How the Dutch MonetDB squeezes the last drop of performance out of a server

Now that server-less and cloud seem to be the new paradigm, you would almost forget that optimising databases on bare metal (on premise) is at least as important. When the performance of complex queries has become the bottleneck in data science projects, it is time to consider improving the speed of your data warehouse with a column store database. We’ve talked about column store databases such as Vertica before.

In this broadcast, MonetDB Solutions is at the centre. MonetDB Solutions is a spin-off of the Dutch national research institute Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and has now received an investment from ServiceNow. MonetDB is able to run queries up to 700x (!!) faster than traditional SQL environments. They are also able to apply Machine Learning, including TensorFlow, in the database themselves.

Lex Knape and Jurjen Helmus (of De Dataloog) talk in this broadcast with Ying Zhang and Niels Nes of MonetDB Solutions. They talk about column store database technology, speed optimisation and how the contract with ServiceNow was achieved. Lex didn’t seem so convinced at first, but the idea of a 700x faster database will stay for quite a while!

Listen on de Dataloog website or on Spotify.