Database Management Articles
Red Hat last week released the second beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The first beta was released in April, and incorporated a range of new and upgraded features. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta 2 provides an updated installer, additional new technologies and resolutions to many of the issues that were reported in the initial beta. Red Hat is asking customers and partners who are testing the initial beta to install and continue their testing with beta 2.
Posted July 07, 2010
Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has begun shipping a high-performance analytics engine intended to speed up the time it takes for queries. The solution, Ingres VectorWise for Linux, is built on Ingres' VectorWise technology, and Ingres claims seeing performance gains of 10x to 70x over existing database and analytic servers while running sophisticated analytics on large to truly massive data sets.
Posted July 06, 2010
Attachmate Corporation has introduced a new enterprise fraud management solution that is intended to take the guesswork out of application monitoring. According to Attachmate, the new solution, Luminet, reveals user activity within enterprise applications and transforms the data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to protect the privacy of mission-critical data, reduce internal fraud and ensure regulatory compliance.
Posted July 06, 2010
Talend, a leading provider of open source data management software, has announced the availability of Hadoop-based integration for Big Data via its enterprise platform, Talend Integration Suite. According to the vendor, Talend Integration Suite is the first enterprise open source data integration solution to natively support Hadoop's distributed computing architecture for high performance and highly scalable data integration.
Posted July 06, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, and San Francisco-based IT Convergence (ITC), which provides solutions for Oracle Database, and the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle E-Business Suites, have expanded their OAUG & ITC Oracle Applications Workshops series with the addition of several upcoming Oracle R12 regional workshops in Atlanta; Denver; Dallas; and Madison, Wis. The Oracle Applications workshops are designed to assist users in learning the new functions and features of Oracle solutions. The " R12 Financials New Features" workshop offers an overview of R12 functional enhancements, new features and latest modules in the Oracle R12 Financial product suite. For users planning to migrate to R12, the " Preparing for an Oracle R12 Upgrade" workshop provides an outlet to learn Oracle Applications Release 12's functional and technical architecture in detail.
Posted July 06, 2010
EnterpriseDB, a supplier of PostgreSQL-based solutions, and Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse and analytic appliances, has formed a new partnership intended to ease database migration projects. Under the agreement, Netezza will resell EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which includes its Oracle Compatibility Layer, as Netezza Migrator. Migrator will be compatible with the Netezza TwinFin appliance.
Posted June 29, 2010
Aimed at further streamlining the development of database-centric web applications, Oracle has introduced Oracle Application Express Release 4.0. The new release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a feature included at no additional cost with all editions and releases of Oracle Database 11g. The 4.0 release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports, and is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Posted June 29, 2010
Infobright, an open source data warehousing company, has announced Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) 3.4, which provides performance improvements for analytics involving large volumes of data. The release includes query performance improvements of up to 500%, delete performance improvement of over 1600%, the ability to run queries while data is loading, more efficient workload management, and support for multi-language data. "Our focus is on providing the best query performance possible, but always balancing that with low cost and ease of use," Susan Davis, vice president of marketing, Infobright, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010
ISUG and eLearnIT, which initially launched their online training offerings with a program for PowerBuilder, are now adding a new ASE training course. Because ASE as a database has "a massive ecosystem," with many parts to it, ISUG sought feedback from members and partners on where to concentrate its efforts in ASE, explains Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG. "The number-one request was for training on monitoring and diagnostics, and therefore that is what this course is about," he tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010
Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse, analytic and monitoring appliances, and Composite Software, Inc., a data virtualization middleware provider, have announced the Netezza Data Virtualizer to simplify, accelerate and optimize the integration of data stored across multiple Netezza appliances. Powered by Composite Software, the Netezza Data Virtualizer creates an integrated view of data that is physically distributed across multiple Netezza appliances and delivers query results to reporting and analytic applications while Netezza appliances continue to manage their data.
Posted June 29, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of its SQL Anywhere 12 database and synchronization solution. A core component of the Sybase Mobility Platform, SQL Anywhere is optimized for mission-critical database applications running outside traditional data center environments requiring little or no onsite IT support. According to Chris Kleisath, senior director of engineering, SQL Anywhere 12 represents a major platform release, providing many key new enhancements for performance and scalability such as support for storage and synchronization of spatial data, support for iPhone devices, and new self-management features.
Posted June 29, 2010
UniVerse 11.1, scheduled for release in Q3 of this year, will include the External Database Access functionality that already exists in UniData. EDA allows users to map files to the format for another database, and then write directly to it. UniData EDA originally shipped with just a driver for DB2. "We released the API for building additional drivers with UniData 7.2. Once we were acquired by Rocket, we committed to delivering a driver for Microsoft SQL Server. Now we're in the process of building a driver that will work with Oracle," Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, Rocket U2, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Rocket U2 is now looking for people who want to help by testing the driver with their application.
Posted June 23, 2010
Revelation Software reports that the feedback the company received at its May users' conference regarding to the latest version of OpenInsight Development Suite was so positive that it has decided to include many suggestions into the 9.2 release.
Posted June 23, 2010
ONware is now offering the ability to use PostgreSQL as a database system for applications developed for U2, D3, MVON and other MultiValue and PICK database environments. The new support for PostgreSQL has been added based on feedback from prospective customers in the MultiValue world, Jack Roth, director of operations, ONgroup, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Roth notes that he has come across a number of companies that have other development in their organizations in Postgres. "They like Postgres and if they can support one database as opposed to two very dissimilar databases, that is an advantage for them," he explains.
Posted June 23, 2010
ISUG and eLearnIT started their online training offerings with a comprehensive training program for PowerBuilder, and are now adding a new ASE training course. 5 Minute Briefing: Sybase talks with Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG, about the training and why it's needed.
Posted June 23, 2010
Bradmark Technologies, Inc., an established provider of application solutions for database management, has announced the release of Surveillance IQ for Sybase IQ 15 analytics server. With additional monitoring metrics for non-Multiplex, Multiplex, VLDB, and ETL options, this release bolsters Bradmark's continuing development of its premier Sybase monitoring and event management solution for customers who run some of the world's most critical data and need to cost-effectively maintain high performance and reliability.
Posted June 23, 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 23, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of Sybase Advantage Server 10, the latest version of its client/server database with both ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) table-based and SQL-based data access.
Posted June 23, 2010
The preliminary agenda for Sybase TechWave 2010, to be held August 9-11 at the Hilton Washington, in Washington, DC, is available now. Sybase has announced it is planning to expand the event to include another day of technical training
Posted June 23, 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 23, 2010
Confio Software which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 22, 2010
Continuent, Inc., a provider of continuous data availability and performance solutions, announced it is rolling out new capabilities to support advanced hot standby and streaming replication features on PostgreSQL databases. The offering, Continuent Tungsten, leverages multiple separate PostgreSQL databases to create highly available data services that offer the ease-of-management and processing throughput.
Posted June 22, 2010
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