DBTA E-EDITION
October 2014
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Trends and Applications
Organizations have been collecting data for years, but never before has there been such urgency to have it immediately available. The business need is pressing—decision makers need up-to-the-minute situational awareness in a volatile global economy.
The Unfolding Future: More Data, Not Enough Data Gurus
Columns - Big Data Notes
One feature of the big data revolution is the acknowledgement that a single database management system architecture cannot meet all needs. However, the Lambda Architecture provides a useful pattern for combining multiple big data technologies to achieve multiple enterprise objectives. First proposed by Nathan Marz, it attempts to provide a combination of technologies that together can provide the characteristics of a web-scale system that can satisfy requirements for availability, maintainability, and fault-tolerance.
Columns - Database Elaborations
It is fair to say that relational theory is the only solid framework for establishing a rational expression of data that falls anywhere inside the boundaries of formal logic. As people continue to laud the "death of relational" by coming up with one or other "new" physical implementations of coding or data engines, from object-oriented, XML, columnar, or anything else one might name, the primary short-coming is that these are physical implementations that avoid having any formalized logic underpinning them.
Columns - DBA Corner
Check constraints are supported in all of the major DBMS products, including DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server. But they are too-often ignored and not implemented in production databases. Properly defined, check constraints can provide enhanced data integrity without requiring procedural logic.
Columns - Quest IOUG Database & Technology Insights
Today, as never before, public sector agencies have had to become more proactive and operate more like private sector businesses and are required to maintain an immense amount of data in order to make "just in time" decisions as well as to forecast for the long term. This is where business intelligence (BI) tools come in handy—not only to provide systems that facilitate the collection of data, but more importantly, providing a means to sift through the vast amounts of information for which the public sector is custodian.
Columns - SQL Server Drill Down
The PASS Summit, put on each fall by the Professional Association for SQL Server is the biggest SQL Server specific event in the world and it brings in many thousands of people from around the world. Its secret ingredient is the remarkable sense of comradery and overall friendliness of this professional association.