Database Management Articles
SAP and Sybase, Inc. announced Wednesday afternoon that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase for approximately $5.8 billion, in a transaction that will bring the companies together to enable customers to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and Sybase will be run as a standalone company. "This is a strategic moment for SAP, for Sybase, our customers, and the IT industry," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP and a member of the SAP executive board, in a conference call for analyst and the press. "This acquisition is about accelerating growth for both businesses. This transaction is fully aligned with our strategic objectives to significantly expand our addressable market, opening up new opportunities in mobility, in-memory computing, and analytics."
Posted May 13, 2010
Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has entered into a strategic agreement with Bendigo Partners, LLC to promote the use of Ingres VectorWise within the financial services industry. Bendigo Partners focuses on investment and operating partner opportunities in global, technology-driven financial services. It supports product expansion, global expansion, acquisitions, or technology and operational efficiencies with both capital and expertise.
Posted May 11, 2010
Altova recently announced the availability of Version 2010 Release 3 (v2010r3) of the Altova MissionKit, an integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools. This latest release provides a range of usability and performance enhancements as well as integration with Visual Studio 2010 and support for industry standards such as iXBRL and National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).
Posted May 11, 2010
HiT Software, a provider of provider of data integration and change data capture software products, was acquired last week by BackOffice Associates, a provider of data migration, data governance and master data management solutions for Oracle, SAP and other ERP vendors.
Posted May 11, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies has released Rapid SQL XE, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE) that enables developers and database administrators (DBAs) to produce high quality SQL code faster. Rapid SQL XE includes direct native support for heterogeneous database environments from a single user interface, and debuts support for Embarcadero InterBase and the open source Firebird database, in addition to full Unicode support.
Posted May 11, 2010
You're probably familiar with the old saying that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." That may have been true back in the days when conversations about competitive advantage concerned memberships at prestigious golf clubs and lavish expense accounts; in the days when data was regarded as mere records of transactions, production and inventory levels. Today's conversations about competitive advantage may still include talk of personal relationships. More frequently, though, these conversations reflect the relatively recent appreciation of the intrinsic value of enterprise data - a value seen not just by senior executives, but also by employees in virtually every department. There is broad consensus in most organizations that enterprise data, and perhaps more importantly, the ability to analyze large volumes or smaller subsets of data at will, in real time, are crucial business differentiators.
Posted May 10, 2010
Mergers and acquisitions often come quickly and when they do, it is critical to have tools and utilities capable of scaling to meet new challenges so operations continue seamlessly, customer service standards are upheld, and costs are contained. This was the case for UGI Utilities, a large natural gas and electric service provider in the eastern U.S. In 2006, UGI acquired the natural gas utility assets of PG Energy from Southern Union Company. A longtime customer of BMC, UGI found it was aligned with the right software company to provide implementation of mainframe service management solutions as well as first class support to get the job done and successfully integrate the newly acquired company's data into its environment, saving time and money.
Posted May 10, 2010
Application monitoring started off with a simple need - to help an administrator or manager of an application, monitor and manage its performance. It was narrow in scope and limited in use - to monitor a single application and provide metrics useful for managing that application only. Monitoring tools were often provided by application vendors, but the growing and complex nature of IT environments necessitated the entry of third-party monitoring tools. These were more specialized, with the ability to centrally monitor several different applications. They helped administrators gain visibility across several different applications, understand where problems occurred, and helped to quickly resolve them.
Posted May 10, 2010
It is rare to find an implemented database devoid of reference tables. Reference tables provide valid values for drop-down lists and in a slightly obtuse way, also allow for expression of a domain or user-defined data type within the database design. Nominally a reference list is but a list of values to be referenced. In practice, the implemented structure of a reference table is driven by small nuances regarding how each list is used. The signifiers may consist of a code or number that creates a short-hand way of expressing a state or value. Yet in addition to such simple codes, a "medium length" name column or even a column to contain a lengthy text description should exist in support of these codes. The names may be used in drop-down lists so that people need not memorize many code values, and the descriptions can assist help-functions by providing users with more understanding of a value's meaning or intended use. For operational applications it may be worthwhile to have an attribute expressing the order in which items should be displayed, unless alphabetical display is a preference. If codes are maintained via online screens, an indicator may be helpful in flagging values that are part of the system and not to be removed or deactivated via those online screens.
Posted May 10, 2010
One thing I really enjoy about the SQL Server community is its vibrancy. I'll give you details on the SQL Server community's explosive growth in a moment, but let's start by comparing Microsoft SQL Server's user community with those of other significant database platforms.
Posted May 10, 2010
Oracle president Charles Phillips unveiled Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g during a presentation in the Guggenheim Museum's Peter B. Lewis Theater filled with customers, analysts and the press. "Now that we can instrument the entire stack, because it is our stack, we can do things we couldn't do before," Phillips told the audience. There is value in being able to get a handle on management costs and gain more predictable environments so downtime is not a threat, and integration is not a struggle, he stressed.
Posted May 05, 2010
5 Minute Briefing had an opportunity to meet with CONFIO at the COLLABORATE 10 conference in Las Vegas. CONFIO recently launched ignite8, the database performance monitoring tool that supports the four major databases installed: Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Sybase. CONFIO ignite8 has been extensively field tested and uses historical trend data to resolve current database performance problems.
Posted May 05, 2010
Pillar Data Systems has introduced new features to increase the performance, efficiency and ease of management for its Pillar Axiom storage system, building on the Axiom's Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities.
Posted May 05, 2010
Fulfilling its commitment to quickly integrate the Sun partner community and provide opportunities for them to grow and profit with Oracle, the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) has expanded its partner enablement resources to include new training resources and Specializations for core Sun and Oracle technologies.
Posted May 05, 2010
Composite Software, Inc., a provider of data virtualization middleware, has expanded its federal operations in response to accelerating government agency demand. The company increased its federal team with key new hires in sales, sales engineering, and services, and solidified a new GSA partnership with Carahsoft Technology Corp., a government IT solutions provider, to build upon a second consecutive year of greater than 50% revenue growth.
Posted May 04, 2010
Idera, a provider of Microsoft SQL Server management and administration tools, announced SQL virtual database 1.3, the latest release for this solution that enables backup files to look and act just like a real SQL Server database within SQL Server Management Studio and other SQL Server applications. With SQL virtual database, users can run queries, insert and delete data, run reports and perform resource-intensive checks like index fragmentation and database integrity against SQL Server database backup files.
Posted May 04, 2010
Idera, a provider of Microsoft SQL Server management and administration tools, announced SQL virtual database 1.3, the latest release for this solution that enables backup files to look and act just like a real SQL Server database within SQL Server Management Studio and other SQL Server applications. With SQL virtual database, users can run queries, insert and delete data, run reports and perform resource-intensive checks like index fragmentation and database integrity against SQL Server database backup files.
Posted May 04, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 12. The new release of Sybase's rapid application development tool enables developers to easily and cost effectively create or migrate their business applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework, for modern and visually appealing application user experiences.
Posted April 29, 2010
Sybase has announced support for iPad and Android devices with the latest release of Afaria. With the new ability to secure and manage iPad and Android, Sybase extends its device support to a list that includes iPhone, Windows Mobile, Windows, Symbian and BlackBerry.
Posted April 29, 2010
Sybase technical experts are planning a series of Developer Days throughout the United States and Europe to showcase the latest releases of its industry-leading development software. All seminars are free and run from 8:30am - 2pm local time (timing may vary slightly by location) with breakfast and lunch included.
Posted April 29, 2010
Sybase TechWave 2010 will be held August 9-11 at the Hilton Washington, in Washington, DC. Sybase has announced it is planning to expand the event to include another day of technical training.
Posted April 29, 2010
Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released to manufacturing and customers can expect availability in the next few weeks through Microsoft's distribution channels. According to Microsoft, SQL Server 2008 R2 represents a continued commitment to mission-critical workloads, providing a scalable platform, increased developer and IT efficiency and managed self-service business intelligence.
Posted April 27, 2010
5 Minute Briefing: Information Management visited the COLLABORATE 10 conference for Oracle users last week in Las Vegas and had an opportunity to meet with new Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) president, David Ferguson. The conference, held at the Mandalay Bay convention center in Las Vegas, was jointly sponsored by the OAUG, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and Quest International Users Group. Attendance was estimated at over 5,000 with excellent attendance at the sessions and brisk exhibit floor activity during the breaks.
Posted April 27, 2010
5 Minute Briefing had an opportunity to meet with CONFIO at last week's COLLABORATE 10 conference in Las Vegas. CONFIO recently launched ignite8, the database performance monitoring tool that supports the four major databases installed: Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Sybase. CONFIO ignite8 has been extensively field tested and uses historical trend data to resolve current database performance problems.
Posted April 27, 2010
Panorama Software, a business intelligence solutions vendor, announced the launch of NovaView for PowerPivot, a business intelligence suite built on top of the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot platform. Microsoft's PowerPivot offers a managed self-service BI capability and in-memory engine.
Posted April 27, 2010
Demonstrating its continued commitment to lifetime support, new enhancements, and application innovation with the Oracle "Applications Unlimited" program, Oracle recently announced that global customers, including BP America, McDonald's, The Principal Financial Group and Standard Pacific Homes have implemented Oracle Applications.
Posted April 21, 2010
With data volumes and database instances on the rise, organizations are encountering challenges in managing and maintaining their information infrastructure, according to the results of the 2010 IOUG Enterprise Platform Decisions Survey. Participants in the survey acknowledged that steps need to be taken to control the costs and complexity of their data environments while addressing the need for continued growth. The use of advanced virtualization strategies was identified by respondents as a key to better managing these diverse environments.
Posted April 21, 2010
Oracle has announced two new products intended to enable companies to run Oracle WebLogic-based applications within virtualized environments. The first product, Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option, brings together Oracle WebLogic Server with Oracle's JRockit Virtual Edition. The second new offering, Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder, provides a framework for automatically capturing the configuration of existing software components and packaging them as self-contained building blocks known as appliances.
Posted April 21, 2010
At COLLABORATE 10 this week, Quest Software has been showcasing a new release of Toad for Oracle that provides greater automation in Oracle development, administration, and query and reporting. Toad for Oracle 10.5 builds upon the next-generation enhancements of Toad 10, saving money for the organization and time for the end user.
Posted April 21, 2010
Noetix Corp., a provider of business intelligence (BI) software and services for enterprise applications, this week introduced its newest operational reporting solution for Oracle E-Business Suite, NoetixViews 6.0. This latest release provides new global views for Oracle Financials, U.S. Federal Financials, Supply Chain, Discrete Manufacturing, Projects, and Enterprise Asset Management, joining the previously released global views for Oracle's Human Resource Management System (HRMS) applications.
Posted April 21, 2010
Sybase today announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 12. The new release of Sybase's rapid application development tool enables developers to easily and cost effectively create or migrate their business applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework, for modern and visually appealing application user experiences. Sybase today announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 12. The new release of Sybase's rapid application development tool enables developers to easily and cost effectively create or migrate their business applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework, for modern and visually appealing application user experiences.
Posted April 20, 2010
Sybase officially announced that, starting January 1, 2010, Sybase ASE 12.5.x is no longer being supported. On Thursday, April 22, at 1 pm ET, ISUG (International Sybase User Group) and mLogica will offer this complementary 1-hour technical webcast to ISUG members.
Posted April 20, 2010
Quest Software, Inc., a Visual Studio Industry Partner and maker of Toad for Oracle, has announced the launch of Toad Extension for Visual Studio. Toad Extension for Visual Studio is a database schema provider that will support complete application lifecycle management (ALM) for Oracle in Visual Studio 2010, unifying Oracle developers with the rest of the Visual Studio development team.
Posted April 20, 2010
Greenplum Software, a data infrastructure company, has introduced what it calls the industry's first commercially available "Enterprise Data Cloud" platform. Called Greenplum Chorus, the solution offers self-service provisioning, data collaboration and data services features to complement traditional enterprise data warehouses. "Greenplum Chorus is a distributed software platform that is run on premises within an enterprise — potentially spanning multiple data centers and encompassing tens or hundreds of warehouses and marts," Ben Werther, director of product management for Greenplum, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The product is available under subscription or perpetual licensing models, Werther adds.
Posted April 13, 2010
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), has announced the availability of a virtual educational program that will run concurrently with the annual Oracle users event COLLABORATE. Presented jointly by the IOUG, as well as the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest), the COLLABORATE 10 conference will take place April 18-22 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas.
Posted April 13, 2010
The COLLABORATE 10 - OAUG (Oracle Applications Users Group) Forum is planning more than 400 user-driven sessions featuring tips, techniques and best practices for Oracle Fusion, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Agile, Hyperion, Oracle Communications and Siebel product families. The OAUG is co-hosting the COLLABORATE 10: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community conference in partnership with the Independent Oracle Users Group and Quest International Users Group, April 18-22, in Las Vegas.
Posted April 13, 2010
Far too often we all talk past one another. This cross talking, while not always drastic, remains perceived as an understood fuzziness. Much of the time we ignore these minor miscommunications because precision and clarity are not necessarily critical in all situations. If the general gist is effectively understood between those communicating, that generality may be all that is necessary. Those involved in the communication may feel comfortable that assumptions made to "fill in the gaps" will fall within an acceptable range. Although the lack of clarity in the message communicated may be acceptable, in other circumstances it may not be acceptable.
Posted April 07, 2010
As you work to protect your data in this day-and-age of data breaches and regulatory compliance, technology and software solutions to data and database security spring to the top of most people's minds. This is to be expected because, after all, most of our data is stored on computers so technology and software are required to protect the data from unauthorized access. This is a good thing: Technology is a crucial component of protecting your valuable business data. But it is not the only thing.
Posted April 07, 2010
The drivers and benefits of using open source in the enterprise have been widely documented. Ultimately, enterprise users adopt open source for two primary reasons: cost and vendor independence. These are the same drivers and benefits that apply to well-known categories such as operating systems, application servers and web browsers. However, because the database plays a role in all enterprise IT applications, the scrutiny and rigor that enterprises apply to the selection, implementation and deployment of open source databases is far more intense and deliberate.
Posted April 07, 2010
It's hard enough to lock down sensitive data when you know exactly which server the database is running on, but what will you do when you deploy virtualization and these systems are constantly moving? And making sure your own database administrators (DBAs) and system administrators aren't copying or viewing confidential records is already a challenge - how are you going to know when your cloud computing vendor's staff members are not using their privileges inappropriately? These are just two of the obstacles that any enterprise must overcome in order to deploy a secure database platform in a virtual environment, or in the cloud. In some cases, these concerns have been preventing organizations from moving to virtualization or cloud computing.
Posted April 07, 2010
The Rocket U2 team has set the dates for U2 University. The U.S. event will be November 9-11, 2010, in Denver, Colo. The U.K. and Australia events have been scheduled for the first quarter of 2011.
Posted April 07, 2010
Entrinsik Inc., a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, will present at this year's SugarCon event in San Francisco, being held April 12-14. SugarCon 2010, SugarCRM's fourth annual user and customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and industry experts from around the world.
Posted April 07, 2010
NorthgateArinso (Northgate) and Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) have announced that they have extended their partnership agreement through 2016. "We are excited to have this level of partnership with Nebraska Furniture Mart," says Mark Pick, vice president, Reality, "and we don't take it lightly. Long-term relationships such as this show our commitment to our customers, Reality and to the MultiValue community."
Posted April 07, 2010
COLLABORATE 10 will at long last bring together Sun and Oracle users for the first time under one roof. Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, talks with DBTA about what the group is planning for the April conference in Las Vegas, and how the integration of customers and technology is being handled by Oracle and the IOUG.
Posted April 07, 2010
The latest release of Oracle Berkeley DB, the small footprint open source embeddable database engine for mission-critical "edge" applications, is now available for downloading. Oracle Berkeley DB 11g Release 2 introduces a new SQL API, based on SQLite, which is familiar to a large developer community, and paves the way to a wider array of applications that the database may be able to support.
Posted April 07, 2010
To help organizations chart the most efficient course to maximize the enterprise value of investments such as capital projects, software and systems development, new acquisitions and products, Oracle yesterday announced the availability of Oracle's Primavera Portfolio Management 8.
Posted April 07, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies has introduced DBArtisan XE, the newest addition to the DBArtisan family of heterogeneous database administration tools. With support for multiple database platforms "out of the box," DBArtisan XE enables database administrators (DBAs) to maximize the performance, availability and security of all major database management systems, including Oracle and MySQL, as well as SQL Server, IBM DB2, and Sybase from a single interface.
Posted April 06, 2010
Today Informatica Corporation announced the availability of a new independent research study entitled "Information, Unplugged: 2009 OAUG ResearchLine Survey on Enterprise Application Information Lifecycle Management." The report details the challenges IT is facing because of the surge in data flowing through today's enterprise applications and databases. "Inadequately managed data growth is fast becoming a problem of epic proportions, with some enterprise applications and databases increasing in size by as much as 50% a year," notes Adam Wilson, general manager, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Informatica.
Posted April 06, 2010
The latest release of Oracle Berkeley DB, the small footprint open source embeddable database engine for mission-critical "edge" applications, is now available for downloading. Oracle Berkeley DB 11g Release 2 introduces a new SQL API, based on SQLite, which is familiar to a large developer community, and paves the way to a wider array of applications that the database may be able to support.
Posted April 06, 2010
Entrinsik Inc., a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, will present at this year's SugarCon event in San Francisco, being held April 12-14. SugarCon 2010, SugarCRM's fourth annual user and customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and industry experts from around the world.
Posted April 06, 2010