Column Oriented Storage lawsuits?
Posted by amrithkumar on April 6, 2008
Frank’s comment on my previous post is an interesting one, he brings up Vertica (www.veritca.com) of Andover, MA. Interestingly, column oriented storage and FPGA filtering are two techniques to address the same challenge, reducing the amount of data that is transfered from disks into main memory.
Column oriented storage is not a new concept. In his post “Advances in Datawarehousing”, the author writes,
Column based databases are not a new concept (Sybase has been offering Sybase IQ for years now) - but some of the upstarts such as Vertica are showing how this fundamental database technology can be packaged and marketed to change the datawarehousing and BI technology landscape altogether
There have been quite a few references to a lawsuit by SybaseIQ that cast a cloud on companies utilizing column oriented storage.
In vertica update 2 the author writes,
One subject on which they’re totally non-forthcoming (lawyers’ orders) is the recent patent lawsuit filed by Sybase. They wouldn’t even say whether they thought it was bogus because they didn’t infringe, or whether they thought it was bogus because the patent shouldn’t have been granted.
On January 31, 2008 it is rumored that Sybase has sued Vertica for allegedly infringing on one of its patents. It isn’t clear which patents these are and how far reaching the issue may be.
Current information indicates that the patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 5,794,229. I’m no lawyer but I’ll keep this blog updated with new information about this suit.
The case is Sybase Inc. v. Vertica Systems Inc. The case number is 08-cv-00024, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
When more information comes along about this suit, it will be interesting to see whether the same kinds of lawsuits may be brought against other column storage companies.
Postscript added April 6th at noon in response to a question from Tom Briggs.
I got the patent number from an article I read in IP Law360. The article is at this address. You may need to register to read the article.
That article contains the following:
“The patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,794,229, was issued in August 1998. It is titled “Database system with methodology for storing a database table by vertically partitioning all columns of the table.”
Judge Leonard Davis has been assigned to the case.”
I verified that at this link.
For those who are willing to pay the $9.99, you can get the latest filing at RFC Express.
April 7, 2008 at 9:31 pm
[...] the new entrants are using column-based architectures and this has already generated at least one lawsuit. Another company entering this crowded space is KickFire, who will shortly be launching their MySQL [...]
April 8, 2008 at 8:28 am
How’d you come up with that patent number?
April 8, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Hi Tom, long time no chat!
I got the patent number from an article I read in IP Law360.
The article is at this address.
That article contains the following:
“The patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,794,229, was issued in August 1998. It is titled “Database system with methodology for storing a database table by vertically partitioning all columns of the table.”
Judge Leonard Davis has been assigned to the case.”
I verified that at this link.
-amrith
April 9, 2008 at 10:01 am
Also, I have to take umbrage to your opening comment that:
“column oriented storage and FPGA filtering are two techniques to address the same challenge, reducing the amount of data that is transfered from disks into main memory.”
Column stores, when combined with compression, actually reduce the amount of data stored. That naturally leads to reading less data into memory, but the real key is that it leads to reading less data off disk.