Database Management Articles
Updating fact rows inside a star schema set of tables is never a best practice. Even so, some organizations travel down this path.
Posted June 01, 2017
Often, when working with technical people, they get excited over the latest and greatest piece of software or hardware. They try and get their management excited, but it seems as if their management just doesn't "get" how good it is.
Posted June 01, 2017
Although Java and JavaScript are the most popular all around programming languages today, the C programming language remains the language of choice for high performance computing after almost 45 years of mainstream use. However, where runtime performance considerations are paramount, Go and Rust are emerging as valid successors to C.
Posted June 01, 2017
Resources used to be expensive. Resources used to be scarce. Resources used to take a long time to provision. As such, it made sense to put resource consumption at the top of the list when talking about database performance. Those days are gone. With more than 80% of databases running in virtual environments, where hardware is more commoditized every day, access to physical resources—CPU, memory, network, and disk—whenever needed is much easier. In fact, Moore's Law predicts that technology advancements will double every 2 years. Well, most physical resources are certainly on pace with that, or better.
Posted June 01, 2017
Cloudera has launched Altus, a new PaaS offering aimed at making it easier to run large-scale data processing applications on public cloud. The initial Altus service helps data engineers use on-demand infrastructure to speed the creation and operation of elastic data pipelines that power sophisticated, data-driven applications.
Posted May 31, 2017
Pythian, a technology services provider, is launching a customized analytics solution that integrates multiple data types from both internal and external sources. The new solution, "Kick Analytics As A Service" (Kick AaaS), gathers multi-source, multi-format data together in the cloud, and adds advanced analytics, machine learning and visualizations to ensure business users and business systems get the insights they need when they need them
Posted May 31, 2017
Tableau Software, a provider of software for visual analytics, has announced four key new features in Tableau 10.3, which will be released next week.
Posted May 25, 2017
OpenText, a provider of enterprise information management software, has introduced the second enhancement pack for OpenText Release 16, the company's digital information platform that helps customers to digitize business processes and manage information flows across the digital enterprise. Supporting the flow of information inside and outside of the enterprise, the extended ECM platform offers stronger integrations within the OpenText Platform as well as with leading applications such as Archiving for Oracle EBS, and SAP S/4HANA, SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C), SuccessFactors, and Hybris Marketing.
Posted May 24, 2017
IBM has introduced a toolkit on Power Systems optimized for open source databases, including MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, Neo4j, and Apache Cassandra, to help deliver more speed, control, and efficiency for enterprise developers and IT departments.
Posted May 24, 2017
Quest Software, a global systems management and security software provider, is announcing enhancements to its portfolio of SQL Server database management and performance monitoring solutions. "We are announcing multiple enhancements to address the Microsoft SQL Server community and customer base," said Greg Davoll, software products leader, Quest Software. Quest as a company is focused on three sets of capabilities for customers: database performance monitoring; database replication; and database development and management tooling, and these new product enhancements reflect that focus, he added.
Posted May 24, 2017
With customer experience expected to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020, Couchbase contends that a new category of database that enables enterprises to continually create and reinvent the customer experience is critical.
Posted May 23, 2017
IDERA, a provider of database lifecycle management solutions, has enhanced its SQL Secure and SQL Doctor products with new cloud capabilities. The releases help data professionals to adapt to, experiment with and take advantage of expanding cloud strategies, while DBAs can embrace the speed and agility demands of DevOps with database performance and security recommendations designed for the public cloud.
Posted May 23, 2017
IBM has created a program to help enterprises take blockchain networks into production faster. "We understand the challenges organizations face and the resources needed to get blockchain networks right the first time," said Marie Wieck, general manager of blockchain technology for IBM.
Posted May 22, 2017
Syncsort, an analytics platform provider, has announced new integration between its Big Iron to Big Data powerhouse Ironstream, and Compuware's Application Audit software that delivers real-time machine data to Splunk Enterprise Security for Security Information and Event Management. The new integration is intended to help organizations detect threats against mainframe data, correlate them with related information and events, and satisfy compliance requirements.
Posted May 22, 2017
Continuing its Cloud Platform expansion, Oracle is adding enhancements to make it easier for organizations to move enterprise database applications to the cloud.
Posted May 17, 2017
As DBAs, we can get mired in the depths of performance tuning parameters and scripts, sometimes getting lost in all the details. It is a good idea to always have a set of goals and philosophies that you can lean on to keep you focused and working on the appropriate things. That is what I want to talk about in this month's DBA Corner column. Some high-level rules of thumb for achieving your DBMS-related performance goals and maintaining your sanity.
Posted May 17, 2017
VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility and Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork, and Oracle have formed a new relationship to simplify management and enable advanced security features for Oracle's suite of mobile business applications and Oracle Mobile Cloud Service (OMCS) for mobile devices.
Posted May 17, 2017
In October of 2008, Congress enacted the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, more commonly known as the bailout of the financial system. The understanding was that catastrophic financial consequences would be the result of the failure of these entities and that those aggregate failures could devastate the U.S. The recent major outages in the public clouds services inevitably lead to the same issue being consider with regard to this new industry.
Posted May 15, 2017
You will often hear experienced practitioners and consultants suggest that there is both an art and a science to effective data governance. The art is in the details of fine-tuning a data governance program to fit your culture and address specific business needs. But the fundamental principles of data governance are best understood and executed through science.
Posted May 15, 2017
Organizations are embracing data visualization as more than a tool to "see" trends and patterns in data but as a pathway to a dynamic culture of visual data discovery. As with any type of cultural shift, there are going to be a few bumps along the road as innovative ways to transform data into actionable insights through the power of data visualization are sought.However, with a few considerations kept top-of-mind in the early stages of data visualization adoption, common problems can be avoided.
Posted May 15, 2017
Big data and analytics are all around these days. Most companies already have their first analytical models in production and are thinking about further boosting their performance. However, far too often, these companies focus on the analytical techniques rather than on the key ingredient: data. The best way to boost the performance and ROI of an analytical model is by investing in new sources of data which can help to further unravel complex customer behavior and improve key analytical insights.
Posted May 15, 2017
What are the enabling technologies that make enterprise architecture what it is today? There are a range of new-generation technologies and approaches shaping today's data environments. The key is putting them all together to help enterprise architecture fit into the enterprise's vision of itself as a data-driven organization. Tools and technologies emerging within today's data-driven enterprise include cloud, data lakes, real-time analytics, microservices, containers, Spark, Hadoop, and open source trends.
Posted May 15, 2017
Oracle has expanded the Oracle Cloud Platform's integration offerings with the availability of the Oracle API Platform Cloud Service.
Posted May 11, 2017
IBM is opening four new IBM Cloud data centers across the United States to support growing enterprise demand for cloud infrastructure that can provide access to services such as IoT, blockchain, quantum computing and cognitive. The new cloud centers are based in Dallas, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Posted May 08, 2017
Confluent, a provider of a streaming platform based on Apache Kafka, is rolling out Confluent Cloud, a fully managed streaming data service aimed at helping developers to focus on building streaming applications with Apache Kafka, rather than Kafka operations. Currently available via an early access program, the Confluent Cloud service will initially be available in Amazon Web Services, with support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud to be added in the future.
Posted May 08, 2017
Fuzzy Logix, which offers in-database analytics, and Kinetica, a provider of GPU-accelerated database, have announced a partnership to offer a joint solution. Since 2012, Fuzzy Logix has had GPU-accelerated analytics, but no GPU-accelerated database to take advantage of their advancements at scale, said Amit Vij, CEO and co-founder of Kinetica. With this collaboration, he noted, Fuzzy Logix has chosen the Kinetica GPU database as the home for its library of GPU-accelerated analytics.
Posted May 08, 2017
Open source database provider MariaDB has announced that the European Investment Bank (EIB) is making a 25 million euro investment in the company to support its next stage of growth and database innovation. MariaDB says that the EIB operation is guaranteed under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), a key element of the European Commission's Investment Plan for Europe, aiming at reviving investment in strategic projects around Europe.
Posted May 08, 2017
Choices are pervasive when designing a database. The data modeler must progress through a series of issues: What ideas are important? Which objects stand out? Which concepts can take a back seat? Adding to all those decisions comes understanding the target structures one is shooting at. A normalized design may lean one way, while a dimensional design may lean another.
Posted May 05, 2017
Not only has the Microsoft SQL Server engineering team added more and stronger leadership, outstanding individual engineers and staff members, but it is also radically moving its entire development process into a "cloud-first" ethos. Now, I'd like to show one of the most salient results of this new development process-accelerated product releases. It was only a few years ago (and is still the case for other data management platforms) that a major new release takes at least 2, but more likely 3 years. With the "production-ready" release of SQL Server 2017 Community Technology Preview 2.0, we are only 1 year from the last production release.
Posted May 05, 2017
MongoDB faced its worst-ever public relations challenge earlier this year when a spate of ransomware attacks plagued tens of thousands of Mongo instances. It's important to realize that we are not talking about some sort of obscure vulnerability here - these MongoDB databases were configured with NO passwords at all, and were easily found listening on the default port (27017) on publicly-accessible servers.
Posted May 05, 2017
With the addition of modern infrastructure as a service (IaaS) architecture and new IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) cloud services, Oracle is making enhancements to the Oracle Cloud EU Region in Germany.
Posted May 04, 2017
Oracle has introduced new artificial intelligence-based customer experience applications to support B2B and B2C interactions. Helping organizations to avoid the need for additional processes and integrations, the applications are intended to allow organizations achieve immediate value and embrace more efficient approaches, according to Jack Berkowitz, vice president, Products & Data Science, Oracle Adaptive Intelligence.
Posted May 03, 2017
Megaport has announced a cloud connectivity collaboration with Oracle. Through this initiative, Megaport and Oracle aim to provide enterprises with an approach for creating dedicated and private connectivity to Oracle Cloud services that can scale with changing business needs.
Posted May 03, 2017
One of the significant changes enterprises should expect to gain speed this year is the expanding role of business users in IT. Fences around the IT landscape are slowly coming down and business users are playing an active part in the digital transformation. It's uncharted territory, driving an increased demand for information governance initiatives to help companies use data to navigate the transformation. Here are trends to watch as data and business users' roles evolve within IT and across the enterprise.
Posted May 03, 2017
Blue Medora, a provider of IT operational analytics (ITOA) for enterprise cloud, database and infrastructure management, is expanding its SelectStar SaaS database performance solution to support Microsoft Azure and Azure SQL databases. SelectStar for Azure provides metric-based and deep-dive monitoring for Azure native database workloads, enabling users to see query-level metrics on their Azure SQL databases.
Posted April 27, 2017
Infor, a provider of business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, has reached an agreement to acquire Birst, Inc., a pioneer of cloud-native, business intelligence (BI), analytics, and data visualization. Birst provides a platform for sourcing, refining, and presenting standardized data insights at scale to drive business decisions. Terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.
Posted April 26, 2017
Infosys, a provider of consulting, technology, outsourcing and services, has launched Infosys Nia, a new artificial intelligence platform building on the capabilities of the company's existing AI platform, Infosys Mana, and its robotic process automation (RPA) solution, AssistEdge.
Posted April 26, 2017
IBM announced first-quarter earnings results, with traditional software and hardware solutions slumping, while next-generation offerings surged. The company's first-quarter cloud revenues increased 33% to $3.5 billion, totaling $14.6 billion for the last 12 months.
Posted April 24, 2017
IBM intends to make Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) available for Linux on IBM z Systems, LinuxONE, and Power Systems. Docker EE, a new version of Docker's container management platform, is designed to give developers and systems administrators a streamlined approach to building, running, and operating applications at scale.
Posted April 24, 2017
Software AG has announced two new partnerships to expand its Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities and ecosystem, a priority for the company as it works to enable customers to keep up with today's technological innovations.
Posted April 24, 2017
Spanning Cloud Apps, a provider of SaaS data protection, has been acquired by affiliates of Insight Venture Partners, a global venture capital and private equity firm investing in software, internet and data services companies.
Posted April 20, 2017
Melissa, a provider of global data quality and identity verification solutions, has introduced MAILERS Online, a cloud-based mailing solution designed to prepare USPS-compliant direct mail more easily.
Posted April 20, 2017
Syntax Systems, a provider of cloud managed ERP services, has announced the acquisition of Core Services Corp., enabling Syntax to now offer cloud-based ERP services for both Oracle JD Edwards and Enterprise Business Suites throughout North America.
Posted April 20, 2017