August 2018 Summaries

The Gartner Catalyst event in San Diego, California provided a platform for 2,500 attendees and 150 sessions to discuss various technology initiatives and topics. A new lounge area was introduced to help attendees rest and recharge, while SingleStore, the No-Limits Database, was unveiled as a modern database solution for applications. Several data and analytic sessions were highlighted, including talks on preparing for future-proofing data strategies, the essentials of Apache Kafka, pairing Kafka with SingleStore for analytics, leveraging AI/ML with data warehouses, and modernizing databases to simplify data life. These sessions showcased the latest innovations in technology, cloud platform selection, DevOps models, ML/AI, IoT architectures, and more, emphasizing the need for guidance on selecting the right tools for organizations trying to innovate their technology strategy.

In 2016, Pandora chose SingleStore as the data store and foundation for solving a specific business problem. The goal was to build a dashboard that would allow their Ad sales team to view data about current and former ad campaigns in real-time. The previous system had limitations such as a two-day delay for new data to be available, and performance issues due to pre-computing fixed answers for specific queries. Pandora required a data store that could deliver results via real-time queries, support two years of raw click and impression data, and be fast enough to support sub-second query response over hundreds of billions of rows of data. The contenders included RedShift, CitusDB, and SingleStore, with SingleStore offering the right mix of features, performance, and flexibility to address the problems Pandora wanted to solve. Pandora worked closely with the SingleStore team to implement the solution, building a test cluster and eventually deploying it in production. They found that columnar data provided significant benefits for query performance, but required careful consideration of indexes, data types, and hardware configurations. The implementation also involved addressing issues such as OR vs IN clauses, data skew, and execution plans. Pandora ultimately chose SingleStore due to its ability to meet their project requirements, features, and performance needs, which have remained true even after expanding their usage beyond the initial Ads dashboard project.