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I was invited to the ESWC 2013 "Semantic Technologies for Big Data Analytics: Opportunities and Challenges" panel on 29th May 2013 in Montpellier, France. The panel was moderated by Marko Grobelnik (JSI), with panelists Enrico Motta (KMi), Manfred Hauswirth (NUIG), David Karger (MIT), John Davies (British Telecom), José Manuel Gómez Pérez (ISOCO) and Orri Erling (myself).
Marko opened the panel by looking at the Google Trends search statistics for big data, semantics, business intelligence, data mining, and other such terms. Big data keeps climbing its hype-cycle hill, now above semantics and most of the other terms. But what do these in fact mean? In the leading books about big data, the word semantics does not occur.
I will first recap my 5 minute intro, and then summarize some questions and answers. This is from memory and is in no sense a full transcript.
Over the years we have maintained that what the RDF community most needs is good database. Indeed, RDF is relational in essence and, while it requires some new datatypes and other adaptations, there is nothing in it that is fundamentally foreign to RDBMS technology.
This spring, we came through on the promise, delivering Virtuoso 7, packed full of all the state-of-the-art tricks in analytics-oriented databasing, column-wise compressed storage, vectored execution, great parallelism, and flexible scale-out.
At this same ESWC, Benedikt Kaempgen and Andreas Harth presented a paper (No Size Fits All -- Running the Star Schema Benchmark with SPARQL and RDF Aggregate Views) comparing Virtuoso and MySQL on the star schema benchmark at 1G scale. We redid their experiments with Virtuoso 7 at 30x and at 300x the scale.
At present, when running the star schema benchmark in SQL, we outperform column-store pioneer MonetDB by a factor of 2. When running the same star schema benchmark in SPARQL against triples as opposed to tables, we see a slowdown of 5x. When scaling from 30 to 300G and from one to two machines, we get linear increase in throughput, 5x longer for 10x more data.
Coming back to MySQL, the run with 1G takes about 60 seconds. Virtuoso SPARQL does the same on 30x the data in 45 seconds. Well, you could say that we should go pick on somebody in our series and not MySQL, being not relevant for this. Comparing with MonetDB and other analytics column stores is of course more relevant.
For cluster scaling, one could say that star schema benchmark is easy, and so it is, but even with harder ones, which do joins across partitions all the time, like the BSBM BI workload, we get scaling that is close to linear.
So, for analytics, you can use SPARQL in Virtuoso, and run circles around some common SQL databases.
The difference between SQL and SPARQL comes from having no schema. Instead of scanning aligned columns in a table, you do an index lookup for each column. This is not too slow if there is locality, as there is, but still a lot more than when talking about a multicolumn column-compressed table. With more execution tricks, we can maybe cut this to 3x.
The beach-head of workable RDF-based analytics on schema-less data has been attained. Medium-scale data, to the single-digit terabytes, is OK on small clusters.
First, Big Data means more than querying. Before meaningful analytics can be done, the data must generally be prepared and massaged. This means fast bulk load and fast database-resident transformation. We have that via flexible, expressive, parallelizable stored procedures and run time hosting. One can do everything one does in MapReduce right inside the database.
Some analytics cannot be expressed in a query language. For example, graph algorithms like clustering generate large intermediate states and run in many passes. For this, bulk synchronous processing frameworks like Giraph are becoming popular. We can again do this right inside the DBMS, on RDF or SQL tables. There is great platform utilization and more flexibility than in strict BSP, while being able to do any BSP algorithm.
The history of technology is one of divergence followed by reintegration. New trends, like Column stores, RDF databases, key value stores, or MapReduce, start as one-off special-purpose products, and the technologies then find their way back into platforms addressing a broader functionality.
The whole semantic experiment might be seen as a break-away from the web, if also a little from database, for the specific purpose of exploring schemaless-ness, universal referenceability of data, self-describing data, and some inference.
With RDF, we see lasting value in globally consistent identifiers. The URI "superkey" is the ultimate silo-breaker. The future is in integrating more and more varied data and a schema-first approach is cost-prohibitive. If data is to be preserved over extended lengths of time, self-description is essential; the applications and people that produced the data might not be around. Same for publishing data for outside reuse.
In fact, many of these things are right now being pursued in mainstream IT. Everybody is reinventing the triple, whether by using non-first normal form key-value pairs in an RDB, tagging each row of a table with the name of the table, using XML documents, etc. The RDF model provides all these desirable features, but most applications that need these things do not run on RDF infrastructure.
Anyway, by revolutionizing RDF store performance, we make this technology a cost-effective alternative in places where it was not such before.
To get much further in performance, physical storage needs to adapt to the data. Thus, in the long term, we see RDF as a lingua franca of data interchange and publishing, supported by highly scalable and adaptive databases that exploit the structure implicit in the data to deliver performance equal to the best in SQL data warehousing. When we get the schema from the data, we have schema-last flexibility and schema-first performance. The genie is back in the bottle, and data models are unified.
David Karger: No, the shallow web (i.e., static web pages for purposes of search) is not big data. One can put it in a box and search. But for purposes of more complex processing, like analytics on the structure of the whole web, this is still big data.
Orri Erling: I am not sure about that, because when you have a stream -- whether this is network management and denial of service detection, or managing traffic in a city -- you know ahead of time what peak volume you are looking at, so you can size the system accordingly. And streams have a schema. So you can play all the database tricks. Vectored execution will work there just as it does for query processing, for example.
Orri Erling: Here we mean sliding windows and constant queries. The triple vs. row issue also seems the same. There will be some overhead from schema-lastness, but for streams, I would say each has a regular structure.
John Davies: For example, we gather gigabytes a minute of traffic data from sensors in the road network and all this data is very regular, with a fixed schema.
Manfred Hauswirth: Or is this always so? The internet of things has potentially huge diversity in schema, with everything producing a stream. The user of the stream has no control whatever on the schema.
Marko Grobelnik: Yes, we have had streams for a long time -- on Wall Street, for example, where these make a lot of money. But high frequency trading is a very specific application. There is a stream, some analytics, not very complicated, just fast. This is one specific solution, with fixed schema and very specific scope, no explicit semantics.
David Karger: Computer science has always been about big data; it is just the definition of big that changes. Big data is something one cannot conveniently process on a computer system. Not without unusual tricks, where something trivial, like shortest path, becomes difficult just because of volume. So it is that big data is very much about performance, and performance is usually obtained by sacrificing the general for the specific. The semantic world on the other hand is after something very general and about complex and expressive schema. When data gets big, the schema is vanishingly small in comparison with the data, and the schema work gets done by hand; the schema is not the problem there. Big data is not very internetty either, because the 40 TB produced by the telescope are centrally stored and you do not download them or otherwise transport them very much.
Manfred Hauswirth: The essential aspect is that data is machine interpretable, with sufficient machine readable context.
David Karger: Semantics has to do with complexity or heterogeneity in the schema. Big data has to do with large volume. Maybe semantic big data would be all the databases in the world with a million different schemas. But today we do not see such applications. If the volume is high, the schema is usually not very large.
Manfred Hauswirth: This is not so far as that, for example a telco has over a hundred distinct network management systems and each has a different schema.
Orri Erling: From the data angle, we have come to associate semantic with
In conclusion, the event was rather peaceful, with a good deal of agreement between the panelists and audience and no heated controversy. I hoped to get some reaction when I said that semantics was schema flexibility, but apparently this has become a politically acceptable stance. In the golden days of AI this would not have been so. But then Marko Grobelnik did point out that the whole landscape has become data driven. Even in fields like natural language, one looks more at statistics than deep structure: For example, if a phrase is often found on Google, it is proper usage.
The quest of OpenLink Software is to bring flexibility, efficiency, and expressive power to people working with data. For the past several years, this has been focused on making graph data models viable for the enterprise. Flexibility in schema evolution is a central aspect of this, as is the ability to share identifiers across different information systems, i.e., giving things URIs instead of synthetic keys that are not interpretable outside of a particular application.
With Virtuoso 7, we dramatically improve the efficiency of all this. With databases in the billions of relations (also known as triples, or 3-tuples), we can fit about 3x as many relations in the same space (disk and RAM) as with Virtuoso 6. Single-threaded query speed is up to 3x better, plus there is intra-query parallelization even in single-server configurations. Graph data workloads are all about random lookups. With these, having data in RAM is all-important. With 3x space efficiency, you can run with 3x more data in the same space before starting to go to disk. In some benchmarks, this can make a 20x gain.
Also the Virtuoso scale-out support is fundamentally reworked, with much more parallelism and better deployment flexibility.
So, for graph data, Virtuoso 7 is a major step in the coming of age of the technology. Data keeps growing and time is getting scarcer, so we need more flexibility and more performance at the same time.
So, let's talk about how we accomplish this. Column stores have been the trend in relational data warehousing for over a decade. With column stores comes vectored execution, i.e., running any operation on a large number of values at one time. Instead of running one operation on one value, then the next operation on the result, and so forth, you run the first operation on thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of values, then the next one on the results of this, and so on.
Column-wise storage brings space efficiency, since values in one column of a table tend to be alike -- whether repeating, sorted, within a specific range, or picked from a particular set of possible values. With graph data, where there are no columns as such, the situation is exactly the same -- just substitute the word predicate for column. Space efficiency brings speed -- first by keeping more of the data in memory; secondly by having less data travel between CPU and memory. Vectoring makes sure that data that are closely located get accessed in close temporal proximity, hence improving cache utilization. When there is no locality, there are a lot of operations pending at the same time, as things always get done on a set of values instead of on a single value. This is the crux of the science of columns and vectoring.
Of the prior work in column stores, Virtuoso may most resemble Vertica, well described in Daniel Abadi's famous PhD thesis. Virtuoso itself is described in IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, March 2012 (PDF). The first experiments in column store technology with Virtuoso were in 2009, published at the SemData workshop at VLDB 2010 in Singapore. We tried storing TPC H as graph data and in relational tables, each with both rows and columns, and found that we could get 6 bytes per quad space utilization with the RDF-ization of TPC H, as opposed to 27 bytes with the row-wise compressed RDF storage model. The row-wise compression itself is 3x more compact than a row-wise representation with no compression.
Memory is the key to speed, and space efficiency is the key to memory. Performance comes from two factors: locality and parallelism. Both are addressed by column store technology. This made me a convert.
At this time, we also started the EU FP7 project, LOD2, most specifically working with Peter Boncz of CWI, the king of the column store, famous for MonetDB and VectorWise. This cooperation goes on within LOD2 and has extended to LDBC, an FP7 for designing benchmarks for graph and RDF databases. Peter has given us a world of valuable insight and experience in all aspects of avant garde database, from adaptive techniques to query optimization and beyond. One thing that was recently published is the results for Virtuoso cluster at CWI, running analytics on 150 billion relations on CWI's SciLens cluster.
The SQL relational table-oriented databases and property graph-oriented databases (Graph for short) are both rooted in relational database science. Graph management simply introduces extra challenges with regards to scalability. Hence, at OpenLink Software, having a good grounding in the best practices of relational columnar (or column-wise) database management technology is vital.
Virtuoso is more prominently known for high-performance RDF-based graph database technology, but the entirety of its SQL relational data management functionality (which is the foundation for graph store) is vectored, and even allows users to choose between row-wise and column-wise physical layouts, index by index.
It has been asked: is this a new NoSQL engine? Well, there isn't really such a thing. There are of course database engines that do not have SQL support and it has become trendy to call them "NoSQL." So, in this space, Virtuoso is an engine that does support SQL, plus SPARQL, and is designed to do big joins and aggregation (i.e., analytics) and fast bulk load, as well as ACID transactions on small updates, all with column store space efficiency. It is not only for big scans, as people tend to think about column stores, since it can also be used in compact embedded form.
Virtuoso also delivers great parallelism and throughput in a scale-out setting, with no restrictions on transactions and no limits on joining. The base is in relational database science, but all the adaptations that RDF and graph workloads need are built-in, with core level support for run-time data-typing, URIs as native Reference types, user-defined custom data types, etc.
Now that the major milestone of releasing Virtuoso 7 (open source and commercial editions) has been reached, the next steps include enabling our current and future customers to attain increased agility from big (linked) open data exploits. Technically, it will also include continued participation in DBMS industry benchmarks, such as those from the TPC, and others under development via the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC), plus other social-media-oriented challenges that arise in this exciting data access, integration, and management innovation continuum. Thus, continue to expect new optimization tricks to be introduced at frequent intervals through the open source development branch at GitHub, between major commercial releases.
(Originally posted to the LDBC blog.)
In recent days, cyberspace has seen some discussion concerning the relationship of the EU FP7 project LDBC (Linked Data Benchmark Council) and sociotechnical considerations. It has been suggested that LDBC, to its own and the community's detriment, ignores sociotechnical aspects.
LDBC, as research projects go, actually has an unusually large, and as of this early date, successful and thriving sociotechnical aspect, i.e., involvement of users and vendors alike. I will here discuss why, insofar as the technical output of the project goes, sociotechnical metrics are in fact out of scope. Then yet again, to what degree the benefits potentially obtained from the use of LDBC outcomes are in fact realized does have a strong dependence on community building, a social process.
One criticism of big data projects we sometimes encounter is the point that data without context is not useful. Further, one cannot just assume that one can throw several data sets together and get meaning from this, as there may be different semantics for similar looking things, just think of 7 different definitions of blood pressure.
In its initial user community meeting, LDBC was, according to its charter, focusing mostly on cases where the data is already in existence and of sufficient quality for the application at hand.
Michael Brodie, Chief Scientist at Verizon, is a well known advocate of focusing on meaning of data, not only on processing performance. There is a piece on this matter by him, Peter Boncz, Chris Bizer, and myself on the Sigmod Record: "The Meaningful Use of Big Data: Four Perspectives – Four Challenges".
I had a conversation with Michael at a DERI meeting a couple of years ago about measuring the total cost of technology adoption, thus including socio-technical aspects such as acceptance by users, learning curves of various stakeholders, whether in fact one could demonstrate an overall gain in productivity arising from semantic technologies. [in my words, paraphrased]
"Can one measure the effectiveness of different approaches to data integration?" asked I. "Of course one can," answered Michael, "this only involves carrying out the same task with two different technologies, two different teams and then doing a double blind test with users. However, this never happens. Nobody does this because doing the task even once in a large organization is enormously costly and nobody will even seriously consider doubling the expense."
"Can one measure the effectiveness of different approaches to data integration?" asked I.
"Of course one can," answered Michael, "this only involves carrying out the same task with two different technologies, two different teams and then doing a double blind test with users. However, this never happens. Nobody does this because doing the task even once in a large organization is enormously costly and nobody will even seriously consider doubling the expense."
LDBC does in fact intend to address technical aspects of data integration, i.e., schema conversion, entity resolution, and the like. Addressing the sociotechnical aspects of this (whether one should integrate in the first place, whether the integration result adds value, whether it violates privacy or security concerns, whether users will understand the result, what the learning curves are, etc.) is simply too diverse and so totally domain dependent that a general purpose metric cannot be developed, at least not in the time and budget constraints of the project. Further, adding a large human element in the experimental setting (e.g., how skilled the developers are, how well the stakeholders can explain their needs, how often these needs change, etc.) will lead to experiments that are so expensive to carry out and whose results will have so many unquantifiable factors that these will constitute an insuperable barrier to adoption.
Experience demonstrates that even agreeing on the relative importance of quantifiable metrics of database performance is hard enough. Overreaching would compromise the project's ability to deliver its core value. Let us next talk about this.
It is only a natural part of the political landscape that the EC's research funding choices are criticized by some members of the public. Some criticism is about the emphasis on big data. Big data is a fact on the ground, and research and industry need to deal with it. Of course, there have been and will be critics of technology in general on moral or philosophical grounds. Instead of opening this topic, I will refer you to an article by Michael Brodie. In a world where big data is a given, lowering the entry threshold for big data applications, thus making them available not only to government agencies and the largest businesses, seems ethical to me, as per Brodie's checklist. LDBC will contribute to this by driving greater availability, better performance, and lower cost for these technologies.
Once we accept that big data is there and is important, we arrive at the issue of deriving actionable meaning from it. A prerequisite of deriving actionable meaning from big data is the ability to flexibly process this data. LDBC is about creating metrics for this. The prerequisites for flexibly working with data are fairly independent of the specific use case, while the criteria of meaning, let alone actionable analysis, are very domain specific. Therefore, in order to provide the greatest service to the broadest constituency, LDBC focuses on measuring that which is most generic, yet will underlie any decision support or other data processing deployment that involves RDF or graph data.
I would say that LDBC is an exceptionally effective use of taxpayer money. LDBC will produce metrics that will drive technological innovation for years to come. The total money spent towards pursuing goals set forth by LDBC is likely to vastly exceed the budget of LDBC. Only think of the person-centuries or even millennia that have gone into optimizing for TPC-C and TPC-H. The vast majority of the money spent for these pursuits is paid by industry, not by research funding. It is spent worldwide, not in Europe alone.
Thus, if LDBC is successful, a limited amount of EC research money will influence how much greater product development budgets are spent in the future. This multiplier effect applies of course to highly successful research outcomes in general but is especially clear with LDBC.
European research funding has played a significant role in creating the foundations of the RDF/Linked Data scene. LDBC is a continuation of this policy, however the focus has now shifted to reflect the greater maturity of the technology. LDBC is now about making the RDF and graph database sectors into mature industries whose products can predictably tackle the challenges out there.
(This posting was inadvertently delayed from the time of its writing, 2012-11-21.)
The Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) project is officially starting now.
This represents a serious effort towards making relevant and well thought out metrics for RDF and graph databases and defining protocols for measurement and publishing of well documented and reproducible results. This also entails the creation of a TPC-analog for the graph and RDF domains.
The project brings together leading vendors, with OpenLink and Ontotext representing the RDF side and Neo Technology and Sparsity Technologies representing the graph database side. Peter Boncz of MonetDB and Vectorwise fame is the technical director, with participation from the Technical University of Munich with Thomas Neumann, known for RDF3X and HyPer. La Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya coordinates the project and brings strong academic expertise in graph databasing, also representing their Sparsity Technologies spinoff. FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas) of Crete contributes expertise in data integration and provenance. STI Innsbruck participates in community building and outreach.
The consortium has second-to-none understanding of benchmarking and has sufficient time allotted to the task for producing world class work, comparable to the TPC benchmarks. This has to date never been realized in the RDF or graph space.
History demonstrates that whenever something that is sufficiently important starts getting systematically measured, there is an improvement in the metric. The early days of the TPC saw a 40-fold increase in transaction processing speed. TPC-H continues to be, after 18 years, well used as a basis of quantifying advances in analytics databases.
A serious initiative for well-thought-out benchmarks for guiding the emerging RDF and graph database markets is nothing short of a necessary precondition for the emergence of a serious market with several vendors offering mutually comparable products.
Benchmarks are only as good as their credibility and adoption. For this reason, LDBC has been in touch with all graph and RDF vendors we could find, and has received a positive statement of intent from most, indicating that they would participate in a LDBC organization and contribute to shaping benchmarks.
There is further a Technical User Community, with its initial meeting this week, where present-day end users of RDF and graph databases will voice their wishes for benchmark development. Thus benchmarks will be grounded in use cases contributed by real users.
With these elements in place we have every reason to expect relevant benchmarks with broad adoption, with all the benefits this entails.
The LDBC Technical User Community (TUC) had its initial meeting in Barcelona last week.
First we wish to thank the many end user organizations that were present. This clearly validates the project's mission and demonstrates that there is acute awareness of the need for better metrics in the field. In the following, I will summarize the requirements that were brought forth.
Scale out - There was near unanimity among users that even if present workloads could be handled on single servers, a scale-out growth path was highly desirable. On the other hand, some applications were scale-out based from the get go. Even when not actually used, a scale-out capability is felt to be an insurance against future need.
Making limits explicit - How far can this technology go? Benchmarks need to demonstrate at what scales the products being considered work best, and where they will grind to a halt. Also, the impact of scale-out on performance needs to be made clear. The cost of solutions at different scales must be made explicit.
Many of these requirements will be met by simply following TPC practices. Now, vendors cannot be expected to publish numbers for cases where their products fail, but they do have incentives for publishing numbers on large data, and at least giving a price/performance point that exceeds most user needs.
Fault tolerance and operational characteristics - Present day benchmarks (e.g., the TPC ones) hardly address operational aspects that most enterprise deployments will encounter. This was already stated by Michael Stonebraker at the first TPC performance evaluation workshop some years back at VLDB in Lyon. Users want to know the price/performance impact of making fault-tolerant systems and wish to have metrics for things like backup and bulk load under online conditions. A need to operate across multiple geographies was present in more than one use case, thus requiring a degree of asynchronous replication such as log shipping.
Update-intensive workloads - Unlike one might think, RDF uses are not primarily load-once-plus-lookup. Freshness of data creates value, and databases, even if they are warehouses in character, need to be kept up to date much better than just by periodic reload. Online updates may be small, as for example refreshing news feeds or web crawls, where the unit of update is small but updates are many, but also replacing reference data sets of hundreds of millions of triples. The latter requirement exceeds what is practical in a single transaction. ACID was generally desired, with some interest also in eventual consistency. We did not get use cases with much repeatable read (e.g., updating account balances), but rather atomic and durable replacement of sets of statements.
Inference - Class and property hierarchies were common, followed by use of transitivity. owl:sameAs was not in much use, being too dangerous, i.e., a single statement may potentially have huge effect and produce unpredictable sets of properties for instances, for which applications are not prepared. Beyond these, the wishes for inference, with use cases ranging from medicine to forensics, were outside of the OWL domain. These typically involved probability scores adding up the joint occurrence of complex criteria with some numeric computation (e.g. time intervals, geography, etc.).
As materialization of forward closure is the prevalent mode of implementing inference in RDF, users wished to have a measure of its cost in space and time, especially under online-update loads.
Text, XML, and Geospatial - There is no online application that does not have text search. In publishing, this is hardly ever provided by an RDF store, even if there is one in the mix. Even so, there is an understandable desire to consolidate systems, i.e., to not have an XML database for content and a separate RDF database for metadata. Also, many applications have a geospatial element. One wish was to combine XPATH/XQuery with SPARQL, and it was implied that query optimization should create good plans under these conditions.
There was extensive discussion especially on benchmarking full-text. Such a benchmark would need to address the quality of relevance ranking. Doing new work in this space is clearly out of scope for LDBC, but an IR benchmark could be reused as an add-on to provide a quality score. The performance score would come from the LDBC side of the benchmark. Now, many of the applications of text (e.g., news) might not even sort on text match score, but rather by time. Also if the text search is applied to metadata like labels or URI strings, the quality of a match is a non-issue, as there is no document context.
Data integration - Almost all applications had some element of data integration. Indeed, if one uses RDF in the first place, the motivation usually has to do with schema flexibility. Having a relational schema for everything is often seen to be too hard to maintain and to lead to too much development time before an initial version of an application or answer of a business question. Data integration is everywhere but stays elusive for benchmarking. Every time it is different and most vendors present do not offer products for this specific need. Many ideas were presented, including using SPARQL for entity resolution, and for checking consistency of an integration result.
A central issue of benchmark design is having an understandable metric. People cannot make sense of more than a few figures. The TPC practice of throughput at scale and price per unit of throughput at scale is a successful example. However, it may be difficult to agree on relative weights of components if a metric is an aggregate of too many things. Also, if a benchmark has too many optional parts, metrics easily become too complicated. On the other hand, requiring too many features (e.g. XML, full text, geospatial) restricts the number of possible participants.
To stimulate innovation, a benchmark needs to be difficult but restricted to a specific domain. TPC-H is a good example, favoring specialized systems built for analytics alone. To be a predictor of total cost and performance in a complex application, a benchmark must include much more functionality, and will favor general purpose systems that do many things but are not necessarily outstanding in any single aspect.
After 1-1/2 days with users, the project team met to discuss actual benchmark task forces to be started. The conclusion was that work would initially proceed around two use cases: publishing, and social networks. The present use of RDF by the BBC and the Press Association provides the background scenario for the publishing benchmark, and the work carried out around the Social Intelligence Benchmark (SIB) in LOD2 will provide a starting point for the social network benchmark. Additionally, user scenarios from the DEX graph database user base will help shape the SN workload.
A data integration task force needs more clarification, but work in this direction is in progress.
In practice, driving progress needs well-focused benchmarks with special trick questions intended to stress specific aspects of a database engine. Providing an overall perspective on cost and online operations needs a broad mix of features to be covered.
The specification of the exercise referred to in the previous post may be found below.
Questions on the exercise can be sent to the email specified in the previous post. I may schedule a phone call to answer questions based on the initial email contact.
We seek to have all applicants complete the exercise before October 1.
The exercise consists of implementing a part of the TPC-C workload in memory, in C or C++. TPC-C is the long-time industry standard benchmark for transaction processing performance. We use this as a starting point for an exercise for assessing developer skill level in writing heavily multithreaded, performance-critical code.
The application performs a series of transactions against an in-memory database, encountering lock contention and occasional deadlocks. The application needs to provide atomicity, consistency, and isolation for transactions. The task consists of writing the low-level data structures for storing the memory-resident database and for managing concurrency, including lock queueing, deadlock detection, and commit/rollback. The solutions are evaluated based on their actual measured multithreaded performance on commodity servers, e.g., 8- or 12-cores of Intel Xeon.
OpenLink provides the code for data generation and driving the test. This is part of the TPC-C kit in Virtuoso Open Source. The task is to replace the SQL API calls with equivalent in-process function calls against the in-memory database developed as part of the exercise.
We are aware that the best solution to the problem may be running transactions single-threaded against in-memory hash tables without any concurrency control. The application data may be partitioned so that a single transaction can be in most cases assigned to a partition, which it will get for itself for the few microseconds it takes to do its job. For this exercise, this solution is explicitly ruled out. The application must demonstrate shared access to data, with a transaction holding multiple concurrent locks and being liable to deadlock.
TPC-C can be written so as to avoid deadlocks by always locking in a certain order. This is also expressly prohibited; in specific, the stock rows of a new order transaction must be locked in the order they are specified in the invocation. In application terms this makes no sense, but for purposes of the exercise this will serve as a natural source of deadlocks.
The application needs to offer an interactive or scripted interface (command line is OK) which provides the following operations:
Clear and initialize a database of n warehouses.
Run n threads, each doing m new order transactions. Each thread has a home warehouse and occasionally accesses other warehouse's data. This reports the real time elapsed and the number of retries arising from deadlocks.
Check the consistency between the stock, orders, and order_line data structures.
Report system status such as clocks spent waiting for specific mutexes. This is supplied as part of the OpenLink library used by the data generator.
The transactions are written as C functions. The data is represented as C structs, and tree indices or hash tables are used for value-based access to the structures by key. The application has no persistent storage. The structures reference each other by the key values as in the database, so no direct pointers. The key values are to be translated into pointers with a hash table or other index-like structure.
The application must be thread-safe, and transactions must be able to roll back. Transactions will sometimes wait for each other in updating shared resources such as stock or district or warehouse balances. The application must be written so as to implement fine-grained locking, and each transaction must be able to hold multiple locks. The application must be able to detect deadlocks. For deadlock recovery, it is acceptable to abort the transaction that detects the deadlock.
C++ template libraries may be used but one must pay attention to their efficiency.
The new order transaction is the only required transaction.
All numbers can be represented as integers. This holds equally for key columns as for monetary amounts.
All index structures (e.g., hash tables) in the application must be thread safe, so that an insert would be safe with concurrent access or concurrent inserts. This holds also for index structures for tables which do not get inserts in the test (e.g. item, customer, stock, etc.).
A sequence object must not be used for assigning new values to the O_ID column of ORDERS. These values must come from the D_NEXT_O_ID column of the DISTRICT table. If a new order transaction rolls back, its update of D_NEXT_O_ID is also rolled back. This causes O_ID values to always be consecutive within a district.
The application must implement the TPC-C new order transaction in full. This must not avoid deadlocks by ordering locking on stock rows. See the rules section.
The transaction must have the semantics specified in TPC-C, except for durability.
The test driver calling the transaction procedures is in tpccodbc.c. This can be reused so as to call the transaction procedure in process instead of the ODBC exec.
The user interface may be a command line menu with run options for different numbers of transactions with different thread counts and an option for integrity check.
The integrity check consists of verifying s_cnt_order against the orders and checking that max (O_ID) and D_NEXT_O_ID match within each district.
max (O_ID)
Running the application should give different statistics such as CPU%, cumulative time spent waiting for locks, etc. The rdtsc instruction can be used for getting clock counts for timing.
This section summarizes some of the design patterns and coding tricks we expect to see in a solution to the exercise. These may seem self-evident to some, but experience indicates that this is not universally so.
The TPC-C transaction profile for new order specifies a semantics for the operation. The order of locking is left to the implementation as long as the semantics are in effect. The application will be tested with many clients on the same warehouse, running as fast as they can. So lock contention is expected. Therefore, the transaction should be written so as to acquire the locks with the greatest contention as late as possible. No locks need be acquired for the item table since none of the transactions will update it.
For implementing locks, using a mutex to serialize access to application resources is not enough. Many locks will be acquired by each transaction, in an unpredictable order. Unless explicit queueing for locks is implemented with deadlock detection, the application will not work.
If waiting for a mutex causes the operating system to stop a thread, even when there are cores free, the latency is multiple microseconds, even if the mutex is released by its owner on the next cycle after the waiting thread is suspended. This will destroy any benefit from parallelism unless one is very careful. Programmers do not seem to instinctively know this.
Therefore any structure to which access must be serialized (e.g. hash tables, locks, etc.) needs to be protected by a mutex but must be partitioned so that there are tens or hundreds of mutexes depending on which section of the structure one is accessing.
Submissions that protect a hash table or other index-like structure for a whole application table with a single mutex or rw lock will be discarded off the bat.
Even while using many mutexes, one must hold them for a minimum of time. When accessing a hash table, do the invariant parts first; acquire the mutex after that. For example, if you calculate the hash number after acquiring the mutex for the hash table, the submission will be rejected.
The TPC-C application has some local and some scattered access. Orders are local, and stock and item lines are scattered. When doing scattered memory accesses, the program should be written so that the CPU will, from a single thread, have multiple concurrent cache misses in flight at all times. So, when accessing 10 stock lines, calculate the hash numbers first; then access the memory, deferring any branches based on the accessed values. In this way, out of order execution will miss the CPU cache for many independent addresses in parallel. One can use the gcc __builtin_prefetch primitive, or simply write the program so as to have mutually data-independent memory accesses in close proximity.
For detecting deadlocks, a global transaction wait graph may have to be maintained. This will need to be maintained in a serialized manner. If many threads access this, the accesses must be serialized on a global mutex. This may be very bad if the deadlock detection takes a long time. Alternately, the wait graph may be maintained on another thread. The thread will get notices of waits and transacts from worker threads with some delay. Having spotted a cycle, it may kill one or another party. This will require some inter-thread communication. The submission may address this matter in any number of ways.
However, just acquiring a lock without wait must not involve getting a global mutex. Going to wait will have to do so, were it only for queueing a notice to a monitor thread. Using a socket-to-self might appear to circumvent this, but the communication stack will have mutexes inside so this is no better.
The exercise will be evaluated based on the run time performance, especially multicore scalability of the result.
Extra points are not given for implementing interfaces or for being object oriented. Interfaces, templates, and objects are not forbidden as such, but their cost must not exceed the difference between getting an address from a virtual table and calling a function directly.
The locking implementation must be correct. It can be limited to exclusive locks and need not support isolation other than repeatable read. Running the application must demonstrate deadlocks and working recovery from these.
repeatable read
The TPC-C data generator and test driver are in the Virtuoso Open Source distribution, in the files binsrc/tests/tpcc*.c and files included from these. You can make the exercise in the same directory and just alter the files or make script. The application is standalone and has no other relation to the Virtuoso code. The libsrc/Thread threading wrappers may be used. If not using these, make a wrapper similar to mutex_enter when MTX_METER is defined so that it counts the waits and clocks spent during wait. Also have a report like that in mutex_stat() for the mutex wait frequency and duration.
If it is advanced database technology, you will get to do it with us.
We are looking for exceptional talent to implement some of the hardest stuff in the industry. This ranges from new approaches to query optimization; to parallel execution (both scale up and scale out); to elastic cloud deployments and self-managing, self-tuning, fault-tolerant databases. We are most familiar to the RDF world, but also have full SQL support, and the present work will serve both use cases equally.
We are best known in the realms of high-performance database connectivity middleware and massively-scalable Linked-Data-oriented graph-model DBMS technology.
We have the basics -- SQL and SPARQL, column store, vectored execution, cost based optimization, parallel execution (local and cluster), and so forth. In short, we have everything you would expect from a DBMS. We do transactions as well as analytics, but the greater challenges at present are on the analytics side.
You will be working with my team covering:
Adaptive query optimization -- interleaving execution and optimization, so as to always make the correct plan choices based on actual data characteristics
Self-managing cloud deployments for elastic big data -- clusters that can grow themselves and redistribute load, recover from failures, etc.
Developing and analyzing new benchmarks for RDF and graph databases
Embedding complex geospatial reasoning inside the database engine. We have the basic R-tree and the OGC geometry data types; now we need to go beyond this
Every type of SQL optimizer and execution engine trick that serves to optimize for TPC-H and DS.
What do I mean by really good? It boils down to being a smart and fast programmer. We have over the years talked to people, including many who have worked on DBMS programming, and found that they actually know next to nothing of database science. For example, they might not know what a hash join is. Or they might not know that interprocess latency is in the tens of microseconds even within one box, and that in that time one can do tens of index lookups. Or they might not know that blocking on a mutex kills.
If you do core database work, we want you to know how many CPU cache misses you will have in flight at any point of the algorithm, and how many clocks will be spent waiting for them at what points. Same for distributed execution: The only way a cluster can perform is having max messages with max payload per message in flight at all times.
These are things that can be learned. So I do not necessarily expect that you have in-depth experience of these, especially since most developer jobs are concerned with something else. You may have to unlearn the bad habit of putting interfaces where they do not belong, for example. Or to learn that if there is an interface, then it must pass as much data as possible in one go.
Talent is the key. You need to be a self-starter with a passion for technology and have competitive drive. These can be found in many guises, so we place very few limits on the rest. If you show you can learn and code fast, we don't necessarily care about academic or career histories. You can be located anywhere in the world, and you can work from home. There may be some travel but not very much.
In the context of EU FP7 projects, we are working with some of the best minds in database, including Peter Boncz of CWI and VU Amsterdam (MonetDB, VectorWise) and Thomas Neumann of Technical University of Munich (RDF3X, HYPER). This is an extra guarantee that you will be working on the most relevant problems in database, informed by the results of the very best work to date.
For more background, please see the IEEE Computer Society Bulletin of the Technical Committee on Data Engineering, Special Issue on Column Store Systems.
All articles and references therein are relevant for the job. Be sure to read the CWI work on run time optimization (ROX), cracking, and recycling. Do not miss the many papers on architecture-conscious, cache-optimized algorithms; see the VectorWise and MonetDB articles in the bulletin for extensive references.
If you are interested in an opportunity with us, we will ask you to do a little exercise in multithreaded, performance-critical coding, to be detailed in a blog post in a few days. If you have done similar work in research or industry, we can substitute the exercise with a suitable sample of this, but only if this is core database code.
There is a dual message: The challenges will be the toughest a very tough race can offer. On the other hand, I do not want to scare you away prematurely. Nobody knows this stuff, except for the handful of people who actually do core database work. So we are not limiting this call to this small crowd and will teach you on the job if you just come with an aptitude to think in algorithms and code fast. Experience has pros and cons so we do not put formal bounds on this. "Just out of high school" may be good enough, if you are otherwise exceptional. Prior work in RDF or semantic web is not a factor. Sponsorship of your M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis, if the topic is in our line of work and implementation can be done in our environment, is a further possibility. Seasoned pros are also welcome and will know the nature of the gig from the reading list.
We are aiming to fill the position(s) between now and October.
Resumes and inquiries can be sent to Hugh Williams, email@example.com. We will contact applicants for interviews.
My article, Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store (PDF), can be found in Volume 35, Number 1, March 2012 (PDF) of the Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering (also known as the IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin).
We discuss applying column store techniques to both graph (RDF) and relational data for mixed workloads ranging from lookup to analytics in the context of the OpenLink Virtuoso DBMS. In so doing, we need to obtain the excellent memory efficiency, locality and bulk read throughput that are the hallmark of column stores while retaining low-latency random reads and updates, under serializable isolation.
DBLP BibTeX Record 'journals/debu/Erling12' (XML)
@article{DBLP:journals/debu/Erling12, author = {Orri Erling}, title = {Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store}, journal = {IEEE Data Eng. Bull.}, volume = {35}, number = {1}, year = {2012}, pages = {3-8}, ee = {http://sites.computer.org/debull/A12mar/vicol.pdf}, bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de} }
Michael Stonebraker chaired a panel on the future of science data at ICDE 2012 last week. Other participants were Jeremy Kepner from MIT Lincoln Labs, Anastasia Ailamaki from EPFL, and Alex Szalay from Johns Hopkins University.
This is the thrust of what was said, noted from memory. My comments follow after the synopsis.
We have a lot of arrays and a custom database for them. But the arrays are sparse so this is in fact a triple store. Our users like to work in MATLAB, and any data management must run together with that.
Of course, MapReduce is not a real scheduler, and Hadoop is not a real file system. For deployment, we must integrate real schedulers and make HDFS look like a file system to applications. The abstraction of a file system is something people like. Being able to skip a time-consuming data-ingestion process with a database is an advantage with file-based paradigms like Hadoop. If this is enhanced with the right scheduling features, this can be a good component in the HPC toolbox.
Michael Stonebraker: Users of the data use math packages like R, MATLAB, SAS, SPSS, or similar. If business intelligence is about AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT, and GROUP BY, science applications are much more diverse in their analytics. All science algorithms have an inner loop that resembles linear algebra operations like matrix multiplication. Data is more often than not a large array. There are some graphs in biology and chemistry, but the world is primarily rectangular. Relational databases can emulate sparse arrays but are 20x slower than a custom-made array database for dense arrays. And I will not finish without picking on MapReduce: I know of 2000-node MapReduce clusters. The work they do is maybe that of a 100-node parallel database. So if 2000 nodes is what you want to operate, be my guest.
Science database is a zero billion dollar business. We do not expect to make money from the science market with SciDB, which by now works and has commercial services supplied by Paradigm 4, while the code itself is open source, which is a must for the science community. The real business opportunity is in the analytics needed by insurance and financial services in general, which are next to identical with the science use cases SciDB tackles. This makes the vendors pay attention.
Alex Szalay: The way astronomy is done today is through surveys: a telescope scans through the sky and produces data. We have now for 10 years operated the Sloane Sky Survey and kept the data online. We have all the data, and complete query logs, available for anyone interested. When we set out to do this with Jim Gray, everybody found this a crazy idea, but it has worked out.
Anastasia Ailamaki: We do not use SciDB. We find a lot of spatial use cases. Researchers need access to simulation results which are usually over a spatial model, like in earthquake simulations and the brain. Off-the-shelf techniques like R trees do not work -- the objects overlap too much -- so we have made our own spatial indexing. We make custom software when it is necessary, and are not tied to vendors. In geospatial applications, we can create meshes of different shapes -- like tetrahedral or cubes for earthquakes, and cylinders for the brain -- and index these in a geospatial index. But since an R tree is inefficient when objects overlap too much, as these do, we just find one; and then because there is reachability from an object to neighboring ones, we use this to get all the objects in the area of interest.
* * *
This is obviously a diverse field. Probably the message that we can synthesize out of this is that flexibility and parallel programming models are what we need to pay attention to. There is a need to go beyond what one can do in SQL while continuing to stay close to the data. Also, allowing for plug-in data types and index structures may be useful; we sometimes get requests for such anyway.
The continuing argument around MapReduce and Hadoop is a lasting feature of the landscape. A parallel DB will beat MapReduce any day at joining across partitions; the problem is to overcome the mindset that sees Hadoop as the always-first answer to anything parallel. People will likely have to fail with this before they do anything else. For us, the matter is about having database-resident logic for extract-transform-load (ETL) that can do data-integration type-transformations and maybe iterative graph algorithms that constantly join across partitions, better than a MapReduce job, while still allowing application logic to be written in Java. Teaching sem-web-heads to write SQL procedures and to know about join order, join type, and partition locality, has proven to be difficult. People do not understand latency, whether in client-server or cluster settings. This is why they do not see the point of stored procedures or of shipping functions to data. This sounds like a terrible indictment, like saying that people do not understand why rivers flow downhill. Yet, it is true. This is also why MapReduce is maybe the only parallel programming paradigm that can be successfully deployed in the absence of this understanding, since it is actually quite latency-tolerant, not having any synchronous cross-partition operations except for the succession of the map and reduce steps themselves.
Maybe it is so that the database guys see MapReduce as an insult to their intelligence and the rest of the world sees it as the only understandable way of running grep and sed (Unix commands for string search/replace) in parallel, with the super bonus of letting you reshuffle the outputs so that you can compare everything to everything else, which grep alone never let you do.
Making a database that does not need data loading seems a nice idea, and CWI has actually done something in this direction in "Here are my Data Files. Here are my Queries. Where are my Results?"] However, there is another product called Algebra Data that claims to take in data without loading and to optimize storage based on access. We do not have immediate plans in this direction. Bulk load is already quite fast (take 100G TPC-H in 70 minutes or so), but faster is always possible.
There were quite a few talks about graphs at ICDE 2012. Neither the representations of graphs, nor the differences between RDF and generic graph models, entered much into the discussion. On the other hand, graph similarity searches and related were addressed a fair bit.
Graph DB and RDF/Linked Data are distinct, if neighboring disciplines. On one hand, graph problems predate Linked Data, and the RDF/Linked Data world is a web artifact, which graphs are not as such, so a slightly different cultural derivation also makes these disjoint. Besides, graphs may imply schema first whereas linked data basically cannot. Then another differentiation might be derived from edges not really being first class citizens in RDF, except for reification, at which the RDF reification vocabulary is miserably inadequate, as pointed out before.
RDF is being driven by the web-style publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD), with some standardization and uptake by publishers; Graph DB is not standardized but driven by diverse graph-analytics use cases.
There is no necessary reason why these could not converge, but it will be indefinitely long before any standards come to cover this, so best not hold one's breath. Communities are jealous of their borders, so if the neighbor does something similar one tends to emphasize the differences and not the commonalities.
So for some things, one could warehouse the original RDF of the web microformats and LOD, and then ETL into some other graph model for specific tasks, or just do these in RDF. Of course, then RDF systems need to offer suitable capabilities. These seem to be about very fast edge traversal within a rather local working set, and about accommodating large, iteratively-updated intermediate results, e.g., edge weights.
Judging by the benchmarks paper (Benchmarking traversal operations over graph databases (Slidedeck (ppt), paper (pdf)); Marek Ciglan, Alex Averbuch, and Ladialav Hluchy.) at the GDM workshop, the state of benchmarking in graph databases is even worse than in RDF, where the state is bad enough. The paper's premise was flawed to start, using application logic to do JOINs instead of doing them in the DBMS. In this way, latency comes to dominate, and only the most blatant differences are seen. There is nothing like this style of benchmarking to make an industry look bad. The supercomputer Graph 500 benchmark, on the other hand, lets the contestants make their own implementations on a diversity of architectures with random traversal as well as loading and generating large intermediate results. It is somewhat limited, but still broader than the the graph database benchmarks paper at the GDM workshop.
Returning to graphs, there were some papers on similarity search and clique detection. As players in this space, beyond just RDF, we might as well consider implementing necessary features for efficient expression of such problems. The algorithms discussed were expressed in procedural code against memory-based data structures; there is usually no query language or parallel/distributed processing involved.
MapReduce has become the default way in which people would tackle such problems at scale; in fact, people do not consider anything else, as far as I can tell. Well, they certainly do not consider MPI for example as a first choice. The parallel array things in Fortran do not at first sight seem very graphy, so this is likely not something that crosses one's mind either.
We should try some of the similarity search and clustering in SQL with a parallel programming model. We have excellent expression-evaluation speed from vectoring and unrestricted recursion between partitions, and no file system latencies like MapReduce. The initial test case will be some of the linking/data-integration/mapping workloads in LOD2.
Having some sort-of-agreed-upon benchmark for these workloads would make this more worthwhile. Again, we will see what emerges.


text:
34-day monuments of antiquity
Changing the date may affect price and availability
Seabourn Odyssey
Departure Port:
Piraeus (Athens), Greece
Arrival Port:
Ocean-view Suite |
Veranda Suite |
Penthouse Suite |
Owner's Suite |
Call us for availability & price* | from US$10,499* per person | from US$21,199* per person | Call us for availability & price* |
Khasab, Oman
With a rugged coastline slashed by narrow fjords, Oman's Musandam Peninsula is often called the ""Norway of Arabia."" Separated from the rest of the Sultanate of Oman by the United Arab Emirates, the peninsula is a rocky headland jutting into the Strait of Hormuz, forming one of the most strategic shipping lanes in the world. Along the scenic east coast, native dhows ply the waters where spinner and bottlenose dolphins are often seen. Ancient towns such as Khasab, the capital of the region, and Bukha offer centuries-old forts and a compelling glimpse into the essence of Arabia.
Khasab, Oman
Weather Information is not available for this Port.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Federal Way group pushing for armed volunteers in schools
on February 18, 2013 @ 3:37 pm (Updated: 3:55 pm - 2/18/13 )A newly-formed group in Federal Way has a plan to put armed volunteers in each of the city's public schools.
The group, which will meet formally for the first time on Tuesday, calls itself the School Alliance for Every Student's Tomorrow (SAFEST).
Mark Knapp, a firearm attorney who heads the group, said unpaid volunteers would be the most cost-effective way to prevent a mass shooting like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
He told KIRO Radio's Dori Monson Show that the volunteers would be trained to the same standards as law enforcement and would also undergo a psychological evaluation.
Knapp said that armed volunteers in plainclothes would be more effective than uniformed officers on campus.
"Because any active shooter has to reckon with the fact that he's going to be met with deadly force if he goes into a school," Knapp said. "He doesn't know where, or when, or from whom that force is going to be applied."
The Federal Way Police Department is opposed to the idea. A police spokesperson tells KING 5 that it already has resource officers in each high school and is prepared to handle a mass shooting scenario.
Brandi Kruse is a reporter for KIRO Radio who is as spontaneous and adventurous in her free time as she is on the job. Brandi arrived at KIRO Radio in March 2011 and has already collected three regional Edward R. Murrow awards for her reporting.
Bonneville Media encourages site users to express their opinions by posting comments. Our goal is to maintain a civil dialogue in which readers feel comfortable. At times, the comments can descend to personal attacks. Please do not engage in such behavior. We encourage your thoughtful comments which: have a positive and constructive tone, are on topic, are respectful toward others and their opinions. Bonneville reserves the right to remove comments which do not conform to these criteria.


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The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
Your support is essential in encouraging emerging art and artists.
Angus Cameron: Going to Pieces at the ICA
On Wednesday 15 May Angus Cameron presented Headless, a large scale performance art project led by Swedish collaborative duo Goldin+Senneby. Cameron shares his thoughts on the themes of Headless in relation to the work of Bernadette Corporation. I spent a … Read more


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Introducing ReadyCLOUD: Discover, Manage, & Access Data from AnywhereReadyCLOUD Discovery provides unprecedented installation simplicity. No IP addresses to figure out, no setup applications to install or run. Just plug in your new ReadyNAS and go to readycloud.netgear.com Once configured you can manage your device, setup access permissions, and browse content. Your own private cloud with data you can access... [Read more]
NETGEAR REVOLUTIONIZES CONNECTED STORAGE AND DATA PROTECTION WITH NEW READYNAS PRODUCTSNETGEAR REVOLUTIONIZES CONNECTED STORAGE AND DATA PROTECTION WITH NEW READYNAS PRODUCTS NAS models feature new operating system, modern GUI, redesigned hardware and a wealth of user applications and data protection technology SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 18, 2013 — NETGEAR®, Inc. (NASDAQGM: NTGR) (www.netgear.com), a global networking company that... [Read more]
Free Memeo Backup Premium for Trying Memeo C1MEMEO C1: DROPBOX FOR BUSINESS Memeo C1 is a simple way for employees to access and update documents across computers and mobile devices without your IT Admin having to give up security and control. It's similar to Dropbox, but built for business. From an employee perspective, it's easy. Simply access important business files from any... [Read more]
ReadyNAS and Symform – A match made in The CloudNETGEAR's focus on security and high-performance network storage devices makes your ReadyNAS a great gateway to the Symform Cloud Storage Network. Your NETGEAR NAS not only gives you robust local backup, it also provides you with easy access to the local drive space you can use to pay for Symform. Symform is a better way to back up all the data... [Read more]
Personal Plans Now Available for ReadyVaultAs you may already know, your NETGEAR ReadyNAS product comes with the option to backup your files to the cloud using the ReadyNAS Vault. With the Vault, you can protect the precious files on your ReadyNAS device in the cloud and then access all of those files from anywhere that you have access to the internet. Up until now, we've focused... [Read more]
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IVCA approved courses are open only to qualified veterinarians or chiropractors. Please note that for the most courses the language of instruction is English.
IVCA Approved Course Providers
At present the IVCA recognises 4 Veterinary Chiropractic educational establishments who run basic, advanced and continuing professional development courses in Canada, England, Germany and the United States of America.
Please click on the websites below links for further details:
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Rainforest Fund Birthday Benefit Concert
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Published: March 25, 2010
Sting, Lady Gaga, Sir Elton John and Dame Shirley Bassey will perform at the Rainforest Fund's 21st Birthday Celebration Benefit Concert.
Sting's wife Trudie Styler has organized the event, to be held at Carnegie Hall.
'Sting, Elton and Gaga will play together, and the boys will be performing with Dame Shirley, doing a great rendition of Hey Big Spender,' Styler says.
The Rainforest Fund Birthday Benefit Concert is on 13 May.
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Nokia proves popular in the Netherlands as the Lumia 920 sells out…on the first day.
We're still not quite sure what the situation is for Nokia's stock of the Lumia 920. Word is that they kept production limits tight due to a fear of having a warehouse filled with unsold devices just collecting dust. That's a dangerous position to be in when your financials are as precarious as Nokia's.
Being the case, it's still interesting to read that in the Netherlands, where the Lumia 920 just went on sale today, at least one major reseller (Bol.com) is already reporting stock is so low that they can't guarantee any orders past tomorrow. To make it worse, they don't even know when the device will be back in stock.
A note has now gone up on their website, which is translated below:
"The official release date for the Nokia Lumia 920 is the 14th of January 2013. During pre-orders the 920 proved to be really popular. As a result of this there is a shortage of Nokia Lumia 920's for the entire country (of the Netherlands). This means that we cannot guarantee quick delivery if you place your order after the 15th of December 2012. We cannot provide a shipping date at this moment."
Indeed preorder interest was so high, it rivaled the iPhone 5 back in November. When reader of the site Niels called up Bol.com he was told "…they just didn't know when it would be back on the shelves. And that the demand is 'high'".
Once again the keywords are there: demand is high. So while we can write-off some of the Lumia 920 shortages to "initial low stock" it is also because once again, people just really want the darn thing. The question is when will Nokia finally ramp up production enough to meet that demand?
Source: Bol.com; Thanks, Niels, for the tip!
There are 65 comments. Sign in to commentgiorgio h says:
Yess true, I'm still waiting on my lumia 920.
dreamfly says:
Same here...been waiting since Nov 19. Wrote an email to the Nokia CEO and he replied saying they were working hard on it. Don't really know how they work but obviously every inefficiently.
jsnod25 says:
Well during their decline over the past couple years they closed many fan plants and laid off tens of thousands of employees, so they aren't able to produce like they used to. Plus they have a wide range of offerings and that limits production of any one model as well.
dubnukem says:
I'm not surprised. Nokia used to be HUGE here in Holland. People were just waiting for them to release a good phone again. And they just did.
Martinspire says:
While that is true, it seems that the demand is high but deliveries to stores are just way too low. Phonehouse just got a handfull of devices on the 10th (rumor) and bol.com didn't get many either. If you check various forums you don't see many reviews or experiences with the device but you do see a lot of people waiting for their phone to be delivered.
It all was to be expected if you look at the launches in the area. Germany also had way too little stock. Not sure if this is because they launched all over the place, but it seems that the current problem isn't shortage of stock per se, but more related to the lack of or size of new stock
JuneMono says:
Still waiting for a Nokia 920 yellow. Waiting since 12/1/12. :(
Apoc says:
I pretty much gave up on waiting for my yellow Lumia 920. Probably will wait to see what Microsoft and Nokia will announce at MWC in Barcelona. But if it happens to come in stock before I will still get it!
bawboh86 says:
I gave up on a yellow as well. And a red, as it seems that one keeps selling out before I can make it to the store (after checking stocks online). I ended up with white. Oh well! It's still a great phone, even if the color doesn't stick out. ^_^
Brian Heller1 says:
I've been waiting since 11/25/12.
pbroy says:
They need to hurry up and satisfy demand so we can start getting some more colors in the US, instead of black and white. Preferably GREY.
giorgio h says:
Is nokia going to do something about their production?
DanBB1 says:
As far as I know, they should be opening a new plant in Vietnam sometime "early 2013". Most likely the next Lumia flagship will be produced there.
jordanfernandes says:
Hey Daniel can U tell me when the lumia 620 will be released?? And any idea about its price?
Jnbs says:
I might not be Daniel, but here is kind of a hope that you can get it.. Preorders are being held at gsmnation.com here is the preorder link: http://www.gsmnation.com/nokia-lumia-620-unlocked-pink.html. In my opinion is a great device, and I will preorder one myself. Availability is on January 2013 for most countries. (ITS SHIPPING ALREADY AWESOME!!!)
Nakazul says:
They sold all 2 phones? (Sarcasm)
DJCBS says:
NOT surprised. SPECIALLY since the phone costs 600€ AND Nokia Holland OFFERS the charging pad (which costs around 70€) to people in Holland. So the Lumia 920 ends up costing 530€.
If more countries sold it at that price (which is the fair price for the phone), they would sell more units in other countries too.
Abdul9 says:
If i knew that i would have waited and ran to Holland to buy mine. Dam! Life is so unfair.
DJCBS says:
It's not that simple. You would have to live in Holland and have bought the phone from one of the specified retailers (which are basically the bigger ones like bol.com, PhoneHouse, MediaMarkt, Saturn, and the operators T-Mobile, Vodafone, Tele2). They don't give you the charging pad right away. Until February 28th you go to Nokia's website (http://nokiapromotion.nl/gratisoplader/) and register your IMEI as well as name and address of course and the colour you desire. Then send by March 8th a copy of the receipt and a printed copy of the form. Then within 4-6 weeks they send it to your address in Holland.
It's not THAT fast to get BUT it's free and spares you 70€ nonetheless.
ericjojo says:
Nokia Lumia 920 all the way...im really digging my Yellow L920!!!
ChristianKing says:
If I'm Nokia, while they need the cash, I'd keep the supply limited and take the hit. Their next flagship should sell like the galaxy SII did for Samsung. Perceived demand is more important for them right now than actual sells if they can take the financial hit. They need mindshare and every time we keep hearing the Lumia 920 sold out, the more it makes it the must have device with the 16 to 25 crowd. Honestly, the lack of Instagram is probably the only thing keeping the Lumia line from exploding with sales. Kids love these colorful phones. But they aren't leaving all their friends behind to get one. Microsoft just needs to give Facebook the cash to get it done. Its clear Google is paying them to not release it on windows phone. Microsoft, write a bigger check.
TK2011 says:
Instagram for WP is supposedly in progress. We just need to wait a little more.
Lloyd_S says:
Letter to editor.....
infur says:
http://www.pdashop.nl/category/6747/top-10-smartphones.html the best selling phone in this shop and also sold out.
kwarkus says:
the Lumia 920 was out in 1 day for few weeks.
pazces84 says:
sucks for those who are still waiting on getting their hands on a L920 :-/
AaHaa says:
Yeah, tell me about it. I was supposed to get it last thursday, but I got a mail telling me it was delayed because of the massive amount of preorders. When I called the webshop, they told me Nokia gave them a lot less phones than they anticipated, so I don't think it's save to say the phone is selling very well YET. Maybe every retailer just got very few devices. By some miracle, I received mine this saturday by the way... Don't know how I maneged to slip through the waiting queues.
Moaske says:
Being from Holland I managed to get a Black one from The Phonehouse in Netherlands: they seem to be very well connected to Nokia as the seem to have received the earliest and most stock. Even one of our biggest etailers (Cool Blue) has them still on backorder for most of it's clients.
By the way, I hesitated a long time about the color, but finally decided that the high gloss of the colors is too damn ugly. The semi matte finish of black is nicer and goes with all accent colors, although my first choice would have been a grey one if it had come available at a reasonable time. I think we're not gonna see that grey one before april of may...
XBWillem says:
Ordered mine months ago and haven't even received confirmation it is on its way...
diplomat696 says:
paulxxwall says:
When u guys get them u will luv them lumia920 usa
diplomat696 says:
If there is such high demand and low supply though how long are people willing to wait before going in another direction...
Mafiatounes says:
I bought mine in France 2 months ago when it released, i was there for work and i just could not wait.. Hi my name is rami and i am a Lumiaddict.
Derek De Souza says:
I'm so glad I've got mine <3 Didn't really had to wait cos I think they had got another batch that was just in!! These phones are selling like hot cakes
KingCrimson says:
Go Nokia, onwards and upwards to VICTORY!
absynthosmicology#WP says:
I just got off the phone from a nokia support rep, as my 920 locks up every few hours. Even after the update. She told me that they are currently replacing most all of AT&T's store supply as well as all of the stock that is already in the customers hands. This could be why there is so much shortage. She did say that they are keeping it as quiet as possible, which I found odd that she would offer that up.. I love my phone, I just don't feel I should have to do a soft reset every few hours...
ejlee072006 says:
Junior_bg says:
Here in Brazil there are thousands of people waiting for the new Lumias 820 and 920, but the prediction of Nokia Brazil is that the new appliances are marketed only in mid-March 2013. Many are not leaving expected and buying galaxy's III and iPhone's 5 ...
Jeanclaudebaktiste says:
In germany/berlin it is no Problem to get 920s on mobilecom debitel, 599€. They have white, black and red
SergeMcG says:
I don't think Lumia 920 will ever be meeting demand. A production increase should take months otherwise it is too costly. By the time they can meet demand is time to release the next flagship model.. I hope I'm wrong, for all those who are waiting. I had to get mine from Dubai!
The queue outside Apple stores is miniscule in comparison at the crowds of those waiting for their Lumia 920 to be shipped.
ianwasheretoo says:
so true! they will never meet demand. They should announce a new lumia now!
Rabbagello says:
I'm also still waiting since 12/12/'12. Belsimpel(.nl) claimed my order would take 2 weeks, than 3 weeks, than they said it would be back in stock on the 9th of Jan. Finally on that day they mailed me to say that they had no clue on when it would be back in stock. Please be sooooon!! My HTC HD7 is starting to die on me. =/
giorgio h says:
Dutch people everywhere..
ceraf says:
It would be nice if they actually reported a ballpark figure of the number of phones sold.
DJCBS says:
In Portugal the original release date of the 920 at Fnac - January 18th - was now pushed to February because Nokia redirected stock destined to the country to face demands in other countries that have already released it. I would be surprised if one of those countries was Holland.
However the 820 AND the 620 have a release date of January 28th.
On the other hands, no Operator here has announced the arrival of the new WP, with Vodafone clearly admiting that they do NOT recommend the phone to any customer who asks for help choosing a Smartphone.
Pawelaziz says:
I pre-ordered the nokia lumia 920 back in december ( 20-25 december) and I've already received 2 emails from CoolBlue. They told me that they can't deliver the lumia on time, now eventually I'm told that they'll deliver the lumia on 22 january in stead of 7 january. I can't wait!!!!! I need that phone!!!
GG002 says:
Lucky you! I couldn't preorder back in December, and did it in beginning of Jan, and now bol.com reports 8-10 weeks of delay!!!!!!!! BLOODY H*LL
Johnny Tremaine says:
Nokia may ramp up production, but likely for the next iteration of the Lumia line. The current line has been on the market for a few months, and it sold what it's going to sell.
This is provided, of course, that Nokia's financials will allow them to survive another year without getting bought.
Marvin_S says:
If the demand is there, why would they sell :) this is the luxury problem they have been waiting for for the last 5 years!
Whodaboss says:
Just imagine if the Lumia 920 was released on all networks in the U.S. versus just on AT&T. Nokia stock would be at least $10 by now because there would have been so much demand. Oh well, my Lumia 810 will have to do for now.
Marvin_S says:
Would not have mattered much, the company has much more traction in Europe. So if they get supplies up in Europe and Asia, they can reach sales numbers much much higher than they would in the states. It's much better to keep your biggest market happy.
peSHIr says:
Only question for me? "Where is that grey colour?"
It is still promised as an available one ("beschikbaar") on http://www.nokia.com/nl-nl/producten/telefoon/lumia920/specificaties/ even though I can find no images of a grey 920 on the Nokia site right now. Just to be clear: available (to me) means that I can buy it, not "we probably plan to start manufacture it in this color as well if black and white turn out to be actually selling". :-/
Marvin_S says:
Ik denk niet dat we het grijze model de komende maanden in de winkels kunnen verwachten.
FAKNL says:
Getting my white 920 today between 1854-2054 delivered, can't wait.
Thamuz says:
So that's why they postponed the Lumia 920 until the end of February in Belgium...
EvadNL says:
Just received a mail from Bol.com saying it could take up to half way of march before I get my Lumia 920 :( very sad!
Panagiotis Filos says:
Still waiting for it here in Greece.Many people want it here also.


text:
By Ms. Candaras, a petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 1074) of Gale D. Candaras, Cory Atkins, Jennifer E. Benson, Thomas M. McGee and other members of the General Court for legislation to regulate cadmium in children's jewelry. Public Health.
Sponsors: | |
Status: | Referred to Senate Committee on Ethics and Rules |


text:
Join and browse our exclusive open discussion forums and talk about whatever you like.
This is Brennie's personal blogger.
ATLANTA - A man admitted Tuesday that he tampered with his children'ssoup in an attempt to get money from Campbell Soup Co., a prosecutorsaid. William Allen Cunningham's 3-year-old son and 18-month-old daughterwere hospitalized twice in January 2006. He forced them first to eatsoup laced with hot peppers and lighter fluid, and the second timeused the prescription drugs Prozac and Amitriptyline - both used totreat depression - to poison the children, authorities said. Cunningham, 41, pleaded guilty to communicating false claims, U.S.Attorney David Nahmias said. Under terms of a plea agreement, he facesup to five years in federal prison when he is sentenced April 19. "He admitted that he put potentially life-threatening foreignsubstances into soup, which he fed to his two young children and thenplaced a call to Campbell Soup Co. falsely claiming that the soup hadbeen contaminated," Nahmias said. According to prosecutors, Cunningham called Campbell and threatened tosue. Authorities say there was no evidence the soup was tainted whenit was bought. ------------------------------------------------------ That's the kind of parenting that gives me hope for the future.
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) - A woman claims she found a razor blade in herMcDonald's breakfast sandwich early Wednesday, and authoritiesinterviewed people involved. Carolyn Bovey, 54, who was not injured, said she ordered the sausage,egg and cheese McMuffin in the drive-thru of a McDonald's inBradenton. She allegedly found the blade in the sandwich's eggs afterbiting into it at work, according to a police report. A manager at the store told authorities that the restaurant uses razorblades, but it was unclear if they were the same type Bovey claims shefound. It was also unclear what the blades were used for. The managertold authorities that the only way she could see the incidenthappening was if someone had placed an object above the cooking areaand it fell in accidentally, a police report said. Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Kenyan said he found a razor blade in themanager's desk that resembled the one found in Bovey's sandwich. Restaurant owner Cynthia Kennedy said in a statement that the publicshould be wary of making assumptions about the incident. "Absolutely nothing is more important to me than operating saferestaurants. We take great pride in the food we serve our customersand set rigorous standards for food and restaurant safety," Kennedysaid. "We strongly caution anyone from jumping to conclusions withouthaving all the facts." Kennedy said through a spokeswoman that she does not know why looserazor blades would be in the restaurant. She added that the restaurantis cooperating with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office. She said shecould not comment further because the investigation is ongoing. "Why would anything like this be near a food preparation area?" Boveytold the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "That almost made me feel worse,that something like this could happen by accident. This should neverhave happened." She said she feels like she slightly cut her lip and was talking toattorneys. ------------------------------------------------------ Is it just me or does it seem that every fake-claim person isattacking the fast food industry these days? I ask you, what everhappened to a good old fashioned fall? Or even some profitableemotional distress? I tell ya, someone's gonna have to get creative and fast or all thosepeople who rely on fake claims are gonna go under.
There was that customer that Edyieville or whatnot had who found aBULLET CASING in his food. And he really HAD found it. Apparently,Edyie took it away from the customer and the resturant kept it so theycould say the poor guy was lying, since apparently "no evidence, noincident." Disgusting of the employees, but it shows that sometimesyou DO find bizarre things in your food. There are a million and onescam artists out there, but there are also horrible resturants toosometimes. :S
Yea for me =)
It seems like the best way to get the job done.
BAY CITY, Mich. (AP) - A lovers' quarrel and a case of mistakenidentity has landed a teenager behind bars after police say herepeatedly rammed a teenage girl's car, thinking it was hisgirlfriend. State police told The Saginaw News that the victim - a 17-year-oldfrom Pinconning - called 911 early Sunday when the suspect smashed hiscar into the rear of hers. The 17-year-old suspect struck her car about 15 times and pushed itthrough stop signs at intersections, the victim told police. Dispatchers advised her to lead the suspect toward police units whowere en route to intercept them, police said. State police troopers and Bay County sheriff's deputies caught up withthe suspect and pursued the Bay City teen at speeds of up to 90 milesper hour, police said. The teen told police he thought the driver was his girlfriend, wholeft a party after the couple quarreled. He said he wanted to talk toher and get his goodnight kiss, so he went searching for her, policesaid. He told police he was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone,telling her to stop her car. She told him she was stopped and didn'tknow what he was talking about, officers said. The teen likely will face charges including assault with a vehicle,fleeing police and drunk driving. ------------------------------------------------------ Hmmm ramming your car into someone else's to get their attention? Thissounds like an ex boyfriend. I think I may have dodged a bullet here.
That's it! Ever since I switched to Comcast my connection has beenshaky at best. I swear they must be using a string and tin can for amodem. As soon as my contract is up I'm dropping them like a badhabit. I renounce my cable internet connection! On the other hand, the customer service people at Comcast areincredibly helpful when it comes to temporarily fixing the problem,they just can't give me a permenant solution. And I can't yell at thembecause they're just so darn nice. Ya know, that gives me an idea. I'll open a buisness where you cancall and yell at me for 99 cents a minute. That's the million dollar one right there.
I'm back! Ok had a small 4 day power outage up here in Seattle and it wasputting a little damper on my outrage against You-Know-Who but I'mback up and running so I'm crusading forward. On a consumer note, can I just say that the quaility of Ramen noodleshas gone seriously down hill.
LIBERTY, Ohio (AP) - A grocery store manager was struck in the headwith a 10-pound sack of potatoes by a customer angry about having towait in line, police say. Police in Liberty, near Youngstown innortheast Ohio, say a 59-year-old woman from Youngstown is suspectedin the attack. Scott Renzenbrink, 45, told police a clerk having problems with acustomer called him to the register. The customer told him she wasupset about the wait and struck the manager in the back of head withthe potatoes when he was walking away after the conversation,according to police. A witness followed the woman out to the parking lot and took down herlicense plate number. Renzenbrink, who was not seriously hurt in the attack last Thursday,identified the woman by a Bureau of Motor Vehicles photo. He may fileassault charges. Information from: The Tribune Chronicle
See if you can guess who I'm rampaging against. I'll give you a clue:Nina T
Oh my god I love having the internet...and cable. Comcast digital cable is so sweet. And the DVR is the answer to myprayers. No longer do I have to go without seeing all my favoritecartoons that only play at 3am, such as the Angry Beavers. I freakinlove the Angry Beavers. We just got a brand new computer last Tuesday even though we stilldon't have a couch =). When it came Corey was so excited, he wasbouncing around like a puppy! We've already started playing ourdesignated computer games. He really likes Anarchy Online and I ofcourse am playing the Sims! Oh and Oregon Trail, Heck Yeah! I rememberplaying Oregon Trail in elementry school on floppy disk, that was soawesome.
Ok so I find that I've been getting angrier and angrier at some of theletters lately and then I remembered a few rules that really help whenresponding to posts. This is from another forum that I frequent athttp://www.etiquettehell.com/forum/. Scritzy's Coke Rules 1. If a post annoys me, count to 10 before replying 2. If a post angers me, count to 100. 3. If a post infuriates me, shut down computer and drink a Coke. That's it! It's so simple. So please, I'm asking everyone here, if yousee a post of mine that is particularly snarky, just reply with"Scritzy".
One of my comments was recently removed because I used the words'damn' and 'hell'. That is such a petty reason. Anyone who cares toread them can see that none of my other replies contained anyprofanity whatsoever. I feel as though I was judged based on onecomment. The thing is that my profile is shared. I stand behind what I say andI want anyone who's interested to read the replies that I've posted onany letter. Anyone who has any critism or comments about me can cometo my profile and leave a message on my blog. There was no need totake such drastic measures. I've only been at this site for a few months but I love it. I check iteveryday that I can, I post on every letter that strikes my interest.I feel as though I just got a taste of the good things here and then afew mean spirited people went and ruined it. I don't understand whyall these people came here, clearly didn't like what they saw, andinstead of leaving in search of a forum that was more to their liking,they decided to change all the rules to fit their needs. It'sridiculous. I hope that my blog is considered neutral ground and I won't bepunished for anything I've said. I don't want my commenting privlidgesto be revoked but I wonder how much longer it will be beforecommenting isn't even worth the trouble.
I had just sat down and wrote all about how much I love T-Mobile whensuddenly it hit me. I'm on a feedback site, I should write somefeedback and tell THEM how much love I have. Duh! I have the Moto Razr and the hinge just broke off the side today! Itprobably has something to do with me dropping it on the cement everyother day but I'm not sure =) Regardless my insurance is going toreplace it. I just filed the claim today and they said I would have itby Tuesday, as in 3 days! Is it just me or is that amazingly quick? I've only had to file a claim once before and that was almost 3 yearsago with Verizon. It took them 2 weeks to get me a replacement andthat time my phone had been stolen so I didn't even have a phone totalk on. At least this time it's just a little broken and I can stilluse it...sort of. I mean I have to hold the top half on but still! Anyway forget this go read my letter!
Today's my Monday...poop. I've only been at work for 3 hours and I've already come across 5problem accounts, rolled over my foot with my chair, and squirtedmyself in the eye with grapefruit juice. Not looking promising. Incidently I just looked down and noticed I forgot to shave my legsthis morning and I'm wearing capris with my 3 day old stubble. Nice.
that this is going to cause problems but can anyone give me the skinnyon this Lisa Smith girl? I gotta know!
I think my job is starting to warp me. I approve greetings fora...chat line...ok, ok...it's a phone sex line. So basically I sit atmy desk and listen to the greetings that men are leaving to enticewomen to come and talk to them. I'm also responsible for hiring thephone actresses. Some men are so ridiculous, you wouldn't believe what some guys thinkwill turn on the ladies. Although I have to say that the worst is whensad/old guys are on here actually looking for a relationship. HELLO!You are in the wrong place! Although I guess I can't complain. I get paid pretty decently andreally I only do maybe 60 minutes of actual work in an 8 hour shift.Dealing with the "actresses" is by far the most tedious part. Anyway back to the warping. I'm starting to look at guys differently now. I can't even go to thebar without hearing the weird disconnected voices coming from thosestupid greetings! I mean I suppose every guy says something every nowand then that isn't the smoothest but it seems to me that every man Iencounter chooses the moment that I'm talking to him to say thatcertine something. Thank god I have a boyfriend. Maybe I can work therapy into my benefits package =)
I have no idea what I did with my life before discovering thiswebsite. If I could I would quit work and dedicate myself full time towatching my feeds and waiting for a new letter to post. Of course if Iquit my job then I wouldn't be able to access PlanetFeedback as Idon't have internet access (or a computer for that matter) at home.This is because I am living in the 1800's. But seriously when is the last time someone told you they don't havethe internet? Never you say, that sounds about right. My 60 year oldmother has internet access for christ's sake (should christ becapitalized in that context?). It's especially embarrassing when I gosomeplace and they want me to take a survey or like Blockbust alwayswants me to sign up for their online pass and I always have to stopthe person and tell them I don't have the internet. Last time theclerk told me to go to the library and sign up, I thought that was alittle bizarre. And sadly there are a few other household items thatare a little higher on the priority list then a computer. Like a couch for instance. *sigh* I suppose I'll have to keep my job a little while longer afterall.
Hey PlanetFeedback!


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Originally published on Wed September 5, 2012 4:57 am
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is considered a rising stary in the Democratic Party. He will address the Democratic National Convention in prime time Wednesday night. So far, the former Denver mayor and brew pub owner has rebuffed speculation that he has national political aspirations.