What's Ahead at Oracle OpenWorld 2017

Each year, tens of thousands of data professionals from well over 100 countries gather at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Leaders of two major Oracle users' groups—David Start, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, and Alyssa Johnson, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group—share what they have planned for their members at Oracle OpenWorld 2017, taking place Oct. 1-5. Read More

“Digital Transformation Economy”: Modernizing Core Technology Architectures is Critical

We've heard the term "digital transformation" used almost to the point of exhaustion in the past couple of years—but it's not just a lot of hot air: It's the future. Organizations must update their legacy architecture to remain current in the new enterprise landscape, and mainframe rehosting offers 10 key advantages Read More

Encryption: No Longer a Fringe Security Feature

Hackers are rarely far from the news these days, whether they're perpetrating cyber-intrusions into political campaigns or take-downs of major retail websites, social media sites, movie studios, or entertainment conglomerates. But some of the "hacking" headlines can be deceiving. In fact, a significant number of cybersecurity breaches around the digital world actually represent a kind of all-too-familiar crime that is as old as the abacus. Read More

Artificial Intelligence Has a 1% Problem

There are plenty of pronouncements about artificial intelligence—both in terms of the miracles it can produce and the threat it poses to humanity. But according to Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks, there is actually a "1% problem" in that there are a handful of companies such as Google, Amazon, and a few others that are actually accomplishing their goals with it. AI has vast potential but some of the claims, as well as the fears, are overstated and a little premature right now, he contends. Read More

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Database Elaborations

Todd Schraml

Business Intelligence Requires a Balanced Approach Every few years we hear of one new idea or product that will surely bring death to the relational database, or death to the data warehouse, or death to something. It appears that many prefer to see death or at least they greatly enjoy planning for it. Often these finalities never seem to arrive.

DBA Corner

Craig S. Mullins

Don’t Neglect Database Performance DBAs spend a lot of time on tuning application code and SQL statements to boost efficiency and optimize access. But SQL is only one aspect of database systems performance. It is also important for DBAs to devote time to tuning and optimizing the design, parameters, and physical construction of database objects, specifically tables and indexes, and the files in which their data is stored.

SQL Server Drill Down

Kevin Kline

Announcing SQL Server 2017 Release Candidate 1 Microsoft announced the first release candidate (a.k.a. RC1) for SQL Server 2017 on Monday, July 17th. Release candidates are not a final and finished product, but they are feature complete. No new features are expected after Microsoft moves into the RC phase, only adding polish (for example, brushing up the documentation and UI) and performance to the existing feature set. The full product release is planned for some time in the second half of 2017.

MongoDB Matters

Guy Harrison

MongoDB Stitches up Backend as a Service MongoDB recently announced some interesting, though incremental, enhancements. These included improved "joins" in the aggregation framework, better document validation using JSON schema, and more reliable behavior in the event of network failures. These features attempt to close the gap between the functionality of MongoDB and traditional relational databases - joins, schemas, and commits. On top of these incremental updates, MongoDB announced a couple of features that intrude on functionality usually provided by application servers or desktop programs.

Next-Gen Data Management

Gerardo Dada

Is Writing Good SQL a Lost Art? Poorly written SQL statements can cause significant performance problems in your database environment. According to some experts, poorly written SQL can cause up to 70% of performance problems overall. Adding resources can mask many issues surrounding poorly written SQL, but comes with a cost. Is writing good, quality SQL (including block code—stored procedures, packages, functions, etc.) a dying art? And if it's so important, why is that?