Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database delivers real-time performance by changing the assumptions around where data resides at runtime. By managing data in memory, and optimizing data structures and access algorithms accordingly, database operations execute with maximum efficiency, achieving dramatic gains in responsiveness and throughput, even compared to a fully cached disk-based RDBMS.1

Right away, Oracle states the assumption has changed. The assumption is the data resides in memory. In contrast to the standard Oracle kernel, where a balance must be struck between disk IO and in-memory operations, the TimesTen database is specifically designed for in-memory operations. It even goes so far as to say that an in-memory Oracle database cannot match the TimesTen performance! Clearly, trade-offs have been made to break speed barriers in specific processing areas.

The Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS) is not optimized for only in-memory management. I remember the day a small team in my consulting group did some testing using the standard Oracle kernel, but with a lot of memory. So much memory, in fact, that the entire database was cached. While our performance tests did run faster, we were shocked that they did not obliterate the baseline tests. What we learned that day was that the standard Oracle kernel is not optimized for in-memory operations. This is because it must strike a balance between in-memory operations and on-disk operations. As Oracle caches become increasingly larger, finding that optimal balance is a technically daunting challenge.