MarkLogic 7 Enhances Enterprise NoSQL

MarkLogic Corporation announced new version of its Enterprise NoSQL database platform, MarkLogic 7.

To help organizations gain better operational agility and optimize storage costs, MarkLogic 7 supports cloud computing, can run natively on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), and has new features that enable database elasticity and searchable tiered storage.

Additionally, to help users understand and gain more meaning from their data, MarkLogic 7 introduces MarkLogic Semantics. It combines the power of documents, data and RDF triples (also known as Linked Data) to enable analysts to understand, discover and make better informed decisions, and to power the delivery of the most comprehensive, contextually relevant information to users.

“Pressed to rapidly create new information products – while containing costs and dealing with expanding data volumes – architecture teams have struggled with rigid infrastructures and traditional relational databases that either stymy development or that cannot expand and contract with changing user needs,” explained Gary Bloom, CEO and president, MarkLogic. “MarkLogic already delivers all the features required for enterprise deployment of NoSQL database technology. With MarkLogic 7, customers will have greater power and agility to do more with data and content at a faster pace, while also making the best use of the new generation of cloud infrastructure. All are critical to our customers who are building mission-critical applications.”

Gain Operational Agility and Adhere to Operational Standards
for Data Governance, Security and Availability
Reduce storage costs using MarkLogic 7 while maintaining the sub-second performance users have come to expect. It automates the process of segregating data into different storage tiers allowing for the cost of storage to reflect the value, relevancy and timeliness of the data, whether it is for real-time operational applications, archiving, batch applications, or batch analytics. The data remains readily available with sub-second query performance, so it can still adhere to governance, compliance and security policies over the entire lifetime of the data, even while leveraging cost-effective public or private cloud platforms.

MarkLogic 7 complements, leverages, and enhances investments in Hadoop while providing secure, real-time, transactional applications and analytics to users. In addition to local disk, SAN, NAS and other traditional file systems, MarkLogic can run directly on top of HDFS for either operational or archived data. This eliminates the need for costly and time-intensive extract, transform and load (ETL) process each time data needs to be used, and allows the cost of indexing to be amortized over the life of the data.

Dynamically scalable data layers become practical with MarkLogic 7, enabling the right resources to be brought to bear even during peak times. A combination of performance monitoring, programmatic control of cluster size, data rebalancing and granular control of resources bring agility and elasticity to the data layer whether it is on-premise or in the cloud. MarkLogic can also leverage Amazon S3 either as a native storage tier or for cloud backup from an on-premise deployment, enabling hybrid on-premise/cloud architectures. All of this is possible because it supports ACID transactions, which are table-stakes for any database that will be used for mission-critical applications.

“Whether at a global bank, government agency, or a start-up, CIOs need to provide their organizations with trusted and proven data management solutions,” said Bloom. “The promise of the cloud and Hadoop can only be realized when coupled with a database platform that enables elasticity and flexibility with the assurance of data consistency and security. Our tiered storage and cloud offerings enable CIOs to be more innovative and proactive while also being responsive to the bottom-line.”

Give Information Applications More Power
Powerful new applications for decision-making are built quicker and are easier to deliver with MarkLogic 7. The new Semantics option stores the RDF triples, documents and data in the same proven Enterprise NoSQL database, maintaining context and making the facts available for decision-making. In addition, MarkLogic Semantics, with a specialized triple index, enables industry-standard SPARQL queries combined with queries against documents and data, so that all relevant information can be delivered in applications and analytic reports.

Maintain the context of your Linked Data and unlock new insights using Semantics. Although still early in the adoption cycle, semantic technologies enable organizations to gain additional insights by allowing users to leverage facts from many sources, including Linked Data.

“Until now there has been a disconnect between the incredible potential of semantics and the values organizations have realized. Managing triples in dedicated triple stores allowed people to see connections – but the original source of that data was disconnected, ironically losing context. By combining triples with a document store that also has built-in querying and APIs for delivery, organizations gain the insights of triples while connecting the data to end users who can search documents with the context of all the facts at their fingertips,” said Joe Pasqua, SVP product strategy, MarkLogic.

Over 70 enterprise organizations have been working with Semantics through the MarkLogic 7 Early Access program.

Innovative use cases that have emerged for this platform include:

• Publishers and media organizations are planning to use the combined Enterprise NoSQL database and triple store as a way to speed implementation of Dynamic Semantic Publishing – a solution used to power websites for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
• Financial institutions are querying triples in the context of a document (such as a trade) to manage Reference Data and understand risk.
• Intelligence, law enforcement, fraud investigators and analysts are discovering connections and patterns in facts and documents.
• Procurement agents are creating decision support tools to rationalize purchasing decisions, vendors and bid management.
• Pharmaceutical companies and governing organizations are using facts and documents together to assess risks and to decide which drug trials to invest in.

Available through the Early Access program, MarkLogic 7 will be available in November. The Tiered Storage and Semantics options are also available in Early Access and will be available along with the production release.