OpenWorld: Oracle unveils Big Data Appliance and NoSQL Database

Oracle has unveiled the Big Data Appliance, a hardware system that runs several new platforms designed for large-scale data collection and analysis.

The rack-based appliance houses 18 server systems and holds up to 432TB of data and 864GB of memory. The appliance forms the basis of the company's push into the big data management and analysis market.

"We think we have by far the most complete solution for customers who want to deploy big data for their shops," said Andrew Mendelsohn, Oracle's server technologies senior vice president.

"If someone says they want to deploy big data in a couple weeks, we have the systems and the software to help you do that."

Among the software platforms in Oracle's big data arsenal is NoSQL. Specially designed to be highly scalable and handle large workloads, NoSQL uses a simplified process to enter and process information requests.

NoSQL can handle tens of thousands of transactions a second while maintaining extremely low response times, Oracle said.

The Oracle Data Integrator tool, meanwhile, simplifies the process of generating Java code for extracting and translating data from a Hadoop database into an Oracle Data Warehouse.

The final piece in Oracle's big data push is in the analytics space. The company is developing a branded version of the R statistical analysis language. The Oracle R Enterprise platform translates R scripts and tools from client systems for use with Oracle's database platforms.

The result, according to Mendelsohn, is a system that can deliver advanced statistical analysis without the need to lift data from the data warehouse.

"All those programs the R analysts wrote for running on a client can run in an Orcale datawarehouse," he said. "You can now run R in a massively parallel fashion."