Speed Up The ProcessSpeed Up The Process

TimesTen Inc. this week will deliver a release of its real-time event-processing software with enhancements that boost performance and scalability and make it easier to integrate with existing systems. The software resides in memory rather than on disks, as conventional relational database systems do, which lets it process data and transactions faster.

TimesTen Real-Time Event Processing System is used by telecommunications companies for messaging and prepaid services and operational applications such as billing and fraud detection, as well as by financial-services companies for trade order management, risk management, and real-time market-data processing. Its real-time processing will be important as wireless phone companies seek to differentiate themselves with new services and price plans, Gartner Dataquest analyst Norbert Scholz says.

Version 5.0 adds data-locking capabilities that, by removing read/ write conflicts, allow more apps to simultaneously access information. Performance is enhanced with new failure and recovery functions, a feature that performs incremental backups, and the ability to restrict data access to specific user groups.

The software has been overhauled to support 16-processor servers, up from eight-processor systems, and to better use CPU power. "They've been able to take the price-performance curve way up," Meta Group analyst Peter Firstbrook says. Version 5.0 also marks the first time the software has been available for 64-bit Itanium 2 servers running Red Hat Linux. Enhancements to its Oracle Connect features improve the software's ability to serve as a real-time data cache for Oracle databases.

Pricing is on a per-server basis combined with the size of the data store. TimesTen software for a four-way server with a moderate amount of data will cost about $50,000.