Snowflake Inc. has acquired Datometry Inc., a startup that developed software for porting workloads between databases.
The companies announced the deal today without disclosing its financial terms. Datometry previously raised $28 million from Dell Technologies Inc., Celesta Capital and other backers. Its website states that it had multiple Fortune 500 customers.
An application interacts with the relational database in which it keeps its information using a set of SQL statements. Switching to a different database requires developers to rewrite those statements, which can take months of work. Datometry has developed a platform called Hyper-Q that automates the process.
In some cases, the SQL statements that an application uses to interact with its database contain dynamic constructs. That means only some of the code is written in advance by developers, while the rest is automatically generated by the application itself. Some automated migration tools struggle to port such SQL statements. Datometry says that’s not the case with Hyper-Q.
The software can also port an application’s database schema. A scheme is a file that defines how the information in a database is organized. That encompasses details such as the number of rows in a database and whether a given row may contain text, numbers or both.
Datometry sold Hyper-Q alongside a database called OpenDB. The company positioned it as an alternative to Oracle Corp.’s relational database. OpenDB is based on PostgreSQL, a popular open-source relational database.
Snowflake’s acquisition announcement indicates that it was more interested in Hyper-Q than OpenDB. The company will use Datometry’s software to help customers migrate workloads from competing products to its cloud data platform. According to Snowflake, the software can speed up Teradata migrations by a factor of four while reducing the associated costs by 90%.
The company plans to integrate Datometry’s technology into its SnowConvert database migration tool. The latter offering, which likewise became part of Snowflake’s product portfolio through a startup acquisition, uses artificial intelligence to rewrite SQL statements. It can move workloads to the company’s data platform from about a dozen competing products.
“Adding the capabilities of Datometry will enhance our customers’ experience, accelerating migrations by significantly reducing the time and effort required for client applications and tooling migration,” Snowflake executives Carl Perry and Venky Ganti wrote in a blog post. “This translates directly to a faster time to value.”
Snowflake offers SnowConvert alongside a second workload migration tool, Snowpark Migration Accelerator, that focuses specifically on Apache Spark. It identifies which parts of a Spark workload can be moved to Snowflake and automatically rewrites them. The company says the software has helped customers move millions of lines of code to its platform.
Photo: Snowflake
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