Tuesday, 2 September 2008

Continuent Introduces Tungsten Database Scale-out Stack

Continuent, a provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database replication and scale-out, has announced the launch of its Tungsten scale-out stack, which support open-source databases like MySQL as well as proprietary ones from the likes of Oracle.

Continuent Tungsten provides database replication, group communications wrappers, performance testing tools and shared infrastructure required to build workable scale-out solutions. Tungsten includes sophisticated cluster management, based on group communications. Continuent’s Tungsten stack works with any database implementation, and is available in source and binary forms.

The stack's capabilities include a failure protection function that keeps extra database replicas in the event the master fails, and can automatically promote a slave to master status when needed. It also enables users to maintain and replicate database copies at a number of locations to aid disaster recovery, according to a statement.

The cross-site clustering feature maintains and replicates databases on multiple sites for disaster recovery and the heterogeneous data integration replicates from MySQL to Oracle and the other way round. It populates a data warehouse by copying data from production database into a replica for purposes of reporting.

“Continuent Tungsten is a very important database extension as it allows open source databases to support business critical solutions and provides a performance boost,” says Eero Teerikorpi, CEO of Continuent.

Eero Teerikorpi further added saying that Tungsten enables customers to stay on Oracle database without using costly Enterprise licenses. Because Tungsten can replicate from MySQL to Oracle and vice versa, it opens new avenues for open source databases in the enterprise application mix.