Actian Delivers SQL Analytics Natively in Hadoop
Actian Corporation hopes to differentiate itself from other providers of Big Data technologies with today's announcement that the latest version of its Actian Analytics Platform provides end-to-end analytic processing natively in Hadoop.
This will make the Hadoop Big Data framework more accessible by offering high-performance ELT (extract, load and transform) and SQL analytics on Hadoop with no need for MapReduce skills. This is a big deal because data scientists with Hadoop skills are in short supply, while SQL skills are relatively abundant.
According to the company, only a subset of SQL was previously supported in Hadoop. Some SQL queries would not run in Hadoop while others had to be rewritten due to incomplete SQL support. Actian’s platform, combined with the company's visual data flow framework, allows SQL users to conduct advanced analytics directly on data in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
Actian CEO Steve Shine said in a statement that other companies offer SQL access to Hadoop using two approaches: through external add-ons or by building a new relational database management system within Hadoop, the latter a costly and time-intensive exercise. “Actian has removed all major barriers to Big Data analytics on Hadoop, basically making Hadoop industrial strength,” he said.
The platform uses Actian's X100 vector processing engine across every node of the Hadoop architecture, which the company says results in performance up to 30 times faster than competitive offerings. The solution is also fully ACID compliant and offers libraries of analytics functions.
“We are delighted to see that, with the addition of full-scale SQL in Hadoop functionality, Actian continues to build its Hadoop ecosystem capabilities with a YARN-certified analytics platform that delivers powerful performance and enterprise readiness,” said John Kreisa, vice president of strategic marketing at Hortonworks, in a statement. “Hadoop gave the Big Data world an affordable repository for vast quantities of data, and now Actian makes that data accessible and actionable for maximum business impact.”
The Actian Analytics Platform will be generally available on June 30. Companies currently using Actian include Evernote and Opera Solutions.
