A Visionary Architecture for Data Warehousing

A number of IT professionals choose MySQL as their data warehousing database because it offers a new

and flexible paradigm of database management. One key technical differentiator between MySQL and

other database platforms – whether they are proprietary or open source – is the pluggable storage engine

architecture of MySQL.

The MySQL pluggable storage engine architecture allows a database professional to select a specialized

storage engine for a particular application need while being completely shielded from the need to manage

any specific application coding requirements. The pluggable storage engine architecture provides a

standard set of management and support services that are common among all underlying storage engines.

The storage engines themselves are the components of the database server that actually perform actions

on the underlying data that is maintained at the physical server level.

Figure 1 – The MySQL Architecture

This efficient and modular architecture provides large performance and manageability benefits for those

wishing to specifically target a particular application need or data warehousing use case. The technical

advantage experienced by the application provider is clearly evident in this respect as unnecessary

overhead is avoided when only certain engines are chosen for application use.

For example, the MySQL server has built-in storage engines that are designed for:

• ACID transactional applications

• Non–transactional applications (that can therefore insert and read data faster)

• Main memory operations for very fast read times

• Clustered / High-availability database environments

• Compressing historical data down to a very small footprint

• Referencing Non-DBMS flat files as part of the MySQL database

• And several other uses

In addition, a single database or application can use different storage engines at the same time for

maximum effect, with a single command being all that’s needed to change from one engine to another.

Finally, an innovative business can develop its own customized storage engine designed to exactly meet

the needs of their particular application.

The storage engine power of MySQL results in the benefit of having many different databases in the same

box to choose from, with true ‘write once’ ability in terms of building application code. No other database

management system offers a visionary architecture that affords such power and flexibility in designing a

data warehousing application like MySQL.