Tera-Tom here! Aster Data started as an idea from Ph.D students attending Stanford University:  Commodity hardware that was scalable with advanced analytics capabilities on ungodly amounts of data.  After proven success, Teradata decided to buy them for $232 Million!  You might say they got an A+ on their final.  Now that I have been teaching Aster Data classes and written a book on Aster Data and MapReduce, I am convinced that Teradata bought Aster for the MapReduce capabilities.

What is MapReduce?  It is basically java code that is compiled and designed to query data in more direct and advanced ways than SQL.  In layman’s terms, a few lines of MapReduce code can do the equivalent of 2 months of SQL development.  For example, the nPath MapReduce function tracks every page a user clicks on inside your website.  nPath shows the path users take so analysts can see the most popular path to a purchase or who is most likely to churn because they went to the customer support page.  The Naive Bayes MapReduce function allows you to take a set of data, correlate it with known results, and then do predictive modeling on additional data sets which provides insight into customers that are most likely and least likely to make a purchase.  These functions have been pre-built in Aster Data and Aster has over 50 different functions ready to use right out of the package.  The brilliance behind Aster Data is the fact that it can still use standard SQL in conjunction with MapReduce functions and it’s called SQL-MR.

Let me also announce that our Nexus Query Chameleon, which some experts are saying is the greatest query tool ever built, now works brilliantly with Aster Data MapReduce functions in addition to working with every database in the world.  You can query Aster Data and run every MapReduce function on Nexus. Now that Nexus works on all systems we will focus development on enhancing MapReduce capabilities.

One of the frustrating things about MapReduce is that, when you first see it, it looks like Greek.  There really isn’t any documentation that explains it clearly or teaches you how to use it effectively.  Well, that is until I took it on.  My book on Aster Data and MapReduce makes it easy to understand.  I have built incredible examples that will allow you to master Aster Data and MapReduce in a short amount of time.  The Aster Data book is Book 10 in the Tera-Tom Genius Series.  I have been receiving rave reviews from readers from around the world.

Was Aster a good purchase for Teradata?  Absolutely.  Will Aster be big?  I’m not sure, but one thing I say without hesitation:  MapReduce is going to have an incredible impact.  I believe every company in the world will be using it and doing so soon.  MapReduce provides the next step in querying and analyzing large data sets.

Call me if you want to schedule classes for Aster Data, MapReduce, Aster Data Database Administration, Teradata or Netezza.  I have expanded my teaching to cover them all.

The computing world is changing right before our very eyes.  This might be the most exciting time in the history of computers and an opportunity of a lifetime for you and your company.  My advice is to begin learning new technologies today including Hadoop, MapReduce, Aster Data, Columnar, Appliances and In-Memory systems.  The old world had structured table data in one or two places.  The new world has both structured and unstructured data distributed throughout the enterprise. The exciting challenge is who can bring it together.

Please contact me if you want to see Aster Data in action or if you just want to learn more about Map Reduce.  I can give you a beautiful demonstration over the web on the Nexus.

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