Actian Vector Product Information

The Vector database engine is a high-speed, columnar-store, database engine, designed to provide extreme high speed reporting and analytics. Vector plays an important part in the Hybrid Data Strategy announced by Actian, as it can be used to aggregate data from other, smaller systems, as well as to provide extremely fast reporting on that data.

Vector is available in two primary editions, the Community Edition (free for smaller systems) and the Enterprise Edition, designed for larger corporations with substantial data analytics needs.

Community Edition

The Community Edition is a freely available edition of Vector designed to help get you started using the product. This edition is currently ONLY available for Linux servers, and it is provided with no support (outside of the community forums).

While current documentation on the web site indicates that the Vector Community License is limited to a 250GB database size, the License Document included with the product indicates that it has a 1TB limit. Because of this, we are not exactly sure WHAT the limit it right now, but we hope that Actian will address this discrepancy in the near future. In either event, this data size should be suitably large to handle the needs for most PSQL database users, who tend to be smaller organizations with smaller data sets.

Sadly, the Vector Community Edition is licensed under a license agreement with Special Terms Used to Prevent Installed Distribution (STUPID). This agreement prohibits companies from distributing the Vector environment to other companies or users. Because of this, we are unable to provide a pre-built server with the Vector Community Edition pre-installed. Instead of using such a time-saving solution, you will need to download the software yourself, and then contract us to act as your agent to install it to a Linux machine. Luckily, the process is fairly quick, so this shouldn't increase your costs much.

Enterprise Edition

The Enterprise Edition of Vector is needed if you will be exceeding the limitations and restrictions of the Community Edition. The Enterprise Edition is available for either Linux or Windows servers, and this edition is not limited in the amount of data that it can store. Licenses must be purchased from Actian, as Goldstar Software is not currently an authorized reseller of this solution. At the time of this writing, licensing is based on the number of cores available on the server, from $56,000 for 8 cores and $97854 for 16 cores, all the way up to $499,999 for an Unlimited/Perpetual license.

First time buyers are also required to purchase a Software Maintenance for the first year. This is available in either Silver or Gold levels, currently priced at $11760 (Silver) or $15120 (Gold) for an 8-core license, $20549/$26421 for a 16-core license, and up from there. Annual maintenance renewals are not required, but are recommended to provide ongoing support and product updates.

Test and Developer licenses are also available, as are hot standby licenses, at 50% the cost of the primary license.

As prices are subject to change, contact Actian Corporation for current pricing and other details.

Why is Goldstar Software Interested in Vector?

As you may be aware, Goldstar Software has been in the PSQL market since 1997, providing support and services to PSQL users and developers. We have seen the Hybrid Data Strategy proffered by Actian and realize the potential of a complete line of data solutions, working together to handle data at IoT endpoints, within smaller SMB applications, and within the larger enterprise environments and analytics. By allowing the critical data to migrate up and down the solution set, we see this sollection of products becoming a coherent whole in the next few years.

One of the things that Vector offers that is of specific interest to the PSQL developer is the incredibly-fast reporting that it makes available. In our initial tests with even very simple reports, we literally saw 100x performance gains when comparing the PSQL ODBC driver to the Vector ODBC driver, running the same query on the same data set! This reporting performance can reduce operational runtimes for reports in all types of SMB organizations, and since many of these organizations have smaller data sets (under 250GB), the Community Edition can provide a FREE solution to developers and users round the world.

One of the missing pieces in the Actian Hybrid Data Strategy right now is the ability to migrate data from one tier to another. However, Goldstar Software already has a majority of this covered! Our Hybrid Data toolset (currently DDF2XML, GSSync, and SQLExec) can generate databases in Vector based on your existing PSQL databases, migrate the initial data set to the Vector instance very rapidly, update the Vector instance for changes in the PSQL data set, and allow for scripted SQL queries to generate exports from the Vector data. Add in a solid report generator such as Crystal Reports, and any organization running PSQL can become a reporting powerhouse.

Goldstar Software's Vector Services

Are you daunted by the complications presented with Hybrid Data? Let us help!

• Installation: We are ready to assist you in installing the Vector instance to a Linux server in your environment, and we are working on a pre-built VM solution that may shave additional time from this process soon.
• Creating the vector Database: Our DDF2XML tool can extract your PSQL data definitions and build a set of CREATE statements automatically, easing the transition of the data to the Vector instance. If you have more complex needs, such as variant data types,or if you have no DDF's for your environment, we can assist with this side of things, too.
• Initial Data Load: Our GSSync tool can perform the initial data extraction from your PSQL database directly by creating a single VWLOAD file per table, or by creating 10 VWLOAD files simultaneously, supporting a parallel import to cut down on the data transfer time. GSSync can even work on data for which DDF's are NOT available or which use data types not supported by PSQL natively, such as various COBOL formats, 6-byte floating point values, Magic dates, and more.
• Updating Vector Data: For smaller databases, GSSync can also handle building and tracking metadata on your source PSQL environment so that you can update data in Vector, instead of having to re-load the entire data set. When used with DataExchange, the maintenance of metadata can be handled internally within PSQL, gaining orders of magnitude of performance gains on larger data sets. (We hope to offer an embedded version of DataExchange to facilitate change tracking in the near future, which may reduce these costs and increase availability to more PSQL engines.)

If you have additional questions about the Vector database product, our services, or how we can help you with your reporting challenges, please contact us today!