DBTA E-EDITION
January 2021
Subscribe to the online version of Database Trends and Applications magazine. DBTA will send occasional notices about new and/or updated DBTA.com content.
Trends and Applications
Data Summit Connect 2021 will be held virtually this year, overcoming the current travel and geography challenges. The program will include a mix of formal presentations and interactive panel-participation-style sessions. Feel free to suggest something different from a normal conference presentation—creativity is encouraged and a virtual conference offers many possibilities!
Succeeding in business is a lot like climbing a mountain and it requires a good amount of planning, and the right leaders and skill sets. In today's environment, that mountain is a mountain of data. An enterprise data catalog with embedded data governance and data privacy capabilities can ensure businesses have the requisite tools they need to scale the data mountain.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on many organizations and, in December 2020, PASS announced that, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is ceasing all regular operations, effective January 15, 2021. In a letter on its website, the PASS board explained the situation, stating, "PASS could not have anticipated the impact COVID-19 would have on the world, and on our organization. We are all reeling from what this year has been and done, and it is with heavy hearts that we must share yet one more bit of bad news from the annus horribilis that was 2020."
Any organization that attaches importance to its data strategy must ensure that mobility remains a core part of its strategy and capabilities. However, many have valuable data that is locked in storage solos, hosted on everything from traditional storage technologies to fully outsourced service providers in the cloud. This does little to facilitate data mobility—an essential part of an approach which determines how well businesses can access and action their data assets. Effective migration can bridge the gap between infrastructure, protocols, and growing data volumes to deliver access to data that helps businesses to move forward with confidence.
It is safe to say that when data and analytics leaders built their data management and data analytics strategies in late 2019, they did not foresee the macroeconomic impacts of 2020. The upheaval of many of the best-laid plans touched all industries as executives looked to data to provide insight into how to withstand the fallout and course correct. While enterprises have long understood the need to migrate to the cloud, the COVID-19 pandemic served as the catalyst for quick plans to get started right away.
IBM, the consistent leader in U.S. patents, topped the U.S. Top 50 with 9,130 grants, down 1% from 2019. IBM scientists and researchers received 9,130 U.S. patents in 2020, the most of any company, marking 28 consecutive years of IBM patent leadership.
At Data Summit Connect Fall 2020, Pariveda's Ryan Gross surveyed the current landscape of technology and tools for data quality, discovery, availability, security, and compliance.
Columns - Database Elaborations
An architecture derives its strength from a level of consistency in how things are implemented. However, that is not to say that a mindless devotion to absolute consistency is a good thing. Times will arise when exceptions to almost any rule are necessary. The skill, the art, the balance in applying decisions that result in a good data architecture across an organization are based on a prudent use of when to conform and when an exception is needed. If there are too many exceptions, it can rightfully be declared by observers that there are no rules and that chaos reigns.
Columns - DBA Corner
Today, more than ever, it is important to break down the cultural barriers and foster an environment of teamwork and communication for the entire IT organization, and indeed, for the entire company. Perhaps one of the most important cultural hurdles to overcome these days is the need for speed. A study done by Forrester Research showed that Dev teams are accustomed to new releases on a quarterly basis or faster, and out on the edge there are teams that deploy multiple times a day! Then we have Ops teams, where the expectation is to have new releases twice a year or even slower.
Columns - MongoDB Matters
From the beginning, MongoDB has had a laser focus on making life easier for developers. MongoDB has continued to produce new developer tooling as well. In June, MongoDB introduced a new shell—the mongosh. The traditional Mongo shell is a command-line utility that provides an easy way to execute commands against the database. The existing shell included a JavaScript engine, so it was capable of running scripts that performed administrative functions or simplified complex commands. The new shell includes most of the features of the traditional shell, but adds modern experience such as syntax highlighting, error handling and autocomplete.
MV Community
BlueFinity is enhancing Evoke for the retail market in response to the impact of COVID-19 on the business sector. Using Evoke, retailers are now able to design and deploy the apps that specifically meet both their needs and the needs of their customers, and they do not have to employ specialist app developers to do it but can use their existing staff to create apps.
The year 2020 will be remembered as a time of great upheaval-forcing companies to quickly adapt or succumb to the changing tide of digital transformation. Today, being data-driven is the goal of all companies, whether long established or born digital. To help make the process of identifying useful products and services easier, each year Database Trends and Applications magazine presents a list of Trend-Setting Products.
Total Computing Solutions (TCS), a division of Zumasys, is updating the features and functionality of its TotaLink credit card processing software to make compliance simpler and integrations for MV platforms smoother. Built-in signature capture through native PICK calls into TotaLink software, allowing customers to avoid purchasing costly dedicated signature capture devices.