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I found the comparison with 'Real Businesses' particularly funny, given Wal-mart have have 2.1 million employees worldwide and Twitter has 75 million users...th

I found the comparison with 'Real Businesses' particularly funny, given Wal-mart have have 2.1 million employees worldwide and Twitter has 75 million users...their scaling requirements are different by a factor of 35.

rm-rf 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that Walmart's databases track way more interesting things than tweets. I'd assume that they know where every pallet of product is located anywhere in the world and what's in it, where every truck is and what's in it, the referrer for every click on their web site, details on every purchase at every store, location of every incoming product from every supplier..... And then I'd assume that they take all that data and de-normalize it, move it to a whole different series of databases, poke it into star schemas and warehouse it for further analysis - 'cause y'know - red wieners might be more popular than blue wieners next xmas, and they'd better anticipate that by at least 6 months, 'cause the wiener factories have to re-tool. Real business have real data, not tweets.
jimbokun 17y ago
Walmart also has a few products they need to track.
- pradocchia 17y ago
  ...and just a few points-of-sale. The Wal-Mart data warehouse operation is legendary in the industry. As of 2008, they were running Teradata, w/ 2.5 PB of data: http://www.dbms2.com/2008/10/15/teradatas-petabyte-power-players/ http://www.dbms2.com/2008/10/15/teradatas-petabyte-power-pla... By comparison, Facebook had ~2.5 PB in Hadoop/Hive in early 2009: http://www.dbms2.com/2009/05/11/facebook-hadoop-and-hive/ http://www.dbms2.com/2009/05/11/facebook-hadoop-and-hive/
code_duck 17y ago
You're comparing two completely different businesses on disparate metrics. How many 'users' does WalMart have worldwide? I'd say at least 500 million on whom they keep a purchase record. Then there's products, credit card numbers, suppliers, etc.
- VBprogrammer 17y ago
  But in terms of their 'real business' it is not the number of customers they have but the number of they have but only their employees who will be using their systems. The purchase records, products and credit card numbers are closer to Tweets than users.
  - code_duck 17y ago
    I don't think the number of people doing data entry or accessing a system matters nearly as much as how much data one has to be tracked. WalMart's data needs exceed that of Twitter, they exceed the needs of Facebook. I don't know if they meet or exceed Google, but I'd imagine it's up there.
gsk 17y ago
Listen to rm-rf. Way back when (2003-2004), I was involved in Walmart's supply chain managament software. I recall a few million rows to be optimized every day (before noon, so the hundreds of trucks plying the road can move things around efficiently).

rm-rf 17y ago

I'm pretty sure that Walmart's databases track way more interesting things than tweets. I'd assume that they know where every pallet of product is located anywhere in the world and what's in it, where every truck is and what's in it, the referrer for every click on their web site, details on every purchase at every store, location of every incoming product from every supplier..... And then I'd assume that they take all that data and de-normalize it, move it to a whole different series of databases, poke it into star schemas and warehouse it for further analysis - 'cause y'know - red wieners might be more popular than blue wieners next xmas, and they'd better anticipate that by at least 6 months, 'cause the wiener factories have to re-tool. Real business have real data, not tweets.

jimbokun 17y ago

Walmart also has a few products they need to track.

pradocchia 17y ago
...and just a few points-of-sale. The Wal-Mart data warehouse operation is legendary in the industry. As of 2008, they were running Teradata, w/ 2.5 PB of data: http://www.dbms2.com/2008/10/15/teradatas-petabyte-power-players/ http://www.dbms2.com/2008/10/15/teradatas-petabyte-power-pla... By comparison, Facebook had ~2.5 PB in Hadoop/Hive in early 2009: http://www.dbms2.com/2009/05/11/facebook-hadoop-and-hive/ http://www.dbms2.com/2009/05/11/facebook-hadoop-and-hive/

code_duck 17y ago

You're comparing two completely different businesses on disparate metrics. How many 'users' does WalMart have worldwide? I'd say at least 500 million on whom they keep a purchase record. Then there's products, credit card numbers, suppliers, etc.

VBprogrammer 17y ago
But in terms of their 'real business' it is not the number of customers they have but the number of they have but only their employees who will be using their systems. The purchase records, products and credit card numbers are closer to Tweets than users.
- code_duck 17y ago
  I don't think the number of people doing data entry or accessing a system matters nearly as much as how much data one has to be tracked. WalMart's data needs exceed that of Twitter, they exceed the needs of Facebook. I don't know if they meet or exceed Google, but I'd imagine it's up there.

gsk 17y ago

Listen to rm-rf. Way back when (2003-2004), I was involved in Walmart's supply chain managament software. I recall a few million rows to be optimized every day (before noon, so the hundreds of trucks plying the road can move things around efficiently).