6 ms·

Martin Kersten, creator of MonetDB, has died

177 points by greghn 4y ago

homerowilson 4y ago
Kersten led amazing research and MonetDB was really ground-breaking in many ways (columnar, shared memory interaction with client languages, etc.). A sad day.
jb1991 4y ago
My heart goes out to Martin’s family, my thoughts and prayers are with you at this time.
einpoklum 4y ago
Martin was an inspiring group leader even after his retirement... he was always so upbeat and optimistic. I'll also remember him for his flowery and poetic use of metaphors and parables in papers and titles. Anyway... * The piece-de-resistance: https://www.monetdb.org/ https://www.monetdb.org/ * MonetDB Solutions: https://www.monetdbsolutions.com/ https://www.monetdbsolutions.com/ is the commercial spin-off of MonetDB. Martin chaired the company hands-on after retiring, almost to his last day. They do integration, training, deployment, professional support... interestingly, it is fully FOSS, and commercial clients who ask for features get those features implemented as FOSS.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jeroenvlek 4y ago
RIP Martin Kersten. I took his undergraduate course at the University of Amsterdam. MonetDB was his professional baby. Nice guy.
SnowHill9902 4y ago
Why do obituaries avoid mentioning the cause of death?
- dmead 4y ago
  it's called respect, fellow hacker news reader.
- swayvil 4y ago
  First thought on my mind too. Is it just me or do a lot of famous software people meet their end by cancer? It reminds me of something from a bit of mystic literature. It was offered that serious practicioners of "concentration meditation" tend to get the crab. And software developers are nothing if not concentrated. Makes you think. What is this "attention" thing anyway? A field? A ray? A wishing machine?
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    A lot of people in general die because of cancer.
  - KMnO4 4y ago
    There are many causes of death, and globally the distribution of cause of death is quite wide. But software developers are generally removed from a large portion on it. They’re not working with hazardous things, typically can avoid low-income related consequences (including living in dangerous areas), and have a higher than average intellect. When you remove most of the common causes of death, cancer becomes proportionally more common. It’s like rolling 100 dice, tossing out anything less than 5, and noticing a lot of 6s.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      So it's just selection bias?
  - aliqot 4y ago
    When you're famous and smart, you're likely to live to a ripe old age. Cancer is an endgame disease, like gout being a disease of nobility. If you don't get killed off by violence or diet first, eventually you live long enough where you begin to seeing the result of running a copy through a copy machine a few billion times, which is cancer. Our cells take damage every day, eventually that damage is just enough for some cells to lose control of how and to what extent they replicate, soon some of their friends join and soon before you know it they want their own veinous supply.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Sad to hear of this. MonetDB really is/was pioneering and interesting work. I hope development on it continues to progress. There's some quality practical research and engineering in there.
nikita 4y ago
Snowflake, SingleStore, Clickhouse, Hyper, sql server columnstore index, duckdb, Apache Arrow compute, redshift, the list can go on. RIP Martin and thank you for your contribution. The world of data analytics honors you!
- tiffanyh 4y ago
  > Snowflake, SingleStore, Clickhouse, Hyper, sql server columnstore index, duckdb, Apache Arrow compute, redshift, the list can go on. I’m confused. Are you suggesting he was involved in all of those other databases?
  - AdamProut 4y ago
    His research on columnstores is seminal. The list of systems above use columnstore storage.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    Snowflake - founded by Marcin Zukowski, his academic grandson via Peter Boncz. HyperDB - Actually not columnar at all... but Martin's student, Peter Boncz, works closely with Thomas Neumann, the main originator of HyperDB. Vectorwise was created by Peter, with involvement of Sandor Heman and Marcin Zukowski, and limited involvement of Martin himself and others at the CWI DB Architecture research group. DuckDB - also not columnar IIANM, but the work of Martin's research group. Arrow compute, ClickHouse etc. - inspired by Martin and others' work on column stores.
    - iib 4y ago
      I think DuckDB is columnar if I recall correctly.
apavlo 4y ago
Everyone should watch one of Martin's last public talks in 2021 on Youtube: MonetDB: Scale Up Before You Scale Out https://youtu.be/vjWRE0UnJDQ https://youtu.be/vjWRE0UnJDQ https://db.cs.cmu.edu/events/vaccination-2021-monetdb-scale-up-before-you-scale-out-sir-martin-kersten/ https://db.cs.cmu.edu/events/vaccination-2021-monetdb-scale-...

177 points by greghn 4y ago

Kersten led amazing research and MonetDB was really ground-breaking in many ways (columnar, shared memory interaction with client languages, etc.). A sad day.

jb1991 4y ago

My heart goes out to Martin’s family, my thoughts and prayers are with you at this time.

einpoklum 4y ago

Martin was an inspiring group leader even after his retirement... he was always so upbeat and optimistic. I'll also remember him for his flowery and poetic use of metaphors and parables in papers and titles. Anyway... * The piece-de-resistance: https://www.monetdb.org/ https://www.monetdb.org/ * MonetDB Solutions: https://www.monetdbsolutions.com/ https://www.monetdbsolutions.com/ is the commercial spin-off of MonetDB. Martin chaired the company hands-on after retiring, almost to his last day. They do integration, training, deployment, professional support... interestingly, it is fully FOSS, and commercial clients who ask for features get those features implemented as FOSS.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jeroenvlek 4y ago

RIP Martin Kersten. I took his undergraduate course at the University of Amsterdam. MonetDB was his professional baby. Nice guy.

SnowHill9902 4y ago

Why do obituaries avoid mentioning the cause of death?

dmead 4y ago
it's called respect, fellow hacker news reader.
swayvil 4y ago
First thought on my mind too. Is it just me or do a lot of famous software people meet their end by cancer? It reminds me of something from a bit of mystic literature. It was offered that serious practicioners of "concentration meditation" tend to get the crab. And software developers are nothing if not concentrated. Makes you think. What is this "attention" thing anyway? A field? A ray? A wishing machine?
- Scarblac 4y ago
  A lot of people in general die because of cancer.
- KMnO4 4y ago
  There are many causes of death, and globally the distribution of cause of death is quite wide. But software developers are generally removed from a large portion on it. They’re not working with hazardous things, typically can avoid low-income related consequences (including living in dangerous areas), and have a higher than average intellect. When you remove most of the common causes of death, cancer becomes proportionally more common. It’s like rolling 100 dice, tossing out anything less than 5, and noticing a lot of 6s.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    So it's just selection bias?
- aliqot 4y ago
  When you're famous and smart, you're likely to live to a ripe old age. Cancer is an endgame disease, like gout being a disease of nobility. If you don't get killed off by violence or diet first, eventually you live long enough where you begin to seeing the result of running a copy through a copy machine a few billion times, which is cancer. Our cells take damage every day, eventually that damage is just enough for some cells to lose control of how and to what extent they replicate, soon some of their friends join and soon before you know it they want their own veinous supply.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Sad to hear of this. MonetDB really is/was pioneering and interesting work. I hope development on it continues to progress. There's some quality practical research and engineering in there.

nikita 4y ago

Snowflake, SingleStore, Clickhouse, Hyper, sql server columnstore index, duckdb, Apache Arrow compute, redshift, the list can go on. RIP Martin and thank you for your contribution. The world of data analytics honors you!

tiffanyh 4y ago
> Snowflake, SingleStore, Clickhouse, Hyper, sql server columnstore index, duckdb, Apache Arrow compute, redshift, the list can go on. I’m confused. Are you suggesting he was involved in all of those other databases?
- AdamProut 4y ago
  His research on columnstores is seminal. The list of systems above use columnstore storage.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  Snowflake - founded by Marcin Zukowski, his academic grandson via Peter Boncz. HyperDB - Actually not columnar at all... but Martin's student, Peter Boncz, works closely with Thomas Neumann, the main originator of HyperDB. Vectorwise was created by Peter, with involvement of Sandor Heman and Marcin Zukowski, and limited involvement of Martin himself and others at the CWI DB Architecture research group. DuckDB - also not columnar IIANM, but the work of Martin's research group. Arrow compute, ClickHouse etc. - inspired by Martin and others' work on column stores.
  - iib 4y ago
    I think DuckDB is columnar if I recall correctly.

apavlo 4y ago

Everyone should watch one of Martin's last public talks in 2021 on Youtube: MonetDB: Scale Up Before You Scale Out https://youtu.be/vjWRE0UnJDQ https://youtu.be/vjWRE0UnJDQ https://db.cs.cmu.edu/events/vaccination-2021-monetdb-scale-up-before-you-scale-out-sir-martin-kersten/ https://db.cs.cmu.edu/events/vaccination-2021-monetdb-scale-...