NonStop SQL

NonStop SQL is a database management system designed for 24x7 availability, high scalability, and excellent performance of online transaction processing (OLTP). The availability is achieved by isolation -- the transactions affected by hardware or software failures will be recovered without affecting other transactions. As for scalability, NonStop SQL is able to scale up almost linearly. It's regarded as a base for highly parallel systems. The fast OLTP is due to the row-partition storage model and fine granularity. The lock on data can be at the individual row level. NonStop SQL is widely used in stock exchanges, banks, and telecommunications.

Storage Model

N-ary Storage Model (Row/Record)

NonStop SQL uses the N-ary Storage Model, which is appropriate for heavy OLTP workloads.

Query Compilation

Code Generation

The query compiler transforms the SQL source commands into executable query plans in host language. The executable query plans and the SQL source commands are stored in a newly created object program file.

Views

Virtual Views

Whenever a view is created, NonStop SQL stores a view definition instead of the materialized table. Whenever a user selects data from a view, the data is directly retrieved from the underlying base tables.

Storage Architecture

Disk-oriented

The data of every table is stored in one or more disk files. Each disk file has a label storing the name and catalog information of the associated table.

Query Execution

Tuple-at-a-Time Model

Data Model

Relational

NonStop SQL supports the basic features of relational database management systems. What distinguish it from many other relational DBMS are the additional features providing excellent OLTP performance, availability, and scalability.

Indexes

B+Tree

NonStop SQL supports B+ tree index. By default, the primary key is used as the index of a table. To speed up the non-primary key look up, an index table can be created based on selected columns.

Website

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/servers/nonstop.html

Tech Docs

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c02148175

Developer

Tandem

Country of Origin

US

Start Year

1987

Acquired By

HP

Project Type

Commercial

Written in

C

Supported languages

C, C++, COBOL, Pascal

Derived From

Db2, SQL/DS

Licenses

Proprietary

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop_SQL