DBTA E-EDITION
August 2020
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Trends and Applications
The mainframe is the most important IT asset for many organizations today, keeping operations up and running and providing the performance and number crunching required by essential technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. Yet, the security of the mainframe is often taken for granted, especially by modern CIOs or CISOs who typically cut their teeth in the world of distributed networking.
The role of cloud computing in today's enterprises continues to accelerate, fueled by both market pressures to compete more aggressively against digital-savvy competitors and, more recently, by the COVID-19 crisis, which has prompted a massive shift to digital work and consumer engagement. While it's clear that cloud computing has a vital role to play in supporting new and existing applications, it presents difficult choices for data managers.
Enterprises with forward-looking and well-honed data strategies will be able to navigate, and recover more quickly from, today's turbulent economy than their less data-savvy counterparts. However, even leading tech-forward companies are struggling with ways to employ data resources to better reach their customers and markets.
Columns - Database Elaborations
IT management can often succumb to repeated patterns of behavior. One of those repeated patterns is accusing developers of being "perfectionists." The developer or developers in question will be told that they should not strive for perfection, because perfection is not needed for the circumstance, and, more importantly, attempts at perfection take too long. Is the developer a closet perfectionist? Maybe, maybe not.
Columns - DBA Corner
The database world is in tumult these days. There are new requirements and new capabilities that organizations are adopting and integrating into their data persistence infrastructure all the time. The world is no longer relational/SQL-only. Organizations are adopting NoSQL database systems to support specific use cases and types of workloads. This is increasing the complexity of how data is managed. But it is not just NoSQL that is driving organizations to run multiple DBMSs. Many organizations have more than one relational DBMS. They may run Db2 on the mainframe and Linux, Oracle on UNIX, and SQL Server on Windows, and perhaps have a few MySQL instances, too. And DBAs are managing a lot of different database instances.
Columns - Quest IOUG Database & Technology Insights
During Quest Forum Digital Event: Innovation Week, William Hardie, vice president of Oracle Database product management, outlined the newest features and updates to Oracle Database. His presentation included a reminder of recent updates—particularly 19c—and an explanation of the features in the preview release of Oracle Database 20c. Each of the latest features fits into Oracle's new mission statement: To help people see data in new ways, discover insights, unlock endless possibilities.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
Microsoft continues to make positive strides in the world of open source. The company once considered open source software to be an anathema, but now it's common for Microsoft to pull software from—and also push software to—the open source software community.
Columns - Next-Gen Data Management
Virtualization of x86 servers is ubiquitous for obvious reasons. Cost savings, efficiencies in provisioning virtual machines (VMs), recoverability, and the ability to move workloads are a few of them. There are, however, key VM and host metrics and events you should keep an eye on if you suspect your database performance is being impacted by running in a virtual machine. Let's walk through those metrics using VMware ESXi as the basis of the discussion.
Columns - Emerging Technologies
In the early days of the internet, a famous New Yorker cartoon noted, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The cartoon was making the point that the internet allowed for truly anonymous interactions in a manner we had not seen before. The anonymity of the internet is as much a feature as a bug. The internet was initially designed to be censorship-resistant, and anonymity—by eliminating the possibility of punishing speech—reduced the potential for censorship.