Database Management Articles
Continuity Software, a provider of disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) management solutions, has announced the general availability of RecoverGuard version 5.2 (v5.2), featuring a Private Cloud Advisor designed to enable customers to ensure availability, recoverability and adherence to industry best practices in the private cloud. "Until about a year ago, no one really used private clouds in the mid and large enterprise for mission-critical systems, but in the last 12 months, we have started to see a shift toward people either deploying such systems or at least planning the deployment of private clouds in the medium and large data centers," Gil Hecht, founder and CEO of Continuity Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 18, 2010
EnterpriseDB has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of its flagship Postgres Plus Advanced Server database. EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server 8.4, which is built on the open source object relational Postgres database, is now fully compatible with all the features and functionality found in the most recent community distribution. The new release provides increased core functionality for the database as a whole, increased Oracle compatibility, increased manageability, and increased security, according to Robin Schumacher, EnterpriseDB's director of product strategy.
Posted August 11, 2010
Today, Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, also announced a new HP-Sybase BI (business intelligence) reference architecture that leverages the HP Converged Infrastructure. The joint solution optimizes query response and data loads with reduced overhead, storage costs and maintenance requirements. Featuring Sybase IQ 15 running on HP ProLiant DL785 servers, Sybase says the solution will help organizations looking for high performance, scalability and energy efficiency at a lower TCO than other analytics server offerings.
Posted August 10, 2010
CA Technologies announced new identity and access management (IAM) solutions intended to enhance security, ease compliance efforts, and automate IT processes within cloud computing environments. The company released a new version of CA Identity Manager, which extends identity management to cloud applications, as well as leverage CA SiteMinder portfolio to control access to its SaaS applications.
Posted August 10, 2010
Idera, a provider of Microsoft SQL Server management and administration tools, has announced the latest version of its SQL Server backup and recovery solutions: SQL safe 6.4, SQL safe lite 6.4 and SQL virtual database 1.4.
Posted August 10, 2010
First elected to Oracle Applications Users Group board of directors in 2009, David Ferguson became president of the OAUG this year. He talks with DBTA this month about how the users group is getting "back to basics" with educational sessions and networking opportunities as well as the new approaches it is taking to meet its members' evolving needs.
Posted August 10, 2010
Earlier this year, Andy Flower took over as president of the Independent Oracle Users Group from Ian Abramson. With Oracle OpenWorld right around the corner, Flower talks with DBTA about how the IOUG is changing to best meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the expanding Oracle ecosystem, despite what continues to be a difficult economy. For the IOUG, it is "the year of the member" and it all starts with the database, he says.
Posted August 10, 2010
Revelation Software has announced the availability of a significant new release of OpenInsight (OI) Development Suite, which continues Revelation's commitment to extend OpenInsight by embracing new technologies as well as providing seamless integration with external databases. OI 9.2, which the company has been working on for more than 2 years, includes the new OpenInsight for Web (O4W) and SQL Connector.
Posted August 10, 2010
Design should be an intention, preferably a planned intention. In that intention, design requires more groundwork than a simple thought-train such as the following, "I planned to write a module that functions; since the module functions, my designs are working." Some situations do exist where true design really is less important than successful functionality. Determining the appropriate level of design and preparation offers an interesting question to every architect. At the lowest level, standards and practices present suitable patterns that can serve as a design skeleton for those low-level or isolated items not requiring a heavy-handed blueprint.
Posted August 10, 2010
What is the most difficult thing about acquiring enterprise software? If you are like most IT technicians, your first inclination was probably something related to cost justification. Let's face it, enterprise software typically is very expensive ... and eventually, something will need to bring costs more in line with value.
Posted August 10, 2010
Extending its leadership in the enterprise tape market, Oracle announced high availability and capacity enhancements to its StorageTek tape libraries and drives. New features of the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System include an increase in scalable capacity from 70,000 to 100,000 tape slots and redundant electronics to help customers manage growth, increase availability and reduce risk. "Being able to scale to 150 petabytes with up to 100,000 tape slots under the management of a single library is a significant advantage for customers who are dealing with explosive data growth, as many companies are today," Tom Wultich, director of product management for tape at Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 04, 2010
Revelation Software has announced the availability of a new release of OpenInsight (OI) Development Suite. The 9.2 release includes the SQL Connector, which allows SQL tables in relational database management systems including Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL, to be seen as native tables to all components of OpenInsight, including forms, reports, popups, stored procedures and O4W. "What we have done is built intelligence into the connector so that programmers that have been doing work, not just in OpenInsight, but any flavor of MultiValue, can now use that same knowledge base that they have, and go against data that used to be fairly difficult for them to get at," Mike Ruane, president and CEO of Revelation Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 04, 2010
Revelation Software has announced the availability of a new release of OpenInsight (OI) Development Suite, which continues Revelation's commitment to extend OpenInsight by embracing new technologies as well as providing seamless integration with external databases.
Posted August 03, 2010
The International Sybase User Group (ISUG) has announced the immediate availability of its latest course offering in conjunction with online training specialist eLearnIT LLC. The new course is entitled "ASE Performance & Tuning with MDA Tables" and has been planned to offer a pragmatic combination of both practical and theory-based skills for Sybase DBAs. With today's data center management demands becoming increasing time critical as well as mission critical, this course compehensively provides DBAs with the skills they will need to perform effectively when troubleshooting problem queries and bottlenecks within Sybase ASE.
Posted July 28, 2010
SAP AG has announced the completion of the cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Sybase, Inc., by Sheffield Acquisition Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of SAP, which expired at 9:00 p.m., New York City time on Monday, July 26, 2010. American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC, the depositary for the tender offer, has indicated that, as of the expiration of the tender offer 80,929,717 shares of common stock of Sybase had been tendered into and not properly withdrawn from the tender offer (including 9,293,901 shares of common stock tendered pursuant to the guaranteed delivery procedures). These shares represent approximately 92.1% of Sybase's outstanding shares of common stock, or 91.8% on a fully diluted basis. All Sybase shares that were validly tendered into the offer and not properly withdrawn have been accepted for payment.
Posted July 28, 2010
Sybase has reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2010. Total revenue for the second quarter of 2010 grew 9% to $302.0 million, compared to $278.0 million in the second quarter of 2009. License revenue grew 6% to $100.1 million, compared to $94.1 million in the second quarter of 2009, services revenue grew 5% to $147.2 million, and messaging revenue grew 24% to $54.8 million in the second quarter of 2010.
Posted July 28, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of its SQL Anywhere 12 database and synchronization solution. A core component of the Sybase Mobility Platform, SQL Anywhere is optimized for mission-critical database applications running outside traditional data center environments requiring little or no onsite IT support. According to Chris Kleisath, senior director of engineering, SQL Anywhere 12 represents a major platform release, providing many key new enhancements for performance and scalability such as support for storage and synchronization of spatial data, support for iPhone devices, and new self-management features.
Posted July 28, 2010
Confio Software, which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 28, 2010
Quest Software, Inc. has introduced a beta program for Toad for Cloud Databases, a new data access and management tool for non-relational data stored in cloud databases, also known as NoSQL databases. Toad for Cloud Databases is intended to help users unlock data stored in the cloud by using the familiar SQL language or Toad's popular visual query and data access capabilities. Users can query and report on non-relational data, migrate data in both cloud and relational databases from one to the other, and create queries that combine the two.
Posted July 28, 2010
SunGard, a leading software and technology services companies, has certified the latest version of its Front Arena position control solution with Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 15, Sybase's enterprise database management system. Customers using SunGard's newest version of Front Arena to support cross-asset capital markets trading and trading strategies combined with ASE 15 have experienced up to a 400 percent increase in transaction processing of stock exchange data.
Posted July 28, 2010
Revelation Software has announced the availability of a significant new release of OpenInsight (OI) Development Suite, which continues Revelation's commitment to extend OpenInsight by embracing new technologies as well as providing seamless integration with external databases. OI 9.2, which the company has been working on for more than 2 years, includes the new OpenInsight for Web (O4W) and SQL Connector.
Posted July 27, 2010
EnterpriseDB has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of its flagship Postgres Plus Advanced Server database. EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server 8.4, which is built on the open source object relational Postgres database, is now fully compatible with all the features and functionality found in the most recent community distribution. In this latest release, EnterpriseDB continues to enrich Postgres Plus by building enterprise-class capabilities on top of the open source relational database management system.
Posted July 27, 2010
SAP AG announced today the completion of the cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Sybase, a partner and a market leader in managing, analyzing, and mobilizing business information. Through this transaction, SAP said it intends to accelerate the reach of SAP solutions across mobile platforms and drive forward the realization of SAP's in-memory computing vision.
Posted July 27, 2010
The Pythian Group Inc., a remote database infrastructure services company and a Platinum member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork has announced the implementation of the Sun Oracle Database Machine at LinkShare Corporation, a division of Rakuten, Inc., and the launch of Pythian's Oracle Exadata services practice.
Posted July 21, 2010
Creating standards for cloud computing is key to its future evolution and broader adoption. What is the role of Linux in the cloud? What economic or technological advantages (if any) do open standards-based clouds have? Where else is open source software gaining traction in the cloud, and will customers choose to run a mix of open and 'private-source' software? How does the history of the evolution of Linux relate to the future of the cloud?
Posted July 21, 2010
SAP AG and CA Technologies announced they are collaborating as part of an effort to meet the latest demands to instill governance, risk and compliance (GRC) market within business and IT processes. Leveraging products from CA Technologies with leading GRC applications from SAP will allow IT executives to gain tighter control over their IT risk and compliance initiatives and focus on long-term value creation for the business.
Posted July 20, 2010
HiT Software, a provider of data integration products and division of a BackOffice Associates, LLC, says it is shipping a new version of its change data capture and replication product that supports multiple databases as well as support for Netezza data warehouse appliance. The new product, DBMoto 7, also delivers data verification, enhanced administrative security options, and log-based replication for IBM DB2 LUW.
Posted July 13, 2010
Mid-sized businesses are using and saving more data than ever before. Indeed, the phenomenon that IT engineers have come to refer to as "big data" is being felt in businesses of all sizes. At the same time, however, organizations are facing reduced budgets. Regardless of how much data their likely overburdened IT staff must manage today and tomorrow, mid-sized businesses must find ways to save money by keeping a tight rein on both capital and operational expenditures.
Posted July 12, 2010
Oracle has introduced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g. "The new release allows customers to integrate relational and OLAP analysis across a multitude of different federated data sources and presents that in a very simple way to end users so that they can do analysis on their own without understanding or needing to know that there might be potentially multiple data sources beneath," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence, tells DBTA. Representing the result of a large investment in simplifying the end user experience, adds Rodwick, companies will see "very interactive dashboards that are completely live and completely interconnected and allow business people to do their own analysis without really needing to go into any kind of query tool." The new release also provides new capablities for search and collaboration, and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Posted July 12, 2010
UniVerse 11.1, scheduled for release in Q3 of this year, will include the External Database Access functionality that already exists in UniData. EDA allows users to map files to the format for another database, and then write directly to it. UniData EDA originally shipped with just a driver for DB2. "We released the API for building additional drivers with UniData 7.2. Once we were acquired by Rocket, we committed to delivering a driver for Microsoft SQL Server. Now we're in the process of building a driver that will work with Oracle," Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, Rocket U2, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Rocket U2 is now looking for people who want to help by testing the driver with their application.
Posted July 12, 2010
ONware is now offering the ability to use PostgreSQL as a database system for applications developed for U2, D3, MVON and other MultiValue and PICK database environments. The new support for PostgreSQL has been added based on feedback from prospective customers in the MultiValue world, Jack Roth, director of operations, ONgroup, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Roth notes that he has come across a number of companies that have other development in their organizations in Postgres. "They like Postgres and if they can support one database as opposed to two very dissimilar databases, that is an advantage for them," he explains.
Posted July 12, 2010
In this issue's column I'll be providing a fundamental introduction to database and database management concepts. Many of you may think that they understand the basic concepts and fundamentals of database technology. But quite a few of you likely do not, so please do not skip over this. First of all, what is a database? DB2 is not a database; neither are Informix, Oracle and SQL Server. Each of these is a DBMS, or Database Management System. You can use DB2 (or Informix or SQL Server) to create a database, but DB2, in and of itself, is not a database.
Posted July 12, 2010
When integrating data, evaluating objects from multiple sources aids in determining their equivalence. Each source may identify customers, but determining which customer from each system represents the same customer can prove daunting. Sometimes matching things is straight-forward; for example, if all sources should have an accurate social security number or taxpayer ID, success involves simply linking the matching numbers.
Posted July 12, 2010
Everybody seems to agree with the need for organizations to do a better job of protecting personal information. Every week the media brings us reports of more data breaches, and no organization is immune. Hospitals, universities, insurers, retailers, and state and federal agencies all have been the victims of breach events, often at significant costs. State privacy laws such as the new Massachusetts privacy statutes have placed the burden of protecting sensitive information squarely on the shoulders of the organizations that collect and use it. While some managers might view this as yet one more compliance hurdle to worry about, we feel it presents an excellent opportunity to evaluate existing practices and procedures. The good news is that there are some great solutions available today that can help organizations of all stripes address these requirements while at the same time tightening data security practices, streamlining operations, and improving governance.
Posted July 12, 2010
NEON Enterprise Software announced that it is offering NEON zPrime for IMS for just one dollar. NEON zPrime for IMS is designed to make costly IMS workloads eligible for processing on IBM specialty processors (SPs) instead of IBM System z central processors. To take advantage of the offer, customers must make a 2-year commitment at a dollar per year, and install a new version of NEON zPrime in production by December 31, 2010.
Posted July 12, 2010
BMC introduced a new mainframe product for IBM IMS, the leading database management system for the IBM System z mainframe. The BMC Fast Path Online Restructure/EP solution is designed to reduce downtime to improve availability of critical IMS Fast Path applications.
Posted July 12, 2010
The International Sybase User Group (ISUG) has announced the immediate availability of its latest course offering in conjunction with online training specialist eLearnIT LLC. The new course is entitled "ASE Performance & Tuning with MDA Tables" and has been planned to offer a pragmatic combination of both practical and theory-based skills for Sybase DBAs. With today's data center management demands becoming increasing time critical as well as mission critical, this course compehensively provides DBAs with the skills they will need to perform effectively when troubleshooting problem queries and bottlenecks within Sybase ASE.
Posted July 08, 2010
Confio Software, which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing
Posted July 07, 2010
Oracle has added upgrades to the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System product line, including built-in inline data deduplication that can be combined with inline data compression, 4 and 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel protocol support, multiple storage pools and new 1 and 2 TB SAS disk drives - doubling maximum system capacity to 576TB. The features are intended to help customers reduce the costs of storing, consolidating and managing data with increased storage efficiency, expand the use of the Sun Storage 7000 System product line into Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), and improve overall capacity and availability.
Posted July 07, 2010
Aimed at further streamlining the development of database-centric web applications, Oracle has introduced Oracle Application Express Release 4.0. The new release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a feature included at no additional cost with all editions and releases of Oracle Database 11g. The 4.0 release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports, and is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat has unveiled Red Hat Cloud Foundations, which is intended to deliver solutions for planning, building and managing infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service private and public clouds. Cloud Foundations: Edition One, available immediately, provides "everything that a customer needs to successfully plan, deploy and manage a private cloud and it is the first in a family of Cloud Foundations that Red Hat will expand along with its partners to provide a complete set of cloud services," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business Unit, at a press conference during the recent Red Hat Summit in Boston.
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat last week released the second beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The first beta was released in April, and incorporated a range of new and upgraded features. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta 2 provides an updated installer, additional new technologies and resolutions to many of the issues that were reported in the initial beta. Red Hat is asking customers and partners who are testing the initial beta to install and continue their testing with beta 2.
Posted July 07, 2010
Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has begun shipping a high-performance analytics engine intended to speed up the time it takes for queries. The solution, Ingres VectorWise for Linux, is built on Ingres' VectorWise technology, and Ingres claims seeing performance gains of 10x to 70x over existing database and analytic servers while running sophisticated analytics on large to truly massive data sets.
Posted July 06, 2010
Attachmate Corporation has introduced a new enterprise fraud management solution that is intended to take the guesswork out of application monitoring. According to Attachmate, the new solution, Luminet, reveals user activity within enterprise applications and transforms the data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to protect the privacy of mission-critical data, reduce internal fraud and ensure regulatory compliance.
Posted July 06, 2010
Talend, a leading provider of open source data management software, has announced the availability of Hadoop-based integration for Big Data via its enterprise platform, Talend Integration Suite. According to the vendor, Talend Integration Suite is the first enterprise open source data integration solution to natively support Hadoop's distributed computing architecture for high performance and highly scalable data integration.
Posted July 06, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, and San Francisco-based IT Convergence (ITC), which provides solutions for Oracle Database, and the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle E-Business Suites, have expanded their OAUG & ITC Oracle Applications Workshops series with the addition of several upcoming Oracle R12 regional workshops in Atlanta; Denver; Dallas; and Madison, Wis. The Oracle Applications workshops are designed to assist users in learning the new functions and features of Oracle solutions. The " R12 Financials New Features" workshop offers an overview of R12 functional enhancements, new features and latest modules in the Oracle R12 Financial product suite. For users planning to migrate to R12, the " Preparing for an Oracle R12 Upgrade" workshop provides an outlet to learn Oracle Applications Release 12's functional and technical architecture in detail.
Posted July 06, 2010
EnterpriseDB, a supplier of PostgreSQL-based solutions, and Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse and analytic appliances, has formed a new partnership intended to ease database migration projects. Under the agreement, Netezza will resell EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which includes its Oracle Compatibility Layer, as Netezza Migrator. Migrator will be compatible with the Netezza TwinFin appliance.
Posted June 29, 2010
Aimed at further streamlining the development of database-centric web applications, Oracle has introduced Oracle Application Express Release 4.0. The new release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a feature included at no additional cost with all editions and releases of Oracle Database 11g. The 4.0 release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports, and is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Posted June 29, 2010
Infobright, an open source data warehousing company, has announced Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) 3.4, which provides performance improvements for analytics involving large volumes of data. The release includes query performance improvements of up to 500%, delete performance improvement of over 1600%, the ability to run queries while data is loading, more efficient workload management, and support for multi-language data. "Our focus is on providing the best query performance possible, but always balancing that with low cost and ease of use," Susan Davis, vice president of marketing, Infobright, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010
ISUG and eLearnIT, which initially launched their online training offerings with a program for PowerBuilder, are now adding a new ASE training course. Because ASE as a database has "a massive ecosystem," with many parts to it, ISUG sought feedback from members and partners on where to concentrate its efforts in ASE, explains Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG. "The number-one request was for training on monitoring and diagnostics, and therefore that is what this course is about," he tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010