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President Biden Issues Executive Order to Create AI Regulations

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that aims to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights, creating an early set of guardrails that could be fortified by legislation and global agreements. The order is an initial step that is meant to ensure that AI is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive. The order—which will likely need to be augmented by congressional action—seeks to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy. Read More

What is Data Mesh?

Data mesh is still in its infancy, and data personas and organizations are craving clarity and specificity. It is critical to be aware of the "why" and "what" and fully understand the role that knowledge graphs play when considering adopting a data mesh strategy. Read More

Cybersecurity in the Age of Uncertainty

It may be well-understood that cybersecurity needs to be front and center in all technology projects, but organizations are still slow or hesitant to fully commit to it. This is becoming a problem for data-intensive organizations, which need to brace for an onslaught of both external and internal threats. Only about one-half of organizations are beginning to recognize how important cybersecurity is from the start in any transformation effort, an Accenture survey of 3,000 executives shows. Read More

Recession-Proofing Your IT Department

Recently, companies such as Dropbox, Amazon, Lyft, and Meta, as well as Apple, have used the draconian and cruel layoff approach to economic optimization. Yet while the "R" word is bantered around, the "mainstream media" continues to claim that a recession has not yet arrived. This is despite the academic definition of "recession," that is, consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product growth, as was the case in the first half of 2022. Read More

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Todd Schraml

Database Elaborations

Todd Schraml

  • The Rationality of Surrogate Keys The original intention of surrogate keys across multidimensional database designs was to help optimize joins by keeping all keys, used for joining between facts and dimensions, both numeric and single-columned. Often such surrogates were generated as simple sequential numbers, 1, 2, 3…. Early versions of many relational database products had sub-optimal performance when joining data together via character strings—especially large quantities of data.
Recent articles by Todd Schraml
Craig S. Mullins

DBA Corner

Craig S. Mullins

  • How Many DBAs Do You Need? An age-old question when it comes to staffing a DBA group is how to determine the right number of DBAs required to keep your organization's databases online and operating efficiently. Many organizations try to operate with the minimal number of DBAs that they can. The general idea here is that the fewer staff members you hire, the lower overall cost will be. However, that assumption is probably not entirely true. An overworked DBA staff can make mistakes that cause downtime and operational problems far in excess of the salary requirements of an additional DBA.
Recent articles by Craig S. Mullins
Kevin Kline

SQL Server Drill Down

Kevin Kline

  • New Troubleshooting Capabilities in SQL Server and Azure SQL Microsoft has recently released a powerful new DMV specifically to help with memory issues, sys.dm_os_out_of_memory_events. It is currently available in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Man­aged Instances. This DMV consolidates and simplifies telemetry from SQL Server ring buffers, applies heuristics, and provides a result set. The DMV stores a record for each out-of-memory (OOM) event that occurs within the database, providing details about the OOM root cause, the memory consumption of database engine components at that point in time, potential sources of memory leaks, and more.
Recent articles by Kevin Kline
Guy Harrison

MongoDB Matters

Guy Harrison

  • Atlas Online Archive Balances Storage Costs with Performance I can't remember the first time a database or storage vendor told me, "Disk is cheap," but it was probably in the 1990s.  Vendors like to say disk is cheap because it helps them sell more of it and to encourage bigger deployments. The fact is that data storage is getting cheaper all the time. When I entered the business, one GB of storage cost about $1000. Today, it's more like 10 cents—10,000 times less!
Recent articles by Guy Harrison
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