Okay, on to CLSA. Here’s a base case on why CLSA/e Equity Access nixedSybase ASE 11.
9 for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 on their research database. . . . Problem to solve:=================Provide a mechanism that will enable secure electronic contribution andstorage of information related to equity research data, as well as, amechanism to enable secure electronic distribution of the information storedin a repository or data warehouse.
Factors affecting the implementationincluded:* Providing access to the mechanisms via intranet and internet connectivity* Ensuring the contribution / storage / notification process can beperformed in ; 5seconds once the information has been submitted forconfirmation* Ensuring performance (i. e. , user response time) as it relates to thedistribution of information can be performed in ; 5 seconds once requested* The contribution function must support no less than 1000 simultaneoususers located in 15 countries. * The distribution mechanism must support not less than 2,000,000simultaneous users located in 57 countries.
* Rapid startup time (3 months for a prototype – 9 months for production)Those were my requirements. . . ————————————————————————————————–The issues:=================Our parent firm was already using a home-grown research database forcontribution and distribution of 400 GB of research information. It wassuggested that we copy their setup and code to meet our rapid startuprequirement.
Our parent firm had implemented a Sybase ASE 11. 9 database running onhigh-end HP Unix servers (hp superdome with 256GB memory with a 2000GB (2TB)mirrored storage array)engineered for large-scale databases. This high-endarchitecture is ideal for the specific demands of online transactionprocessing workloads and high availability (never goes down). Unfortunately,the whole setup is very expensive and very centralized (Hong Kong). In orderto meet their performance criteria, they resorted to distributing all orparts of the database across multiple servers in different time zones.
Thiswas very expensive solution to maintain because of the database licensing,hardware, communication costs associated with distributing the data, andpersonnel to support the distributed databases (3 databases x 55 tables ineach database x 4 countries). We were starting with 6 countries and over 100,000 simultaneous users. Theparent solution cost would have an initial capital expenditure of $4,200,000and a run rate of $46,000 per month (to start). Our budget to start was somewhere around $125,000 (not including personnel).
————————————————-This is how I make a living. . . ==============================Using a copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, I prototyped the database andsupporting structures (indexes, stored procs, tables, etc) in two weeksusing our parent firm and another successful internet-based researchsupplier as templates for our base service. The license for the software was$900, and the server was already being used for other non-production work.
SQL Server license was free because we already had a development license. I set SQL (ANSI SQL-92), JAVA (J2EE), Javascript, XML, and HTLM as thebaseline for our standards for development. Notepad was the developmenttool. I picked up a free evaluation copy of ColdFusion 5. 0 for themiddleware components and downloaded JDK 1. 3 from Sun.
com for the Javadevelopment environment. The majority of the database activity revolves around a master transactiontable for collecting and distributing data. Seperate reference tables (in1-to-many relationships with the transaction tables) are used for useraccess, markets, countries, clients, contributors, names, address, etc, inorder to minimize table maintenance and complicated screen inputs. Command-line batch jobs using SQL BULK INSERT we created to transfer databetween database servers.
In six weeks we were ready to test the system’s performance on a CompaqProliant 8500 class machine with 8 CPUs, 16GB memory, with external storagefor 200GB. We had
