AsterixDB

TLDR

AsterixDB is a new, full‑function BDMS that offers a flexible NoSQL‑style data model, a rich query language, scalable runtime, LSM‑based partitioned storage and indexing, and support for external data, fuzzy, spatial, and temporal types, making it well suited for web data warehousing, social data storage, and other Big Data use cases. This paper is the first complete description of the resulting open‑source AsterixDB system. The authors describe AsterixDB’s data model, query language, and software architecture, detail its development history from 2009 to the 2013 open‑source release, summarize its current status and early performance comparisons with a parallel relational DBMS, a popular NoSQL store, and a Hadoop‑based SQL analytics platform, and discuss initial trials and lessons learned. AsterixDB demonstrates competitive performance relative to a parallel relational DBMS, a popular NoSQL store, and a Hadoop‑based SQL analytics platform on comparable workloads.

Abstract

AsterixDB is a new, full-function BDMS (Big Data Management System) with a feature set that distinguishes it from other platforms in today's open source Big Data ecosystem. Its features make it well-suited to applications like web data warehousing, social data storage and analysis, and other use cases related to Big Data. AsterixDB has a flexible NoSQL style data model; a query language that supports a wide range of queries; a scalable runtime; partitioned, LSM-based data storage and indexing (including B + -tree, R-tree, and text indexes); support for external as well as natively stored data; a rich set of built-in types; support for fuzzy, spatial, and temporal types and queries; a built-in notion of data feeds for ingestion of data; and transaction support akin to that of a NoSQL store. Development of AsterixDB began in 2009 and led to a mid-2013 initial open source release. This paper is the first complete description of the resulting open source AsterixDB system. Covered herein are the system's data model, its query language, and its software architecture. Also included are a summary of the current status of the project and a first glimpse into how AsterixDB performs when compared to alternative technologies, including a parallel relational DBMS, a popular NoSQL store, and a popular Hadoop-based SQL data analytics platform, for things that both technologies can do. Also included is a brief description of some initial trials that the system has undergone and the lessons learned (and plans laid) based on those early "customer" engagements.