TimesTen In-Memory Database Classic Overview

TimesTen delivers by changing the assumptions around where data resides at runtime. By managing data in memory and optimizing data structures and access algorithms accordingly, database operations execute with maximum efficiency, achieving dramatic gains in responsiveness and throughput, even compared to a fully cached disk-based RDBMS.

You can embed TimesTen within applications to further improve database operation performance by eliminating inter-process communication and network overhead.

TimesTen is commonly deployed with multi-user, multi-threaded applications that use row-level locking and read-committed isolation. Applications access TimesTen databases using standard SQL via JDBC, ODBC, ODP.NET, OCI (Oracle Call Interface), Pro*C/C++, PL/SQL, and Oracle Database Programming Interface (ODPI) for C (ODPI-C), Python, and Node.js. While the best response time is achieved with TimesTen running in-process with the application (also known as "direct mode"), conventional client/server access is commonly used when a database is shared by several applications running on different servers.

TimesTen databases are persistent and recoverable. You can achieve durability through a combination of transaction logging and disk-based database checkpointing. Oracle TimesTen supports modern security controls by providing TLS 1.3 for encrypted client/server and replication communications, and encryption-at-rest capabilities to help protect data stored on disk.

TimesTen Replication provides high availability by replicating transactions between TimesTen databases in real time. Due to the mission-critical nature of TimesTen applications, most enterprise deployments use TimesTen Replication for availability and disaster recovery. For example, telecommunications and web-accessible global systems such as online charging, subscriber session management, eCommerce online stores, and travel and reservation websites cannot tolerate application/service downtime; financial services and securities trading systems must remain continuously available while financial markets are open.

TimesTen Replication uses memory-optimized, transaction-log-based replication technology with an efficient, stream-based network protocol for high performance, reliability, and robustness. Key features include:

• Asynchronous replication provides maximum performance by decoupling application transaction execution from the capture, propagation, and apply steps of replication.
• Synchronous replication provides a higher level of data protection by maintaining full consistency between the active and standby databases; an application commit only returns when the replicated transaction has been both received and committed on the standby database.
• Hot read availability of the standby database; additional read capacity can be provided by configuring additional read-only subscribers.
• Parallel replication for applications that require very high transaction throughput.
• Automated failure detection and failover to the standby database; achieved by seamless integration with Oracle Clusterware.
• Online upgrades; allowing individual servers to be taken offline for software upgrades, while other servers continue uninterrupted.

For applications with existing data residing in an Oracle database, caching a performance-critical subset of that data in the TimesTen in-memory database is a practical way to improve transaction response time. See TimesTen Application-Tier Database Cache Overview.