DBTA E-EDITION
November 2013
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Trends and Applications
When it comes to service recovery, speed matters. The costs of recovery from failures can be staggering in terms of business service downtime, in lost revenues and damaged reputations. For DR preparedness to significantly improve, companies should consider these 5 dimensions of disaster recovery.
IBM announced new business analytics and cloud software solutions to help zEnterprise clients take advantage of new workloads. These include a new version of the DB2 and IMS databases, and Cognos analytics tools configured for zEnterprise.
The number of databases continues to grow, but evolution tells us that not all may survive. Through the natural selection of most useful traits, intensifying the most crucial features, and implementing the best of both, databases will continue to flourish in new remarkable ways, helping organizations achieve specialized goals unique to their business. Here's a look at where the evolutionary path of the data center could take us in the coming years.
There can be many reasons for big data projects failing, but the causes often fall under the umbrella of a lack of careful planning and a failure to effectively reconcile the panoramic visions of business objectives with technical and structural realities. Business objectives are often abstract and high level, and operationalizing those abstractions into the kind of detailed information that feeds the development of effective big data projects is often to be found at the root of that failure. Precision and measurability are the keys to defining the business objectives that will be addressed by the project.
Offering DBAs and developers a new means to prove their expertise on MongoDB, the open source document database company has introduced a new program that offers comprehensive exams worldwide through MongoDB University. MongoDB will first offer the Associate MongoDB Certified Developer exam beginning December 3.
Columns - Applications Insight
Two new approaches to application quality have emerged: "risk-based testing" - pioneered in particular by Rex Black - and "exploratory testing" - as evangelized by James Bach and others. Neither claim to eradicate issues of application quality, which most likely will continue as long as software coding involves human beings. However, along with automation of the more routine tests, these techniques form the basis for higher quality application software.
Columns - Database Elaborations
Changes to database structures should be performed in a coordinated fashion as the application processes that support the new functionality are rolled out into production. While the "work" involved in adding a column or a table to a relational database is actually minimal, often there are circumstances where developers and DBAs create additional columns and additional tables in anticipation of future needs. Sadly, this "proactive" effort results in databases littered with half-formed ideas, fits-and-starts, and scattered-about columns and tables that provide no meaningful content.
Columns - DBA Corner
Although the concept of NoSQL is relatively new, some of the players have actually been around for a while. Yet, the concept of what NoSQL means continues to change. With all that in mind, let's take a look at the world of NoSQL.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
There was an interesting new vibe at Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit 2013. There was a very strong positive energy permeating the place and a noticeable uptick in positive interactions among attendees. In broader technical news, Microsoft unveiled a couple of powerful new features that had been hidden even in the closed previews and also announced the availability of SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2.
MV Community
Entrinsik, a provider of information management solutions, has formed a new partnership with KeyedIn Solutions, a software business specializing in cloud-based enterprise applications. The combination of KeyedIn Solutions and Entrinsik Informer reporting software enables users to analyze a wide range of organizational data through a single application and portal.
Pick Cloud and Ladybridge Systems have announced a database as a service (DBaaS) offering, enabling customers to purchase a fully managed hosted OpenQM license.
Rocket Software is making some of the most popular hands-on labs from U2 University available online to provide customers with a convenient way to learn about new U2 features.