DBTA E-EDITION
December 2021
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Trends and Applications
As many tools and platforms have evolved to solve niche problem areas, they are fairly disconnected, creating more confusion for data leaders to decide what tools and platforms are needed to support end-to-end business needs. In simple terms, XOps can be broken down to "X" related to data, infrastructure, business intelligence (BI), and machine learning (ML) models, and "Ops" is the automation via code. The individual component has existed for years, but the difference now is they are interconnected to drive agility and innovation by removing silos.
You've decided to go with ELK to centralize and manage your logs. Wise decision. But before you go ahead and install Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and the different Beats, there is one crucial question that you need to answer: Are you going to run the stack on your own, or are you going to opt for a cloud-hosted solution?
The past 2 years have been defining ones for enterprises seeking to become data-driven. There have been changes wrought by COVID-19, of course, but, even before the pandemic, companies were already on a path to better leverage the data that was streaming in from all corners of their organizations. With this heightened focus, new roles have been emerging for the caretakers of data, including database administrators, data engineers, data analysts, data scientists, and developers.
Becoming a data-driven enterprise isn't just a lot of analyst hyperbole. It is the ability to deliver tangible results, from successfully launching new products to achieving increased productivity. A recent study of 1,250 executives, conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group and Splunk, reveals that data leaders—those organizations that are excelling at data classification, aggregation, quality measures, investigation skills, and monitoring—are seeing results in their bottom lines and market positions. At the same time, the survey shows, all organizations still lag in moving forward with data aggregation, classification, and monitoring.
Columns - Database Elaborations
Using surrogate keys within a database is often considered a technique to improve performance. The assumption is that using anything other than a numeric data value to join tables provides "bad" performance. Therefore, whatever the natural key may be—one column, multiple columns, alphanumeric, etc.—the surrogate key can be a 100% numeric single value, standing in for that natural key value set. Some DBMSs have key generators that are numeric, others may be more wide-ranging in values. Some organizations may choose to use surrogate keys generated from hashed natural key values. Will surrogate keys improve everyone's query performance? As with the stock market, specific circumstances differ everywhere, so the individual results may vary.
Columns - DBA Corner
Being a successful database administrator requires more than just deep technical knowledge of database systems. Gaining the technical know-how is important, yes, but there are many sources that offer technical guidance for DBAs. The non-technical aspects of database administration are just as challenging, yet there are fewer guiding resources to help. With this in mind, let's look at the 10 "rules of thumb" for DBAs to follow.
Columns - Quest IOUG Database & Technology Insights
Now more than ever, companies are facing staffing and skills challenges. DBAs and managers are under pressure to deliver high-performing and responsive systems that can scale with the business.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
When it comes to improving the performance of database systems, there are nearly as many approaches as there are DBA (database administrator) teams. Mature disciplines—from medicine to aviation to accounting—also have mature processes that represent the generally accepted workflows and procedures needed for best results, or, at a minimum, to prevent the worst from happening. However, DBAs do not have an equivalent for the FAA handbooks found in every aircraft cockpit in America—that's a shame because so many of our DBA workflows and processes could be made easier, more reliable, and more predictable with a bit of planning and foresight.
Columns - Emerging Technologies
Since the emergence of cloud computing more than a decade ago, many have been waiting for a completely cloud-based, elastic database that could expand (and even contract) its footprint dynamically and would eliminate the significant operational effort of maintaining a production database system.
MV Community
Entrinsik Informer earned top marks from the BARC BI & Analytics Survey 22, scoring in 45 top rankings and 75 leading positions in 6 different peer groups. Informer was top-ranked in various peer groups for price-to-value, distribution of reports, performance satisfaction, operational BI, project success, vendor support, implementer support, customer satisfaction, functionality, ease of use, sales experience, data preparation, competitive win rate, product satisfaction, and ad hoc query.
Kore Technologies and Ad Astra are collaborating to improve data integration capabilities for institutions using Ellucian Colleague. This partnership allows both companies to focus on their value propositions while providing increased value to clients.
Mainstream New Zealand began in 1992 as a virtual business providing freight services between Auckland and Christchurch. Suppliers, customers, and staff leverage the company's internally developed freight management system (FMS) to manage consignments, and its warehouse management system (WMS) to automate warehouse pick, pack, and dispatch processes. Both proprietary systems utilize Rocket UniVerse to deliver the capabilities both the business and their customers need to succeed.