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MPbase Is Just Like…
What's wrong with this statement?

MPbase is just not quite like anything you may have come across before. It has many characteristics that are truly unique. It also has many characteristics that it shares with current data handling environments. Most people will look at a single MPbase characteristic and say "Oh that means MPbase is just like ________." From this myopic, "single characteristic" point of view they will normally be correct.

However, it is important to consider that at its core MPbase is a unique entity. It is neither fair nor safe to make assumptions based on single matching characteristics. Normally certain characteristics are reliable indicators of others. In other cases certain characteristics are mutually exclusive. Most of these conditions do not hold true in the MPbase environment.

The following paragraphs describe many of the major characteristics of MPbase. At first read they may seem to be a set of impossible combinations. It is possible! This is due to the unique internal architecture of MPbase. The only possible way to describe MPbase is with a large and inaccurate set of "sort-of-likes." Maybe someday there will be some "just-likes." But for now "sort-of-likes" will have to do.

MPbase internally is sort of an …

Update-efficient, highly compressed, content-addressable, multidimensional, data-intelligent, relational, hierarchical, object-oriented, platform-independent, self-organizing, massively parallel, self-tuning, fault-tolerant, network-centric, hypercube.

Also it is sort of …

Index-free while at the same time being just one big index. The fastest possible structure for access and/or update. Best used for transaction-based processing and/or best for batch processing.

MPbase is precisely none-of-the-above. But it is sort of all-of-the-above. In addition, the more data and tasks you give MPbase the better it works. The better the compression works. The better the update processing works. The better the batch processing works. The better the transaction processing works. The farther MPbase gets behind, the faster it will catch up.

The combination of characteristics in MPbase only make sense from the inside looking out. From the outside looking in there seems to be no possible way that this combination of characteristics could possibly come from one system. Internally MPbase has changed all the rules. Therefore all of the normal assumptions need to be revisited. Most of the limits to current information processing are self-imposed. It is time to lose those limitations and start using the full power of the underlying hardware.


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