Speed factor heightens in-memory demand

By Ellen O'Brien - By now, in-memory databases were supposed to be all the rage.

In the late 1990s, when hard drives were smaller than they are now, and industry analysts were predicting huge demand from Web-based businesses in need of high-transaction, 24/7 caching capabilities, it seemed in-memory databases would soon be commonplace.

Instead, in-memory databases, which store information in the memory of a computer rather than on a disk drive, remain a relatively tiny, niche market.