Last December, Oracle introduced its MySQL-based cloud database service called HeatWave. It offers high performance complex query support alongside its well-established OLTP capability; a combination that is unusual in the open-source database world. It runs on OCI Gen 2, which is the second generation of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Now, Oracle is bringing out a new version of HeatWave that includes machine learning-based automated provisioning and performance tuning. These capabilities enable MySQL developers to build applications that are truly enterprise-scale and scope without needing arcane enterprise database management skills.
The automated performance and other management capabilities are features of MySQL AutoPilot. It uses machine learning in such areas as query performance, cluster capacity, network overhead, dictionary size, and load parallelism to optimize every aspect of HeatWave’s operation. In addition to automatic tuning and provisioning, it optimizes data loading, query execution, and failure handling.
The automated data loading capability includes automated data partitioning recommendations driven in part by an automated way of determining the optimal degree of parallelism for loading and optimized data reorganization, all without requiring manual effort. All the data is encrypted both at rest and over the network without impacting performance. It can scale up to 64 nodes and process 32 terabytes of data, up from 24 nodes and 12TB of data, and scalability has further improved by 20% to a nearly 0.9 scalability factor (1.0 being perfect-which is impossible for any system to achieve).
For MySQL database developers, this is a game changer. Usually, developers scale MySQL through labor- intensive sharding schemes, often resulting in complex application SQL logic, and exposing the system to multiple levels of human error. With HeatWave, this is not an issue.
MySQL developers also run into constant challenges configuring the database for maximum efficiency and coding the SQL for the best performance. With HeatWave, these are no longer concerns. It is important to note that since HeatWave is built on top of open-source MySQL, any existing MySQL application will work on it without any modification.
Oracle Corporation has long been known as a provider of relational database technology for the enterprise. With HeatWave, Oracle is leveraging its decades of experience and database expertise to provide first class database capabilities to teams of open-source database application developers at a very affordable price and elevating the MySQL community to a whole new level of database power and sophistication.
