Actian Ingres 12.0 Enhances Cloud Flexibility, Improves Security, and Offers up to 20% Faster Analytics

Today, we are excited to announce Actian Ingres 12.0*, which is designed to make cloud deployment simpler, enhance security, and deliver up to 20% faster analytics. The first release I worked on was Ingres 6.4/02 back in 1992 and the first bug I fixed was for a major US car manufacturer that used Ingres to drive its production line. It gives me great pride to see that three decades later, Ingres continues to manage some of the world’s most mission-critical data deployments and that there’s so much affection for the Ingres product.

With this release, we’re returning to the much-loved Ingres brand for all platforms. We continue to partner with our customers to understand their evolving business needs, and make sure that we deliver products that enable their modernization journey. With this new release, we focused on the following capabilities:

• Backup to cloud and disaster recovery. Ingres 12.0 greatly simplifies these configurations for both on-premises and cloud deployments through the use of Virtual Machines (VMs) or Docker containers in Kubernetes.
• Fortified protection automatically enables AES-256 encryption and hardened security to defend against brute force and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
• Improved performance and workload management with up to 20% faster analytical queries using the X100 engine. Workload Manager 2.0 provides greater flexibility in allocation of resources to meet specific user demand.
• Elevated developer experiences in OpenROAD 12. We make it quick and easy to create and transform database-centric applications for web and mobile environments.

These new capabilities, coupled with our previous enhancements to cloud deployment, are designed to help our customers deliver on their modernization goals. They reflect Actian’s vision to develop solutions that our customers can trust, are flexible to meet their specific needs, and are easy-to-use so they can thrive when uncertainty is the only certainty they can plan for.

Customers like Lufthansa Systems rely on Actian Ingres to power their Lido flight and route planning software. “It’s very reassuring to know that our solution, which keeps airplanes and passengers safe, is backed up by a database that has for so many years been playing in the ‘premier league’,” said Rudi Koffer, Senior Database Software Architect at the Lufthansa Systems Airlines Operations Solutions division in Frankfurt Raunheim, Germany.

Experience the new capabilities first-hand. Connect with an Actian representative to get started. Below we dive into what each capability delivers.

A Database Built for Your Modernization Journey

Backup to Cloud and Disaster Recovery

Most businesses today have 24×7 data operations, so a system outage can have serious consequences. With Ingres 12.0 we’ve added new backup functionality to cloud and disaster recovery capabilities to dramatically reduce the risk of application downtime and data loss with a new component called IngresSync. IngresSync makes copies of a database to a target location for offsite storage and quick restoration.

Disaster recovery is now Docker or Kubernetes container-ready for Ingres 12.0 customers, allowing users to set up a read-only standby server in their Kubernetes deployment. Recovery Point Objectives are in the order of minutes and are user configurable.

Backup to cloud and disaster recovery are imperative for situations like:

• Natural Disasters: When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake strikes a local datacenter, cloud backups ensure that a copy of the data is readily available, and an environment can be spun up quickly in the cloud of your choosing to resume business operations.
• Cyberattacks: In the event of a cyberattack such as ransomware, having cloud backups and a disaster recovery plan are essential to establish a non-compromised version of the database in a protected cloud environment.

Fortified Protection

Actian Ingres 12.0 enables AES-256 bit encryption on data in motion by default. AES-256 bit is considered one of the most secure encryption standards available today and is widely used to protect sensitive data. The 256-bit key size makes it extremely resistant to attacks and is often used by governments and highly regulated industries like banking and healthcare.

In addition, Actian Ingres 12.0 offers user-protected privileges and containerized User Defined Functions (UDFs). These UDFs, which can be authored in SQL, JavaScript, or Python, safeguard against unauthorized activities within the company’s firewall that may target the database directly. Containerization of UDFs further enhances security by isolating user operations from core database management system (DBMS) processes.

Improved Performance and Workload Automation

Actian Ingres 12.0 customers can increase resource efficiency on transactional and analytic workloads in the same database. Workload Manager 2.0 enhances the data management experience with priority-driven queues, enabling the system to allocate resources based on predefined priorities and user roles. Now database administrators can define role-types such as DBAs, application developers, and end users, and assign a priority for each role-type.

The X100 engine, included with Ingres on Linux and Windows, brings efficiency improvements such as table cloning for x100 tables that allow customers to conduct projects or experiments in isolation from core DBMS operations.

Our Performance Engineering Team has determined that for analytics workloads, these enhancements make Actian Ingres 12.0 the fastest Ingres version yet with a 20% improvement over prior versions. Transactional workloads see improved release over release performance.

Elevated Developer Experiences

Actian OpenROAD 12.0, the latest update to the Ingres graphical 4GL, also sees some new enhancements designed to assist customers on their modernization journey.  Surprisingly or not, we still have customers with forms-based applications and while many argue that these are the fastest and most reliable apps for data-entry, our customers want to deliver more modern versions of these apps mostly on tablet style devices. To facilitate this modernization and to protect the decades of investments in business logic, we have delivered enhanced versions of abf2or and WebGen in OpenROAD 12.0.

Additionally, OpenROAD users will benefit from the new gRPC-based architecture, which streamlines administration, bolsters concurrency support, and offers a more efficient framework, thanks to HTTP/2 and protocol buffers. The gRPC design is optimized for microservices and can be neatly packaged within a distinct container for deployment. The introduction of a newly distributed Docker file lays the groundwork for cloud deployment, providing production-ready business logic ready for integration with any modern client.

Leading Database Modernization and Innovation

These latest innovations join our recent milestones to solidify Actian’s position as a data and analytics leader. These achievements build on recent recognitions, including:

• Actian Data Platform Named “Data Integration Solution Of The Year” in 5th Annual Data Breakthrough Awards Program.
• Actian CEO Marc Potter named “Top Executive” as part of the CRN 2024 Big Data 100.
• Actian Earns 2024 Top Workplaces for Remote Work Award, Recognized by Industry Leader Monster.

With this momentum, we are ready to accelerate solutions that our customers can trust, are flexible to their needs, and are easy-to-use.

Get hands-on with the new capabilities today. Connect with an Actian representative to get started.

*Actian Ingres includes the product formerly known as Actian X.

About Emma McGrattan

Emma McGrattan is SVP of Engineering and Product at Actian leading global research and development. She is a recognized authority in data management and analytics technologies and holds multiple patents. Emma has over two decades of experience leading a global software development organization focused on innovation in high-performance analytics, data management, integration, and application development technologies. Prior to joining Actian, Emma was Vice President for Ingres at Computer Associates. Educated in Ireland, Emma holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Dublin City University.