TimesTen In-Memory Database

Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database (TimesTen) is a lightweight in-memory database that offers unrivaled performance, simple management, high performance, and high availability.

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How TimesTen works

TimesTen is a lightweight, fully persistent, and highly available in-memory relational database that delivers microsecond response and high throughput for OLTP applications. You can use TimesTen as a database of record or as a cache for Oracle Database.

Because the TimesTen database resides in physical memory rather than a file system, access to data is more direct, resulting in a shorter code path, simpler algorithms, and internal data structures. By removing the assumption of the file system, complexity dramatically decreases. The number of machine instructions drops, buffer pool management disappears, extra data copies are unnecessary, index pages shrink, and their structure is simplified. The design becomes simple and more compact, and requests are processed faster.

Applications access TimesTen databases using standard SQL through JDBC, ODBC, ODP.NET, Oracle Call Interface, Pro*C/C++, and Oracle PL/SQL programming interfaces. While TimesTen achieves the best response time running in-process with the application (also known as "direct mode"), conventional client/server access happens when several applications running on different servers share the same database.

How TimesTen In-Memory Database works diagram, description below This image show three tiers, the client-server application, application tier, and database tier. The client-server application has a local TimesTen client library. The client application connects to a TimesTen in-memory database in the Application tier through JDBC, ODBC, ADO.Net, Oracle Call Interface, Pro*C/C++, and Oracle PL/SQL programming interfaces. The TimesTen database has checkpoint files and transaction log files. The Database tier contains multiple Oracle Databases, and the TimesTen is connects to those databases.

TimesTen benefits

  • Extreme OLTP performance

    Achieves extremely low latency application performance by delivering data from an in-memory database that is colocated with applications.

  • Easy installation and deployment

    Includes Helm charts and YAML manifest files that make it easy to install and deploy TimesTen databases through TimesTen Kubernetes Operator.

  • Automatic monitoring and management

    Supports automatic lifecycle management of TimesTen databases, including taking autocorrective actions. Automatic management reduces the need for human-assisted database maintenance, allowing TimesTen production deployments to run more efficiently.

  • Highly available data management

    Uses active standby replication topology to support high availability. The read-only subscriber replication option offers additional off-site disaster recovery protection.

TimesTen offerings

Use TimesTen as a database of record

TimesTen Classic is a memory-optimized relational database that provides responsiveness and high throughput for applications. This offering is feature-rich for use independently as a system of record, such as recoverability through checkpoint and transaction logs, backup and restore, and support of various APIs. Through transactional replication, TimesTen Classic offers high availability for the in-memory database.

Use TimesTen as a cache database

TimesTen Cache is ideal for caching performance-critical subsets of an Oracle Database for improved response time in the application tier. Cached tables can be read-only or writable. TimesTen automatically reads and updates the cache tables and data synchronization between the cache and the Oracle Database. Cache offers applications standard SQL and functionality of a relational database, seamless maintenance of data consistency with Oracle Database, and performance of an in-memory database.

Distribute TimesTen database data

TimesTen Scaleout is a grid of interconnected hosts running TimesTen Scaleout instances that provide fast access, fault tolerance, and high availability of an in-memory database. K-safety offers fault tolerance by enabling you to define the number of copies of data to ensure that your database continues to operate despite various faults (as long as a single copy of the data is accessible). A grid contains one or more databases, and each database is distributed across all instances of the grid.

Run TimesTen in containerized environments

TimesTen is well suited to running in containerized environments. When combined with TimesTen Kubernetes Operator, TimesTen provides a simple and robust solution for high performance, highly available data management in Kubernetes environments. Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for Kubernetes enables TimesTen deployment on OCI Kubernetes Engine or on on-premises infrastructure. It can quickly deploy TimesTen as standalone system of record or as a cache (for Oracle Database).

In addition to the cost of the compute resources used for your Kubernetes cluster, Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for Kubernetes supports Bring Your Own License (BYOL), which allows you to leverage your existing on-premises TimesTen In-Memory Database and TimesTen Application Tier Database Cache licenses to provision your databases in Oracle Cloud.

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