SQL/MX Comparison Guide for SQL/MP Users

Comparing the Differences in the Products
HP NonStop SQL/MX Comparison Guide for SQL/MP Users—523735-003
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Manageability
the ability to divide the data to be processed into partitions and work on each partition
in parallel. In a partitioned parallel plan, multiple operators all work on the same plans,
and results are merged by using multiple pipelines. Although NonStop SQL/MP uses
some partitioned parallelism to process in parallel, NonStop SQL/MX has been
designed to take advantage of both executor server process (ESP) parallelism and
Data Access Manager parallelism.
For additional information about parallelism, see the SQL/MX Query Guide.
Manageability
For parallelism in NonStop SQL/MP, one ESP per partition is started. NonStop SQL/MX
simplifies ESP management by starting only the number of ESPs it needs to process a
plan in parallel if the optimizer determines that ESP partitioned parallelism will provide
the best priced query plan.
NonStop SQL/MX provides a number of user-controlled defaults that allow you to
change default settings that affect optimization, performance, and the generation of
histogram statistics.
Like NonStop SQL/MP, NonStop SQL/MX provides EXPLAIN output. However,
NonStop SQL/MX provides EXPLAIN as a table, and the output is in machine-readable
format. You can easily extract the EXPLAIN output from embedded SQL programs. In
addition, NonStop SQL/MX provides a GUI-based query tool called Visual Query
Planner that graphically displays the results of query plans.
ANSI Compatibility
NonStop SQL/MX is open, portable, and, most important, uses an industry standard:
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) version of SQL that was created in
1992. This version of SQL is referred to as SQL-92—a standard that is considered far
more complete than earlier versions of SQL for business-critical applications. SQL-92
was replaced by SQL:1999. Core SQL:1999 contains all of Entry SQL-92, plus much of
Intermediate SQL-92 and some of Full SQL-92, plus a few new SQL:1999 features.
NonStop SQL/MX is based on SQL:1999 and includes support for features from higher
levels of the standard. NonStop SQL/MP is based on the SQL-89 standard.
Applications with SQL statements that adhere to the SQL:1999 standard can be ported
to run against a variety of database management systems, including NonStop
SQL/MX. If you are trained to write applications with other SQL-92 compliant database
management systems, you can easily apply your skills to applications for NonStop
SQL/MX.
For details about how NonStop SQL/MX features comply with ANSI standards, see the
SQL/MX Reference Manual.