Existing Disk-based RDBMS (also known as Disk-Resident DBMSs or DRDBMSs), which has been favored by many for a long time due to the wide range of functions and convenient administrative tools that are typically available, are now facing performance issues owing to changes in DB application environments. These issues are attributable to the fact that RDBMSs use disks as their main data storage devices. Frequent disk I/O errors cannot but result in poor transaction- processing performance.

This led to efforts to overcome the limitations of DBMS I/O, in particular the limited speed of disks, which are the physical data storage medium. Dialogue consequently turned to the use of memory, which is faster than disks, in DBMSs

(Storage media in order of speed: Tape < Drum < Disk < memory < cache < CPU)

After its foundation in November 1999, ALTIBASE began in earnest to develop an MMDBMS product based on the technology for the main memory resident data storage system (Project Name: Mr.RT) acquired from the Korea Electronic and Telecommunications Research institute (ETRI). After a year of hard work, in October 2000, ALTIBASE completed the development of a general-purpose MMDBMS dubbed 'SPINER' (later renamed 'ALTIBASE')and successfully commercialized it.

The MMDBMS drastically improves on the processing speed of the DRDBMS, which is the DRDBMS’s critical technical limitation. This advantage had widespread appeal, and the range of application of ALTIBASE began to expand. ALTIBASE MMDBMS was most often implemented in areas where high-speed processing was so important that DRDBMSs could not be used due to their poor performance.

The age of MMDBMSs,in which data reside in memory rather than on disks, has dawned.

2 years later, ALTIBASE released ALTIBASE Version 2.0. ALTIBASE modified and changed most of the original technology acquired from ETRI to provide improved stability and a wide range of functions not available in the previous version.

Subsequently, ALTIBASE V3.0, a general-purpose MMDBMS released in 2003, offered not only the same functions as DR DBMSs, but also much faster data- processing performance.

The launch of ALTIBASE V3.0 stimulated the use of the MMDBMS in general-purpose applications and led to its widespread adoption in the communications and securities fields, helping ALTIBASE establish a track record in banking, billing, authentication, and ITS. It has become the dominant player in the domestic market, accounting for more than 80% of the MMDBMS market in Korea.

However, the MMDBMS, which was conceived with the goal of overcoming limitations plaguing the DRDBMS, encountered its own limits as the IT environment quickly changed. The amount of enterprise data quickly increased , and both companies and end users demanded faster service despite the rapid increase in the amount of data.

ALTIBASE applied its key strength, namely the ability to develop a high-performance DBMSs, to the task of large-capacity data processing, and pioneered the development of a hybrid MM DBMS, at the time a new concept and nonexistent DBMS structure. This DBMS proved capable of both high-performance and large-capacity processing.

In April 2005, the hybrid MM DBMS ‘ALTIBASE 4’ made its debut. ALTIBASE 4 was designed to provide both MMDBMS and DRDBMS in a single DBMS, thereby storing and managing a single database separately across heterogeneous storage media (M memory and disk). Accordingly, data that are accessed frequently are stored in memory, whereas the rest of the data are stored on disk according to performance weight, thus making it possible to simultaneously the advantages of both MMDBMSs, which are capable of transaction speeds more than 10 times faster than DRDBMSs, and DRDBMSs, which are suitable for processing large amounts of data.

Additionally, according to the environment or customers' needs , it is possible to configure the system in various ways: e.g. as an MMDBMS only, a DRDBMS only, or a Hybrid MM DBMS.

In 2008 ALTIBASE Corp. realized another achievement, namely the “Real Alternative DBMS”. It is the product of the continuous evolution of its predecessor. The Real Alternative DBMS has a more radical structure, with additional functionalities for high efficiency and performance than the previous system. ALTIBASE Corp. released ALTIBASE 5, the hybrid DBMS called the “Real Alternative DBMS”, in January 2008.

Although it adopts the core hybrid DBMS concept first realized in ALTIBASE 4, he ALTIBASE 5 hybrid DBMS can be applied to virtually any existing system in which high- performance processing is required.

ALTIBASE 5 uses so-called “Volatile Memory Tablespaces” to realize much faster performance than existing Disk DBMSs in situations where high-performance data processing is required. It also uses partitioned tables for large- volume data in order to manage and maintain data more efficiently. Additionally, ALTIBASE 5, the “Real Alternative DBMS”, provides more advanced ODBC and libraries for convenience of development so that existing systems can be upgraded smoothly. Therefore, ALTIBASE 5 combines the advantages of MMDBMS and DRDBMS in a single engine that can be implemented as a new system or in conjunction with existing systems at low- cost to realize high efficiency and high performance.

As the modern IT environment becomes more complicated and diverse, the hybrid DBMS ALTIBASE 5 will establish itself as a “New Real Alternative DBMS”.