Banks, airlines, and major enterprises all rely on the strategic data analysis of huge customer and business datasets stored in data warehouses. Intelligent decision support systems are used to delineate the patterns of customer behavior and transactions for fine-tuning business conduct. However, systems equipped with sophisticated mathematical algorithms ought to provide fast responses to real-time queries. The literature on the subject includes evaluations of the performance of data and file migration on earlier computer systems that used disks and tapes [1,2]. But what storage devices should today’s systems use to store and provide quick access to queries from large legacy databases containing years’ worth of business intelligence? How should the read/write and transaction access times be improved on current and emerging storage devices?

The authors of this paper compare the efficiency of storing and retrieving query results from traditional redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAIDs) to that of new solid state flash disks. They designed experiments to investigate the input/output (I/O) performance of RAIDs and solid state disks. Not surprisingly, the authors found the performance of RAIDs impressive in sequential read/write operations, compared to solid state disks. The experimental results highlight the superiority of random read/write operations on the solid state disks over the throughput of RAIDs with similar I/O and transaction operations.

This paper provides clear results in the continuing debate over the factors that affect fast storage and the processing of transactions on traditional and modern storage devices. Those results demonstrate the need to develop new algorithms for minimizing I/O delays to speed up the processing of transactions. However, shouldn’t academic researchers and industry experts focus more research on developing fast block management algorithms [3,4] and advanced applications of flash disks in workload characterization [5]?

Information technology and computer engineering students might find this paper’s exploration of the limitations of RAIDs and flash disks useful for their senior capstone projects. Of course, it all depends on the student’s background, research interests, and industry experience.