SkySQL Joins IBM On SQL Merger

SkySQL has announced a line of MariaDB products that combine NoSQL and SQL technology, offering users the ability to handle large unstructured data sets alongside traditional database features to ensure data consistency.

Available immediately, MariaDB Enterprise 2 and MariaDB Enterprise Cluster 2 are based on the code used in the firm’s MariaDB 10 database server, which it also released today.

According to SkySQL, the availability of an enterprise grade SQL database system with NoSQL interoperability will be a game changer for developers building revenue generating applications and database administrators in charge of large, complex environments.

The two new products have been developed with support from other partners in the open source community, including Red Hat, IBM and Google, according to the firm, and are aimed at giving IT managers more options for managing large volumes of data.

In fact, Red Hat will use MariaDB Enterprise 2 as the default database for its enterprise customers, while Google has also moved large parts of its infrastructure to MariaDB, according to Dion Cornett, VP of Global Sales for SkySQL .

Cornett said that customers have been using a wide variety of databases over the past few years in order to meet the diverse requirements of applications.

“The types of applications have evolved over time, and the challenge we now have today is that people have different IT stack structures, and trying to integrate all that has been very challenging and required lots of custom code to be created. What we’re doing with MariaDB is introduce an array of features to combine the best of both worlds,” he said.

The features are designed to allow developers and database administrators to take many different data structures and integrate them and use them in a cohesive application, in the same way that standard database tools presently allow.

These include the Connect Storage Engine, which enables access to a wide variety of file formats such as XML and CSV files, and the ability to run familiar SQL commands against that data.

A key feature is dynamic columns, which enables MariaDB to “smartly interpret” incoming data and adapt it to the data structure that best fits, according to Cornett.

“At a technical level what you’re actually looking at are files within the cells of information that can vary in size, which is not a capability you’ve traditionally had in databases and that flexibility is a big leap forward,” he said.

The new MariaDB products can also plug into the Apache Cassandra storage engine, which can take a columnar data store and read or write against it like it is a traditional SQL table.

An example of how MariaDB Enterprise 2 might be used is if a service provider has a large-scale video server and wants to combine that with billing information, Cornett said.

“The customer’s video history and what they’re consuming could be very unstructured, but the billing structure will be very fixed, and it has been something of a challenge to bring the two of those together up to this point,” he explained.

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Techies Demand More Money

Employers may need to loosen their purse strings to retain their IT staffers in 2014, according to a salary survey from IT career websiteDice.com.

Among the tech workers who anticipate changing employers in 2014, 68 percent listed more compensation as their reason for leaving. Other factors include improved working conditions (48 percent), more responsibility (35 percent) and the possibility of losing their job (20 percent). The poll, conducted online between Oct. 14 and Nov. 29 last year, surveyed 17,236 tech professionals.

Fifty-four percent of the workers polled weren’t content with their compensation. This figure is down from 2012′s survey, when 57 percent of respondents were displeased with their pay.

The decrease in salary satisfaction could mean companies will face IT staff retention challenges this year, since 65 percent of respondents said they’re confident they can find a new, better position in 2014.

This dissatisfaction over pay comes even though the survey, released Wednesday, showed that the average tech salary rose 2.6 percent in 2013 to US$87,811 and that more companies gave merit raises. The main reason for last year’s bump in pay, according to 45 percent of respondents, was a merit raise. In comparison, the average tech salary was $85,619 in 2012 and 40 percent of those polled said they received a merit raise.

Meanwhile, 26 percent of respondents attributed their 2013 salary increase to taking a higher-paying job at another company.

Employers realize tech talent is coveted and are attempting to keep workers satisfied by offering them a variety of incentives, the survey found. In 2013, 66 percent of employers provided incentives to retain workers. The two most popular incentives were increased compensation and more interesting work. Incentives that allow employees to better balance their work and personal lives were also offered, such as telecommuting and a flexible work schedule.

Skills that commanded six-figure jobs in 2013 came from some of the hottest areas of IT. Data science led the way with big data backgrounds yielding some of the highest salaries. People skilled in Knowing R, the popular statistical computing language, can expect to make $115,531 on average, while those with NoSQL database development skills command an average salary of $114,796. IT pros skilled in MapReduce to process large data sets make $114,396 on average.

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