The year 2020 has been an extraordinary year. It was also a milestone year for OceanBase. In this year, OceanBase broke its own world record in tPC-C list for the second time. More importantly, it registered an independent company and stepped onto a new stage of development. Meanwhile, The Chinese database market is also changing rapidly.
At the just concluded DTCC 2020 conference, IT168 had an exclusive interview with Yang Chuanhui (Rizhao), senior director of Ant Group OceanBase and General manager of R&d Center of Beijing Auxingbeis Technology Co., LTD., to talk about the independent year of OceanBase.
What’s changed and what’s not in 2020
In 2020, OceanBase passed its coming-of-age ceremony and started to develop independently.
Yang Chuanhui, senior director of Ant Group OceanBase and General manager of Aoxing Bass R&D Center
In June of this year, OceanBase registered an independent company “Beijing Aoxing BSI Technology Co., LTD.”, Yang Bing, former head of financial cloud and middleware of Ant Group, took the post of CEO of the company, and Yang Zhenkun, founder of OceanBase, took the post of CTO. Time industry sensation. The move marks the start of large-scale commercialization for OceanBase and pushes the distributed database technology, China’s top self-developed technology, into a new stage of development, according to an official press release.
On May 20, TPC’s official website announced that OceanBase broke its own world record in the TPC-C benchmark test, with transaction performance rising to 700 million TPMCS from 60.88 million TPMCS in the last test. The cost performance has been optimized from ￥6.25/tpmC last time to ￥3.98/tpmC.
If the second brush TPC-C is to prove the correctness of the technical route of distributed database in the authoritative third party, domestic database has the ability to rank among the world’s top database, then the recognition of large state-owned banks will create a reputation for its reliability in the customer side. It is reported that the important business system of INDUSTRIAL and Commercial Bank of China, known as “universe travel”, has been transformed from mainframe to distributed architecture, running on OceanBase.
In addition, In October 2020, OceanBase launched OBCA certification on its official website to build its own database talent ecology. In just over two months, nearly 10,000 people have participated in the examination and thousands of people have obtained OBCA certification.
“After independence, OceanBase grew rapidly as a front line team, including sales, was put together. Independent for more than half a year, our business is more than the sum of the previous years, and we support are very loyal customers. Such as INDUSTRIAL and Commercial Bank of China, China Mobile, the top insurance companies, and so on.” Yang told IT168 that OceanBase achieved 0-1 breakthroughs in very core business scenarios this year.
At the same time, After OceanBase became independent, Yang’s role and work changed a lot. Before, he played the role of architect. OceanBase went out to commercialize independently, but still assumed the role of architect, focusing on technology. He also does customer support and technical evangelism. The working rhythm used to be faster and more tiring. “Before, ants had more technical demands and more controllable time, but now they serve external customers with more demands and more urgent demands, and the working rhythm becomes more uncontrollable.”
In China’s database market, 2020 is a harvest year hot year, a number of database manufacturers have obtained a new round of financing. China Database Technology Conference DTCC is a grand event in the field of database in China, which has been held for 11 consecutive sessions. It is not only a platform for database practitioners to share and exchange information, but also a window to observe the development of Chinese database market. At the DTCC 2020 conference just past, many participants felt that the domestic database market was more hot this year, and everyone was full of enthusiasm. Especially for the future of distributed database, it is almost Out of the distributed.
Distributed databases are still in their infancy
The debate between centralized architecture and distributed architecture has a long history, and distributed database is not a new trend. As early as the 1970s, academic research on distributed database has been started. In the 1980s, distributed database was regarded as an important technology trend, but its development was restricted by technology, demand, cost and other factors. Mass data processing requirements and technological advances have brought distributed databases to center stage.
There have been discussions about the cost and operational pressures of distributed databases. Some people feel the need to “let the bullets fly for a while” and distributed databases need a process to mature.
“At present, the development of distributed database is still in the primary stage, and the capabilities of various database manufacturers in China are uneven. Many companies start with a distributed database, but It took OceanBase more than a decade to get to where it is today. It would be a good idea for everyone to test TPC-C first to see if each distributed database really guarantees strong consistency, which is the basic requirement.” Yang Chuanhui believes that now distributed is the tuyair, has not done large-scale popularization, fish and dragon mixed, until the large-scale popularization, distributed database manufacturers, especially OLTP distributed manufacturers in the future up to 5.
On distributed and centralized in the field of database is a substitute or complementary relationship, Yang Chuanhui has his own judgment. He explained that centralized databases are used more than distributed databases in today’s business scenarios, and that the two databases will coexist in the short and even medium term. In the long run, centralized databases account for less and less, while distributed databases account for more and more. “There is a process. For example, we are replacing diesel cars with electric cars today. This is a big trend. In addition, can not buy the electric car to install diesel car engine, electric car has electric car engine and electric car based on the three-electric control system. It’s the same with distributed databases. OceanBase is based on a normal PC server, so the best way to leverage the distributed nature is definitely on a PC server.”
Next, OceanBase will focus on product and ecology. First, HTAP’s ability to handle mixed loads. Support complex queries, a system that supports OLTP and OLAP. Second, we need to improve transparent scalability. Be completely transparent to the user. Third, cloud. For example, when deployed to the cloud, storage and computing are separated, advanced diagnostic capabilities and intelligent operation and maintenance capabilities are provided to reduce operation and maintenance costs. Ecological aspects, continue to carry out certification, and universities and other industry-university-research cooperation, technology ecology is also the biggest challenge for the development of self-research database.
The year 2020 is full of uncertainties. Entering 2021, the epidemic is still raging. How will many enterprises and individuals face the New Year? “In one word, I would say ‘enjoy’ the moment. 2020 has been an interesting year for everything. For OceanBase there are good and bad, regardless of the year 2021 to encounter good things or bad things, I think the most important thing is to enjoy the process, there are some things we can’t decide, we can decide is today’s attitude, we might as well go to enjoy carefully for the cause of China’s database, the process of China’s scientific and technological innovation to help, There are all kinds of challenges, and we are optimistic about them.” That’s what Yang chuanhui wants to say about 2021, and he’s confident about the future of OceanBase and the Chinese database.