Xeround Intelligent Data Grid (IDG)

Xeround's core product offering is the Xeround Intelligent Data Grid, or IDG. In brief, the Xeround IDG is a distributed, grid-based database targeted primarily to service provider and telecom deployments.

At the heart of the Xeround IDG is the networking protocol used by the various Xeround IDG components to communicate. The entire DB is itself based on the network communications model; where each component has its own networking address and the individual components of the platform work together to manage the access to and place multiple copies of data across the individual nodes in strategic locations, both for failover (multiple copies of each data record are distributed across physical nodes; and the vendor notes that self-healing capabilities of the platform enable it to detect a faulty node and automatically redistribute that node's functions to other active nodes) and performance (load balancing) purposes.

The individual components of a Xeround IDG platform include the Xeround Data Router (XDR), which serves as the main access point to the database for applications; the Xeround Data Blade (XDB), which handles the actual (physical) data retrieval and storage requests forwarded to it from the XDRs; the Xeround Management Server (XMS), which provides a Web-based management interface to the platform with such functions as performance/event monitoring, configuration management, etc; and the Xeround Data Modeler (XDM), an Eclipse-based interface that enables the graphical modeling of data schemes, replication definitions, synchronization, and more. The vendor states that the product's network-based methodology is at the core of its scalability; DB performance can be increased consistently and linearly by adding XDRs; while DB capacity can be similarly increased via the addition of XDBs. All components are Linux-based as of this writing, and can be deployed on the same or different blades per the organization's needs.

As mentioned, access to the data stored in a Xeround IDG is through the XDRs, which themselves are supplied in versions supporting LDAP, SQL, or a native API. I.E., external applications can therefore access the physical data of the DB by contacting the appropriate XDR and sending it an SQL statement, an LDAP statement, or one of the product's own native API commands. In addition to these interfaces, the vendor states that an XML (Xquery) based interface is expected to be available with the next product release.

Beneath the hood of the XDBs, the vendor points to an "Entity-Centric" data model in which all of a specific entity's (such as a customer) related information is aggregated and stored within the same node (with replication of the data to other nodes for performance/failover, of course) for efficient access. Internally, the system leverages a "massive partition" architecture in which hundreds to thousands of individual data container partitions are created and managed by the platform, each individually mapped to defined "data channels." A global index manages access to these partitions, while secondary indexes then provide data access into the partitions themselves.

Three primary product configurations are offered by the vendor. Xeround IDG Core provides the base data distribution architecture as described above; while Xeround IDG Unify is a federation tool, enabling Xeround-based access to existing, external data stores (caching features are also supported; such that the data from external DBs can be stored directly within Xeround's data store for immediate access). Finally, Xeround IDG Sync provides replication services between data sources, including support for the definition of mapping rules from source to source as well as support for change propagation.

New to Xeround IDG is support for multiple data distribution architectures; including write and read optimized scenarios (the vendor states that the core platform is read/write agnostic; i.e., both reads and writes have similar performance curves); single-copy and active/passive systems; and a "Global-active" deployment in which both a global DB can be maintained across geographies, while simultaneous local copies can be maintained in specific geographic locations with bi-directional synchronization between the local and global DBs.

Xeround IDG is available now. Contact the vendor for further information.