Database Management Articles
Quest Software, Inc. plans to launch a beta program tomorrow 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 June 22, 2010
Oracle has announced Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g. A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g supports all types of processes with a new unified process foundation, targeted user-centric design and new social BPM capabilities, and includes a native implementation of BPMN 2.0.
Posted June 16, 2010
GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
Posted June 16, 2010
GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
Posted June 15, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, has launched its new website, which now incorporates a more user-oriented design and facilitates navigation from page to page. With a new homepage featuring bold graphics, concisely captioned links and headlines, as well as an automatic slide reel of the latest news, events and learning and networking opportunities OAUG has to offer, the new website showcases the resources that are valued by its members, while also providing a more aesthetic approach and user-friendly navigation tools.
Posted June 08, 2010
Yesterday, at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2010 in New Orleans Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration and event capture software, introduced the new Attunity PowerPivot Connector for Oracle, a dedicated and optimized solution for making Oracle data available in Microsoft PowerPivot. Attunity also announced the availability of additional certified connectors that enable PowerPivot users to access data from many heterogeneous sources.
Posted June 08, 2010
Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution, aimed at helping organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security.
Posted June 08, 2010
Brent Ozar, a Quest Software SQL Server expert, recently achieved SQL Server 2008 Master status, becoming only the fifth person in the U.S. outside of Microsoft to achieve the company's highest technical certification. Ozar, who is at the Quest booth at Tech-Ed in New Orleans this week, recently talked with 5 Minute Briefing, providing an arcane glimpse into the intense 3-week-long onsite program that included the most difficult exams he had ever seen.
Posted June 08, 2010
Customer service is always important but never more critical than during difficult economic times, when wasting time is just not acceptable and customer satisfaction is an imperative. Atlantic Detroit Diesel-Allison sells and services a full line of Detroit Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, and MTU engines, and the automatic transmissions offered by the Allison Transmission Division of General Motors Corporation. Atlantic DDA had initiated a plan to improve its service department by improving order processing, thus driving more revenue, with additional goals of gaining operational efficiency and heightening customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these objectives, Atlantic DDA needed to make real-time information available to its teams of service representatives.
Posted June 07, 2010
If managing your corporate data for the long term isn't currently on your mind, it should be, and in several different ways: cost, performance, business continuity, and compliance. First, let's talk about cost and performance. You want to manage your database infrastructure so it can support your growing data needs within budget, while providing acceptable performance to your users. SANs (storage area networks) have enabled us to meet these contradicting goals over the last decade, and, as I mentioned in a previous column, SAN vendors are offering innovative new technologies to push on-disk storage even further. Some interesting new strategies also are helping organizations achieve a more balanced mix of cost versus performance through the use of "tiered storage."
Posted June 07, 2010
Quality can be a hard thing to define. What is good and what is bad may not be easily identified and quantified. When a data mart accurately reflects data exactly as found in the source, should that be considered a quality result? If the source data is bad, is the data mart of high quality or not? If the data mart differs from the source, when is the difference an improvement of quality and when is said difference evidence of diminished quality? While it may seem self-evident that correcting the source of load data would be the "right" thing to do, in practice that direction is not necessarily self-evident. The reasons supporting this nonintuitive approach are varied. Sometimes changes to the source impact other processes that must not change, or the changes will expose problems that may provoke undesired political fallout, or it may simply be that making the proper adjustments to the source application would prove too costly to the organization. For all these reasons and more, in the world of business intelligence, the dependent data often is expected to be of higher quality than the source data. In order for that improvement to occur, data placed within the dependent mart or data warehouse must be altered from the source. Sometimes these alterations become codified within the process migrating data from the source. Other times changes are made via one-time ad hoc updates. Either way, this alteration leads to a situation in which the dependent data will no longer equate one-for-one to the source data. Superficial comparisons of this altered content will highlight the disparity that what exists for analytics is not the same as what exists for the operational system.
Posted June 07, 2010
Before we go any further, let me briefly answer the question posed in this column's title: "No Way!" OK ... with that out of the way, let's discuss the issue ... Every so often, some industry pundit gets his opinions published by declaring that "Database administrators are obsolete" or that "we no longer need DBAs." Every time I hear this, it makes me shake my head sadly as I regard just how gullible IT publications can be.
Posted June 07, 2010
In only a few years' time, the world of data management has been altered dramatically, and this is a change that is still running its course. No longer are databases run in back rooms by administrators worrying about rows and columns. Now, actionable information is sought by decision makers at all levels of the enterprise, and the custodians of this data need to work closely with the business.That's because, in the wake of the recent financial crisis and economic downturn, there's a push from both high-level corporate management and regulators to achieve greater understanding and greater transparency across the enterprise, Jeanne Harris, executive research fellow and a senior executive at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, and co-author, along with Tom Davenport, of Competing on Analytics and Analytics at Work, tells DBTA. "In many ways, I think the ultimate result of the financial crisis is that executives realized they cannot delegate analytics to subordinates; they can't view it as technology or math that doesn't really affect them."
Posted June 07, 2010
In the midst of turbulent times, many successful businesses learned an important lesson: The closer IT works with the business, the better an organization can weather the storms that blow in. Thus, many savvy companies understand that the managers and professionals who oversee information technology and applications need to be well incentivized to stay on. At the same time, these professionals understand the need to develop expertise in business management and communications. Many companies are looking to information technology to provide an additional competitive edge, and see their Oracle enterprise systems as the cornerstone of this strategy. As a result, a survey finds that Oracle enterprise application managers and professionals appear to have weathered the economic storm. The survey, conducted among 334 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) by Unisphere Research, and sponsored by Motion International, finds an increase in the number of Oracle technology professionals who are near or surpassing the $100,000 mark in their base salaries.
Posted June 07, 2010
Panorama Software, a provider of proactive business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the release of NovaView 6.2, the newest version of its flagship suite of web-enabled BI applications. Oracle connectivity is a key addition to the available data sources, making Oracle relational database data instantly available for interactive, multi-dimensional analysis with the entire NovaView product stack.
Posted June 02, 2010
Yesterday, Oracle announced a world record result on the SAP Business Intelligence-Data Mart (BI-D) standard application benchmark. According to Oracle, this result surpasses the best IBM DB2 result on this benchmark with more than eight times the performance.
Posted June 02, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database design, development and management tools for all major database platforms, has unveiled a new line of XE branded database products that incorporate three distinguishing features - deep, native support across all major databases with a consistent user interface, centralized license management and on-demand tool access via Embarcadero ToolCloud, and an easy upgrade path to Embarcadero All-Access XE.
Posted June 02, 2010
Teradata has acquired xkoto, the creator of GRIDSCALE, an active-active solution that virtualizes the database infrastructure, enabling businesses to distribute application loads horizontally across multiple database copies for better reliability and performance.
Posted June 01, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database design, development and management tools for all major database platforms, has unveiled a new line of XE branded database products that incorporate three distinguishing features - deep, native support across all major databases with a consistent user interface, centralized license management and on-demand tool access via Embarcadero ToolCloud, and an easy upgrade path to Embarcadero All-Access XE.
Posted June 01, 2010
The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance object database to support the scientific processing of the Gaia mission. This mission's aim is to map the Milky Way with precision. The Gaia mission will launch in mid-2012 to conduct a census of all the billion stars in our galaxy. Gaia will observe all celestial objects down to their lowest magnitude. Each object will be observed an average of 70 times during a 5-year period, charting their positions, distances, movements and changes in brightness. Gaia is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new objects, such as extra-solar planets and failed stars known as brown dwarfs. Within our own solar system, Gaia will be able to identify hundreds of thousands of asteroids.
Posted June 01, 2010
Varonis Systems Inc., a provider of data governance software, will soon be shipping Version 5.5 of its data management and governance toolsets. The updated editions of DatAdvantage and DataPrivilege represent the latest evolution of Varonis' Meta-data Framework, which enables customers to identify sensitive unstructured and semi-structured data on their file systems, SharePoint sites and network-attached storage (NAS) devices, find areas with excessive permissions and abnormal access activity, understand who can access, who is accessing, who shouldn't have access, and who owns the data, and remediate risk faster than traditional data protection products.
Posted June 01, 2010
IBM has announced a new DB2 feature that allows clients to more easily move their applications written for Sybase ASE to DB2, adding to the support for Oracle Database applications introduced last year. "With this new feature, we are adding the compatibility capabilities for applications that are written for Sybase ASE to run with little and in many cases no changes to the application," Bernie Spang, director of database strategy and marketing at IBM, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 01, 2010
Bradmark Technologies, Inc., a provider of application solutions for database management, announced that its flagship product, SurveillanceDB, has been selected by Facets users, including Blue Care Network of Michigan, Kansas City, Wellpoint and others as their monitoring solution to ensure overall system efficiency by reducing the time to identify and resolve database issues and track departmental usage. Facets is TriZetto's enterprisewide software solution for health plan administration. The state-of-the-art platform, with integrated applications, automates processes across an entire enterprise and drives greater cost-efficiencies. Facets also helps organizations support the consumer-directed products demanded by today's retail healthcare market and deliver advanced care management capabilities.
Posted June 01, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies has released Rapid SQL XE, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers and database administrators (DBAs) to produce high quality SQL code faster. Rapid SQL XE includes direct native support for heterogeneous database environments from a single user interface, and debuts support for Embarcadero InterBase and the open source Firebird database, in addition to full Unicode support.
Posted May 26, 2010
SAP and Sybase, Inc. have announced that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase, in a transaction that will bring them together to enable companies to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The planned transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and, according to the companies, Sybase, based in Dublin, Calif., will be run as a standalone company under the name "Sybase an SAP company."
Posted May 26, 2010
The Rocket U2 team has announced a call for beta participants for its new product, U2 DataVu. Based on Rocket Shuttle, U2 DataVu will provide U2 developers with powerful and flexible ad hoc query, reporting and dashboard capabilities. With native access to UniData and UniVerse U2, developers can use U2 DataVu's graphical drag and drop capabilities to build visual reports and dashboards with zero programming.
Posted May 26, 2010
A major new release of PostgreSQL, the enterprise-class open source database, is now in beta, and is expected to be released into general availability this summer. PostgreSQL version 9.0 is the first version to include built-in real-time binary database replication with query scale-out, consisting of two features, hot standby and streaming replication.
Posted May 26, 2010
A major new release of PostgreSQL, the enterprise-class open source database, is now in beta, and is expected to be released into general availability this summer. PostgreSQL version 9.0 is the first version to include built-in real-time binary database replication with query scale-out, consisting of two features, hot standby and streaming replication.
Posted May 26, 2010
Oracle has agreed to acquire Secerno, a provider of database firewall solutions for Oracle and non-Oracle databases. According to Oracle, Secerno's solution adds a critical defensive layer of security around databases, which blocks unauthorized activity in real time.
Posted May 25, 2010
Continuing its investment in MySQL, Oracle unveiled the latest release of MySQL Enterprise, a comprehensive offering of production support, monitoring tools, and MySQL database software. A key component of the release is MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.2, which delivers enhanced query performance monitoring, improved security, and time-saving integration with MySQL Support. MySQL Enterprise Monitor helps organizations more efficiently manage MySQL servers and helps reduce downtime by identifying problems before they become costly outages.
Posted May 20, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies has released Rapid SQL XE, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers and database administrators (DBAs) to produce high quality SQL code faster. Rapid SQL XE includes direct native support for heterogeneous database environments from a single user interface, and debuts support for Embarcadero InterBase and the open source Firebird database, in addition to full Unicode support.
Posted May 20, 2010
HiT Software, a provider of provider of data integration and change data capture software products, has been acquired by BackOffice Associates, a provider of data migration, data governance and master data management solutions for Oracle, SAP and other ERP vendors.
Posted May 20, 2010
Altova recently announced the availability of Version 2010 Release 3 (v2010r3) of the Altova MissionKit, an integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools. This latest release provides a range of usability and performance enhancements as well as integration with Visual Studio 2010 and support for industry standards such as iXBRL and National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).
Posted May 20, 2010
Microsoft last week announced that volume licensing downloads for SQL Server 2008 R2 are available in all languages, including the public availability of PowerPivot functionality. Customers can now download the trial version of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 and the web downloads of PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint.
Posted May 18, 2010
A major new release of PostgreSQL, the enterprise-class open source database, is now in beta, and is expected to be released into general availability this summer. PostgreSQL version 9.0 is the first version to include built-in real-time binary database replication with query scale-out, consisting of two features, hot standby and streaming replication.
Posted May 18, 2010
ParaScale, Inc. has introduced a new version of its cloud storage platform with advanced features for data security, protection and accessibility. Release 2.5 of ParaScale Cloud Storage software also includes features to efficiently address 'big data' requirements by enabling data services and application integration directly onto storage nodes.
Posted May 18, 2010
SAP and Sybase, Inc. announced Wednesday afternoon that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase for approximately $5.8 billion, in a transaction that will bring the companies together to enable customers to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and Sybase will be run as a standalone company. "This is a strategic moment for SAP, for Sybase, our customers, and the IT industry," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP and a member of the SAP executive board, in a conference call for analyst and the press. "This acquisition is about accelerating growth for both businesses. This transaction is fully aligned with our strategic objectives to significantly expand our addressable market, opening up new opportunities in mobility, in-memory computing, and analytics."
Posted May 13, 2010
Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has entered into a strategic agreement with Bendigo Partners, LLC to promote the use of Ingres VectorWise within the financial services industry. Bendigo Partners focuses on investment and operating partner opportunities in global, technology-driven financial services. It supports product expansion, global expansion, acquisitions, or technology and operational efficiencies with both capital and expertise.
Posted May 11, 2010
Altova recently announced the availability of Version 2010 Release 3 (v2010r3) of the Altova MissionKit, an integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools. This latest release provides a range of usability and performance enhancements as well as integration with Visual Studio 2010 and support for industry standards such as iXBRL and National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).
Posted May 11, 2010
HiT Software, a provider of provider of data integration and change data capture software products, was acquired last week by BackOffice Associates, a provider of data migration, data governance and master data management solutions for Oracle, SAP and other ERP vendors.
Posted May 11, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies has released Rapid SQL XE, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers and database administrators (DBAs) to produce high quality SQL code faster. Rapid SQL XE includes direct native support for heterogeneous database environments from a single user interface, and debuts support for Embarcadero InterBase and the open source Firebird database, in addition to full Unicode support.
Posted May 11, 2010
You're probably familiar with the old saying that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." That may have been true back in the days when conversations about competitive advantage concerned memberships at prestigious golf clubs and lavish expense accounts; in the days when data was regarded as mere records of transactions, production and inventory levels. Today's conversations about competitive advantage may still include talk of personal relationships. More frequently, though, these conversations reflect the relatively recent appreciation of the intrinsic value of enterprise data - a value seen not just by senior executives, but also by employees in virtually every department. There is broad consensus in most organizations that enterprise data, and perhaps more importantly, the ability to analyze large volumes or smaller subsets of data at will, in real time, are crucial business differentiators.
Posted May 10, 2010
Mergers and acquisitions often come quickly and when they do, it is critical to have tools and utilities capable of scaling to meet new challenges so operations continue seamlessly, customer service standards are upheld, and costs are contained. This was the case for UGI Utilities, a large natural gas and electric service provider in the eastern U.S. In 2006, UGI acquired the natural gas utility assets of PG Energy from Southern Union Company. A longtime customer of BMC, UGI found it was aligned with the right software company to provide implementation of mainframe service management solutions as well as first class support to get the job done and successfully integrate the newly acquired company's data into its environment, saving time and money.
Posted May 10, 2010
Application monitoring started off with a simple need - to help an administrator or manager of an application, monitor and manage its performance. It was narrow in scope and limited in use - to monitor a single application and provide metrics useful for managing that application only. Monitoring tools were often provided by application vendors, but the growing and complex nature of IT environments necessitated the entry of third-party monitoring tools. These were more specialized, with the ability to centrally monitor several different applications. They helped administrators gain visibility across several different applications, understand where problems occurred, and helped to quickly resolve them.
Posted May 10, 2010
It is rare to find an implemented database devoid of reference tables. Reference tables provide valid values for drop-down lists and in a slightly obtuse way, also allow for expression of a domain or user-defined data type within the database design. Nominally a reference list is but a list of values to be referenced. In practice, the implemented structure of a reference table is driven by small nuances regarding how each list is used. The signifiers may consist of a code or number that creates a short-hand way of expressing a state or value. Yet in addition to such simple codes, a "medium length" name column or even a column to contain a lengthy text description should exist in support of these codes. The names may be used in drop-down lists so that people need not memorize many code values, and the descriptions can assist help-functions by providing users with more understanding of a value's meaning or intended use. For operational applications it may be worthwhile to have an attribute expressing the order in which items should be displayed, unless alphabetical display is a preference. If codes are maintained via online screens, an indicator may be helpful in flagging values that are part of the system and not to be removed or deactivated via those online screens.
Posted May 10, 2010
One thing I really enjoy about the SQL Server community is its vibrancy. I'll give you details on the SQL Server community's explosive growth in a moment, but let's start by comparing Microsoft SQL Server's user community with those of other significant database platforms.
Posted May 10, 2010
Oracle president Charles Phillips unveiled Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g during a presentation in the Guggenheim Museum's Peter B. Lewis Theater filled with customers, analysts and the press. "Now that we can instrument the entire stack, because it is our stack, we can do things we couldn't do before," Phillips told the audience. There is value in being able to get a handle on management costs and gain more predictable environments so downtime is not a threat, and integration is not a struggle, he stressed.
Posted May 05, 2010
5 Minute Briefing had an opportunity to meet with CONFIO at the COLLABORATE 10 conference in Las Vegas. CONFIO recently launched ignite8, the database performance monitoring tool that supports the four major databases installed: Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Sybase. CONFIO ignite8 has been extensively field tested and uses historical trend data to resolve current database performance problems.
Posted May 05, 2010
Pillar Data Systems has introduced new features to increase the performance, efficiency and ease of management for its Pillar Axiom storage system, building on the Axiom's Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities.
Posted May 05, 2010