News

New Dev Community Delivers 411 for SQL

• By Jason Turcotte
• September 13, 2006

A new program launched this week places SQL under the limelight, as one company looks to laud and standardize the programming language for data queries and analysis. And build a developer community in the process.

Boston-based StreamBase Systems announced Project StreamSQL in hopes of expanding the SQL-based language and to ease the development of real-time streaming data apps with a flexible, scalable solution. Building real-time apps with StreamSQL–which adds time and event-based windows to standard SQL–equates to transaction fraud detection, automated stock trading, Web site monitoring and more–all features that enhance the Web services experience.

“The rapid growth of the complex event processing marketplace suggests that the standardization of a programming language that processes and analyzes streams of real-time data would make sense,” said Philip Howard, research director, Bloor Research. “Acceptance of such a standard would facilitate adoption of CEP technology and enable enterprise developers familiar with current query languages to more easily build real-time streaming data applications.”

According to StreamBase CTO and Founder, Michael Stonebreaker, the knowledge is out there. He cites millions of relational database servers running SQL already, and that tens of thousands of SQL database programmers are well-versed in the language. He says coding in Java and C++ is too low level for real-time apps, but those using SQL for stored data queries can extend the same technology for streaming data.

Take Wall Street, for example. With StreamSQL technology an enterprise can evaluate traders in real-time, enabling them to quickly cut off an investor’s money flow when things get ugly. The product co-relates history (time windows) with data analysis, which would include trading patterns in this particular scenario.

“You want to get these apps up in hours or a small number of days,” Stonebreaker said. “And you want to enforce a collection of business rules in real-time.”

Stonebreaker says developers can code StreamSQL more quickly than other programming languages, and need only write the code once. That code can be shared with other vendors to create high-level standards and help build a developer community. The real crux of this offering, he says, is processing speed and agility. StreamBase reps predict StreamSQL will quickly become ‘the Oracle of streaming data,’ and they say it will be the ubiquitous language for the development of real-time streaming data apps.

StreamBase offers free interactive workshops for developers in select cities. Thus far, training sessions have been scheduled Oct. 10, 11 in New York City, and Oct. 17, 18 in Dulles, Va. A free trial of StreamSQL Developer Edition is available now at the company’s Developer Zone.