Red Brick offers query-priority tool

Data warehousing firm Red Brick Systems wants to let its customers do the analytical equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

The Los Gatos, California-based firm announced today a new tool that allows continuous flow of data into a data warehouse without interfering or slowing the response time of the business analysts who slice and dice data in the system.

Called query-priority concurrency, the new functionality is part of Red Brick's DecisionScape suite of data warehousing products and services and is available with Red Brick Warehouse Version 5.1. It's designed for companies that rely on constantly updated and a continuous flow of data such as stock market information, financial information, or Internet-related data.

The technology used for the system relies on a "versioning technique," a sort of replication system in which the new data is added to a different version of the same data while analysts are querying the data. A new version of the data is created for each query so the information is constantly updated for users.

You are hearing more and more about this type of requirement," said Brian Murphy, analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. "Now, you have to wait [when dealing with real-time information.] Business analysts usually need to independently gather this information separately from what they are querying."

The feature is available as a free upgrade to current users of Warehouse Version 5.1.