Database Management Articles
The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) held the annual PASS Summit last week drawing 2,814 delegates and 993 pre/post-conference attendees for a total of 3,807 registrations. It is the largest turnout since the inception of the conference, and represents a 25% increase in attendance over 2009. The SQL Server community is growing "and we are very much a part of that community," Rick Heiges, vice president of marketing, PASS, told 5 Minute Briefing. The record conference attendance was not a surprise, he added. "Last year, our numbers were down about 10% but that was actually fantastic because a lot of other shows were down as much as 50%. We knew that we had a strong base to build upon. We saw signs of the economy coming back so when we started to budget for this year we had a good feeling that we would be able to have record attendance because our community is just so passionate about being here and getting together each and every year."
Posted November 16, 2010
Psychiatrists report play is important for keeping our minds and bodies healthy and happy. It has been uncovered that without at least some play, we mentally and physically deteriorate. Lack of play can lead to depression. Our brains are so hardwired in their need for playful activities that without such expressions we loose focus. Play enhances the creativity and imagination within us. Likewise, play has a proper role within our work. And not just for the psychological benefit to the individual, but for the overall health of the organization. For an IT development group, play is essential for finding better ways to approach problems. Within an IT context, play involves evaluating new ways to handle old problems. Prototyping, at times, constitutes play. Prototypes can be used for more than just the practicalities of the user interface; sometimes a prototype of specific functions is necessary for comparisons in order to judge how non-obvious techniques may perform. Such prototype endeavors can involve not only new algorithms, but potentially variant data structures. Ideally, such prototypes will improve team understanding of the data structures and offer insights into potential new and innovative approaches.
Posted November 09, 2010
SQL is the lingua franca for modifying and reading database data and any DBA worth his (or her) paycheck should be proficient in writing SQL queries. But SQL is a flexible and feature-rich language, so there are always things that can be learned - even by senior technicians. As such, this month's column discusses several interesting SQL queries that you can put in your bag of tricks for future use.
Posted November 09, 2010
I am attending my first Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit in Seattle this month. A lot of DBAs I meet are very keen to attend these events as the standard of speakers and quality of content is so high. Travel, accommodation and attendance costs are often prohibitive, however, let alone getting the time away from the office. Getting managers' approval to attend and justifying the cost can be difficult, especially for those of us based outside the U.S. PASS also runs a European event in April each year in Germany and, in the U.K., we have the SQL Bits conference. Those who wish to attend can still run into the same objections, however.
Posted November 09, 2010
Application Security, Inc.(AppSec), a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions (SRC) for the enterprise, and Unisphere Research have announced a new database security report, "Data in the Dark: Organizational Disconnect Hampers Information Security." The report, based on research conducted among 761 members of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), reveals that companies suffer from a false sense of security.
Posted November 09, 2010
At PASS Summit 2010, Quest Software today announced a new user-driven feature of Quest SQLServerPedia, code-named "Project Lucy." Project Lucy analyzes SQL Server trace files securely uploaded by community members. In return, it provides them with an understanding of their instance performance, and how it stacks up against their peers' environments and Microsoft best practices, while keeping their individual user information confidential.
Posted November 09, 2010
While public clouds have gotten much of the cloud computing attention over the past years, a new Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) survey, conducted by Unisphere Research, finds that private cloud formations are growing in many companies, often outpacing adoption of public cloud services.
Posted November 03, 2010
Quest Software, Inc. has announced new initiatives around SharePlex for Oracle, its Oracle data replication solution, in order to put real-time replication within reach of organizations with small IT departments and tight budgets.
Posted November 03, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has announced that Sentrigo Hedgehog Enterprise and vPatch solutions are now available on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for database audit, protection and breach prevention. Sentrigo's database compliance and security solutions allow organizations to more easily run applications subject to PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SEC regulations and more on Amazon EC2.
Posted November 02, 2010
Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, says it is seeing significant adoption momentum of Sybase CEP, a complex event processing (CEP) technology for performing analytics on high speed streaming data.
Posted October 27, 2010
Bradmark Technologies, Inc., has announced the maintenance releases of Surveillance for Sybase that bolsters Bradmark's continuing development of its premier monitoring solution for Sybase data management products, enabling customers - including many that manage the world's most critical data - to cost-effectively maintain unprecedented performance and reliability.
Posted October 27, 2010
MENTIS Software, a provider of Sensitive Information Management solutions for enterprise applications and databases, has announced the availability of its latest release - MENTIS 7. The new release provides advanced Sensitive Data Discovery capabilities to help customers document and manage sensitive data locations as well as program and user access levels. Scan results of the discovery process are maintained in the MENTIS 7 metadata repository, providing critical information to IT managers responsible for security and audit management.
Posted October 27, 2010
Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, has announced the Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM for BlackBerry smartphones - a new "super app" that delivers an integrated application experience on BlackBerry smartphones.
Posted October 27, 2010
Altova has announced the availability of version 2011 of the Altova MissionKit, its integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools.
Posted October 27, 2010
ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd., a provider of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for the service industry, has announced that its Mobility Suite will run on key components of the Sybase mobility platform - SQL Anywhere embedded database and synchronization and Afaria mobile device management and security - by the end of 2010.
Posted October 27, 2010
Onsystex Corporation, which helps companies extend the reach and effectiveness of MultiValue applications, has announced that it has extended its operations by acquiring the development and outsourcing business of EuphoriaNET, a global IT services company, to expand its outsourcing offering to include offshore development in Latin America.
Posted October 27, 2010
At this week's Teradata Partners' users conference, Teradata Corporation announced it is shipping a new version of its data warehouse solution, providing new analytic features to support customers working with complex big data. Teradata Database 13.10 includes temporal capabilities, which enable companies to recreate information from selected points in time. Other new features include advanced and flexible data compression options that provide as much as 20 times more data, as well as analytic functions and expanded capabilities within the Teradata Open Parallel Framework.
Posted October 26, 2010
Quest Software, Inc. has announced new initiatives around SharePlex for Oracle, its Oracle data replication solution, in order to put real-time replication within reach of organizations with small IT departments and tight budgets.
Posted October 26, 2010
HiT Software, Inc., a provider of data integration, and change data capture products for heterogeneous database environments, has released HiT ODBC/400 v9.0 and HiT OLEDB/400 v5.0.
Posted October 26, 2010
Oracle has announced a world record non-clustered TPC-H 3TB benchmark result demonstrating the scalability of Oracle Database 11g running on Oracle's Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server.
Posted October 20, 2010
Altova has announced the availability of version 2011 of the Altova MissionKit, its integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools.
Posted October 20, 2010
Ingres Database 10, the latest version of Ingres Corporation's flagship open source database product is now generally available. Developed at Ingres and with input from the open source community, Ingres Database 10 now supports multi-versioning, column encryption, partitioning and faster bulk loading.
Posted October 19, 2010
When IBM developers set out to build the next version of Informix their goal was to build on the foundation of one of the more mature, effective and reliable pieces of information management software in the industry. With the 10th anniversary of the IBM acquisition of Informix fast approaching, they knew that the 11.7 release would be closely watched by clients and partners alike.
Posted October 12, 2010
As a consultant, I get to meet many varied SQL Server professionals on a regular basis. One of the most common conversations we've had over the last few years surrounds the loss of control the DBA has experienced due to a couple of advances in technology.
Posted October 12, 2010
As bizarre as it seems, no one sabotages our efforts more easily than ourselves. We often leave ourselves vulnerable to failure whenever we respond to requests for project estimates. Like "A Tale of Two Cities" estimating can bring our best and our worst. In offering estimates, individuals may undercut their own efforts. For example, a developer may only consider time coding, and fail to include enough headroom for testing, rework, or documentation. While some aspects of these estimating attempts might suggest a passive-aggressive approach to avoid tasks, much of this estimate-short-sheeting often results from a desire to please and provide a number to make management "happy." There is always a desire from management to have more things done, and to do things quickly on every project. Even when not stated, this unspoken desire colors the responses of the individuals doing the estimating.
Posted October 12, 2010
If you are a DBA, or a database performance analyst, chances are that you deal with performance-related issues regarding your database systems every day of the week. But have you ever stopped for a moment and tried to define what you mean when you say "database performance"? Doing so can be a worthwhile exercise, if only to organize your thoughts on the matter. Think about it; don't we need a firm definition of database performance before we can attempt to manage the performance of our databases?
Posted October 12, 2010
Revelation Software has announced that OpenInsight 9.2.1 is now in development and will include a new Version Control module, as well as O4W (OpenInsight for Web) release 1.1.
Posted October 12, 2010
Oracle introduced the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-8 at Oracle OpenWorld. The new configuration extends the Oracle Exadata Database Machine product family with a high-capacity system for large OLTP, data warehousing and consolidated workloads. "The data volumes now are huge, and they are going to keep getting bigger and as they grow rapidly, you will need more and more power," said Oracle president Mark Hurd, commenting on the release during a keynote at the Oracle conference.
Posted October 06, 2010
5 Minute Briefing: Oracle had the opportunity to meet and speak with Pythian chief technology officer Alexander Gorbachev during Oracle OpenWorld about the company's achievement of four specializations under the OPN (Oracle PartnerNetwork) Specialized Program. Pythian, already a Platinum member of the OPN, has met a series of demanding technical and business requirements to earn the specializations in Oracle Database 11g, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Database Performance Tuning, and Oracle Linux.
Posted October 06, 2010
At Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle unveiled Oracle Fusion Applications. Commenting on the debut of the portfolio during a keynote that highlighted major OpenWorld announcements, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, explained that Oracle Fusion Applications takes the best features of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, the Oracle E-Business Suite, and Siebel and re-implements them on top of a modern middleware infrastructure entirely written in Java.
Posted October 06, 2010
Just 6 months after launching Ignite 8, Confio Software's newest release of its performance analysis tool, the company announced that nearly 90% of Confio's Oracle customer base has upgraded to Ignite 8 representing over 10,000 monitored Oracle instances worldwide.
Posted October 06, 2010
Building on the theme of "freedom of platform choice" Quest Software announced the beta launch of Toad Extension for Eclipse at Oracle OpenWorld. The newest addition to the Toad product family allows Java developers to perform essential Oracle development tasks, such as writing, editing, browsing and querying, directly from within the Eclipse IDE, harnessing the power of Toad for Oracle. This follows Quest's recent announcement on the availability of Toad for Cloud Databases.
Posted October 06, 2010
Estimates put the amount of data in existence at this time at more than a zettabyte (or a trillion gigabytes), which would be the equivalent of 75 billion fully loaded iPads. All this data is streaming into and through enterprises from transactions, remote devices, partner sites and user-generated content, with formats varying from structured, relational data to graphics and videos.
Posted October 06, 2010
Estimates put the amount of data in existence at this time at more than a zettabyte (or a trillion gigabytes), which would be the equivalent of 75 billion fully loaded iPads. All this data is streaming into and through enterprises from transactions, remote devices, partner sites and user-generated content, with formats varying from structured, relational data to graphics and videos.
Posted September 28, 2010
Just 6 months after launching Ignite 8, Confio Software's newest release of its performance analysis tool, the company has announced that nearly 90% of Confio's Oracle customer base has upgraded to Ignite 8 representing over 10,000 monitored Oracle instances worldwide. "DBAs are busy people and they won't upgrade unless there is really something of value there, so the fact that they have really jumped on the new release is because they saw it and they said, this is something we absolutely want to do," Don Bergal, chief operating officer at Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 28, 2010
Revelation Software has announced that OpenInsight 9.2.1 is now in development and will include a new Version Control module, as well as O4W (OpenInsight for Web) release 1.1. O4W 1.0 was released earlier this year as part of the latest release of OpenInsight. "When we released O4W 1.0, which was within our OpenInsight 9.2 release, we received so much feedback - not only to the initial release but even during the beta testing phase," says Robert Catalano, director of sales at Revelation, that Revelation had to stop the development of O4W at a certain point in order to get the documentation in sync. This resulted in a backlog of features that needed to be included, "and they are showing up now in the 9.2.1 release," he tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 22, 2010
Rocket Software is offering two webinars in October. The first is an overview of the upcoming U2 University event, to be held in Denver, November 9-11. Registration is now open for Oct 6, 2010 9 am MDT and Oct 6, 2010 4 pm MDT.
Posted September 22, 2010
InterSystems Corporation will next week roll out a new version of its Caché high-performance object database. The new release targets the growing demand by CIOs for economical high availability by introducing database mirroring, while also now addressing Java developers' need for high-volume high-performance processing combined with persistent storage for event processing systems. Robert Nagle, InterSystems vice president for software development, recently chatted with 5 Minute Briefing about the release and the new features it offers. Commenting on the growing interest in NoSQL databases, Nagle observes that many of the beneficial characteristics people see in NoSQL are in fact true of Caché - a flexible data model and zero DBA cost. "But for us, what is unique is that it is not NoSQL, it is that it needs to be SQL - without the overhead of relational technology - because I think SQL is extremely important for almost every class of application that is deployed."
Posted September 22, 2010
Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance (SRC) solutions for the enterprise, has announced the addition of Rights Management to its flagship enterprise platform, DbProtect. Determining who has rights to what data can be a laborious task and it is something that many organizations avoid because they think the task is impossible to complete, Josh Shaul, vice president of product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We realized we could solve the problem very effectively with software." The new Rights Management module allows information security analysts, business managers, and database administrators (DBAs) to automate user entitlement reviews in enterprise database environments, and also enables organizations to meet compliance regulations mandating the implementation of strong access control measures, such as those required by the Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS.)
Posted September 21, 2010
EnterpriseDB, which provides products, services, support and training based on the PostgreSQL open source database project, has announced support for the newly released PostgreSQL 9.0 open source relational database. PostgreSQL 9.0 includes more than a dozen major improvements that enhance every aspect of database application design and performance, including built-in replication and hot standby capabilities that give PostgreSQL 9.0 the high availability required for the "scale out" and failover architectures that characterize cloud computing and other demanding application environments, as well as 64-bit Windows support. The new release also that simplifies major upgrades by removing the need for the "dump/load data" procedure required in prior versions and instead performs an in-place upgrade, which is much easier and faster.
Posted September 21, 2010
InterSystems Corporation will next week roll out a new version of its Caché high-performance object database. The new release targets the growing demand by CIOs for economical high availability by introducing database mirroring, while also addressing Java developers' need for high-volume high-performance processing combined with persistent storage for event processing systems. Robert Nagle, InterSystems vice president for software development, recently chatted with 5 Minute Briefing about the release and the new features it offers. Commenting on the growing interest in NoSQL databases, Nagle observes that many of the beneficial characteristics people see in NoSQL are in fact true of Caché - a flexible data model and zero DBA cost. "But for us, what is unique is that it is not NoSQL, it is that it needs to be SQL - without the overhead of relational technology - because I think SQL is extremely important for almost every class of application that is deployed."
Posted September 21, 2010
Symantec Corp. announced the availability of Symantec Enterprise Vault 9.0 and Enterprise Vault Discovery Collector, technology to help organizations store, manage and discover information across the enterprise. The vendor also announced NetBackup 5000 deduplication appliance and cloud storage for NetBackup and Backup Exec to help organizations reduce their data storage footprints and more effectively leverage cloud-based data storage services.
Posted September 20, 2010
Oracle has introduced Oracle GoldenGate 11g and Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition 11g, new releases of the two products that form the foundation of Oracle's data integration product line. The new products, part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, offer tighter integration with Oracle applications and technologies, support for additional heterogeneous systems, and improved performance.
Posted September 15, 2010
Enhancing its portfolio of desktop virtualization solutions, Oracle has announced Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6, a solution that delivers server-hosted applications and desktops to client devices, enabling businesses to manage applications centrally in the data center, resulting in higher security, decreased operational costs, and increased mobility.
Posted September 15, 2010
Idera, a provider of Microsoft SQL Server management and administration solutions, has announced the public beta of Idera SQL doctor 1.1, a new tool for database administrators (DBAs) and database developers that collects SQL Server configuration and run-time information, analyzes the results, pinpoints problems, and provides immediate prioritized recommendations to resolve identified SQL Server performance problems.
Posted September 14, 2010
Fewer than 30% of the 430 respondents to a new survey conducted by the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) say their organizations are encrypting personally identifiable information in all their databases. Although that percentage is up slightly from last year, the finding is surprising given the number of existing data privacy and protection mandates that specifically call for data-at-rest encryption.
Posted September 09, 2010
The promises of public cloud computing - pay as you go, infinite scale and outsourced administration - are compelling. However, for most enterprises, security, geography and risk mitigation concerns make private cloud platforms more desirable. Enterprise customers like the idea of on-demand provisioning, but are often unwilling to take the performance, security and risk drawbacks of moving applications to remote hardware that is not under their direct control.
Posted September 07, 2010
Oracle is a fast-changing company, and in recent years, its pace has accelerated to blinding speed. The software giant has expanded well beyond its relational database roots to encompass applications, management tools, service-oriented architecture and middleware, and even hardware. There are now many components to Oracle - from three major databases, to enterprise resource applications, to web applications to development languages to open source desktop tools.
Posted September 07, 2010
Brent Ozar achieved SQL Server 2008 Master status earlier this year, becoming the fifth person in the U.S. outside of Microsoft to achieve the company's highest technical certification. A Quest Software SQL Server expert at the time, Ozar has since joined SQLskills.com, a provider of training and consulting focused on Microsoft SQL Server, as a principal consulting partner. In this issue, he provides an arcane gliimpse into the intense 3-week-long onsite program that include the most difficult exams he had ever seen.
Posted September 07, 2010
As databases are established, particularly databases intended to support analytics initiatives, responsibilities for the design must include articulating the planned approaches for enhancing and scaling the database over time. If a database is created to express a multidimensional data warehouse bus architecture, or a corporate information factory, or anything else, the explanation of this connection should exist somewhere. Such documentation should also expand on why things were decided as they were and the expected stylings to be associated with proposed enhancements. Descriptions involving anticipated processing patterns extend naturally from such architecture artifacts. Database and application design personnel should work together in the creation of such credentials to ensure these documents thoroughly cover the needs of the personnel involved in building and maintaining the solution.
Posted September 07, 2010