Publisher's Synopsis
The technology called Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) has been receiving increased attention because systems built based on MPP achieve much greater levels of performance than the traditional serial processors. This interest, long present in the scientific community, has extended more recently to the world of business, where companies such as American Express, Dow Jones, and Prudential Bache have all purchased MPP equipment to help them handle the large of amounts of data that need to be processed. The literature on MPP is quite academic, in contrast to topics such as Open Systems, Client/Server, and Unix.;This volume should help demystify MPP and convince readers of the importance of MPP and its relevance for such business applications as on-line transaction processing, expert database systems for decision support and special-purpose applications for reengineered business processes, for example. Intended for managers (IT or Marketing Directors) who are involved in making strategic decisions with regard to appropriate technology platforms as well as for systems administrators with some technical background who would be responsible for maintaining an MPP database machine.
