DBTA E-EDITION
December 2011
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Trends and Applications
Until recently, companies were only warming up to the possibilities of cloud computing. Lately, however, for many enterprise-IT decision makers, cloud is hot, hot, hot. The sea change now underway means many companies are quickly moving from "dipping their toes into cloud computing" to a full-fledged immersion, says Thom VanHorn, vice president of marketing for Application Security, Inc. In 2012, expect to see those same companies dive right in. "The move will only accelerate," he tells DBTA.
Stacks of statistics from many sources share a common theme - growth rates for digital information are extremely high and undeniable. A tsunami of e-information is fueling the engine of today's corporate enterprise, and many businesses are aiming to ride the information wave to prosperity. However, many companies are not sufficiently attentive to all the potential liabilities lurking in the depths of this digital information, including the risks involved in using real, live personal customer and employee data for application development and testing purposes. There's real potential for serious data security, legal and noncompliance risks when businesses fail to protect this data.
A new survey of 421 data managers and professionals affiliated with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) members finds that while most companies have well-established data warehouse systems, adoption is still limited within their organizations. Many respondents report a significant surge of data within their data warehouses in recent times, fueled not only by growing volumes of transaction data but unstructured data as well. Now, the challenge is to find ways to extend data analysis capabilities to additional business areas.
Columns - Notes on NoSQL
As the leading provider of relational database software, it's hardly surprising that Oracle initially gave little or no credence to the NoSQL movement that emerged in 2009. Indeed, an Oracle white paper from May 2011 concluded with the recommendation to "Go for the tried and true path," and avoid NoSQL databases.
Columns - Database Elaborations
The cost for new development can often be easily justified. If a new function is needed, staffing a team to create such functionality and supporting data structures can be quantified and voted up or down by those controlling resources. Money can be found to build those things that move the organization forward; often, the expense may be covered by savings or increased revenue derived from providing the new services.
Columns - DBA Corner
In a world replete with regulations and threats, organizations today have to go well beyond just securing their data. Protecting this most valuable asset means that companies have to perpetually monitor their systems in order to know who did exactly what, when and how - to their data.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
Three columns ago, I started a series of articles pointing out that tough times are a-comin' for the DBA profession due to major disruptive changes in the wider IT world (see "2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as We Know It"). In previous columns, I have told you about how our lives will change due to major technological changes caused by things such as Solid State Disks (SSD) and massively multicore CPUs.
MV Community
InterSystems Corporation, has announced that Pronger Smith Medical Care rolled out InterSystems Ensemble as its core enterprise integration platform. The strategic decision to build application interfaces with in-house staff on the Ensemble platform has already generated tens of thousands dollars in cost savings over any other development approach, according to Craig Cypress, Network System Manager at Pronger Smith.
The release of OpenInsight 9.3, the next version of Revelation Software's flagship product, is now imminent, and includes many new features eagerly awaited by Revelation customers. On track to be generally available by the end of the year, Robert Catalano, director of sales at Revelation, says that data encryption is among the major new components in OpenInsight 9.3. "Data encryption will be a key component that will be built into the database. It is data encryption at rest and that means that you can specify tables and fields that are sitting in on your disk drive and that data will be encrypted."