MySQL Opens Storage Engine API to the Community

MySQL Opens Storage Engine API to the Community: "MySQL is expecting several additional database vendors and community projects to announce supporting storage engines at the conference. It's also unveiling its own, internal, advanced transactional database engine, code-named Falcon. "

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: The Top-Five Myths About SOA

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: In Focus: The Top-Five Myths About SOA: "Myth #5 - If you're using Web services (such as SOAP over HTTP), you've achieved SOA. Not so, says Martin Moseley, chief architect at Intuit, maker of Quicken and Turbo Tax software. 'Even if you use Web services and apply object-oriented approaches, you may not achieve the kind of loosely coupled, autonomous and reusable components that are essential to true SOA,' Moseley says.
Myth #4 - You can buy SOA out of the box. Not quite, says Manuel Ferreira, IT director at Galp, the largest oil and gas supplier in Portugal. 'SOA is something you build for each enterprise, carefully studying each application and planning services that can be reused across that enterprise,' Ferreira says. 'If it's out of the box, it's probably not reusable.'
Myth #3 - You can simply wrap legacy systems with services. 'We often see significant benefits for the overall SOA project if you closely examine the current business needs and then modernize your applications,' says Mark Davis, manager, worldwide enterprise integration services at HP, a TIBCO integration partner. Application modernization may mean reengineering existing applications, rehosting them on a more reliable, manageable or standards-based platform, replacing custom code with a packaged application or retiring apps if you find they no longer support the business.
Myth #2 - Once the top executives are sold on SOA, your troubles are over. SOA demands commitment and tenacity, says Susan Martin, CIO at agricultural giant Bunge Global Markets. 'There's a constant pull to meet new IT and business needs using the quick-and-dirty approaches of the past,' she says. Sticking to SOA approaches and standards requires ongoing discipline, strong governance and support from ra"

IT Hiring Trends Revealed by Robert Half Technology

IT Hiring Trends Revealed by Robert Half Technology

Oracle not doing so well... SQL Server in high demand.

A Simple Plan: Embracing Simplicity Can Reap Huge Business Intelligence Benefits

A Simple Plan: Embracing Simplicity Can Reap Huge Business Intelligence Benefits: "The root cause of complexity in BI - and in IT generally - is that the industry lacks a clear definition of the concept, making it difficult for simplicity to drive product design. Such a definition must be built upon three fundamental pillars of simplicity: an easy-to-use interface, usable features, and ease of deployment and administration. All three pillars must exist in a truly simplified product, and IT managers should begin pressuring their BI vendors to deliver them."

Mopping Up Dirty Data

Mopping Up Dirty Data: "RSA Security, like countless other companies, found out the hard way about the perils of dirty data. The security-software firm had just installed customer-relationship-management software from Siebel Systems in 2001 to make it easier for its 300-person sales force to sell authentication products to enterprise and electronic-commerce customers.

Problem was, the Siebel application was fed by several incompatible systems, each with its own way of identifying customers. And RSA had no way�short of manually going through every record�of being sure salespeople were being given complete and correct information on all customers. If, for example, the company's order-entry system reported information on a customer named James Smith, and the Web server had information on a Jim Smith, the Siebel system probably wouldn't catch on that the two Mr. Smiths were really one customer."

For Oracle and DB2 - CA to Intro New Web-Based Database Control Center

Not for SQL Server yet, but will be a big deal when it is...

CA to Intro New Web-Based Database Control Center: "The IT management company, based in Islandia, N.Y., will introduce on April 24 a new Web-based, freely downloadable DCC (database command center) software module for Internet Explorer that database administrators can use to manage various kinds of databases through many platforms across an enterprise system from any Internet-connected computer.
DCC enables DBAs to perform a laundry list of administrative tasks�through a single-sign-on process�across Windows, Linux, Unix and mainframe databases from a browser interface without having to install any client-based software, the company said. "

It's All About the Data

It's All About the Data: "If you work in IT, you better like alphabet soup: master data management (MDM); customer data integration (CDI); corporate performance management (CPM); business intelligence (BI); enterprise application information (EAI); enterprise integration information (EII); extract, transform and load (ETL); Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX); and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)."

Oracle Plugs 36 Holes in Critical Patch Update

Oracle Plugs 36 Holes in Critical Patch Update: "Database server giant Oracle on April 18 shipped its scheduled quarterly critical patch update with fixes for 36 security vulnerabilities in several enterprise-facing products.
The mega update includes a fix for a gaping flaw in the Oracle PL/SQL Gateway that was reported to Oracle more than six months ago and was the subject of a war of words between Oracle and database security expert David Litchfield at the Black Hat Federal security conference earlier in 2006. "

GigaOM : � Google Finally Has An Enterprise Plan

GigaOM : � Google Finally Has An Enterprise Plan: "Google is not a name you normally associate with corporate back end software. Sure they sell a search appliance, but that�s not setting any new sales records, leading many to believe that Google doesn�t really care much for the enterprise markets.

Well, that is about to change. Erick Schonfeld over on Business 2.0 blog has the scoop on a major new push by Google into the enterprise. As early as tomorrow the search giant is going to announce �a broad set of partnerships with enterprise software companies, including Cognos, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAS.�

As part of the deal, Google will make it easy to search the data (from these various software systems) through its OneBox corporate homepage. Or as Erick says, �Instead of Google Maps, now you will have mashups with Oracle databases, Cognos business intelligence software, and Salesforce.com customer info.�"

Microsoft ships SQL Server 2005 Service Pack | InfoWorld | News | 2006-04-19 | By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

Microsoft ships SQL Server 2005 Service Pack | InfoWorld | News | 2006-04-19 | By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service: "Microsoft released the first service pack for SQL Server 2005 on Wednesday, fixing dozens of bugs and paving the way for more businesses to upgrade to its latest database software. "


...

The free version of the database, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, formerly called Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE), has also been upgraded with a graphical management tool. Administrators without access to special development tools had to use a command line in a DOS window to set up previous versions of the database, Cartwright said.

“The learning curve has always been a little bit steep,” he said.

Applying Project Management to Your Data Integration Project

Applying Project Management to Your Data Integration Project: "Once a company realizes that its electronic data storage capabilities need revamping, it must evaluate the current state and develop a vision for a desired end state - i.e., the vision. Determining the current state and development of the desired future state is founded on the results of an assessment of current data integration and warehousing practices. This process becomes the foundation for a business case."

IBM, Microsoft Square Off on Data Storage Battlefield

An interesting part...

IBM, Microsoft Square Off on Data Storage Battlefield: "'One could reasonably expect that the cost of a terabyte will be reduced from about $1,000 today to $100 in 2007,' he wrote. 'Historical trends imply that in 20 years or less, we will be able to store literally everything digitally, and the petabyte will be a standard measure of personal storage.'

Perhaps storage will be cheaper, but managing that data won't necessarily drop in cost. Database mirroring will serve as one aspect of making sure businesses maintain high availability to access that data.
'As we move from managing transactional data to pre-transactional, as with RFID and other sensors, we will face a 10-100 factor increase in data volume,' Flessner wrote. 'As an industry we are facing an unprecedented explosion of data that we will need to manage, with the ability to organize, summarize and prioritize all of this information becoming a key priority for IT.' "

IBM, Microsoft Square Off on Data Storage Battlefield

IBM, Microsoft Square Off on Data Storage Battlefield: "For its part, IBM on April 6 told eWEEK in an interview that Viper, its upcoming update to its DB2 database server software, has been infused with technology that compresses data throughout the system, including on disk and in memory, thus resulting in a 54 percent savings on storage costs with no performance hit.
On the same day, Microsoft's Paul Flessner, senior vice president of data and storage platforms, announced that SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1�due at month's end�will ship with the final version of database mirroring. Database mirroring is a long-anticipated feature�many listed it as their top pick on the long list of coming attractions in the next-generation SQL Server 2005�that didn't ship in a final, production-ready form when SQL Server 2005 first came out. "

Metrics and the Source of all Knowledge

Business Intelligence Review: "Many times metrics are used as a weapon against the staff member. Dr. Edward Deming often said, 'We need to drive fear out of the workplace.' But most performance measurement systems do exactly the opposite. When management does act on a metric, they don't always look at the business process. Instead they focus on someone, some other department or some outside factor to 'blame' causing people to play the system and to point their fingers elsewhere when problems arise. Many times the metrics selected are too high level to provide information where someone can take action to address before problems develop. In other cases, an important result gets looked at, but it is impacted by so many variables it is difficult to determine the degree of correlation. For example, is a three percent decrease in the rate of content due to improvements in the process or variability in the measurement system? The metrics show a result, but it may be too late to take any corrective action; which leads us to understand that by the time a problem is discovered, it is too late to do anything about it. In the world of meta data, there are an infinite number of possible metrics. This article will define the foundation metrics that each and every meta data implementation should review in detail: content and usage."

Business Intelligence and the Aging

Business Intelligence and the Aging: "In December of last year, I became �officially� old; not because of having arrived at any pre-specified chronological age, but because I was an official delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. This affair, mandated by Congress, had special significance in that it was the first such event in the 21st century, and its obvious focus was to prepare for the first wave of baby boomers to start arriving at the age of retirement. This large number of Americans moving into a new life stage will hit the workforce with the impact of a tsunami and will leave an indelible mark on the nation�s economic and social fabric. "

Content Management and BI Initiatives

Business Intelligence Review: "In fact, in many companies unstructured content is growing faster than traditional data-based content. Examples of this unstructured enterprise content (EC) include Web content, scanned document images, audio and video files, broadcasts and diagrams - just to name a few. It's unstructured in that it doesn't reside in rows, columns and fields somewhere in a corporate database."

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: No Need to Fear XBRL

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: No Need to Fear XBRL: "Companies have been slow to adopt XBRL. One reason may be the distraction and burden of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. We noted another reason several weeks ago: Some companies are afraid it will be a back door to regulating the structure of corporate charts of accounts into a single model, something that we believe is a very bad idea. Since then we have learned that the SEC, the ultimate arbiter in this case, is opposed to a single chart of accounts structure for U.S. public companies. Gary Booth, CIO of the SEC, recently stated in a speech that the 'guiding principle I think the SEC should continue to pursue is to make sure registrants continue to have as much flexibility in the presentation of their financial statements as they currently do under U.S. GAAP accounting.' "

Oracle SQL Developer

Oracle SQL Developer: "Oracle SQL Developer is a new, free graphical tool that enhances productivity and simplifies database development tasks. With SQL Developer, you can browse database objects, run SQL statements and SQL scripts, and edit and debug PL/SQL statements. You can also run any number of provided reports, as well as create and save your own.

SQL Developer can connect to any Oracle Database version 9.2.0.1 and later. We support SQL Developer running on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX."

Linux Muscling to the Top in Oracle Shops

Linux Muscling to the Top in Oracle Shops: "Solaris, Sun's flagship Unix operating system, now dominates Oracle sites. It's installed at 49 percent of Oracle shops among the 812 surveyed in January by the Independent Oracle Users Group, or IOUG.

Other Unix flavors�HP-UX and AIX�combine with Solaris to give Unix control over 73 percent of Oracle shops. But Linux is moving up fast, with 44 percent of respondents saying they'll be running their databases on Linux by this time next year. "

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 - for free

It's no bs..

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2: "Virtual Server 2005 R2: Now Available as a Free Download
Learn how you can use Virtual Server 2005 R2, now available as a free download, to increase hardware utilization and enable faster deployments of new servers."

Forrester Predicts 2006 Trends for Investing of Software and Services Budgets

Forrester Predicts 2006 Trends for Investing of Software and Services Budgets

Three Trends in Business Intelligence Technology Perfect Storm or Perfect World?

Three Trends in Business Intelligence Technology Perfect Storm or Perfect World?: "Trend # 1: Consolidation of BI Companies
You would have to live under a rock to not have read or heard something about a business intelligence company gobbling up or forming exclusive relationships with another BI company. These acquisitions / relationships seem to fall into one of three categories:"