DBTA E-EDITION
June 2025
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Trends and Applications
In the rush to embrace artificial intelligence (AI), enterprises across industries have encountered a harsh reality: transformation takes more than technology. Two years ago, generative AI captured the imagination of business and technology leaders alike, promising to revolutionize operations and decision-making. Yet today, many organizations find themselves with pilot projects that are failing to scale, and AI investments that are falling short of expectations.
Change is happening, and it's happening so fast that even the most seasoned data managers and professionals can't keep up. New technologies, along with new approaches to data management, are restructuring—and reimagining—data-related jobs. Industry leaders are expressing astonishment at the speed in which the data world is changing. "I'm witnessing something that's going to make everything different," said Milan Parikh, lead enterprise architect at Cytel.
It's been said that AI is only as good as the data fueling it. And that's true—to an extent. Having good data is important, but it is also useless if it's inaccessible. This explains why building the Data Operating Fabric—an intelligent platform that oversees and controls real-time data ecosystems to help businesses run more smoothly and drive better ROI—has become a priority for organizations as AI adoption continues to accelerate and new solutions, such as AI agents, come online.
We're still only at the beginning stages of AI, and data appears to be one of the biggest issues slowing down progress. That's one of the revelations of a new survey from Accenture of 2,000 executives. "Though every business may want an AI-powered edge, many companies are still struggling to advance beyond their initial AI experiments," survey co-authors Senthil Ramani, Lan Guan, and Philippe Roussiere find. "A big reason for this is low data readiness—which arises when all types of data, especially unstructured data, are not used to the max."
Columns - Database Elaborations
Inside any database management system (DBMS), one can designate a specific data item as "null." The null represents the "existence" of a non-value, the nonexistence of a value, or…nothing. This sounds a bit like an oxymoron, a nonvalue value, but there it is. Each DBMS has its own implementation of null support, so what it does to be able to share with you that "there is no value" can differ. For example, rather than a value, there may be a group of bit flags associated with an individual data element, with one of those bits being an "I am null" flag. And because every DBMS has its own way of doing this, it is best not to think that by using a null, one is greatly saving on space usage. Space may be saved, or maybe not so much.
Columns - DBA Corner
For several years now, cloud computing has been heralded as the ultimate solution for IT infrastructure, promising scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. Organizations of all sizes rushed to the cloud, enticed by its pay-as-you-go pricing and freedom from on-prem hardware constraints. However, an interesting shift is occurring: Some organizations are repatriating workloads from the cloud back to on-prem or hybrid environments. This phenomenon, known as cloud repatriation, is challenging the assumption that "cloud-first" is always the best strategy.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
If you're reading this, you're likely an expert in something database related. You know everything there is to know about SQL, Microsoft Azure, data analytics, maybe more. Perhaps you're an IT specialist who knows your company's digital infrastructure from end to end. If you've spent some years in your role, you've realized that, in addition to your technical know-how, you've probably had to develop another set of skills—interpersonal ones.
Columns - Emerging Technologies
As our lifespans stretch well beyond the traditional retirement horizon, the future of work is undergoing a profound transformation. With some individuals living well into their 110s—and babies born today potentially reaching 150—we're not just facing longer lives, but longer careers. Many of us may be working into our 80s or 90s. The implication is clear: technology must evolve to support not just the young and able but also the aging who will increasingly make up a significant portion of the global workforce.
MV Community
Database Trends and Applications magazine presents the annual DBTA 100, a list of forward-thinking companies expanding what's possible with data for their customers. Several top MultiValue companies land on the list again this year, including KoreTech, Revelation Software, and Rocket Software.