One of the factors behind the need for speed in accessing data is that race teams collect so much information. “A racing team might collect 2 or 3 terabytes of data per year, and need the ability to access 4 or 5 years worth of data,” says Spence. “So the volumes are large. SQL Server 2008 enables us to use the FILESTREAM mechanism to point to a BLOB and stream it, providing much faster access than we would get through a typical table query.”
The unpredictability of racing is another major force behind the need for immediate access to large volumes of ECU data.
“The reasons teams gather so much information is that you're never absolutely certain as to what you will need to look at during a race or during a test,” says van Manen. “What you do know is that any decision making, especially during a race, will have to be made nearly immediately. A team has a massive amount of data to guide their decisions, but they need the ability to access that data swiftly and precisely. If they need to compare data points with earlier runs, all of the earlier examples need to be immediately accessible for comparison. With Formula One, you are operating within a very impatient world.”
Spence agrees about the demands of working within an impatient world: “The most important thing to the team is the speed of access. “We all know how frustrating it is if you load something on a computer and you have to wait for a minute. When you're in the racing environment the pressure is intense. You need a robust, high-performance system when you’ve got someone shouting at you, ‘We need to know what to do before the car goes!’ The proof of concept demonstrated that SQL Server 2008 and FILESTREAM clearly outperformed our file system, while greatly improving data integrity.”
The combination of performance, data integrity, and robustness has made McLaren Electronics eager to offer its database solution to all Formula One teams.
“To support the racing teams we need three things from a database: performance, integrity, and robustness,” says van Manen. “If you can find all three, you’ve got a winner. SQL Server 2008 wins on all three points.”
