What kind of database does the enterprise need? There may be different answers at different times and in different circumstances.

Relational databases are still dominant

The concept of database originated in the 1960s. By the 1970s, relational models had been created. In the 1980s relational databases became the information infrastructure of the whole society. At the beginning of 2000, with the development of the Internet, the concurrent visits increased rapidly, reaching the level of millions to millions, while the traditional commercial database is increasingly difficult to accommodate and process such a large amount of data and visits. Since 2006, a large number of new non-relational databases have mushroomed out, causing an unprecedented NoSQL revolution in the entire database industry.

Although the non-relational database has aroused great response in a period of time, the relational database has experienced decades of development, until now it is still the information infrastructure of the whole society, carrying the most important and most visited data of the whole society. But basically the market pattern of relational database has not changed much. The first hegemons are still dominant today. For example, we are familiar with Oracle database, SQL Server, DB2.

Relational databases, historically the most condemned databases, are not dead, but alive. As can be seen from the trend of database popularity, the top three relational databases from 2013 to now are all very stable.

According to Gartner report, the global database market is huge, among which relational database reached 37.5 billion USD in 2018, still maintaining a high growth rate of 10%, and the global market size is expected to reach 45.9 billion USD in 2020. China’s relational database market is expected to reach $2.07 billion in 2020.

According to Han Hongyuan, a researcher of Ant Financial, relational database has two main values. One is to meet the ACID characteristics of database, namely atomicity, consistency, isolation and persistence, which can help application development and simplify the complexity of application development. Second, THE SQL syntax is close to natural semantics, and the code written by developers can be easily understood by business personnel, and the code readability and maintainability are very strong, reducing the cost of communication.

In recent two years, the domestic database market is particularly lively. Many manufacturers have launched domestic databases developed by themselves, and relational database is the main target of various manufacturers, among which OceanBase of Ant Financial is a representative. However, in response to the challenges of business complexity and rapid iteration, relational databases are evolving from centralized to distributed architectures.

Architecture change: from centralized to distributed

The 1990s to the beginning of this century is the great development period of relational database, IOE built a closed centralized architecture system, with Oracle database, SQL Server, DB2 – based commercial relational database firmly occupy the enterprise database market. Back then, the only people who could afford databases were the rich and the rich, mostly banks and telecoms firms.

Traditional centralized architectures have natural advantages in terms of stability and availability, but also obvious disadvantages, poor scalability. In the past, traditional enterprises had limited access to terminals, while the business systems of banks, government and enterprises were all for internal use, and their shortcomings in scalability were not enough to pose challenges. However, with the development of the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, the business system not only meets the needs of internal personnel, but also supports the access requests of massive mobile terminals. The high concurrency brought by the exponential growth of data makes the centralized architecture face challenges, and it is difficult to meet the needs by relying on vertical expansion.

In 2009, Alibaba pioneered the idea of “de-IOE”, which means weaning its business systems from over-reliance on IBM minicomelets, Oracle databases and EMC storage. In 2010, Alibaba/Ant Financial launched OceanBase distributed relational database project.

In the past ten years, there have been continuous voices of “O” in China, which has been accompanied by the evolution of architecture system from centralized to distributed. Centralized architecture the expansion capacity of a single large server plus storage is limited, which cannot support the sustainable development of enterprises. Distributed is the future. The boom in cloud computing has created a need for larger databases. Cloud has become the trend, and cloud and distributed architecture complement each other.

Now the domestic database to “O” and has a long way on the road of the cloud, such as traditional financial sector, especially the traditional banking system is still built from many are dependent on the IOE centralized architecture, carrying the database due to the very important business system, is one of the most difficult migration based software, Banks for reasons of stability and the compliance and so on various aspects, In particular, there are doubts about the availability and reliability of distributed architecture, and they tend to be cautious in selection. However, due to business needs, many banks have begun to transform the distributed architecture and cloud migration.

OceanBase took the top spot last year with TPC-C, proving to the world that distributed databases can compete with centralized databases in terms of performance, reliability and availability. At present, OceanBase not only supports ant Financial’s own business and Alibaba Group’s double 11 traffic test, but also supports the business of dozens of commercial banks and financial institutions.

OceanBase version 2.2 is the stable version that successfully supports the 2019 Tmall Double 11 promotion. It is also the version used for TPC-C test and ranked the top of TPC-C performance. Compared to version 2.0, version 2.2 has a number of new features. It is a milestone release compatible with both MySQL and Oracle modes, and OLTP performance is improved by more than 50% compared to version 2.0.

Now a sudden outbreak of the epidemic, so that business operators are experiencing the most special year. In the national fight against the epidemic, technology companies have provided strong technical support to help businesses stay closed.

From February 19 to February 26, Ant Financial launched an online live broadcast of the digital class “Fighting the Epidemic together and Breaking the Situation with technology”. Invite senior experts to share practical experience of Ant Financial service from three aspects of “cloud native”, “R&D efficiency” and “database” and answer questions online. Online to see the conference to Ali Yunyunqi, into the ant digital broadcast room.

On February 24th and 25th, there will be two live broadcasts about OceanBase version 2.2, which will be shared by Qing Tao, solution architect of OceanBase team of Ant Financial. This section describes the Complete OceanBase solution for scenarios such as remote DISASTER recovery, live equipment room relocation, and online data migration. You will be introduced to the OceanBase 2.2 deployment and installation guide, which will walk you through building a highly available OceanBase 2.2 database cluster. In addition, it will explain all knowledge points in the operation and maintenance process from resource management, cluster management, tenant management, alarm monitoring, backup and recovery in detail, aiming at the difficulties and questions that users may encounter in operation and development when using OceanBase 2.2 version.

In addition, this live broadcast will lead you to explore Oracle and MySQL tenants, experience data migration, data synchronization and other practical operations, and help users experience the core capabilities of OceanBase 2.2 from the development and operation level.

It is understood that Version 2.2 of OceanBase has been officially launched on the official website recently, you can log in the Official website of OceanBase to obtain free. OceanBase version 2.2 is a stable version that successfully supports the 2019 Tmall Double 11 promotion. It is also used for TPC-C test and ranked the top of TPC-C performance. OceanBase 2.2 is a milestone release that is compatible with both MySQL and Oracle schemas.