Real-time performance for business applications is increasingly important but difficult to build. That's what Groovy Corporation, an Australian startup hopes to change.

Groovy today released the results of tests that show its SQL Switch performed 105 times faster than the fastest available relational database, a highly tuned version of MySQL. The tests were performed on the Dell DVD Store Database Test Suite, which mimics an online retailer.

Joe Ward, CEO of Groovy, points out that companies have tried to build real-time performance using mainstream relational databases but that this often requires expensive new hardware. Groovy enables companies to achieve real-time database performance often just by using their existing systems.

Here are the results:

The Groovy SQL Switch generated a 2.33 millisecond response rate compared against the previous 244 millisecond record response time of the previously fastest performance recorded on the Dell DVD Store Database Test Suite. The Groovy solution also produced 168,845 orders per minute compared against the 4,614 orders per minute of the previously fastest database. Furthermore, the Groovy SQL Switch was capable of managing more connections while maintaining low CPU loads and actually had more performance available than the Dell DVD Store Database Test Suite drivers were capable of testing.

Groovy has relocated to Silicon Valley to help in its visibility, and to be closer to developers working on new applications and services.

Here is some background on the company:

Groovy was formed in 2007 to commercialise 12 years of scalable data management research.

The Groovy founders Joe Ward & Dr. Ray Huetter, began working together when Joe was the Managing Director of Marketboomer and Ray was the technical founder and architect behind Bullant. (Marketboomer was Bullant's largest customer and is now the largest B2B ecommerce exchange in the hospitality industry globally).

Bullant was a revolutionary, 32-bit web platform that was well ahead of its time. After $50M of investment, the decision was reached that many of the aspects of the Bullant platform had become standard in the marketplace and that the data management system behind Bullant needed to be re-written onto a 64-bit architecture. This was due to the memory limitation of 32-bit architecture (3GB of RAM), whereas 64-bit architecture can address an enormous amount of RAM (16.8 million terabytes).

In 2000, the CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, demonstrated the Bullant platform at Internet world in New York and was amazed at Bullant's true-real time nature, quoted as saying "that's a real-time update, that's a very difficult thing - as those of us in the industry know to achieve".

Bullant had solved the refresh problem.

In 2006, the Bullant IP was acquired by Joe and then transferred into Groovy's IP holding company, opening up an enormous opportunity for Joe & Ray to move forward in the database marketplace.