DBTA E-EDITION
June 2020
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Trends and Applications
This year more than ever before, customers are turning to online transactions in response to decreased physical mobility due to the COVID-19 crisis, employees are working from home, and an uncertain economy is demanding smarter ways to compete. At the root of all these capabilities is data and the ability to analyze and act on data-driven insights. What technologies are coming to the forefront to enhance enterprises' ability to compete on data? We asked a number of leading industry experts and solution providers to describe what they see as the most impactful technologies shaping today's data environments.
Organizations are increasingly turning to cloud data warehouses for advanced analytics and data visualizations. Solutions like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and more provide immediate value with secure and easy access to any data with near-infinite scalability. However, the convenience of having all of that data accessible from one platform makes full transparency and control essential.
Modernization is driving many of today's enterprise data strategies—and cloud stands out as the primary vehicle for attaining this modernization. However, many enterprises are struggling with data quality issues, as well as integrating cloud-based and on-premise data.
Today, there is a constantly evolving list of data management issues that organizations are contending with. In addition to pressures of exploding data volumes, there is urgent demand for real-time data-driven insights as well as more widespread data access. Expanding regulatory mandates also demand greater data quality and governance, as do cybersecurity threats. Whether cloud-based or on-premise and open source or proprietary, there are many options for data management and analytics. Spanning the spectrum of well-established and cutting edge, the DBTA 100 list recognizes companies that are innovating and preparing for the future.
Database technologies are constantly changing and adding new options for enterprises. At Data Summit Connect, a free 3-day series of data-focused webinars, a session titled "The New World of Database Technologies," looked at two key NoSQL databases, MongoDB, a cross-platform document oriented database, and AnzoGraph DB, an MPP (massively parallel processing) graph database designed to accelerate data integration and scalable analytics.
Columns - Database Elaborations
As the number of types of slowly changing dimensions (SCDs) increased, things have ended with Types 0 through 7, making essentially eight of them. But it is unclear whether there full consensus exists among current practitioners on what actually differentiates each of these eight SCD types. Some confusion may result from the fact that when the first three SCD types were defined, each could be equated to a result for a dimensional attribute. Type 1 had facts associated to dimension values as they are currently, or always current, Type 2 had facts associated with dimension values as were current when the facts were processed, Type 3 had facts associated with both current values and values current when processed.
Columns - DBA Corner
When non-DBAs think about what it is that a DBA does, performance monitoring and tuning are usually the first tasks that come to mind. This should not be surprising. Almost anyone who has come in contact with a computer has experienced some type of performance problem. Moreover, relational database systems have a notorious reputation (much of it undeserved) for poor performance.
Columns - Quest IOUG Database & Technology Insights
Security has not always been as big an issue as it is now. In the past, DBAs were more focused on performance, high availability, or scalability. Today, security is an issue at the forefront of every IT project. Security should come by design and by default, so developers need the right tools to help make that happen. Recently, François Pons, senior principal product manager at Oracle, provided a video overview of the Oracle Database Security Assessment Tool (DBSAT), which helps identify areas where a database configuration, operation, or implementation introduces risks and also recommends changes and controls to mitigate those risks.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
Here's one big advantage to moving to Microsoft Azure SQL Database—you never have to patch. That's all well and good, but most of the SQL Server installed license base is still on-premise. If you're in this category, then it is essential that you keep up with patching and security fixes regularly. The information in this article is the sort that experienced SQL Server DBAs keep close at hand. So, let's take a few minutes to walk through the details of how to do that.
Columns - Next-Gen Data Management
While Postgresql.org has been around since 1996, its origins go back to the mid-1980s, when Michael Stonebraker, who led the Berkeley team that developed Ingres, started a new project called Postgres to build upon the ideas in Ingres. While most PostgreSQL users rely upon the free and open source implementation, there are several variants.
Columns - Emerging Technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided most of us with more disruption and change in a few months than we have experienced in decades. The short-term effects of lockdown, health tragedies, and severe economic downturn are all too apparent. But we all know that there will be a post-COVID world, and it makes sense to try and predict what role technology will play in that recovery.
MV Community
Alcomtec is a Rocket Software partner based in Lima, Peru. The company builds a wide range of technology tools that help businesses solve their critical problems and grow their revenues. Alcomtec launched Fudtrak and Fudtraker, two digital tools that are powering the food truck industry by enabling owners to manage everything from inventory to orders to payments in a single app—both underpinned by Rocket technology.
Using the RESTful services in jBASE, Pennsylvania-based wholesale electrical distributor Scott Electric has been able to transform itself by providing online sales directly to its customers. Despite COVID-19, March was the company's strongest month for online orders.
Zumasys is acquiring Total Computing Solutions (TCS), bringing a new set of platform capabilities for the MultiValue space. Zumasys plans to bring the TotaLink credit card processing software, which is well suited for MultiValue applications, to the general marketplace.