On Databases with a Small Footprint. Q&A with David Nguyen
Q1. What does it mean to have a database with a small footprint?
A database with a small footprint can mean a few things. The main one being that the database engine must utilize a very minimal set of resources to operate. As little ram and CPU cycles as possible in order for the device to run the rest of the application. Sometimes it also means for the database data itself to be as compressed and small as possible.
Q2. Why does a small footprint matter?
Many devices are not supercomputers and developers want to utilize as much as possible to solve the problems they are working on. If the database engine that stores and retrieves data can operate with as minimal CPU and RAM overhead as possible, that allows for the developer to have their application and device do more interesting compute.
Q3. You just released a version 16.0 of RaimaDB. What is new in RaimaDB 16.0?
With our release of RaimaDB 16.0, we have added a number of security related features. We have spent extensive time making sure our product is fully Autosar C++14 and MISRA C 2012 compliant. The automotive industry is developing more and more software in their cars and to easily utilize a database engine, we have met existing standards for software in those vehicles. Along with that, we also fully function on the Autosar Classic OS. Another security feature in this release is full SSL connection support. RaimaDB clients can communicate with a RaimaDBserver through industry standard SSL protocols. We have also added struct and enum data type support for our embedded developers’ ease of use and our built in HTML5 administrative tool (Raima Control Center) now supports full SQL and has a SQL query builder contained within. You can try the demo of the Raima Control Center here or download a free trial of RaimaDB version 16.0 here
Q4. What are the typical applications that are sensitive to memory footprint?
Automotive autonomous driving is very sensitive to memory footprint. There is a huge amount of data needing to be processed at once for a driving system to function safely and it all needs to happen as quickly as possible. This requires the database engine to be very efficient and careful about the memory that it uses to allow for the actual decision making compute to occur quickly enough. Another example is smart machines in industrial automations that work smarter with system-side communication flows and rapid data retrival. They typically store large amounts of sensor data, sometimes merged with geospatial data on does that on devices that are very resource constraint and needs to be power efficient.
Q5. Can you give us an example on how RaimaDB 16.0 can be useful for enabling high-performance applications in Edge, IoT, and IIoT?
https://raima.com/why-raima/ highlights many of the different use cases where we excel but particularly performance and ease of use are the main focus points. The RaimaDB engine is very resource efficient and utilizes the minimal CPU and ram needed to operate as quickly as possible for our developers. Our very straight forward but powerful API’s enable the developer to rapidly develop their application without worry about how their data is being stored and retrieved, enabling them to focus instead of tackling their own more difficult problems.
Q6. Who are the typical customers using the RaimaDB?
Automotive, aerospace and defense and healthcare are our biggest customer markets. Each of those spaces have a need for high performance compute with minimal but secure database engine footprint. Raima products have more than 50 million successful deployment and has been field tested more than 30.000 times by developers worldwide. You can find some of our customer stories here
Qx. Anything else you wish to add?
The Raima team is very proud of the latest release and love to work with engineers to continuously improve the product. Therefore, everyone that wants to evaluate RaimaDB for their development project will get free consulting by one of the Raima engineers to get started with your evaluation. You can download RaimaDB here or contact me directly at David.nguyen@raima.com
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David Nguyen , Director of Engineering & QA at Raima Inc.
David brings years of experience in development and QA. At Raima, he fostered a QA team responsible for the creation and maintenance of an automated testing QA framework and a complete daily build system. Additionally, he helped implement a structure to the engineering process and is currently responsible for leading the development in modernizing the product line while ensuring the customer experience is the best it can be for the end user. David holds a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from University of Washington.
Sponsored by Raima.