In-Memory Databases...

I've just read an announcement about "solidDB - an In-memory, relational database software for extreme speed"...

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/soliddb/

"As relational in-memory database software, solidDB performs up to ten times faster than conventional databases. Whether deployed as a cache for IBM DB2™ or IDS™, or standalone as the database of record, solidDB delivers performance-critical data with extreme speed."

Put a relational in-memory database as cache in front of another relational database to speed up your architecture? What a brilliant idea...;-)

Makes sence, because memory is so much faster than any harddisk... and holding all the semantic and structural business-data (I'm not talking about binary data like images or videos) in-memory of a standard server equipped with several tons of memory is absolutely no problem for the average business of today, because the real world (which our semantic and structural business-data reflects in some way or other) doesn't grow as fast as the memory-technology... most of the time it doesn't grow at all.

But the big problem with the idea of soldDB is simply "the relational database in front of another relational database". Still to much indirection exposed by your database if you're going to work with objects in your application anyway...

I'm running db4o as in-memory object-database for several years now to maintain mission critical data... and I'm a happy programmer with lots of freetime, because programming complex applications got so easy if you're doing things the right way: using db4o as the perfect Prevalayer... more to come, stay tuned...