Database Management Articles
Oracle has introduced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g. "The new release allows customers to integrate relational and OLAP analysis across a multitude of different federated data sources and presents that in a very simple way to end users so that they can do analysis on their own without understanding or needing to know that there might be potentially multiple data sources beneath," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence, tells DBTA. Representing the result of a large investment in simplifying the end user experience, adds Rodwick, companies will see "very interactive dashboards that are completely live and completely interconnected and allow business people to do their own analysis without really needing to go into any kind of query tool." The new release also provides new capablities for search and collaboration, and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Posted July 12, 2010
UniVerse 11.1, scheduled for release in Q3 of this year, will include the External Database Access functionality that already exists in UniData. EDA allows users to map files to the format for another database, and then write directly to it. UniData EDA originally shipped with just a driver for DB2. "We released the API for building additional drivers with UniData 7.2. Once we were acquired by Rocket, we committed to delivering a driver for Microsoft SQL Server. Now we're in the process of building a driver that will work with Oracle," Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, Rocket U2, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Rocket U2 is now looking for people who want to help by testing the driver with their application.
Posted July 12, 2010
ONware is now offering the ability to use PostgreSQL as a database system for applications developed for U2, D3, MVON and other MultiValue and PICK database environments. The new support for PostgreSQL has been added based on feedback from prospective customers in the MultiValue world, Jack Roth, director of operations, ONgroup, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Roth notes that he has come across a number of companies that have other development in their organizations in Postgres. "They like Postgres and if they can support one database as opposed to two very dissimilar databases, that is an advantage for them," he explains.
Posted July 12, 2010
In this issue's column I'll be providing a fundamental introduction to database and database management concepts. Many of you may think that they understand the basic concepts and fundamentals of database technology. But quite a few of you likely do not, so please do not skip over this. First of all, what is a database? DB2 is not a database; neither are Informix, Oracle and SQL Server. Each of these is a DBMS, or Database Management System. You can use DB2 (or Informix or SQL Server) to create a database, but DB2, in and of itself, is not a database.
Posted July 12, 2010
When integrating data, evaluating objects from multiple sources aids in determining their equivalence. Each source may identify customers, but determining which customer from each system represents the same customer can prove daunting. Sometimes matching things is straight-forward; for example, if all sources should have an accurate social security number or taxpayer ID, success involves simply linking the matching numbers.
Posted July 12, 2010
Everybody seems to agree with the need for organizations to do a better job of protecting personal information. Every week the media brings us reports of more data breaches, and no organization is immune. Hospitals, universities, insurers, retailers, and state and federal agencies all have been the victims of breach events, often at significant costs. State privacy laws such as the new Massachusetts privacy statutes have placed the burden of protecting sensitive information squarely on the shoulders of the organizations that collect and use it. While some managers might view this as yet one more compliance hurdle to worry about, we feel it presents an excellent opportunity to evaluate existing practices and procedures. The good news is that there are some great solutions available today that can help organizations of all stripes address these requirements while at the same time tightening data security practices, streamlining operations, and improving governance.
Posted July 12, 2010
NEON Enterprise Software announced that it is offering NEON zPrime for IMS for just one dollar. NEON zPrime for IMS is designed to make costly IMS workloads eligible for processing on IBM specialty processors (SPs) instead of IBM System z central processors. To take advantage of the offer, customers must make a 2-year commitment at a dollar per year, and install a new version of NEON zPrime in production by December 31, 2010.
Posted July 12, 2010
BMC introduced a new mainframe product for IBM IMS, the leading database management system for the IBM System z mainframe. The BMC Fast Path Online Restructure/EP solution is designed to reduce downtime to improve availability of critical IMS Fast Path applications.
Posted July 12, 2010
The International Sybase User Group (ISUG) has announced the immediate availability of its latest course offering in conjunction with online training specialist eLearnIT LLC. The new course is entitled "ASE Performance & Tuning with MDA Tables" and has been planned to offer a pragmatic combination of both practical and theory-based skills for Sybase DBAs. With today's data center management demands becoming increasing time critical as well as mission critical, this course compehensively provides DBAs with the skills they will need to perform effectively when troubleshooting problem queries and bottlenecks within Sybase ASE.
Posted July 08, 2010
Confio Software, which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing
Posted July 07, 2010
Oracle has added upgrades to the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System product line, including built-in inline data deduplication that can be combined with inline data compression, 4 and 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel protocol support, multiple storage pools and new 1 and 2 TB SAS disk drives - doubling maximum system capacity to 576TB. The features are intended to help customers reduce the costs of storing, consolidating and managing data with increased storage efficiency, expand the use of the Sun Storage 7000 System product line into Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), and improve overall capacity and availability.
Posted July 07, 2010
Aimed at further streamlining the development of database-centric web applications, Oracle has introduced Oracle Application Express Release 4.0. The new release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a feature included at no additional cost with all editions and releases of Oracle Database 11g. The 4.0 release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports, and is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat has unveiled Red Hat Cloud Foundations, which is intended to deliver solutions for planning, building and managing infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service private and public clouds. Cloud Foundations: Edition One, available immediately, provides "everything that a customer needs to successfully plan, deploy and manage a private cloud and it is the first in a family of Cloud Foundations that Red Hat will expand along with its partners to provide a complete set of cloud services," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business Unit, at a press conference during the recent Red Hat Summit in Boston.
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat last week released the second beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The first beta was released in April, and incorporated a range of new and upgraded features. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta 2 provides an updated installer, additional new technologies and resolutions to many of the issues that were reported in the initial beta. Red Hat is asking customers and partners who are testing the initial beta to install and continue their testing with beta 2.
Posted July 07, 2010
Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has begun shipping a high-performance analytics engine intended to speed up the time it takes for queries. The solution, Ingres VectorWise for Linux, is built on Ingres' VectorWise technology, and Ingres claims seeing performance gains of 10x to 70x over existing database and analytic servers while running sophisticated analytics on large to truly massive data sets.
Posted July 06, 2010
Attachmate Corporation has introduced a new enterprise fraud management solution that is intended to take the guesswork out of application monitoring. According to Attachmate, the new solution, Luminet, reveals user activity within enterprise applications and transforms the data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to protect the privacy of mission-critical data, reduce internal fraud and ensure regulatory compliance.
Posted July 06, 2010
Talend, a leading provider of open source data management software, has announced the availability of Hadoop-based integration for Big Data via its enterprise platform, Talend Integration Suite. According to the vendor, Talend Integration Suite is the first enterprise open source data integration solution to natively support Hadoop's distributed computing architecture for high performance and highly scalable data integration.
Posted July 06, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, and San Francisco-based IT Convergence (ITC), which provides solutions for Oracle Database, and the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle E-Business Suites, have expanded their OAUG & ITC Oracle Applications Workshops series with the addition of several upcoming Oracle R12 regional workshops in Atlanta; Denver; Dallas; and Madison, Wis. The Oracle Applications workshops are designed to assist users in learning the new functions and features of Oracle solutions. The " R12 Financials New Features" workshop offers an overview of R12 functional enhancements, new features and latest modules in the Oracle R12 Financial product suite. For users planning to migrate to R12, the " Preparing for an Oracle R12 Upgrade" workshop provides an outlet to learn Oracle Applications Release 12's functional and technical architecture in detail.
Posted July 06, 2010
EnterpriseDB, a supplier of PostgreSQL-based solutions, and Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse and analytic appliances, has formed a new partnership intended to ease database migration projects. Under the agreement, Netezza will resell EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which includes its Oracle Compatibility Layer, as Netezza Migrator. Migrator will be compatible with the Netezza TwinFin appliance.
Posted June 29, 2010
Aimed at further streamlining the development of database-centric web applications, Oracle has introduced Oracle Application Express Release 4.0. The new release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a feature included at no additional cost with all editions and releases of Oracle Database 11g. The 4.0 release helps reduce the time and complexity of building opportunistic Web 2.0 applications and reports, and is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN).
Posted June 29, 2010
Infobright, an open source data warehousing company, has announced Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) 3.4, which provides performance improvements for analytics involving large volumes of data. The release includes query performance improvements of up to 500%, delete performance improvement of over 1600%, the ability to run queries while data is loading, more efficient workload management, and support for multi-language data. "Our focus is on providing the best query performance possible, but always balancing that with low cost and ease of use," Susan Davis, vice president of marketing, Infobright, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010
ISUG and eLearnIT, which initially launched their online training offerings with a program for PowerBuilder, are now adding a new ASE training course. Because ASE as a database has "a massive ecosystem," with many parts to it, ISUG sought feedback from members and partners on where to concentrate its efforts in ASE, explains Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG. "The number-one request was for training on monitoring and diagnostics, and therefore that is what this course is about," he tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 29, 2010
Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse, analytic and monitoring appliances, and Composite Software, Inc., a data virtualization middleware provider, have announced the Netezza Data Virtualizer to simplify, accelerate and optimize the integration of data stored across multiple Netezza appliances. Powered by Composite Software, the Netezza Data Virtualizer creates an integrated view of data that is physically distributed across multiple Netezza appliances and delivers query results to reporting and analytic applications while Netezza appliances continue to manage their data.
Posted June 29, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of its SQL Anywhere 12 database and synchronization solution. A core component of the Sybase Mobility Platform, SQL Anywhere is optimized for mission-critical database applications running outside traditional data center environments requiring little or no onsite IT support. According to Chris Kleisath, senior director of engineering, SQL Anywhere 12 represents a major platform release, providing many key new enhancements for performance and scalability such as support for storage and synchronization of spatial data, support for iPhone devices, and new self-management features.
Posted June 29, 2010
UniVerse 11.1, scheduled for release in Q3 of this year, will include the External Database Access functionality that already exists in UniData. EDA allows users to map files to the format for another database, and then write directly to it. UniData EDA originally shipped with just a driver for DB2. "We released the API for building additional drivers with UniData 7.2. Once we were acquired by Rocket, we committed to delivering a driver for Microsoft SQL Server. Now we're in the process of building a driver that will work with Oracle," Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, Rocket U2, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Rocket U2 is now looking for people who want to help by testing the driver with their application.
Posted June 23, 2010
Revelation Software reports that the feedback the company received at its May users' conference regarding to the latest version of OpenInsight Development Suite was so positive that it has decided to include many suggestions into the 9.2 release.
Posted June 23, 2010
ONware is now offering the ability to use PostgreSQL as a database system for applications developed for U2, D3, MVON and other MultiValue and PICK database environments. The new support for PostgreSQL has been added based on feedback from prospective customers in the MultiValue world, Jack Roth, director of operations, ONgroup, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Roth notes that he has come across a number of companies that have other development in their organizations in Postgres. "They like Postgres and if they can support one database as opposed to two very dissimilar databases, that is an advantage for them," he explains.
Posted June 23, 2010
ISUG and eLearnIT started their online training offerings with a comprehensive training program for PowerBuilder, and are now adding a new ASE training course. 5 Minute Briefing: Sybase talks with Mike Harrold, executive director of ISUG, about the training and why it's needed.
Posted June 23, 2010
Bradmark Technologies, Inc., an established provider of application solutions for database management, has announced the release of Surveillance IQ for Sybase IQ 15 analytics server. With additional monitoring metrics for non-Multiplex, Multiplex, VLDB, and ETL options, this release bolsters Bradmark's continuing development of its premier Sybase monitoring and event management solution for customers who run some of the world's most critical data and need to cost-effectively maintain high performance and reliability.
Posted June 23, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database design, development and management tools for all major database platforms, has unveiled a new line of XE branded database products that incorporate three distinguishing features - deep, native support across all major databases with a consistent user interface, centralized license management and on-demand tool access via Embarcadero ToolCloud, and an easy upgrade path to Embarcadero All-Access XE.
Posted June 23, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of Sybase Advantage Server 10, the latest version of its client/server database with both ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) table-based and SQL-based data access.
Posted June 23, 2010
The preliminary agenda for Sybase TechWave 2010, to be held August 9-11 at the Hilton Washington, in Washington, DC, is available now. Sybase has announced it is planning to expand the event to include another day of technical training
Posted June 23, 2010
GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
Posted June 23, 2010
Confio Software which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 22, 2010
Continuent, Inc., a provider of continuous data availability and performance solutions, announced it is rolling out new capabilities to support advanced hot standby and streaming replication features on PostgreSQL databases. The offering, Continuent Tungsten, leverages multiple separate PostgreSQL databases to create highly available data services that offer the ease-of-management and processing throughput.
Posted June 22, 2010
Quest Software, Inc. plans to launch a beta program tomorrow for Toad for Cloud Databases, a new data access and management tool for non-relational data stored in cloud databases, also known as NoSQL databases. Toad for Cloud Databases is intended to help users unlock data stored in the cloud by using the familiar SQL language or Toad's popular visual query and data access capabilities. Users can query and report on non-relational data, migrate data in both cloud and relational databases from one to the other, and create queries that combine the two.
Posted June 22, 2010
Oracle has announced Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g. A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g supports all types of processes with a new unified process foundation, targeted user-centric design and new social BPM capabilities, and includes a native implementation of BPMN 2.0.
Posted June 16, 2010
GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
Posted June 16, 2010
GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
Posted June 15, 2010
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, has launched its new website, which now incorporates a more user-oriented design and facilitates navigation from page to page. With a new homepage featuring bold graphics, concisely captioned links and headlines, as well as an automatic slide reel of the latest news, events and learning and networking opportunities OAUG has to offer, the new website showcases the resources that are valued by its members, while also providing a more aesthetic approach and user-friendly navigation tools.
Posted June 08, 2010
Yesterday, at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2010 in New Orleans Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration and event capture software, introduced the new Attunity PowerPivot Connector for Oracle, a dedicated and optimized solution for making Oracle data available in Microsoft PowerPivot. Attunity also announced the availability of additional certified connectors that enable PowerPivot users to access data from many heterogeneous sources.
Posted June 08, 2010
Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution, aimed at helping organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security.
Posted June 08, 2010
Brent Ozar, a Quest Software SQL Server expert, recently achieved SQL Server 2008 Master status, becoming only the fifth person in the U.S. outside of Microsoft to achieve the company's highest technical certification. Ozar, who is at the Quest booth at Tech-Ed in New Orleans this week, recently talked with 5 Minute Briefing, providing an arcane glimpse into the intense 3-week-long onsite program that included the most difficult exams he had ever seen.
Posted June 08, 2010
Customer service is always important but never more critical than during difficult economic times, when wasting time is just not acceptable and customer satisfaction is an imperative. Atlantic Detroit Diesel-Allison sells and services a full line of Detroit Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, and MTU engines, and the automatic transmissions offered by the Allison Transmission Division of General Motors Corporation. Atlantic DDA had initiated a plan to improve its service department by improving order processing, thus driving more revenue, with additional goals of gaining operational efficiency and heightening customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these objectives, Atlantic DDA needed to make real-time information available to its teams of service representatives.
Posted June 07, 2010
If managing your corporate data for the long term isn't currently on your mind, it should be, and in several different ways: cost, performance, business continuity, and compliance. First, let's talk about cost and performance. You want to manage your database infrastructure so it can support your growing data needs within budget, while providing acceptable performance to your users. SANs (storage area networks) have enabled us to meet these contradicting goals over the last decade, and, as I mentioned in a previous column, SAN vendors are offering innovative new technologies to push on-disk storage even further. Some interesting new strategies also are helping organizations achieve a more balanced mix of cost versus performance through the use of "tiered storage."
Posted June 07, 2010
Quality can be a hard thing to define. What is good and what is bad may not be easily identified and quantified. When a data mart accurately reflects data exactly as found in the source, should that be considered a quality result? If the source data is bad, is the data mart of high quality or not? If the data mart differs from the source, when is the difference an improvement of quality and when is said difference evidence of diminished quality? While it may seem self-evident that correcting the source of load data would be the "right" thing to do, in practice that direction is not necessarily self-evident. The reasons supporting this nonintuitive approach are varied. Sometimes changes to the source impact other processes that must not change, or the changes will expose problems that may provoke undesired political fallout, or it may simply be that making the proper adjustments to the source application would prove too costly to the organization. For all these reasons and more, in the world of business intelligence, the dependent data often is expected to be of higher quality than the source data. In order for that improvement to occur, data placed within the dependent mart or data warehouse must be altered from the source. Sometimes these alterations become codified within the process migrating data from the source. Other times changes are made via one-time ad hoc updates. Either way, this alteration leads to a situation in which the dependent data will no longer equate one-for-one to the source data. Superficial comparisons of this altered content will highlight the disparity that what exists for analytics is not the same as what exists for the operational system.
Posted June 07, 2010
Before we go any further, let me briefly answer the question posed in this column's title: "No Way!" OK ... with that out of the way, let's discuss the issue ... Every so often, some industry pundit gets his opinions published by declaring that "Database administrators are obsolete" or that "we no longer need DBAs." Every time I hear this, it makes me shake my head sadly as I regard just how gullible IT publications can be.
Posted June 07, 2010
In only a few years' time, the world of data management has been altered dramatically, and this is a change that is still running its course. No longer are databases run in back rooms by administrators worrying about rows and columns. Now, actionable information is sought by decision makers at all levels of the enterprise, and the custodians of this data need to work closely with the business.That's because, in the wake of the recent financial crisis and economic downturn, there's a push from both high-level corporate management and regulators to achieve greater understanding and greater transparency across the enterprise, Jeanne Harris, executive research fellow and a senior executive at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, and co-author, along with Tom Davenport, of Competing on Analytics and Analytics at Work, tells DBTA. "In many ways, I think the ultimate result of the financial crisis is that executives realized they cannot delegate analytics to subordinates; they can't view it as technology or math that doesn't really affect them."
Posted June 07, 2010
In the midst of turbulent times, many successful businesses learned an important lesson: The closer IT works with the business, the better an organization can weather the storms that blow in. Thus, many savvy companies understand that the managers and professionals who oversee information technology and applications need to be well incentivized to stay on. At the same time, these professionals understand the need to develop expertise in business management and communications. Many companies are looking to information technology to provide an additional competitive edge, and see their Oracle enterprise systems as the cornerstone of this strategy. As a result, a survey finds that Oracle enterprise application managers and professionals appear to have weathered the economic storm. The survey, conducted among 334 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) by Unisphere Research, and sponsored by Motion International, finds an increase in the number of Oracle technology professionals who are near or surpassing the $100,000 mark in their base salaries.
Posted June 07, 2010
Panorama Software, a provider of proactive business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the release of NovaView 6.2, the newest version of its flagship suite of web-enabled BI applications. Oracle connectivity is a key addition to the available data sources, making Oracle relational database data instantly available for interactive, multi-dimensional analysis with the entire NovaView product stack.
Posted June 02, 2010