Avokia Claims Most Farflung Database Cluster Ever

Avokia Claims Most Farflung Database Cluster Ever: "Avokia is claiming to have strung out the most farflung database cluster ever, between Toronto and San Francisco, or 2,266 miles.
ADVERTISEMENT Espressocode, maker of software for the freight and customs industries, is using ApLive technology, which Avokia rolled out at Demo in February, to pull IBM DB2 databases together in an active and load-balanced cluster in the multisite environment. "

Startling Paybacks from RFID

Startling Paybacks from RFID: "Whereas the benefits of tagging vehicles, intermodal containers, pallets and cases in supply chains are almost all financial in nature and of limited variety and magnitude, item level RFID tagging on the grand scale offers a far wider variety of financial benefits and also many nonfinancial benefits. Some examples are shown in Figure 1."

Dashboards Can Help You Align Operations with Business Goals

Dashboards Can Help You Align Operations with Business Goals: "Like many other projects, dashboard projects involve pitfalls. Following is a summary:

-Data accuracy: The data displayed has to be absolutely correct. If users cannot trust the data, they will not use it. Nothing will kill the use of a dashboard faster than incorrect data.
- Target audience: Different users in an organization will need different information, aggregated at different levels. Dashboards should be targeted at specific users and developed according to their needs. Involvement of the end users in a dashboard project will greatly improve the adoption rate of the final product. "

Good stuff - keep this handy if you are waorking in or near a dashboard project.

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Oracle Ships 'Low Cost' Content Management Software

Wow... do you consider $50k /processor "low cost"?

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Oracle Ships 'Low Cost' Content Management Software: "Oracle on Wednesday launched software that the company says is designed to provide 'low-cost' management of Office documents, PDF and image files, and other unstructured data.
The new Content and Records databases target companies dealing with content in mostly unmanaged environments, the vendor said. The two products include interfaces for use within a service-oriented architecture to content-enable business processes and applications.
The new databases perform different functions in managing unstructured data. The Oracle Content Database consolidates content into a secure repository, while the Oracle Records Database manages the retention and disposition portion of the content lifecycle, after the information has been created and published.
The two new products, which were first unveiled in June, are both priced at $50,000 per processor, and are options for the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. "

IT's seven deadly career sins | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2006-09-18 | By Richard Gincel

IT's seven deadly career sins InfoWorld Analysis 2006-09-18 By Richard Gincel: "Absolutely correct, Ferrell says: “The current corporate obsession with project management is nothing more than a realization that here is a great place to stick people with no technical or personnel management skills and get them to take the blame for failures.” "

The Backup Dilemma: Is it Time to Table Tape?

The Backup Dilemma: Is it Time to Table Tape?: "In summary: hold onto your tape system. Although a disk-based system can and should play a significant role in all data protection environments and it can improve recovery-time objectives and other performance metrics, it is unsuitable for long-term backup storage and should be considered a performance enhancer rather than a reliability or functionality enhancer. While ongoing developments in data protection methodologies may tweak some of the storage parameters, none of them change it so thoroughly as to make a pure disk-based long-term backup environment suitably reliable and cost-effective."

Business Intelligence and Illegal Trade

This is also how the CIA breaks down terrorist networks... and the FBI figures out who's who in the Mafia..

Business Intelligence and Illegal Trade: "It is precisely in this area where business intelligence can and should play a critical role. For starters, as mentioned in my recent article, through social network analysis, we may start to connect the dots of who talks to whom and be able to preempt criminal activities. In addition, finding patterns in the data itself through more classical data mining algorithms, may enable us to obtain insights into the inner workings of the networks and facilitate law enforcement organizations in doing their job. Lastly, business intelligence will always have a key role to play in serving as a platform for decision making as we have to choose between several courses of action. Only if there is a rigorous and methodical analysis of the facts we have at hand, will we purposefully move in the right direction. And, illicit trade makes it very clear that, at the very least, we have to try."

DW 2.0 Conference | Home

If I was going to a conference soon, this would be near the top of my list. Sounds very good.

DW 2.0 Home: "The inaugural DW 2.0 Conference will be chaired by Bill Inmon, internationally acclaimed writer, educator, entrepreneur, and 'father' of the original data warehouse revolution. Bill is the principal author of the DW 2.0 architecture. He will be joined by a faculty of expert speakers delivering a comprehensive, detailed picture of DW 2.0 from both the technical and business perspectives. As such, this conference is of direct relevance to IT and business professionals alike.
Topics include:
An introduction to the world of DW 2.0 including a comparison of first and second generation data warehouses and the components of DW 2.0.
Techniques for optimizing DW 2.0 components
Storage and performance issues
How DW 2.0 relates to current priorities such as CDI and master data management
Human factors in implementing new architectures
DW 2.0 as a more effective business intelligence tool
Integrating metadata into the DW 2.0 architecture
Cost justification and return on investment "

CIO Blogs - The Slow, Painful Demise of Strategic IT |

This trend doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I agree with the author.

CIO Blogs - The Slow, Painful Demise of Strategic IT : "I don't care how wonderful the relationship is between CIOs and CEOs in companies where the CFO does the CIO's performance review. This is always the defense I hear. 'Our CIO and CEO have a wonderful relationship. They don't need a direct reporting relationship. In fact, it would get in the way, because the CEO is so busy, this lets them focus on IT issues.' Or, 'our CFO really gets IT. In fact, he/she gets it more than the CEO. I get more done by reporting to the CFO than I ever could reporting to the CEO.'
Baloney. If the CEO doesn't have time--or worse, enough IT knowledge--to manage the CIO, it's because the reporting relationship signifies the bigger truth: the CEO doesn't believe IT is strategic. At the very least, it sends a signal to the rest of the organization than IT isn't strategic."

Oracle Rootkits 2.0: The Next Generation - from Only4Gurus.com

Oracle Rootkits 2.0: The Next Generation - from Only4Gurus.com: "Summary: This presentation shows the next (2.) generation of Oracle Rootkits. In the first generation, presented at the Blackhat 2005 in Amsterdam, Oracle Rootkits were implemented by modifying database views to hide users, jobs and sessions. The next generation presented at the BH USA 2006 is using more advanced techniques to hide users/implement backdoors. Modifications on the data dictionary objects are no longer necessary so it's not possible to find the new generation of rootkits by checksumming the data dictionary objects."

Seven Habits of Highly Effective DBAs

Seven Habits of Highly Effective DBAs: "2. Understand the business and user expectations. One would think this is a no-brainer, yet gaining knowledge and keeping abreast of the business often slips to the bottom of many DBAs' lists, who then flounder as they face unanticipated database use and growth patterns. Get beyond a superficial level of understanding to map database transaction and workload patterns to different user activities. Such knowledge helps in two ways. For new systems, it allows you to model systems infrastructure to ensure capacity is available to accommodate regular use as well as spikes. For existing systems, it helps you build a baseline of what the database is supposed to look like when it is working 'normally' and identify any deviations. Accordingly, you can configure alert thresholds to avoid false alerts, as well as begin proactive diagnosis and action to prevent long-term performance disruptions."

What end-users can't stand about you - Network World

What end-users can't stand about you - Network World: "Walking away is not what annoys Jeff the most about IT managers. 'Once [our IT manager] asked how I enjoyed a particular weekend party; obviously he had read my e-mails, as I never mentioned the party to him,' he says. "

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: The Seven Pillars of BI Success

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: The Seven Pillars of BI Success: "Recent innovations discussed in Neil Raden's 'BI Megatrends,' BI vendors' partnerships with Google and other search technology vendors--will extend the reach of BI. Ten years ago, few would have said that every worker (let alone every teenager) needed a cell phone. Similarly, differences in perception among industry analysts, market prognosticators and vendors tell us that a range of opinions exist about BI's potential, and that many still do not view BI as part of the mainstream office tool portfolio."

The Monthly Process of Analytics

Not sure if I agree, but an insightful article:

The Monthly Process of Analytics: "In the same way, the data warehouse is best suited for storing and processing large quantities of data, but it is not ideally suited for an individual customer to build a detailed sales analysis package for Big John the VP. This analytic package could require compiling information from multiple sources that need to be integrated. That analysis might require integration of information not typically stored in the data warehouse. This can lead to the manual process of cutting and pasting this required data into Excel and PowerPoint. Using the old logic of analytics, accessing all of the required data from a data warehouse could result in many manual hours of compiling that presentation for Big John the VP. Wouldn't it be nice if we could improve the end user experience by providing an environment where instead of hunting for information, a single interface providing all the information the user needed?"