Highly advanced interactive analytic applications on the rise

As it’s Friday I thought I’d take a fun upbeat kind of topic to talk about. So what’s lighthearted and easy to digest? I don’t know about you, but highly advanced interactive analytic applications comes to mind for me.

These are the apps that are typically used to process extremely large data volumes inside a massively parallel database. As ultra-fast analysis on tens and hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of data becomes something of a necessity, the data management and data processing vendors are positively licking their lips at the prospect of their niche becoming a whole lot more en vogue.

But what’s the deal here for developers? The drive towards this sector of the tech spectrum will necessitate distributed computing specialists with a keen eye on performance optimisation. So are there tools out there to help? Yes of course there are or I wouldn’t have started thinking about the subject in the first place.

Likely protagonists in this space include companies like Aster Data with its recently announced nCluster 4.5 product which is focused on the management of sophisticated analytics for deep data exploration at massive volumes levels. The company is also now going to market with a Developer Express integrated visual development offering.

With customers like MySpace (remember them?) on its books, the company hopes that developers will be attracted offerings such as the Aster Data Analytic Foundation, a suite of re-usable analytic functions for accelerating application development; and the Aster Data Management Console 4.5, a management console for visibility and control of data and analytic applications.

‘Foundation’ and ‘Console’ as brand names? Have they been cuddling up too close to Microsoft and Atari? I jest of course, ‘interactive analytic applications’ will (and I think we can be definite about this) become more important now.

That said, if you search the term on our own site here you will draw a blank (until today I hope) and if you Google it you will find Aster Data comes up a close second behind Tibco, so watch this space. See – I told you it was going to be fun!