Database Management Articles
The future of business intelligence is coming. The comment is rhetorical, but in many ways it is true. For the last few years the conversation has surrounded Web 2.0 or even BI 2.0. The concept has brought changes to the way that we look at information and the methods that we use to exchange information. BI 2.0 has brought us a plethora of new functionality that provides proactive support to organizations and a more interactive manner of sharing information. So where is this going, and how will today's technology support our needs as 2010 arrives, and with it a new decade?
Posted March 04, 2010
Primary keys come from candidate keys. Each candidate key consists of the attribute or attributes used to label a distinct row in a table. Every candidate key should contain the fewest number of attributes possible to identify rows individually and uniquely. Every entity within a design requires at least one candidate key.
Posted March 04, 2010
After the misery that was 2009, most of the SQL Server users I talk to are happy that 2010 started in languid fashion. Not that there isn't a lot of work to do; on the contrary, there's more work than ever. However, the long hours and multiple projects of 2009, compounded by freezes in all levels of spending, raised the general stress level to unhealthy heights. With the new year, stress levels dropped significantly, and many IT leaders see signs of improving prospects. What does that bode for 2010? I have a couple of predictions, though I doubt they'll surprise many people.
Posted March 04, 2010
The continuing acceptance and growing usage of Linux as an enterprise computing platform has enlivened the open source community. The term "open source" refers to software that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve. Often "open source" gets misinterpreted to mean free software. This is understandable, but the open source concept of free is closer to liberty than it is to no charge.
Posted March 04, 2010
An overwhelming challenge - expanding volumes of data - threatens to gum up any productivity improvements seen to date as a result of information technology deployments. All that data is coming in from systems, sensors, and storage area networks, pressuring organizations to expand database inventories, while grappling with associated licensing and hardware costs. Plus, many compliance mandates demand that this data be stored for long periods of time, but remain accessible to auditors and business end users.
Posted March 04, 2010
For many organizations, application information lifecycle management, or ILM, now offers expedient - and badly needed - measures for properly defining, managing, and storing data. Many enterprises are being stymied by a massive proliferation of data in their databases and applications. Growing volumes of transaction data are being digitally captured and stored, along with unstructured forms of data files such as email, video, and graphics. Adding to this tsunami are multiple copies of all this data being stored throughout organizations. At the same time, increasingly tight mandates and regulations put the onus on organizations to maintain this data and keep it available for years to come. Much of this data still resides on legacy systems, which are costly to operate and maintain.
Posted March 04, 2010
Faced with growing data volumes and limited budgets, companies, educational institutions, and government agencies are increasingly relying on IT to help them gain a competitive edge and better serve their customers and constituents. DBTA recently asked key MultiValue vendors to explain their strategies for enabling data integration from different repositories and for supporting business intelligence and analytics that provide meaningful insight for customers.
Posted March 04, 2010
Oracle has announced Oracle SOA Governance 11g, which consists of Oracle Enterprise Repository, Oracle Service Registry, SOA Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle Web Services Manager. "With the launch of Oracle SOA Governance 11g, Oracle becomes the only vendor to offer a unified management approach for both best-of-breed SOA and packaged applications within a single platform. This unified governance umbrella not only helps organizations to deliver new business capabilities more efficiency, but also helps ensure that they are closely aligned with key business objectives," states Amlan Debnath, senior vice president, Oracle Product Development.
Posted March 03, 2010
Confio Software yesterday announced availability of Ignite 8, a major expansion of its database performance solution. Ignite 8 expands the Ignite for SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and Sybase products to include comprehensive performance monitoring in combination with the response-time analysis for which Ignite has been known.
Posted March 03, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has announced Repscan version 3.0, a major new release of its database vulnerability assessment and security scanning software. Version 3.0 incorporates new and improved features that allow users to more easily navigate, identify and interpret critical data within an enterprise. Among new product features is a graphical user interface, which has been redesigned to allow even security experts with limited database knowledge to run and interpret results. The whole user interface was redesigned from ground up to be more approachable by someone who was not necessarily a database expert, Andy Feit, vice president of marketing for Sentrigo, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted March 03, 2010
Zmanda, a provider of open source and cloud-based backup solutions, has announced a product that enables Tivoli administrators to incorporate backups of MySQL databases as part of an enterprise-wide backup and disaster recovery strategy. The solution, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) Option for Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, enables MySQL users to manage their data protection policies through Tivoli.
Posted March 03, 2010
Confio Software today announced availability of Ignite 8, a major expansion of its database performance solution. Ignite 8 expands the Ignite for SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and Sybase products to include comprehensive performance monitoring in combination with the response-time analysis for which Ignite has been known.
Posted March 02, 2010
Sybase, Inc. recently reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2009. "2009 was obviously a great year of major accomplishment for Sybase," stated John Chen, chairman, CEO and president, during the Q4 earnings call. "We are very pleased that we delivered consistent financial performance throughout the year," which culminated in "the best quarter of the company history in Q4 and a third consecutive year of record revenue, earnings, as well as cash flow." For the full year, he noted, revenue came in at $1.17 billion, the highest ever, and above the company's outlook as it entered into 2009, 12 months ago.
Posted February 25, 2010
Sybase has announced that its Sybase IQ column-based analytics server, in collaboration with solutions from HP and Red Hat, achieved the top data warehousing benchmark result among currently published non-clustered Linux and x86 systems in the TPC-H benchmark at the 1 TB scale factor.
Posted February 25, 2010
Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, has announced the availability of an expanded portfolio of mobile customer relationship management tools and services, enabling enterprises to engage customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle, using the mobile channel.
Posted February 25, 2010
To make it easier for application developers and data management professionals to access the software tools they need, while also reducing the cost and time associated with managing software tool licenses, Embarcadero has announced Embarcadero ToolCloud. "The ToolCloud is about a new way of letting IT departments make Embarcadero tools available to their end users," Philip Rathle, senior director of product management, Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 25, 2010
NorthgateArinso (Northgate) has announced that Anderson Business Technology has gone live with its Reality system. Anderson Business Technology, an office equipment, supply and service provider, teamed up with Northgate to overhaul its system to a contemporary Reality database in a Microsoft Windows server environment. "There is no other sector that moves as fast as technology," says David Anderson, company president and grandson of the founder. "If you are not prepared to make the changes you need to keep pace, you don't survive."
Posted February 24, 2010
Rocket Software is planning a complimentary webcast series focused on the latest release of RocketU2 SystemBuilder Extensible Architecture (SB/XA). SB/XA is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) and deployment environment delivering up-to-the-minute interface design and portable reporting capabilities. Existing SB+ applications can automatically convert without requiring changes to the underlying code.
Posted February 24, 2010
Vertica announced today a new release of the Vertica Analytic Database, incorporating new features designed to increase performance and automate provisioning of computing resources. Vertica 4.0 is the latest version of the company's MPP columnar database, designed for large queries across large amounts of data.
Posted February 23, 2010
To allow companies to simplify development and management of highly advanced interactive analytic applications that process extremely large data volumes, Aster Data has announced Aster Data nCluster 4.5. With the volume of data in enterprises doubling every 18 months, rich and extremely fast analysis on tens and hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of data has become a necessity. Aster Data's previous releases made "big data" analytics possible by allowing analytic applications to run inside Aster Data's massively parallel database. Now, Jon Bock, director of product marketing for Aster Data, tells 5 minute Briefing, "We are taking the next step in that we are putting together an environment and toolset to make it significantly easier to develop those applications, to test them, and then to manage them."
Posted February 23, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has announced Repscan version 3.0, a major new release of its database vulnerability assessment and security scanning software.
Posted February 23, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, announced its 2010 OAUG Connection Point conference series, three 2-day, intensive forums that enable attendees to collaborate and train with educators and executives from around the world on specific Oracle solutions.
Posted February 23, 2010
Oracle has announced availability of the latest release of Oracle Database Lite, a comprehensive solution for developing, deploying and managing applications for mobile and embedded environments. With Oracle Database Lite, mobile users gain continuous access to data unconstrained by mobile network bandwidth and coverage, allowing them to access enterprise data even in the absence of a network connection.
Posted February 17, 2010
Oracle has agreed to acquire AmberPoint, a leader in SOA management. AmberPoint's solutions help organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions, such as insurance claims processing or account provisioning where multiple applications need to work together.
Posted February 17, 2010
CommVault is shipping an integrated cloud storage connector for its Simpana software platform designed to enable customers to move on-premises backup and archive data into, and out of, private and public cloud storage without complex scripting or the addition of disparate cloud gateway appliances. With the addition of this new connector, the Simpana software can treat cloud storage providers as simply another target storage destination, along with onsite disk, VTL, and optical devices.
Posted February 17, 2010
To make it easier for application developers and data management professionals to access the software tools they need, while also reducing the cost and time associated with managing software tool licenses, Embarcadero today announced Embarcadero ToolCloud.
Posted February 16, 2010
Calpont Corp, a provider of analytic database solutions, announced it is shipping a data warehouse solution based on open source technology. The product will be available as a commercially supported solution, as well as community download.
Posted February 16, 2010
There's no question that databases are the heart of nearly every application running these days. Moreover, the information stored in databases is now being routinely used as a competitive and operational business weapon by all businesses and organizations regardless of size or industry. Whether used internally in business intelligence applications or utilized externally via the exposure of data tools that let customers view and search through vast amounts of data on websites, data is being maximized in many different ways.
Posted February 09, 2010
When the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was first enacted in 2002 in the wake of several very visible accounting scandals, small to medium enterprises may have felt they dodged a very expensive bullet. The requirement to document processes for governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), and have them confirmed by outside auditors only applied to publicly traded companies. Unlike their publicly traded brethren, SMEs were not forced to purchase costly GRC software, did not have to re-direct resources from their normal daily tasks to prepare for audits, and did not have to change their methods of operation to comply with a government mandate.
Posted February 09, 2010
Rocket Software has announced that a new version of the SystemBuilder Extensible Architecture (SB/XA) Personal Edition is available for customers now using Personal Editions of UniData or UniVerse. This new version incorporates all the features and benefits provided in SB/XA 6.0.1. SB/XA 6.0.1, released in November 2009, is designed to maximize its customers' investments in U2 technology. SB/XA is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) and deployment environment that delivers up-to-the-minute interface design and portable reporting capabilities. Existing SB+ applications can automatically convert without requiring changes to the underlying code.
Posted February 09, 2010
There are still a few exhibitor opportunities available for the 2010 Users Conference, which will be held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev., April 27-30. Exhibitors have the opportunity to book a booth or table top and sponsorships include admission for one attendee with a second attendee free, as well as additional amenities.
Posted February 09, 2010
Fortis Bank Nederland's Singapore office has gone live with banking system provider Temenos' T24 platform utilizing jBASE technology. The process was completed in 5 months and was driven by Fortis Bank Nederland's (FBN) separation from its Belgian counterpart. It marks the first stage of a consolidation process which will see the T24 system rolled out internationally from a central hub in the Netherlands. The bank now plans to extend T24 to offices in the U.K., U.S., Hong Kong and continental Europe and expects to complete the project by the third quarter of 2010.
Posted February 09, 2010
Have you ever read those inserts that your bank, credit card providers, insurance company, mutual fund company, and others slip inside your statements and bills? We all get them. You know, those flimsy pieces of paper, printed in small type and written in convoluted English. I have started collecting them - sort of like baseball cards. But I doubt they'll ever be valuable. They are entertaining, though ... and disheartening.
Posted February 09, 2010
One fall semester many years ago, I was a university freshman. Actually, I was anything but "fresh." I was dumb enough to think that 8 a.m. was a wonderful time to attend Economics 101. After staying up until the wee hours most every night, the "dismal science" took on more than one meaning as I set my clock just early enough to get to class on time. Along with 30 other very naïve classmates, I staggered into class and did my bleary-eyed best to focus on the lessons at hand. There were lots of Greek compound words and lots of graphs. I learned, for example, that the word economics derives from the Greek "oikonomikos," which means, approximately, "death by slidedecks" and, specifically, "house" (oikos) and "management" (mikos). I barely survived the experience and never took an 8 a.m. class again. Imagine my surprise, then, when a lesson I'd learned (and promptly forgotten) all those years ago jumped back into my consciousness late last year.
Posted February 09, 2010
In 1995, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen famously claimed that applications of the future would run within a web browser, relegating the role of the operating system - Windows, in particular - to "a poorly debugged set of device drivers." Fifteen years later, we can see that although rich applications such as Microsoft Office are still dominant, the web browser has become a platform that can deliver almost any conceivable type of business or consumer application.
Posted February 09, 2010
Designing a data model that supports the reporting and analytical functions is no different, initially, than any other modeling effort. Understanding the data is crucial. The data architect or modeler needs to feel comfortable with dimensional modeling techniques and needs to obtain a working knowledge of the universe of discourse for the subject-at-hand. A good start in gathering this knowledge begins by reviewing the operational data structures containing the identified source elements. The challenge in designing analytical solutions is found in applying best practices for analytics simply and effectively.
Posted February 09, 2010
Sybase, Inc., has announced that it has finalized an asset purchase agreement with Aleri Inc., a provider of enterprise-class complex event processing (CEP) technology and CEP-based solutions. CEP is an integral part of real-time analytics and with this acquisition, Sybase strengthens its overall analytics platform and leadership position to better meet the needs of enterprises requiring real-time analytics processing. The acquisition is intended to not only improve Sybase's financial services stack but also bring the company into new markets.
Posted February 09, 2010
IBM has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Initiate Systems, a provider of data integrity software for information sharing among healthcare and government organizations. The announcement of the acquisition "marks a significant expansion of IBM's ability to help clients integrate information from hundreds of sources," Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM's Information Management Software division, said during a teleconference detailing the acquisition.
Posted February 09, 2010
Oracle announced yesterday that it has agreed to acquire AmberPoint, a leader in SOA management. AmberPoint's solutions help organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions, such as insurance claims processing or account provisioning where multiple applications need to work together.
Posted February 09, 2010
IBM has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Initiate Systems, a provider of data integrity software for information sharing among healthcare and government organizations. The announcement of the acquisition "marks a significant expansion of IBM's ability to help clients integrate information from hundreds of sources," Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM's Information Management Software division, said during a teleconference detailing the acquisition.
Posted February 08, 2010
After receiving regulatory approval from the European Commission for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc, Oracle last week announced that it had closed the deal, completing a process begun last spring. While the purchase had been held up by the European Commission's concerns that Oracle's ownership of the MySQL open source database, through the Sun acquisition, would have an adverse effect on competition, in a statement released by the commission, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said, "I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products."
Posted February 03, 2010
SYSTIME and Oracle yesterday announced availability of an Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) solution that connects Oracle's Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.
Posted February 03, 2010
Syncordant, a data integration company, has announced the release of its new enterprise-class product, the Data Integrator. The new product enables a single, real-time, customizable view into multiple heterogeneous databases distributed anywhere in the world.
Posted February 03, 2010
Enteros, Inc., a provider of performance management software, is extending the support of its Load2Test ZeroDev offering to a host of platforms, including Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL, Oracle EBUS Oracle Forms and HTTP/XML.
Posted February 03, 2010
Syncordant, a data integration company, has announced the release of its new enterprise-class product, the Data Integrator. The new product enables a single, real-time, customizable view into multiple heterogeneous databases distributed anywhere in the world.
Posted February 02, 2010
Informatica Corporation, a provider of data integration software, has acquired Siperian, a vendor in the master data management (MDM) infrastructure technology category. Informatica will acquire Siperian, on a fully diluted basis, for approximately $130 million in cash.
Posted February 02, 2010
Sybase today announced the availability of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 15.5, the newest version of its high-performance, mission-critical enterprise database management system. This latest version of ASE nonetheless provides key new functionality, Terry Orsborn, product marketing manager for Sybase ASE, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The first is really around what we are calling ‘extreme performance.' This is our new in-memory database capability. Our customers are finding our approach to be very compelling and it is really resonating with their needs for low-latency and high concurrency."
Posted January 27, 2010
Enteros, Inc., a provider of performance management software, is extending the support of its Load2Test ZeroDev offering to a host of platforms including Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL, Oracle EBUS Oracle Forms and HTTP/XML.
Posted January 27, 2010
Reflecting on its accomplishments in 2009, Sybase, Inc. recently announced significant partnership momentum supporting its Unwired Enterprise Vision. Entering 2010, the company says it is poised to further extend the availability of the proven mobile enterprise platform, mobile IP and mobile commerce offerings with an extensive global partnership ecosystem that includes SAP, Samsung, Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN), Verizon and IBM
Posted January 27, 2010
Rocket Software has announced that a new version of the SystemBuilder Extensible Architecture (SB/XA) Personal Edition is available for customers now using Personal Editions of UniData or UniVerse. This new version incorporates all the features and benefits provided in SB/XA 6.0.1.
Posted January 27, 2010