Relational Technology Inc has been expanding on the thinking behind its joint development efforts with Sequent Computer Systems Inc and most recently Corollary Inc, saying that it is working on a multiprocessing version of its Ingres relational database for machines based on multiple 80386 microprocessors and running under Unix. The Alameda, California company says that while the upcoming Ingres Release 6, currently in beta test, will run unchanged under Corollary’s 386/smp multi-processor version of Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Xenix System, with optimisation, it will deliver performance improvements beyond those normally achieved with multiprocessing. One area of improvement is in query optimisation, where Relational has developed a Parallel Database Query system with Sequent that enables queries to be split over multiple processors, yielding much better than linear improvement in performance when processors are added – anything from 10-fold to 100-fold, the company suggests. Relational did $50m in sales of databases for use with Unix in the year to June, and says that while databases for DEC’s VMS are still the biggest contributor, Unix is approaching parity, and is expected to grow by 65% to 75% in the fiscal year just started as a result of DEC’s decision to bundle a database derived from Ingres with its Ultrix implementation of Unix, and also from the fact that The Santa Cruz Operation Inc is bundling Ing res as a component of Open Desktop.
