ASE Compression: CPU or IO, what worries you more?

[Former Member]

When ASE 15.7 has been announced at 2010 Techwave, Vegas, most of the focus has circled around the new ASE kernel.   We have just started to taste the new ASE optimizer (introduced years ago and still feeling fresh, innovative) and ............. BANGGGGGG ............. another thing to wreck your head on:   threaded kernel.  Gosh!  Can we have our piece of mind back for some time, pleeeez?

Never mind, one of the features that come out of the same magic box of the ASE 15.7 server was the compression option.  It did not share of the glare of its big brother, but it has been waited for no less.  Less?   Nay, it has been waited for much more!

Finally, I had some spare time to taste of this option and share the findings with those interested to hear.

As in the previous post that has dealt with an IMDB feature (ASE 15.5 ff), this post too will present a link to the presentation on ASE Compression.

Very briefly, I have found this option quit benign.  Elegant.

Documentation presents it as useful storage, cache and performance-wise.  The tests I have performed on it do confirm the advantages compression is said to have in the documentation.   Some of these are pretty straightforward (less storage?  sure... less cache?  sure...).  Some are less so (compression on per-partition level?  or on a session level?  CPU load overhead?  Hmm....).

What I loved also is the ease of making  things work.  Reminds me of IMDB feature:  simple to learn, simple to implement, great impact.

I hope you will find the presentation helpful and I hope you will find the feature useful.

ATM.