On the afternoon of July 12, AsiaInfo Technologies Holdings Limited (AsiaInfo, stock code: 01675.HK) held an online launch event to officially release AntDB v7.0 to the public.

　　What does this mean?

　　In fact, it is known in the industry that AsiaInfo has its own database products. I can see from the version number v7.0 that, obviously, it is not recently developed but is said to have been engaged in more than a decade.

　　However, in the past, AsiaInfo has never opened a special launch for its database products, and this 712 launch is definitely the first time. For this reason, I also checked with AsiaInfo , and this is indeed the case. This means that AsiaInfo's AntDB has started to move from behind the scenes to the front stage, and AntDB has transformed from a customized database for communication industry to a general database product for the whole industry, and formally participated in the database market competition.

　　Why did ASIM Technology choose this time to release AntDB v7.0? What kind of database is AntDB? As we all know, AsiaInfo is not a company just oriented to database. Is it a real business or a game? For this reason, I interviewed Zhang Hua, General Manager of Database Product Center of AsiaInfo.

　　Zhang Hua, a veteran of the domestic database industry, is the earliest R&D leader of AntDB and has been working in the database and operator industry for nearly two decades.

　　According to the information, AntDB is a general-purpose enterprise-level distributed relational database developed by AsiaInfo independently as core transaction database. AntDB’s earliest R&D product can be traced back to the early 21st century. It has been 14 years since the first-generation product was applied to the core billing system of telecom operators in 2008 to the release of version 7.0 today. Now, it is widely used in communication, finance, transportation, energy, Internet of Things and other industries, and successfully applied to more than 200 projects.

　　Lu Yinglei, general manager of the information system operation department of Shanghai Mobile, said that based on the AntDB, Shanghai Mobile has completed the transformation of China’s first independent and controllable core billing and accounting system database project, including billing, accounting, and billing management systems. A breakthrough has been made in the transformation of the BOSS global database in China.

　　Zhang Chenglin, deputy general manager of Yunnan Highway Network Toll Management Co., Ltd., shared that based on the AntDB, Yunnan Expressway has become the first unit in China to fully realize the nationalization goal of the province’s expressway clearing and settlement system.

　　Why did AsiaInfo start to develop database more than ten years ago? Public information shows that AntDB is based on PostgreSQL kernel, so what innovation has AntDB made in technology? Is the core technology independent and controllable?

　　Zhang Hua told me that AntDB has gone through three stages of evolution:

　　Phase 1: AsiaInfo was designed to meet the needs of operators. China's huge population scale and the communications industry's demand for information and digitalization were at the forefront of the world. In terms of demand , it was at the forefront of technology right from the start. Since the traditional database product bred in the European and American markets did not meet such volume of data management well, especially when dealing with some core application scenarios (e.g. billing, signaling analysis, etc.), it could not meet the throughput and responsiveness of data processing. In order to ensure support for such massive data and high-frequency transaction scenarios, as early as 2004, AsiaInfo carried out technical innovation and developed its own memory database product, and firstly applied it to billing and accounting applications, which well supported the core application scenarios of communication industry and achieved good results, which is the predecessor of AntDB.

　　Phase 2: With the iteration of communication technology in 3G, 4G, and 5G, the amount of data increases exponentially, the amount of users jumps by orders of magnitude, and the application scenarios explode. During this phase, AsiaInfo's database products made a "triple jump" to ensure that they could "keep up with the times". First, AsiaInfo evolved its in-memory database to a full-featured, general-purpose relational database; then, it evolved to a full-stack database that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL open source ecosystems and offers high compatibility with Oracle; and finally, it went further to a distributed, cloud-native database.

　　Zhang Hua said that although AntDB was initially based on PostgreSQL kernel, but in the second phase, AsiaInfo rewrote the AntDB kernel.Since  the vast majority of the code was written by itself, the core technology is absolutely independent and controllable, and in May this year, AntDB passed the independent code certification by the national laboratory.

　　In 2014, AsiaInfo undertook the largest offshore software project in China at that time, the Digital Transformation project of Telenor, one of the Tier 1 telecom operators in Europe. He said,AntDB+MySQL were database component of the entire Telenor Group's next-generation business support system in that project.

　　It was also at this stage that AsiaInfo discovered that database products were promising and could be oriented to the world's top tracks, not just the domestic information innovation market.

　　Phase 3: In 2018-2019, because of the changing international situation, the country started to mention information innovation and independent innovation, which played a decisive role in AsiaInfo's decision to enter the database product market. Zhang Hua said, Back then, frankly, it was very difficult for domestic database to earn money. Foreign vendors such as Oracle of Oracle, SQL Server of Microsoft, DB2 of IBM, are all international top-tier vendors. Why should customers choose a small one that they’ve never heard of and pay the money? This was very difficult, because, at that time, the domestic database didn’t have suitable environment to survive.

　　But after the country put forward information innovation and independent innovation, coupled with the international situation changes, people found that we can not only consider short-term commercial interests, but also business sustainability. It gives the opportunity to companies like AsiaInfo, which has some technical accumulation and a bit of sentiment. Everyone can come to have a try, and the country and the enterprise will give us the opportunity. If we do a good job, the domestic database can also be recognized. Therefore, it is the right time to do database products now.

　　From 2019 to now, AsiaInfo started to do the information innovation business and the basic software business was operated independently. Since then, AsiaInfo has treated the database as a strategic product line for the company, and basically doubled the investment every year. And the investment is mainly in two aspects: one, to prove that besides high-density transaction-based scenarios, AntDB can also adapt to more complex scenarios, such as CRM systems, etc. Second, to strengthen the product line and recruit a large number of database professionals from outside to enrich the team. In addition, AsiaInfo has also set up a database division (in the past, it was only a division under AsiaInfo's R&D center). Zhang Hua also revealed that AsiaInfo had set up an independent subsidiary, Hunan AsiaInfo Anhui, for this purpose.

　　Finally, Zhang Hua emphasized that AsiaInfo is taking the database business as a strategic business, not only to do it continuously, but also to make it bigger. The release of AntDB 7.0 is a major milestone for AsiaInfo, because it is the first test of AsiaInfo's true orientation to the general database product market and to the whole industry.