Data warehousing leader Teradata today introduced a new analytical database to help businesses monetise the Internet of Things.

Teradata Database 15 has been developed to enable what the big data company observes as a seismic industry shift from a single data warehouse to a ‘logical’ data warehouse.

This allows users to orchestrate analytic queries across multiple systems, integrate and consume JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data, write and run non-SQL languages in-database, and leverage new analytics.

The involvement of JSON is particularly significant because it is the primary language that powers the Internet of Things, and its integration allows businesses to acquire and use data immediately to support analytics and innovation.

The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets has led many to talk of a connected age – but should the hype of the Internet of Things live up, a truly connected world is nowhere near. Smart devices are just the beginning of a phenomenon that will see objects of any description equipped with tiny internet-connected sensors and embedded microprocessors that generate actionable data.

However, the capabilities and scale of the Internet of Things has largely been hypothesised to date, and mostly in the consumer space, with little solutions on the market that allow enterprises to actually formulate it into their IT strategy.

>See also: Next big thing: Preparing for the Internet of Things in the enterprise

Teradata Database 15 has sought to do just that. Analysing data in its native JSON structure offers organisations the agility to adapt to dynamic data and implement improved business models as soon as new data comes from the source.

Furthermore, embedding and running user-written SQL and non-SQL languages in parallel within the database provides developers much-needed architectural flexibility. With Database 15, developers can select from a variety of scripting languages – Perl, Ruby, Python, and R – while database redesign and physical table changes are not required when new data is acquired in JSON.

The new database also offers enhancements to temporal capabilities and adds three-dimensional (3-D) representation and processing of geospatial data, along with enhanced workload management and system availability.

“Teradata is delivering on its vision of an agile and liquid experience for all users,” said Scott Gnau, president of Teradata Labs, at the company’s flagship Teradata Universe event in Prague, where the announcement was made.

“Teradata Database 15 delivers on the unified-data-architecture promise of enabling users to look access all data to get new, powerful insights.”

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Driving data with QueryGrid

Teradata also used its Prague conference to reveal a new software product, QueryGrid, which it called the ‘most complete’ big data solution in the industry, and the only that optimises analytics across the enterprise and beyond.

Businesses have faced the challenge of how to best orchestrate a wide variety of new analytic engines, file systems, storage techniques, procedural languages and data types into one cohesive, interconnected, and complementary analytic architecture.

According to Teradata, customers should create an architecture that allows the orchestration of analytic processes across parallel databases rather than federated servers.

“Teradata QueryGrid is the most flexible solution with innovative software that gets the job done,” Gnau said. “After the user selects an analytic engine and a file system, Teradata software seamlessly orchestrates analytic processing across systems with a single SQL query, without moving the data.

“In addition, Teradata allows for multiple file systems and engines in the same workload.”

The solution gives users self-service access to data and analytic processing across different systems from within a single Teradata Database or Teradata Aster Database query.

It uses analytic engines and file systems to concentrate their power on accessing and analysing data without special tools or IT intervention, and minimises data movement and duplication by processing data where it resides.

Teradata Database 15, with QueryGrid capability, offers bi-directional data movement and pushdown processing to open-source Hadoop, Aster Database, and other databases.

Queries can be initiated from the Teradata Database to access, filter, and return subsets of data from Hadoop, Aster Database, and other database environments to the Teradata Database for additional processing. The analysis can incorporate data from the Teradata Database and Hadoop.

>See also: Who is really poised to make money from the Internet of Things?

The company’s database, Aster Discovery Platform and Hadoop technology combine to from its Unified Data Architecture.

Teradata Database 15 is now available, with Teradata QueryGrid capabilities set to be available in the third quarter of 2014.