kdb is a a relational database management system developed by Kx Systems designed to deliver nearly real-time analytical performance on large amounts of streaming and/or historical data with no impact on operational efficiency. It is available for Solaris, Linux and Windows (32-bit or 64-bit).

kdb RDBMS was launched in 1998 and is build on K a programming language developed by Mr. Arthur Whitney 1993. It supports two query languages, the standard query language of relational databases, SQL, specifically ANSI-SQL II (also known as sql92), and a variant of SQL called KSQL that is oriented towards high performance analysis. KSQL adds time-series query functions and eliminates table joins required by most commercial databases.

= Technology Timeline =

1993 K language developed by Arthur Whitney High-speed vector based processing design Time-series functions built in 1998 K database (kdb) adds relational database management to K KSQL procedural language runs SQL queries and adds time-series query functionseliminates table joins required by mainstream databases. No need for data warehouse or OLAP queries can be run against production database with no loss of performanceeliminates slow query performance, aggregate tables, and pre-calculations. Linear scalability via parallel processes. Built-in web server, XML, HTML and Excel interface support Ability to interoperate with Java and ODBC-compliant databases. Support for SQL, Java, C,. Visual Basic, Perl and other languages. Small footprint, low DBA resources

2001 kdb/tick adds tick functionality to kdb. Real-time tick data feeds and in-memory analytics. End-of-day transfer to historical database. Support for equities, bonds, fixed income, and other instruments kdb/taq offers fast loader for NYSE TAQ CD datafrom CD to kdb for relational analysis

2002 Kx offers enterprise licensing. Kx offers onsite consulting and education services. Kx offers support contracts. kdb/taq supports NYSE FTP downloads. 2003 Kx releases kdb+ database and applications for 64-bit architectures: Linux, Solaris, Windows

kdb is widely used in the finacial wold as well as for building other time-critical decision support systems.

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