INESC TEC developed an application for managing large databases in real time

Nowadays, database management and updating is a key concern for large companies. In order to perform said critical tasks, the purchase of dedicated hardware is the solution found by most organisations; however, this leads to expenses in terms of hardware management and maintenance, and often the need to allocate human resources. Now, there’s a cloud platform that aims to meet the market demands, with a more reliable and cost-effective technology that can be updated in real time.

This technological innovation results from the European project CloudDBAppliance – European Cloud In-Memory Database Appliance with Predictable Performance for Critical Applications – developed with the participation of HASLab – INESC TEC’s High-Assurance Software Laboratory. The platform combines hardware and software to provide large data storage capacity and hybrid and/or analytical cloud processing, thus enabling users to scale processing capacity according to their needs, at any given time.

Thanks to this new platform, which is currently available to companies operating in the banking, telecommunications and retail areas, said companies can benefit from real-time analytical data, thus allowing them to implement proximity marketing services, calculate prices in real-time, improve the management of risk portfolios and ATM networks and benefit from the immediate portability of mobile numbers.

With an investment of €4.8 million, the CloudDBAppliance project started in 2016 and was developed by a consortium of 12 European companies and research institutions from seven countries, including IKEA Greece, JRC, Wind3 and Singular Logic. INESC TEC, the only Portuguese entity involved in the project, was responsible for the development of high availability mechanisms i.e. the processes that ensure the use of data regardless of the occurrence of service failures – caused by server or network problems, or even natural disasters that result in a loss of connection between data centres.

The developed technology will now be tested in real-world scenarios at IKEA Greece, JRC, Wind3 and Singular Logic, companies where several demonstrations took place throughout the project. In the specific case of IKEA Greece, the platform will allow customers to get personalised notifications based on their purchase history, preferences and their actual location in the store.

At JRC, said technology will be used to analyse the risk in real-time credit portfolios. As to Wind 3, an Italian telecommunications company, the platform will favour the immediate portability of mobile numbers; at Singular Logic, the platform will assist the real-time management of the ATM network in Greece.

The CloudDBAppliance project – European Cloud In-Memory Database Appliance with Predictable Performance for Critical Applications – was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, under the agreement number 732051.