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Accelerate data science with Exasol UDFs

Accelerate data science with Exasol UDFs

Businesses of all sizes are investing in AI and Loading...Machine Learning. The truth is, getting machine learning models into production and running at scale is no small feat. In fact, a recent study from Gartner found that only 21% of respondents said their AI was in production.

To accelerate the deployment of your machine learning into production, you should consider User Defined Functions from Exasol.

A UDF is a software function or an algorithm developed by you, the user, using your choice of programming language. They are custom-built functions and routines that are not included in the database itself; rather, they are written by data professionals to solve problems or answer queries that cannot be addressed by the built-in functions of the database.

As the world’s fastest analytics database, Exasol provides you with a powerful UDF framework to help enhance the performance of several critical tasks in your Loading...data science workflow.

There are 4 key benefits you can expect from Exasol Loading...UDFs:

Exasol’s UDF framework supports the most popular machine learning languages including Loading...Java, Loading...Python, R, and Lua. You can build your machine learning model by creating a UDF script, which can be written in any of those popular data science languages. Our extensive language support means you don’t need to learn any new programming languages.

  1. Choice of programming languages

Exasol’s UDF framework supports the most popular machine learning languages including Java, Python, R, and Lua. You can build your machine learning model by creating a UDF script, which can be written in any of those popular data science languages. Our extensive language support means you don’t need to learn any new programming languages.

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Figure 1: Multiple language support within Exasol UDF framework

2. Faster model performance and results

Once you have created your machine learning algorithm in the Exasol UDF script, you can run it directly on Exasol’s Loading...in-memory engine in parallel to get your results immediately. Our distributed, Loading...MPP database architecture allows you to seamlessly scale model performance as you increase your data volume and users. Our customer experience has shown that machine learning models that normally take hours or even days will run in minutes on Exasol.

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Figure 2. Exasol architecture

3. No data movement

Unlike other databases where you need to move your data to a separate system for running models in production, with Exasol, you can run your machine-learning models directly in the database. Exasol UDF scripts are deployed on the same database where your data is stored, so you can eliminate the time-consuming data transport effort while accelerating time to results.

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Figure 3. Exasol Loading...in-database analytics vs. traditional approach

4. Easy access to data science

With Exasol UDF framework, business users can access the results of the machine learning models directly through their BI dashboards or visualization tools, without having to learn any programming language or machine learning skills. By making data science readily available to business users, you allow everyone to make intelligent and fast decisions every day.

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Figure 4. Access ML model directly from BI dashboard.

The use cases for Exasol UDFs go beyond operationalizing data science. For instance, many of our customers have used our UDFs to create custom ETL scripts and execute them on Exasol to expedite their entire data loading process. With Exasol UDFs, you can expand your analytics horizon into a new level.

Hopefully you’re impressed by Exasol UDFs as much as I am. I encourage you to sign up for our free trial and find out what Exasol UDFs can do for you!