Data warehouse: RedBrick vs IDS

Question for those who may have worked with RedBrick, Would RedBrick make a better data warehouse engine than IDS? and why? I'm not looking for a formal evaluation, even very biased opinions are welcome :) For one thing I know RedBrick is NOT even cheap, so which one you happen to know costs more? Thank you. Kern -- Let's go Green This email contains 100% recycled electrons.

Hi, Prior to IDS 11.7, the answer would be Red Brick, hands down. That's simply because IDS was not designed for data warehousing, like the fact that Red Brick was never designed for OLTP. Red Brick was the first commercially available data warehouse product on the market. The Red Brick company was originally founded by Ralph Kimball, who invented the concept of dimensional modeling, which remains today the de facto standard for designing data warehouses. The key features that Red Brick has are: - Star schema support throughout, i.e. Star Index, Star Join (using the zigzag method) - Target and bitmap indexes - One pass loader, i.e. tables and indexes are ready to use after data loading - no need for deferred index build - Pre-computed view (i.e. MQT in DB2) aka. summary tables with advisor based on run-time stats (vs. schema based advisor) - Versioning, i.e. trickle feed, for real-time warehousing - Rule-based Optimizer (vs. cost-based optimizer in IDS) - Built-in OLAP functions (prior to SQL-OLAP becoming a standard) All these features provide superb performance "out of the box" with very simple setup, e.g. a single Star index on the fact table would provide very adequate performance. Starting with IDS 11.7, a number of the key features listed above were implemented in IDS (using some code from XPS, a MPP-based data warehousing product developed mostly in Portland, as part of Informix). Since then, IDS has comparable performance for queries requiring star-join, bit-map indexing (in the form of multi-index scan, though indexes are not materialized). However, IDS still does not have summary tables, versioning or a one-pass loader. Starting with 11.7xC3, you may be aware of a product called Informix Warehouse Accelerator (IWA). I won't repeat all the features that come with this product, as there are plenty of articles that describe this product (or read the blog listed below). Suffice to say that IWA is built using "modern" technology in that it is an entirely in-memory database that will outperform standard disk-based systems by over 100x. The fundamental difference between the two approaches is that Red Brick was built during a period where "smart indexing" with Star Schema was key to its simplicity and performance. (Red Brick sales folks would routinely tell an Oracle shop that Red Brick is 10x over Oracle in performance and proceeds to prove it to them). Technologies like IWA use technologies (i.e. compression, multi-core cpus and SIMD instructions) to scan data and do predicate evaluation very efficiently. The combination of IDS for OLTP data and transparent acceleration of warehouse/analytic queries makes for a very compelling combination (not to mention other IDS features like HA, etc). If you need more info, feel free to contact me or the IDS team directly. Fred Ho Program Director Chief Technologist - Informix Warehouse IBM Corporation Blog: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/fredho66/?lang=en Tel. 408-956-2422 Tie Line - 475-2422 email: hof@us.ibm.com

Thank you Fred! You're so informative! > On Jul 25, 2014, at 10:43 AM, "FREDERICK HO" <hof@us.ibm.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > Prior to IDS 11.7, the answer would be Red Brick, hands down. That's > simply because IDS was not designed for data warehousing, like the fact > that Red Brick was never designed for OLTP. > > Red Brick was the first commercially available data warehouse product > on the market. The Red Brick company was originally founded by Ralph > Kimball, who invented the concept of dimensional modeling, which remains > today the de facto standard for designing data warehouses. The key > features that Red Brick has are: > > - Star schema support throughout, i.e. Star Index, Star Join (using the > zigzag method) > > - Target and bitmap indexes > > - One pass loader, i.e. tables and indexes are ready to use after data > loading - no need for deferred index build > > - Pre-computed view (i.e. MQT in DB2) aka. summary tables with advisor > based on run-time stats (vs. schema based advisor) > > - Versioning, i.e. trickle feed, for real-time warehousing > > - Rule-based Optimizer (vs. cost-based optimizer in IDS) > > - Built-in OLAP functions (prior to SQL-OLAP becoming a standard) > > All these features provide superb performance "out of the box" with > very simple setup, e.g. a single Star index on the fact table would > provide very adequate performance. > > Starting with IDS 11.7, a number of the key features listed above were > implemented in IDS (using some code from XPS, a MPP-based data warehousing > product developed mostly in Portland, as part of Informix). Since then, > IDS has comparable performance for queries requiring star-join, bit-map > indexing (in the form of multi-index scan, though indexes are not > materialized). However, IDS still does not have summary tables, versioning > or a one-pass loader. > > Starting with 11.7xC3, you may be aware of a product called Informix > Warehouse Accelerator (IWA). I won't repeat all the features that come > with this product, as there are plenty of articles that describe this > product (or read the blog listed below). Suffice to say that IWA is built > using "modern" technology in that it is an entirely in-memory database > that will outperform standard disk-based systems by over 100x. > > The fundamental difference between the two approaches is that Red Brick > was built during a period where "smart indexing" with Star Schema was key > to its simplicity and performance. (Red Brick sales folks would routinely > tell an Oracle shop that Red Brick is 10x over Oracle in performance and > proceeds to prove it to them). Technologies like IWA use technologies > (i.e. compression, multi-core cpus and SIMD instructions) to scan data and > do predicate evaluation very efficiently. The combination of IDS for OLTP > data and transparent acceleration of warehouse/analytic queries makes for > a very compelling combination (not to mention other IDS features like HA, > etc). > > If you need more info, feel free to contact me or the IDS team > directly. > > Fred Ho > > Program Director > > Chief Technologist - Informix Warehouse > > IBM Corporation > > Blog: > https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/fredho66/?lang=en > > Tel. 408-956-2422 > > Tie Line - 475-2422 > > email: hof@us.ibm.com > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. >