DBTA E-EDITION
March 2013
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Trends and Applications
Data keeps growing, systems and servers keep sprawling, and users keep clamoring for more real-time access. The result of all this frenzy of activity is pressure for faster, more effective data integration that can deliver more expansive views of information, while still maintaining quality and integrity. Enterprise data and IT managers are responding in a variety of ways, looking to initiatives such as enterprise mashups, automation, virtualization, and cloud to pursue new paths to data integration. In the process, they are moving beyond the traditional means of integration they have relied on for years to pull data together.
Special Report: Gaining Maximum Advantage with MultiValue Technologies
Two big questions are on the minds of data professionals these days. How are increasing complexity and the inevitable onslaught of big data shaping the future of database administrators and data architects? How will our roles change? In the interest of studying the evolving landscape of data, the Independent Oracle User's Group (IOUG) took the pulse of the community. The Big Data Skills for Success study polled numerous individuals in the IOUG Oracle technology community, to identify just how the responsibilities of handling data are changing and what the future of these roles looks like.
Databases are restricted by reliance on disk-based storage, a technology that has been in place for several decades. Even with the addition of memory caches and solid state drives, the model of relying on repeated access to information storage devices remains a hindrance in capitalizing on today's "big data," according to a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). The survey was underwritten by SAP Corp. and conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.
Columns - Applications Insight
Google's dominance of internet search has been uncontested for more than 12 years now. Before Google, search engines such as AltaVista indexed web pages and allowed for keyword search with an interface and functionality superficially similar to that provided by Google. However, these first-generation search engines provided relatively poor ordering of results. Because an internet search would return pages ranked by the number of times a term appeared on the website, unpopular or irrelevant sites would be just as likely to achieve top rank as popular sites.
Columns - Database Elaborations
Do not allow well-meaning but confused proponents to obscure concepts related to normalization and dimensional design. Under a normalized approach one usually would not expect for numeric data items and textual data items to fall into different logical relations when connected to the same entity object. Yet within a multidimensional approach that is exactly what happens. Multidimensional design and normal design are not the same, and one should not expect to claim that both approaches were used and that they resulted in the same data model.
Columns - DBA Corner
When data professionals think about regulatory compliance we tend to consider only data in our production databases. After all, it is this data that runs our business and that must be protected. So we work to implement database auditing to know who did what to which data when; or we tackle database security and data protection initiatives to protect our data from prying eyes; or we focus on improving data quality to ensure the accuracy of our processes.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
Two columns ago, I described how the TPC benchmarks are useful for getting a general idea of the performance characteristics of your preferred database vendor and hardware platform. And in last month's column, I described how the published TPC benchmarks can even help with pricing, especially when you don't have your own quantity discounts in place.
MV Community
Revelation Software is inviting members of its Works Subscription program to take part in the beta test of OpenInsight 9.4. The new release includes Improvements to the MVBFS (MultiValue Based Filing System) connector, as well as additional minor updates that have been requested by users, Robert Catalano, director of sales at Revelation, tells DBTA.
Rocket Software has announced the general availability of the Rocket U2 Toolkit for .NET v1.2 (U2NETDK), which delivers Microsoft .NET interfaces for the UniVerse and UniData data servers. The new release allows .NET programmers to leverage the Microsoft .NET Framework and CLR (Common Language Runtime) with the U2 databases.
Michigan State University (Michigan State), University of Michigan (Michigan) and University of Texas-Austin (Texas) plan to implement the Paciolan Ticketing Intelligence data warehouse in order to more efficiently aggregate and utilize data about interaction between university athletics and sports fans.