Phani Raj Raghavendra

High-performance databases are optimized for transaction processing and used by several industries around the world, notably financial services and healthcare. They are more commonly available on 32-bit Unix platforms (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux). The trend is to 64-bit-enable them and migrate them to the IA-64 architecture. This helps companies take advantage of the scalability and performance features provided by 64-bit architecture and win them greater market share. This article will describe some of the challenges we faced and resolved in migrating one such database engine application from 32-bit Unix to Linux on IA-64. Migration Challenges of the Database This database has its own runtime architecture that is totally different from the Itanium runtime architecture, with substantial runtime glue code written in native assembly language to enhance performance.... (more)