Splice Machine 2.0 Bridges The Online Transaction Processing-Business Analytics Divide

Big data startup Splice Machine is seeking beta testers for the second generation of its in-memory relational database software that's capable of simultaneously performing transaction processing and business analytics tasks.

Splice Machine 2.0 supports the Apache Spark open-source computational engine that turbocharges big data processing speeds and makes dual transaction processing/analytics possible.

"It's an architectural breakthrough," said Splice Machine CEO and co-founder Monte Zweben, in an interview with CRN. "This provides the ability to perform real-time analysis on live data and make decisions in the moment instead of waiting for data from yesterday."

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Splice Machine's in-memory RDBMS, which debuted earlier this year, is designed to be more scalable than current-generation relational databases from Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft and others, and to be capable of handling huge volumes of data for both online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) tasks.

Splice Machine boasts a performance improvement of 10 times to 20 times those products at one-fourth the cost.

Unlike many NoSQL databases being developed by startups to handle big data, Splice Machine's software provides a SQL interface that's familiar to most database administrators and developers. The database works with the Hadoop big data platform, providing a way to get around that system's batch-processing limitations.

Most distributions of Hadoop, including Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR Technologies, now include Spark as part of its core processing capabilities. Splice Machine 2.0 is designed to leverage those advanced processing capabilities. "Spark is an incredible computational engine," Zweben said.

"As more customers start to run Spark on Cloudera's platform, Splice Machine's integration complements the analytical capabilities of our enterprise data hubs, enabling customers across a variety of industries to handle all types of workloads with great efficiency," said Charles Zedlewski, products vice president at Cloudera, a Splice Machine integration partner, in a statement.

Splice Machine 2.0 includes advance resource management for Hadoop and Spark to manage simultaneous OLTP and OLAP processes, ensuring that complex OLAP queries don't hog compute resources and delay time-sensitive OLTP jobs.

"There are no more applications that are just transactional or just analytical," Zweben said. "They need to be simultaneous operations."

Splice Machine 2.0 also includes an extensive management console for monitoring analytical and transactional queries in process, including batch import processes. The new release can access external data and libraries, execute federated queries on data in external databases and files using Virtual Table Interfaces, and execute pre-built Spark libraries for machine learning, stream analysis, data integration and graph modeling.

Wells Fargo is beta testing the new release and Splice Machine is seeking additional testers. Zweben expects the beta tests to last several months, with the 2.0 edition becoming generally available in next year's second quarter.

PUBLISHED NOV. 25, 2015