It's pretty rare that I go crazy about endorsing a product announcement but yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of attending an amazing webinar by Confio Software on a new product they have underdevelopment. Essentially it is a new SQL driver that compresses SQL data on the way to the disk subsystem. Once the driver was installed it there were utilities to show expected compression on a DB by DB basis. Compression typically resulted in a 60-80 reduction in file size and a 100-130% increase in overall performance. In true Confio tradition, they really over-delivered on the product. Implementing compression was an 'on-line' operation tasked by background threads leaving normal query operation totally unaffected during the process. Compression could be halted part way through or even totally undone, decompressing the database back to it's original state. All SQL based functions continue to work as before without any changes. From SQL's perspective the DB Files are exactly the same as before they were compressed. Compressed DB files can be moved to any other server with the Confio Performance drivers installed making it 'cheaper' to move DB copies around. Myself, I'm excited about the prospect of taking the full McFarland DB onto my laptop without giving up a third of my disk space.

The driver is supposed to work with all MSSQL versions from 2005 forward, even express. (Don't expect it to help you past the 4GB limit of express however as even with compression, it still appears to SQL as a 4GB DB.)

When questioned about the advantage over MSSQL compression, (available in 2008 R2 and later), they explained differences between the approaches. MS compressed by fitting more records within the same 8k page leaving the driver always reading and writing 8k pages. The Confio approach was to compress the 8k page itself prior to writing to the disk allowing smaller and faster i/o operations. In answer to CPU overhead to compress/decompress, we were told that there was a net CPU cycle saving due to the reduced requirements of the disk drivers passing smaller packets. It looks like you really CAN get something for nothing in this day and age.

I encourage anyone interested to contact:

Tony Kraayenbrink
tonykraayenbrink@confio.com
http://www.confio.com/
Sales Development - Confio Software
303.385.2384 | 970.324.7210 mobile

In the interests of full disclosure I have no financial interest in Confio software but McFarland DOES own a license of Confio Performance monitoring software, (as, in my opinion, should anyone running a significant enterprise on an SQL back-end.)