Database Management Articles
Few things in the world are changing as dramatically as data. Data has tapped out a powerful rhythm to keep time with technology's bleeding edge, leaving many technologies struggling to keep up. It should come as no surprise, then, that many of the data strategies that IT departments developed, and still widely rely upon, are no longer sufficient for today's needs. You can put data marts near the top of that list.
Posted November 10, 2011
It is not magic. Building a successful IT solution takes time. And that time is used in various ways: obtaining an understanding of the goal; mapping out what components are necessary and how those components interact; testing components and their interaction; and finally migrating those components into the production environment - otherwise known as analysis, design, development, testing, and deployment. Regardless of the methodology employed, these functions must always be addressed. Different approaches focus on differing needs and aspects. But any complete methodology must fill in all the blanks for accomplishing each of these tasks.
Posted November 10, 2011
Being a successful database administrator requires far more than technical acumen and database knowledge. DBAs should be armed with a proper attitude as well as sufficient fortitude and personality before attempting to practice database administration. Gaining the technical know-how is important, yes, but there are many sources that offer technical guidance for DBAs. The non-technical aspects of DBA are just as challenging, though. So with that in mind, this month's column will offer 10 "rules of thumb" for DBAs to follow as they improve their soft skills.
Posted November 10, 2011
InterSystems Corporation has announced that Kettering Health Network has completed an enterprise-wide transition to the InterSystems Ensemble rapid integration and development platform. Kettering is an integrated delivery network (IDN) comprised of more than 60 state-of-the-art facilities where patients throughout the Dayton, Ohio, area are served by more than 1,200 physicians.
Posted November 10, 2011
Sybase has unveiled a new version of the Sybase IQ high performance column-based analytics database, due to be generally available by the end of November. "This really is an extension into big data - and big data is characterized by a lot of things - but we see the trends in the market around MapReduce and Hadoop in database analytics and we have added those capabilities into IQ 15. 4," Dan Lahl, director of product marketing at Sybase, tells 5 Minute Briefing. With the new release of IQ, he notes, Sybase IQ provides customers a "have it your way" approach.
Posted November 04, 2011
Schooner Information Technology, Inc., which develops and markets high-availability (HA) high-performance MySQL software for mission-critical applications, has unveiled SchoonerSQL v5.1, a full build of the MySQL database and its standard InnoDB storage engine, with additional Schooner enhancements.
Posted November 02, 2011
Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire Endeca Technologies, Inc., a provider of unstructured data management, web commerce and business intelligence solutions. "Together, we will provide best-in-class technology to manage structured and unstructured data together; business intelligence tools to analyze structured and unstructured data together; and a broad suite of packaged applications which extends the value of unstructured data into ERP, Supply Chain, CRM, EPM, Web Commerce, and specialized applications," said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Development, in an announcement issued by Oracle. "This technology will also allow us to integrate more comprehensive unstructured data management into Oracle's engineered systems."
Posted November 02, 2011
MarkLogic Corporation today announced general availability of MarkLogic 5, the latest version of its next generation database for unstructured information. MarkLogic 5 includes a new connector for Hadoop to enable large-scale batch processing for big data analytics on the structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data residing inside MarkLogic. Using MarkLogic for real-time analytics with Hadoop for batch processing supports companies that need real time, secure, enterprise applications that are cost effective with high performance. With simple drop-in installation, organizations can run MapReduce on data inside MarkLogic and take advantage of Hadoop's development and management tools, all while being able to leverage MarkLogic's indexes and distributed architecture for performance, resulting in enhanced search, analytics, and delivery in MarkLogic, and enabling organizations to progressively enhance data without having to remove it from the database.
Posted November 01, 2011
Addressing the needs of human resources (HR) departments that support global workforces in real time, SAP AG announced a series of new HR-based mobile apps to help managers and employees execute HR-based requests on-the-go. The new mobile apps from SAP are intended to increase employee and manager productivity, supporting the always-on workforce with real-time mobile capabilities for performing HR-related activities, including interviewing job candidates, managing employee performance, entering and approving leave requests and accessing corporate KPIs.
Posted October 26, 2011
Capgemini, a provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, is cooperating with Sybase, an SAP company, to manage the deployment of enterprise mobility solutions. Capgemini will host mobile solutions powered by industry-leading Sybase Managed Mobility technologies and offer them on a software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service basis. In addition, Capgemini and SAP AG intend to enter into an agreement to build differentiated mobility solutions, through which Capgemini plans to make mobility solutions from SAP available to customers.
Posted October 26, 2011
CA Technologies announced a new solution intended to help companies manage and integrate their database infrastructure with Microsoft's SQL Azure cloud database environment. The new product, CA ERwin Data Modeler for SQL Azure, is designed to enable data managers to make fact-based decisions about which data to move to the cloud and which to keep on premise. This new release of Erwin Data Modeler will also enable data transfer from other databases beyond SQL Server, Donna Burbank, senior director of product marketing for the Data Management business at CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "This solution will enable data transfer from other databases in addition to SQL Server, such as Oracle, Sybase, Teradata, or DB2."
Posted October 26, 2011
Columnar database technology burst on the data warehouse scene just a couple years ago with promises of faster query speeds on vast amounts of data. They delivered on that promise, but at a cost that is no longer worth paying. Here's why.
Posted October 26, 2011
Teradata, a data analytic data solutions provider, announced the latest update to its flagship data warehouse product, as well as new features in its data warehouse appliance. Teradata Database 14 is designed as the analytical engine for powering all of the vendor's "purpose-built" platform family members - from enterprise data warehouses to appliances. "We're including big data application support," says Scott Gnau, president of Teradata Labs at a briefing at the vendor's recent user group event.
Posted October 26, 2011
At its Information on Demand Conference, IBM unveiled its latest business analytics appliance, the IBM Netezza Network Analytics Accelerator, which helps communications services providers (CSPs) leverage and gain insights from big data in a timeframe that can make a difference in their business. "Developing a deep understanding of the customer, their experience, and their digital lifestyle means CSPs can better allocate network resources and create more targeted services using IBM analytics. This is both a challenge and opportunity for CSPs, and those that embrace analytics now will gain a competitive advantage," says Scott Stainken, general manager, IBM Global Telecommunications Industry.
Posted October 25, 2011
Quest International Users Group (Quest) for Oracle PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle Utilities users is laying out an ambitious roadmap for the year ahead, incorporating new in-person product-focused events directed specifically at the needs of the JD Edwards and PeopleSoft communities, as well as expanding its offering of online learning opportunities. Michael L. Whitmer, president of Quest, joined by Jonathan Vaughn, Quest's executive director, talked with 5 Minute Briefing at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco about strategies for supporting members in 2012. There is a shift going on in IT and being technically competent is simply not enough anymore, says Whitmer. "The IT organizations that are going to be successful going forward are those that really move out of being the order-taker organization to being a true business strategy organization, in partnership with the business, and deliver IT in a way that provides business value."
Posted October 20, 2011
At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual week-long conference in San Francisco for customers and partners, Andy Flower, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the emerging challenges facing IOUG members, the group's plans for the year ahead, including additional training and certification around Exadata, and how Oracle's engineered systems approach is being received. "The overall need for analytics, the growth of data, and the managing and processing of more and more data - those areas are the central themes for us," Flower noted.
Posted October 19, 2011
More than 600 data managers and professionals completed the IOUG's 2011 survey on database growth. All respondents to this IOUG ResearchWire survey were entered in a sweepstakes drawing to win an Apple iPad. Have you ever wondered if anyone actually wins these prizes?
Posted October 19, 2011
The Oracle Applications Users Group is continuing its Back to Basics theme, Mark C. Clark, president of the OAUG, told 5 Minute Briefing during Oracle OpenWorld, with education and networking, enabled by smaller regional events and online learning opportunities, in addition to its continued participation in larger events such as OpenWorld and COLLABORATE. Upcoming Connection Point events include the "OAUG Connection Point-EPM/BI/R12.1 Upgrade" which will be held November 15-16, 2011, in Atlanta; and the "OAUG Connection Point-Dubai 2012" will be held March 14-15, 2012, in Dubai, UAE.
Posted October 18, 2011
Savvis, a CenturyLink company, launched Savvis Symphony Database, a cloud-based database platform, at Oracle OpenWorld. Symphony Database provisions everything needed for a complete, secure database solution, with just a few clicks. According to the vendor, client advantages include no software licensing or hardware provisioning, and performance levels can be scaled - both up and down - based on business needs, without any downtime, providing performance guarantees and reduced costs compared to hosted database solutions. Users can select from Oracle Enterprise 11G RAC or Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 for the underlying technology.
Posted October 18, 2011
Every professional programmer (and DBA) should have a library of books on SQL fundamentals. There are many SQL titles to choose from, and a lot of them are very good. But this month's column will outline four SQL books that should be on every database professional's bookshelf.
Posted October 18, 2011
IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Q1 Labs, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based provider of security intelligence software. The move aims to accelerate IBM's efforts to help clients secure their enterprises by applying analytics to correlate information from key security domains and creating security dashboards for their organizations. Financial terms were not disclosed. Following the close of the acquisition, Q1 Labs will join the newly-formed IBM Security Systems division. The new division will be led by Brendan Hannigan, CEO of Q1 Labs.
Posted October 17, 2011
Every project is, or should be, driven by user requirements. Requirements are the organization's way to articulate what needs to happen in order to provide value. Yet time and again requirements are looked at as something overly technical, mysterious, and too confusing to easily handle. Repeatedly, organizations use a template to ensure that requirements are defined early in the solution process. Sadly, the intended purposes are habitually defeated as these templates are filled with a lack of understanding for what information belongs in a given section, resulting in people creating documents that the authors themselves do not understand. Across many organizations requirements documents are created, reviewed, and even agreed to, that far too often are incoherent monstrosities saying nothing of actual value.
Posted October 15, 2011
During a keynote presentation last week at Oracle OpenWorld 2011, the new Oracle Big Data Appliance, an engineered system optimized for acquiring, organizing and loading unstructured data into Oracle Database 11g, was announced by Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Product Development, Oracle.
Posted October 15, 2011
At Oracle OpenWorld, F5 Networks, Inc., announced that its BIG-IP solutions have achieved Oracle Database and WebLogic Ready status through the Oracle PartnerNework (OPN), demonstrating that F5 has fully tested and supports BIG-IP version 10 products on Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle WebLogic 11g Release 1. The BIG-IP product family consists of physical and virtual solutions that provide integrated application delivery services, such as acceleration, security, access control, and high availability.
Posted October 05, 2011
Allround Automations has released a free plug-in that directly connects its PL/SQL Developer IDE with Red Gate Software's Oracle database deployment tools. "Combining PL/SQL Developer and the Deployment Suite for Oracle from Red Gate gives any database developer an extremely powerful environment for development and deployment," Tom Harris, Red Gate's product manager for Oracle tools, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted October 05, 2011
Ingres Corp. has been rebranded as Actian Corporation and unveiled a new strategy to enable companies to develop Action Apps which it describes as lightweight, consumer-style applications that automate business actions triggered by real-time changes in data. "The name change is symbolic of a completely new approach," Greg Wood, Actian CFO, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Ingres is becoming Actian to take action on big data, powered by VectorWise, the world's fastest data analytics engine."
Posted October 04, 2011
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveiled the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 during a presentation at the company's Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters. Based on Oracle's new SPARC T4 servers, the engineered system exploits the same parallelism and data compression provided by Oracle's other engineered systems, the Exadata and Exalogic, said Ellison, and, importantly, provides a smooth upgrade path to the SPARC Solaris installed base.
Posted October 04, 2011
At Sybase TechWave, Sybase launched Sybase PowerBuilder 12.5, the second .NET release of its rapid application development tool. PowerBuilder 12.5 provides a fast and cost-effective solution for creating modern and visually appealing business applications on the Microsoft Windows 32 ((Win32) and .NET Frameworks.
Posted September 28, 2011
At SAP TechEd 2011 in Las Vegas, SAP AG announced two new solutions built on SAP HANA, the company's in-memory computing platform. The two new solutions - SAP Smart Meter Analytics software powered by SAP HANA and SAP COPA Accelerator software - were developed by SAP product and design teams working in collaboration with customers. According to SAP the new applications will provide users with real-time insight into "big data," allowing them to leverage large amounts of information for analysis, planning, and forecasting and simulations in a more fluid, natural way versus traditional approaches.
Posted September 28, 2011
Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, has announced the general availability of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 15.7. Sybase ASE 15.7 provides a cost-efficient relational database management system (RDBMS) for managing very large data sets for the most demanding applications. The new version of the enterprise data management solution saves disk space, increases performance and scalability on parallel hardware, and efficiently manages unstructured data.
Posted September 28, 2011
Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration software, has introduced Attunity Replicate, high-performance data replication software. The new enterprise data replication solution emphasizes simplified user experience, quick time to value, and low cost of ownership, Itamar Ankorion, vice president of Business Development and Corporate Strategy, Attunity, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Attunity will present Attunity Replicate at Oracle OpenWorld, October 3-5, at booth #3728.
Posted September 27, 2011
Oracle has announced the Oracle Database Appliance - targeted at small and midsize enterprises and departments that want higher availability for their application databases. Like Exadata, it is an engineered system that combines hardware and software.
Posted September 22, 2011
Quest Software has announced the availability of a new release of Toad for Oracle, the flagship product in the Toad portfolio. The new release contains a number of notable new capabilities, including the new Code Analysis feature which provides a more flexible and intuitive way to perform code reviews and analysis.
Posted September 21, 2011
As the world's most popular open source database, MySQL's speed, reliability, and ease of use have made user-generated content and social media available to the masses. In the 18 months since the Oracle acquisition of MySQL, Oracle continues to develop MySQL internally and integrate community patches. Under Oracle's stewardship, MySQL released its first new major version in 2 years.
Posted September 14, 2011
Cost containment is an important IT department goal in this day and age of financial austerity. Every decision regarding your computing environment must be weighed not only against the value it can deliver to your organization but also upon its cost to procure, implement, and maintain. If a positive return on investment cannot be rapidly delivered, then the software (or hardware) won't be adopted.
Posted September 14, 2011
When assembling a database design, one of the keys for success is consistency. There should be more than just similarity in the way things are named, the manner in which tables or groups of tables are constructed; the manifestation of these elements should follow standards and practices that are documented and understood. If one tries to rely on the idea that individual developers will simply look at existing tables and glean standards via osmosis as they add on or create new tables, then one does not actually have any standards at all.
Posted September 14, 2011
As data grows, the reflex reaction within many organizations is to buy and install more disk storage. Smart approaches are on the horizon but still only prevalent among a minority of companies. How is it data has grown so far so fast? Technology growth along the lines of Moore's Law (doubling every 18 months) has made petabyte-capable hardware and software a reality. And data growth itself appears to be keeping pace with the hardware and systems. In fact, a petabyte's worth of data is almost commonplace, as shown in a new survey conducted by Unisphere Research among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). In "The Petabyte Challenge: 2011 IOUG Database Growth Survey," close to 1 out of 10 respondents report that the total amount of online (disk-resident) data they manage today-taking into account all clones, snapshots, replicas and backups-now tops a petabyte.
Posted September 14, 2011
VoltDB, Inc. today announced the general availability of VoltDB open source relational database management system (RDBMS) version 2.0. VoltDB is a distributed, in-memory database designed for applications that are pushed beyond their limits by high-volume data sources. The new release adds new features for developer productivity, database durability and recovery, including performance and interoperability improvements.
Posted September 13, 2011
InterSystems Corporation, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with offices in 23 countries, has announced the strategic acquisition of Siemens Health Services (SHS) France from its Siemens parent company. SHS, a provider of healthcare solutions to hospitals in France, will now operate as InterSystems SAS. This acquisition moves InterSystems into a strong position in France, which is one of the world's top five healthcare IT markets by revenue, and marks the entry of InterSystems TrakCare advanced clinical applications into this market.
Posted September 13, 2011