Database Management Articles
To help organizations prevent internal and external attacks from reaching their enterprise database targets, Oracle has introduced Oracle Database Firewall, which is intended to act as the "first line of defense for databases." According to Oracle, the new software solution monitors database activity on the network to help prevent unauthorized access, SQL injections, privilege or role escalation, and other external and internal attacks in real time. "In the same way that most companies have deployed network firewalls to stop intruders from coming into their data centers," Vipin Samar, vice president of Database Security, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing, "Oracle Database Firewall is blocking unauthorized traffic from getting to the database itself."
Posted February 15, 2011
EnterpriseDB, which provides products, services, support and training based on the PostgreSQL open source database project, has announced the availability of three components that add security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication Server EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Standard Server 9.0 delivers the latest features in PostgreSQL 9.0, plus value-added tools and services providing organizations with a complete enterprise-ready database installation.
Posted February 09, 2011
EnterpriseDB, which provides products, services, support and training based on the PostgreSQL open source database project, has announced the availability of three components that add security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication ServerEnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Standard Server 9.0 delivers the latest features in PostgreSQL 9.0, plus value-added tools and services providing organizations with a complete enterprise-ready database installation.
Posted February 09, 2011
A new survey of 430 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) reveals that organizations lack a sense of urgency about securing critical data, and the greatest challenges to securing application and data environments are primarily organizational and budget related. The OAUG's 2011 Data Security report, "Managing Information in Insecure Times," was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information today, Inc., in partnership with Application Security, Inc. (AppSec) in December 2010. Fifty-three percent of respondents stated that budget was the greatest impediment holding back information security efforts. Thirty-three percent claimed a lack of an understanding of the threats prevents them from rallying support for countermeasures. And more than one-quarter of respondents cited a disconnect between IT teams and executive management as a major impediment to implementing proper security measures.
Posted February 08, 2011
Embarcadero is providing SQL Server developers and DBAs with a toolset designed to simplify many common and complex tasks associated with developing, administering and optimizing SQL Server databases. The new toolset, dubbed DB PowerStudio for SQL Server, combines several of Embarcadero's most popular database tools into a lower-cost studio offering. DB PowerStudio for SQL Server is available in two editions, a Developer Edition and a DBA Edition. Both editions include tools and capabilities including Rapid SQL, an integrated development environment that simplifies SQL scripting, query building, object management and version control in live databases or offline source code repositories. The overlapping Developer and DBA Editions reflect the converging roles of DBAs and developers in the database space, Scott Walz, senior director of product management for Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 08, 2011
Over the past 3 years, the IOUG ResearchWire studies conducted by Unisphere Research have focused on Oracle technology as well as trends affecting data professionals, allowing IT professionals to benchmark where their organizations stand within their own technology environment. Executive Summaries of all IOUG ResearchWire reports are publicly available for free download and full study reports are also available to IOUG members at no charge when they sign in with their user name and password.
Posted February 02, 2011
Depending on their industry sectors, many database professionals have to deal with audits at some stage, often removing vital years off their lives and inches off their hairlines! Having worked as a DBA in the financial industry, I've experienced both internal and external auditor visits on multiple occasions. In all cases, we pretty much had to drop all other work to ensure they were provided with the relevant information, or to implement the changes they required so we could provide the information in the future. The auditors' levels of experience and understanding varied wildly. This was not their fault, as they are not paid to be database experts, but it could make them frustrating to work with.
Posted February 02, 2011
One of the most fertile grounds for disagreement between database professionals is the appropriate usage of views. Some analysts promote the liberal creation and usage of views, whereas others preach a more conservative approach. When properly implemented and managed, views can be fantastic tools that help to ease data access and simplify development. Although views are simple to create and implement, few organizations take a systematic and logical approach to view creation. And therein lies the controversy. A strategic and reasonable policy guiding the creation and maintenance of views is required to avoid a muddled and confused mish-mash of view usage. Basically, views are very useful when implemented wisely, but can be an administrative burden if implemented without planning.
Posted February 02, 2011
Referential integrity helps manage data by enforcing validation between related entities. This enforcement follows logical semantics behind the database design -- i.e., an employee can only work for an already defined department; a prescription can only be written by a health care practitioner with the proper authority. A Foreign Key on an Employee table rejects data when any attempt is made to insert or update a row with a department value that does not already exist as a department identifier within a Department table.
Posted February 02, 2011
IBM announced the latest release of the Informix database server, version 11.7, in October 2010, thus marking the fourth major release since Informix joined the company. One of the most exciting features in Informix 11.7 is the "Flexible Grid." Wouldn't you like to administer multiple servers as easily as a single server? Wouldn't you like to mix different hardware, operating systems, and versions of software? The Informix Flexible Grid provides this capability.
Posted February 02, 2011
The Revelation Users' Conference will be returning to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, later this year. The conference dates are Tuesday, October 4th through Friday, October 7th, 2011.
Posted February 02, 2011
Ingres Corporation, an analytic database vendor, has teamed up with Jaspersoft, a provider of business intelligence software, to certify deployments of Jaspersoft with Ingres VectorWise. Jaspersoft's business intelligence products were tested with Ingres VectorWise, and reportedly delivered faster query response times compared to other database solutions that run on Jaspersoft, the company says.
Posted February 01, 2011
Oracle has made enhancements to Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g enables organizations to develop and deploy internal and external portals and websites, composite applications, mashups, and social and collaboration services all tightly integrated with enterprise applications. The updates combine best-of-breed capabilities from Oracle's portfolio of portal products and provide customers with a unified user experience platform for the enterprise and the web, Andy MacMillan, vice president, Product Management, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 01, 2011
EMC has introduced a free Community Edition of the EMC Greenplum Database, the high-performance massively parallel processing (MPP) database product, along with free analytic algorithms and data mining tools. The new offering is intended to remove the cost barrier to entry for big data power tools for developers, data scientists, and other data professionals, according to EMC. This free set of tools will enable the community to better understand their data, gain deeper insights and better visualize insights, as well as contribute and participate in the development of new tools and solutions. With the Community Edition stack, developers can build complex applications to collect, analyze and operationalize big data leveraging big data tools including the Greenplum Database with its in-database analytic processing capabilities.
Posted February 01, 2011
Quest Software, Inc., maker of the Toad product suites, has broadened its support for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the beta kick-off of Toad for Sybase, a new, integrated Sybase ASE management tool that improves Sybase ASE performance and boosts DBAs' productivity. The beta is currently available for download on Toad World, Quest's one-stop destination to read about Toad and learn new tips and tricks from top database experts. According to Quest, Toad for Sybase aims to give DBAs the most important functionality for Sybase database administration and development, carefully selected based on customer feedback.
Posted January 28, 2011
HP and Microsoft have announced four new converged application appliances that combine applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system. In addition, there is the previously-announced HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, an enterprise-level mission-critical system. Now available with a starting price of $2 million, the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is said to deliver up to 200 times faster queries and 10 times the scalability of traditional SQL Server deployments."Our appliances have been engineered from the beginning with time to solution in mind," Fausto Ibarra, senior director of Business Intelligence at Microsoft, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We are really offering a unique value proposition."
Posted January 25, 2011
Quest Software has announced the addition of a wizard-based workload replay feature to its database performance testing tool, Benchmark Factory for Databases, enabling users to easily and cost-effectively capture production workload and replay it in a testing environment. "It is a solution that is really made very easy for the user so they can use it at any point in the process but ideally we would see it used before changes are deployed out to production so they can get an idea of what the effect of those changes will be," Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 25, 2011
EnterpriseDB, the largest independent PostgreSQL open source database company, has announced the availability of three components, adding security and replication technology for community PostgreSQL Server users - SQL/Protect, PL/Secure and xDB Replication Server. The add-on modules, now available with a subscription to Postgres Plus Standard Server, make PostgreSQL more secure and supply data integration capabilities between multiple PostgreSQL servers as well as between PostgreSQL and Oracle.
Posted January 25, 2011
Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance (SRC) solutions for the enterprise, and NEON Enterprise Software, a provider of solutions for mainframe customers, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enterprise SRC solutions for monitoring database activity on the mainframe. The "compliance tidal wave" that has been hitting IT is now crashing on the mainframe, Josh Shaul, vice president product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. As open systems have succeeded in becoming "much more locked down," regulators are naturally expanding the breadth of their audits to include the mainframes to ensure that proper controls are there as well, he explains. And while it is very hard to hack into mainframe systems, Shaul notes, for authorized users the potential for abuse that exists on the mainframe is the same as in distributed systems.
Posted January 18, 2011
Queplix Corp., a data virtualization software vendor, has introduced three new Application Software Blades in Virtual Data Manager enabling companies to integrate social media data with internal corporate systems. Companies can now automatically capture information from FaceBook, LinkedIn and Google Contacts and harmonize it with their own corporate data. According to Queplix, companies typically struggle with how to incorporate and leverage the data within social media communities for business gain. "The value of social media and its potential to enhance corporate initiatives is widely recognized, yet barely tapped," said Mark Cashman, chief executive officer, Queplix. With the new integration capability, Queplix allows organizations to combine data from social media sources with internal information, thus providing a new layer of intelligence to business-supporting functions.
Posted January 18, 2011
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), a community of more than 20,000 international database and technology professionals, announced it has formed the MySQL Council to address the interests and needs of the broader community of MySQL users serving IOUG constituencies. Initial areas of focus for the MySQL Council will include providing technical articles for the peer-reviewed SELECT Journal, facilitating the development of online education as well as supporting COLLABORATE 11, the annual Oracle user group conference taking place April 10-14 in Orlando, Florida.
Posted January 18, 2011
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) will present the first event in its 2011 conference series February 13-18 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with the theme "Building An Enterprise Data Strategy: A Framework For Consistent Information Across The Enterprise." The aim of the 6-day event is to provide attendees with the education they need about how to inventory, govern, integrate, and exploit their data assets. Organizations have "massive amounts of data" as well as a variety of different databases and duplicates of databases, and, as a result, people are not aware of all the data they have and how they can utilize it, Paul Kautza, director of education of TDWI, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The conference will provide classes on how to gain critical executive sponsorship, connect point projects into a unified data management approach, and define and implement a true corporate data strategy that will deliver consistent information across an enterprise.
Posted January 18, 2011
Quest Software, Inc., maker of the Toad product suites, has broadened its support for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the beta kick-off of Toad for Sybase, a new, integrated Sybase ASE management tool that improves Sybase ASE performance and boosts DBAs' productivity. The beta is currently available for download on Toad World, Quest's one-stop destination to read about Toad and learn new tips and tricks from top database experts. Toad for Sybase aims to give DBAs the most important functionality for Sybase database administration and development, carefully selected based on customer feedback. Toad for Sybase will be released initially as a freeware product in March 2011, with a commercial release coming out later in the year in Q2, Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 11, 2011
Health Insights has signed a partnership agreement to deploy its popular MedicaPlus Hospital and Clinical Information System on the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance object database. Health Insights' decision to partner with InterSystems follows the successful port of MedicaPlus to run on CACHÉ and a series of tests using industry-standard SQL database queries. By using CACHÉ, Health Insights has boosted the scalability and performance of its applications.
Posted January 11, 2011
With its January 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle gained the MySQL open source database management software (DBMS) platform for enterprise IT environments. MySQL is designed to let users design and manage complex applications and data sets, and has gained a substantial share of the overall DBMS market.
Posted January 07, 2011
In line with recent SQL Server releases, Microsoft on Nov. 9 announced at the PASS Summit that the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) version of SQL Server 11 - codenamed Denali (after the Alaska mountain also known as Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America) - is available for download and evaluation. This is our first opportunity to look at some of the features that will form the basis for the next major release of SQL Server, expected to be fully available in the second half of 2011.
Posted January 07, 2011
Back in the 1970s, the ANSI SPARC three-tiered model arose, foreshadowing a smooth intertwining of data and architectural design. The three tiers concept isolated the physical storage needs of data structures independent of business' perception of these structures. The three levels were comprised of schemas labeled external, conceptual, and internal, with each level describing the data in focus from varying perspectives.
Posted January 07, 2011
As my regular readers know, toward the end of each year I devote an edition of my column to review the significant data and database-related events of the past year. Of course, to meet my deadlines, the column is written before the year is over (this column is being written in November 2010), so please excuse any significant news that may have happened late in the year!
Posted January 07, 2011
Astera Software, a provider of data integration solutions through its Centerprise Data Integration platform, has announced the beta version of Centerprise Data Integration Real-Time Edition (RTE). Historically, Centerprise has been a batch-oriented platform for moving data in batches at specified times, but with Centerprise Data Integration Real-Time Edition (RTE), Ibrahim Surani, CEO of Astera Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing, the company is adding the capability to move data in real time. The benefit to customers is that they can achieve better operational reporting or improved operational effectiveness as a result of multiple systems being in sync, and without the need to write custom programs, he notes.
Posted January 05, 2011
Red Gate has launched Data Compare for Oracle, a new tool that compares database table contents, highlights differences, generates SQL scripts to match the tables up, and automatically aligns them if desired. With Data Compare, deployment is done automatically in minutes, says Tom Harris, head of Red Gate's Oracle tools division. "After making database changes, the last thing you want is to spend hours deploying them."
Posted January 04, 2011
Oracle has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5. The new release delivers enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X. MySQL 5.5 is the first major MySQL server release which has been done under Oracle's reign and it is also represents the first time the InnoDB team, which was acquired by Oracle back in 2005, and the MySQL team worked together to create a new release, Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted December 21, 2010
MarkLogic Corporation, whose flagship product is a purpose-built database for unstructured information, has announced that it was selected as the database of choice after a proof of concept that included a migration of the existing catalog content in less than four days.
Posted December 21, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security and data protection solutions for the data center and the cloud, said it has secured $6 million in a Series C funding round. The round included participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Stata Venture Partners, as well as a new strategic investment from Juniper Networks, through the Junos Innovation Fund. The financing will allow Sentrigo to increase global sales and marketing activities in support of its rapid revenue growth rate, as well as to continue expanding its database security and data integrity solutions for the cloud.
Posted December 21, 2010
Oracle today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5. The new release delivers enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X.
Posted December 15, 2010
Oracle has announced a world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on a SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers.
Posted December 15, 2010
InterSystems Corporation, which specializes in advanced integration, database, and business intelligence technologies for breakthrough applications, has announced that support for the latest 2010 releases of the InterSystems CACHÉ database and InterSystems Ensemble integration and development platform is now available on the Amazon EC2 platform with 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the guest operating system.
Posted December 15, 2010
SnapLogic has unveiled the new SnapCenter enterprise integration control center as well as improved performance and scalability in SnapLogicServer 3.1. This release continues SnapLogic's initiatives to meet the integration needs of the most demanding enterprises as they tackle "big data" problems driven the by the ever increasing adoption of cloud computing and mobile, distributed architectures. Separately, SnapLogic, which is led by Gaurav Dhillon, founder and former CEO of Informatica, also announced that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and that Ben Horowitz has joined SnapLogic's board of directors.
Posted December 14, 2010
Oracle has announced a world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on a SPARC Supercluster with SPARC T3-4 servers. In addition to the new world record, Oracle also announced a new service called Gold Support, as well as the SPARC Solaris-based Exalogic Elastic Cloud System, and a complete refresh of the SPARC Enterprise Server product line.
Posted December 07, 2010
At SAP TechEd 2010 held in Bangalore, India, last week, SAP AG announced availability of the new High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA). According to the company, the SAP in-memory computing engine that resides at the heart of SAP HANA is an integrated database and calculation layer that allows the processing of massive quantities of real-time data in main memory to provide immediate results from analyses and transactions. The engine supports industry standards such as SQL and MDX but also incorporates a high-performance calculation engine that embeds procedural language support directly into the database kernel. This approach, SAP explains, eliminates the need to read data from the database, process it, and then write data back to the database.
Posted December 07, 2010
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) has just released the findings of a new survey of IOUG members that benchmarks the rapid evolution of cloud computing among Oracle users. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT professionals and data managers, was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle.
Posted December 01, 2010
The IOUG has completed a number of ground-breaking studies in 2010 through the IOUG ResearchWire program. Conducted among IOUG members by Unisphere Research, 2010 IOUG ResearchWire Executive Summaries are available to all on the IOUG website.
Posted December 01, 2010
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) has just released the findings of a new survey of IOUG members that benchmarks the rapid evolution of cloud computing among Oracle users. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT professionals and data managers, was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle.
Posted November 30, 2010
InterSystems Corporation, which specializes in advanced integration, database, and business intelligence technologies for breakthrough applications, yesterday announced that support for the latest 2010 releases of the InterSystems CACHÉ database and InterSystems Ensemble integration and development platform is now available on the Amazon EC2 platform with 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the guest operating system.
Posted November 30, 2010
Panorama Software, a provider of proactive business intelligence (BI) solutions, has announced support for the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse through its flagship business intelligence solution, Panorama NovaView 6.2.
Posted November 30, 2010
DBSophic, a provider of performance management products for database-centric applications, has announced a new free solution to help SQL Server DBAs identify and trouble-shoot database performance problems. The product, Qure Workload Analyzer, analyzes database workloads comprised of one or more SQL traces and provides DBAs with deep, intelligent analysis. An intuitive graphical interface and multi-dimensional grouping, sorting and filtering make it easy to identify and analyze performance bottlenecks
Posted November 30, 2010
How does one know what one doesn't know? When evaluating what one knows, it is hard to know where to begin. The wise men say, "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." If one believes such commentary, what is known constitutes the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Databases have an easier time with such missing circumstances. If the rows of a database table are lacking referents, an outer join query filtering for NULLs might detail for you all the missing items. In developing and delivering projects, such a reference list for our minds to link to does not exist, for an outer join or anything else. Often, we do not know everything that needs to be done, particularly as a project starts. The difference between success and failure is not so much what one knows, but in how one handles the gaps between what is known now and what needs to be known before one finishes.
Posted November 30, 2010
Fifty percent of enterprises are now using open source databases in a production environment, according to Forrester Research.This is a multi-digit jump from data available just a few years ago. And this isn't just one or two particular business verticals either; just about every sector of the economy is deploying open source databases in production now. Moreover, Forrester predicts that by 2014, 75% of all businesses will be using open source databases to power their key applications.
Posted November 30, 2010
Assuring optimal performance of database applications starts with coding properly formulated SQL. Poorly written SQL and application code is the cause of most performance problems. As much as 75% of poor relational performance is caused by "bad" SQL and application code. But writing efficient SQL statements can be tricky. This is especially so for programmers new to a relational database environment or those who have never been trained to properly write SQL.
Posted November 30, 2010
SQL Azure is Microsoft's cloud-based relational database service hosted in their data centers, and it's got some DBAs worrying about the future. The more I look at the technology, however, the more I see practical applications for it and the less I think people should be concerned.
Posted November 30, 2010
These days, many companies recognize that there are severe repercussions to ignoring or undervaluing data security, and a sizable segment of organizations-at least one-third in many cases-have been taking additional measures to bolster their data security.
Posted November 30, 2010