Blog Moved

Future posts related to technology are directly published to LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/prasadchitta

Friday, October 14, 2011

Most efficient multi-set Cartesian join in C

At the beginning of my career, with Indian Space Research Organization, I have been posed with a challenge that required implementing a multi-set Cartesian product with absolutely minimum memory usage to solve an optimization problem. (see my old post on description of the problem: Simple looking Complex problem  )


As a tribute to Dennis M Ritchie (also known as dmr) the creator of C language, who passed away yesterday, I am posting my implementation of this algorithm in C language.

I consider the above seven "highlighted" lines of C code as one of the earliest and most notable achievements of my career! 


If there is any better implementation to solve the stated problem please let me know by posting a comment.....  

Sunday, October 9, 2011

ACID and BASE of data

I am completing my 18 years of working in the field of Information Technology.

All these days an enterprise  data store generally provides the four qualities Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability (ACID) to the transactions. Oracle has emerged as a leader in providing enterprise class ACID transactional capabilities to the applications.

Recently in the Open World 2011, Oracle announced a noSQL database which typically characterized by the BASE acronym. Basically Available, Soft state, Eventually consistent (BASE)

I see a lot of debate on SQL vs NoSQL, ACID vs BASE and Shared Everything vs Shared Nothing architectures of data stores of late; and with Oracle getting on to the NoSQL bandwagon, this debate is just took up additional momentum.

Oracle has posted this paper nicely explaining their NoSQL database. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/learnmore/nosql-database-498041.pdf

In my opinion, SQL and NOSQL choice is straight forward to make:-

big query: Are we storing data or BIG-DATA (read my old post on transactional data vs machine generated big data - http://technofunctionalconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/02/analytics.html)

With the new trends in 'BIG DATA' all the data almost become key, value pair with read and insert only operations with minimal or no updates to the data records. NoSQL/BASE is best suited to handle this type of data. Still the traditional transactional databases of OLTP nature, needs ACID complaint transactions.

So, when designing the big data solutions, an architect should surely look at the NoSQL dataBASE. Is it not?

Publishing this post on 09/10/11 (dd/mm/yy) and this is my 85th post to this blog.