In today’s hyper-connected techno world, data is at the heart of every modern business, and any strategy for managing it must include a plan for storage and disaster recovery, security, action, and automation. But, technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) poses great unprecedented challenges for database administrators in terms of scalability, flexibility, and connectivity. Thus, the industry will need new databases to handle increasing amounts of data generated from IoT devices. To fulfill this need, Steven Graves, the President and CEO of McObject LLC, with his expert team, is offering proven, ultra-fast data management technology to meet the unique needs of intelligent, connected devices.
The Reason behind the Foundation of McObject
Steven came up with the idea to establish McObject when he and Andrei Gorine (CTO of McObject) were having a conversation about a need for a new real-time embedded database. This database was to be used in what was then considered primarily hardware devices: telecom and networking equipment, industrial controllers, avionics, etc. This conversation led to the creation of McObject in 2001 and the launch of the eXtremeDB In-Memory Database System (IMDS) product family, the first in-memory embedded DBMS created specifically for embedded systems.
Delivering Smarter, Reliable and Cost-Effective Applications
Federal Way, WA-based McObject creates the eXtremeDB database system for intelligent devices, embedded systems, and scalable real-time applications. Its proven eXtremeDB software is built on a core IMDS architecture, thereby, making applications smarter and more reliable & cost-effective to develop and maintain. Presently, eXtremeDB in the cloud is primarily used for Big Data and financial systems. Since the inception, this database system has evolved to incorporate persistent storage and more programming interfaces such as SQL/JDBC/ODBC. Now, it also integrates more languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, Python and Lua, time-series data, sharding, and the client/server model. McObject offers eXtremeDB for HPC (High Performance Computing) for cloud computing. This database system comes with the following features:
- Statistical analysis: eXtremeDB for HPC has a library of more than 100 functions for performing statistical analysis of time series data like grand, group, grid, window averages, etc.
- Pipelining: The comprehensive math library of eXtremeDB is the building blocks that can be amassed into a pipeline to minimize information flows and maximize usage of CPU and L1/L2/L3 cache as much as possible.
- Columnar and conventional row-oriented storage: The database system provides best of OLTP and time-series data management.
- Horizontal partitioning (sharding): Elastically scale databases on-prem or in the cloud. Utilize every CPU and every core.
- High Availability: For using Master/slave model, the accessibility of “five 9s” is required. The replicas are in read-only mode and can be used to balance the load of queries. Highly configurable synchronous, asynchronous, and partial replication.
- Cluster: Master/master model also supports “five 9s” availability, and enables distributed processing of database operations.
- Multiple APIs: eXtremeDB covers different languages such as C, C++, C#, Java, Python or Lua, and SQL (including JDBC and ODBC drivers) or a native language API.
Importance of Scalability in Database Sphere
As market demands are never static, scalability has become a crucial catalyst that helps in improving the availability and performance in the database. If the data is not available, applications cannot run and as a result, the company may lose their business. Therefore, McObject’s eXtremeDB offers elastic scalability through sharding. Because of this feature, databases are partitioned (“sharded”), with each partition/shard managed by an instance of the DBMS server. These shards can be dispersed on a storage array (which may be a SAN). Thereby, keeping a CPU core busy with each server or distributed across different physical servers with their own storage systems.
In addition to delivering high availability via failover, each shard can have one or more replica or backup copies to share the query-processing load. Distributed query processing across multiple servers, CPUs and/or CPU cores accelerate performance. In some cases, through parallel execution of database operations and by harnessing the combined processing power, memory and I/O bandwidth of many nodes rather than just one also accelerate performance. This processing played a key role in eXtremeDB’s record-setting STAC-M3 benchmark implementations.
Offering Flexible and Healthy Work-Environment
McObject team’s goal is to dedicate their time and effort toward developing the most advanced database technology possible, to provide their customers with outstanding solutions. Therefore, Steven motivates his employees to invest time in learning and communicating any relevant new skills with their co-workers. McObject offers flexible schedules and boosts staff research so that these things can help the company understand, motivate and better provide for its employees. Commenting on this, the versatile leader states “We have a great team that has been working together for years and that thrives on learning on new techniques and testing new ideas in our field.” Due to such healthy work-environment, McObject team was able to develop Active Replication Fabric™ for their clients.
A Versatile Leader Leading McObject towards Success
Steven is a seasoned senior executive and technologist in the database software and embedded systems industries. As the CEO of McObject, the dynamic leader has been leading the company towards success. To ensure his business runs smoothly, the first thing Steven does when he wakes up is to check his email to see whether the engineering team has what they need to support their customers and the projects they have in development process. Then, the CEO reviews any product requests received from his existing and potential clients. To keep an eye out on the latest development or technology, he looks at industry relevant daily news and blogs.
Top Three Skills Required to Build a Successful Career
According to Steven, there are many skills that can help developers to build a successful career in cloud computing. Here, he pointed out some skills: adaptability, constant focus, and in-depth knowledge. He shares that individuals should be flexible enough to adapt any changes in this sector. “Those that don’t adapt will find their careers going extinct,” adds Steven. He also suggests that having a constant emphasis and in-depth knowledge of data management practices and techniques will, in turn, give them a competitive edge.
