Clustering, Security Enhance Crate.IO IoT Database

Crate.io, a company that specializes in databases for Internet of Things applications, today came out with CrateDB 2.0. The SQL database is also now available in an enterprise version.

Special databases are required to handle the fire hose of data that IoT creates and the fact that this data can be messy as opposed to tabular and neat, said Andy Ellicott, Crate.io’s chief marketing officer. CrateDB addresses all that, and enables organizations to query and analyze data in real time. Now, version 2.0 of CrateDB brings clustering upgrades for better performance and resiliency. “It just makes CrateDB faster,” Ellicott explained.

CrateDB 2.0 also lets users drill down into sensor readings based on such parameters as sensor type, time, geographic region, IP addresses, etc. “Those are pretty complex queries for any database…and clustering makes it even faster,” said Ellicott.

This new version of the database also features SQL improvements. That includes aggregations on Joins, sub selects, table renaming, and reindexing.

And the new Enterprise Edition of CrateDB 2.0 offers premium features including better security, which leverages authentication and authorization; better visibility on who’s doing what; and improved analytics. CrateDB is available via three annual subscription levels. That starts at $500 per month per cluster. And CrateIO offers discounts for startups. The company also now offers CrateDB as a managed service. CrateIO, which was founded in 2014, in December launched its open source, SQL database. Today CrateIO has more than 60 customers in production and more than 12 paying customers. 

Among the CrateDB users are a fleet tracking company called Clickdrive.io out of Singapore. Roomonitor is another CrateDB customer. The company, which is out of Barcelona, Spain, enables rental property owners and managers to monitor whether air conditioning is being wasted and whether there’s too much noise at their locations.