The Milpitas, California-based disk and tape subsystem integrator System Industries Inc, which operates primarily in the DEC VAX market, has adopted Framingham, Massachusetts-based Charles River Data Systems Inc’s Relational Accelerator, a dedicated database engine designed to enhance the performance of Oracle Corp applications running on DEC VAX/VMS computers, under an agreement valued at more than $35m over the first three years. System Industries will integrate the product with its disk and tape subsystems and Charles River will continue to enhance and develop the product, and supply technical training and support. The Relational Accelerator is claimed to provide significant cost savings compared with VAX-only systems running Oracle – and the Oracle installed base under VAX/VMS is put at ovr 14,000 sites, accounting for about 40% of the VAX relational database market. The Relational Accelerator features a real-time, dedicated database engine and disk storage system that processes the back-end Oracle kernal transparently, providing up to 25 transactions per second as measured by the TP1 benchmark on a variety of VAX and MicroVAX front-ends. Response time increases of two to four times are claimed to be typical, and the thing is also said to increase the number of simultaneous users that can be supported on a given system. No indication of price was given.
