There will always be a place for relational databases, but non-relational solutions are proving to be fast, flexible, and scalable for many tasks.

Sybase today announced that it is delivering notice to the holders of its 3.50% Convertible Senior Notes Due 2029 of the closing on July 29, 2010 of the "second-step" cash merger of Sheffield Acquisition Corp...

Information protection is one of the common entry points for organizations getting started with information governance. Protecting sensitive data serves a clear business need, and protecting data is the goal of many current regulations. In this 2 part series we will start looking at the protection of data in this article by looking at the security of IBM Data Servers on z/OS. This will be followed by part 2 looking at audit and compliance.

To ensure that queries run as efficiently as possible, the database administrator needs to monitor performance to find inefficient queries. This article focuses on exploring how a DBA can monitor the I/Os against an instance of SQL Server, using Dynamic Management Objects, or more commonly know as Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) and Functions (DMFs).

Feeding a data warehouse with changes from the source database can be very expensive. If the extraction is only done with SQL, there is no way to easily identify the rows that have been changed. IBM InfoSphere Replication Server can detect changed data by reading only the database log. This article series illustrates how you can use InfoSphere Replication Server to efficiently extract just the changed data, and then pass the changes to IBM InfoSphere DataStage to feed the data warehouse. This is a two-part article series. In Part 1, get an overview of the products and how they can work together. In Part 2, explore two different integration options: with staging tables or with MQ messages.

Ever wonder what the Oracle Database Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) was doing behind the scenes or how it comes up with an execution plan? While other tools or settings show us WHAT the CBO comes up with, the 10053 trace event setting tells us HOW the CBO came to its decision (the final execution plan).

Learn how to develop service components by combining pureXML, data Web services, and data objects and using a sample module project with WebSphere Integration Developer V7.

A short document to explain the main concepts of IBM Cognos 8 Dispatchers when routing requests.

This document describes how one can implement SSO to his Custom Java Authentication Provider by explaining the required concepts. This documents supplements SDK documentation.

One of the most integral components and critical success factors of any enterprise data warehousing initiative is the Solutions Architecture document, a high-level conceptual model of a data warehousing solution. Learn why this collaborative effort that addresses the needs of all major stakeholders, including both the business units and Information Technology (IT), is essential.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11gR2) makes it easier than ever to isolate and identify potential root causes of poor I/O performance. This article focuses on the various Oracle and non-Oracle tools to generate sample workloads to provide sufficient metrics for detection and eventual resolution of performance bottlenecks within the database's underlying input/output (I/O) subsystem.

If you haven’t already tried out PowerPivot, or if you need a little help educating your IT department on SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, check out these two reports from leading research firm, Gartner, Inc. These important notes highlight the value of PowerPivot and how IT should prepare for and position PowerPivot. They also offer best practices based on real-world customer scenarios and feedback for building business intelligence (BI) and performance management architecture.

Read the full Gartner reports here:

What is SQL Server PowerPivot?

Q&A: What are Customer Experiences with SQL Server PowerPivot

BI is a top priority for our customers who are looking for solutions to bring better business insights to employees making decisions every day. PowerPivot introduces Microsoft’s unique ‘managed self-service’ approach that gives companies and IT departments the ability to enable and empower their business users to create reports and conduct their own analysis while still maintaining all the insight and oversight of IT.  It’s this focus on users that differentiates Microsoft BI. Microsoft has long been tracking on a vision of bringing BI to more users and PowerPivot is another step in this direction to making BI truly pervasive. 

Another recent note by Gartner’s John Hagerty (formerly AMR) titled: “Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel: Unleashing the Business User” discusses the critical need for companies to embrace the business user, enabling them to get important work done and freeing up IT for more strategic projects.

For more information, see our previous posts here and here. For a free trial, visit http://powerpivot.com/.

Sybase today announced that, in connection with the closing of the acquisition of Sybase by Sheffield Acquisition Corp, pursuant to a "first-step" cash tender offer for all outstanding Sybase common shares at $65.00 per share...

Rob Gravelle explores the MySQL UPDATE statement, which is used to modify existing records in a table. Among its many features, he looks at how to update multiple tables, avoiding mistakes, and how to limit how many rows are updated.

In October 2009, IBM announced that some rather neat technology known as data sharing would be delivered for the IBM DB2 for Linux, Unix and Windows product, in an optional facility dubbed pureScale. Julian Stuhler takes a closer look at this technology and the possible implications for the entire IBM DB2 world.

Marcin Policht demonstrates how to leverage SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) package variables in order to modify SSIS properties without directly editing package content.

This document provides an example of installing and upgrading TM1 9.5 including TM1 9.5 Server, TM1 9.5 Web, and TM1 9.5 Contributor. This example is performed on a Single Server running MS Windows XP 32-bit and using IIS and Apache Tomcat.

Crunched by the economy and squeezed by competition, businesses and consumers alike are turning to mobile computing. This report wraps up our overview of the top contenders in the mobile database market with a look at Sybase SQL Anywhere and SQLite.

The IBM Data Server .NET Provider supports application development for IBM Informix. It is available for download as part of the Informix Client Software Development Kit (SDK). This article describes the two .NET providers that support .NET application development for Informix, and highlights the benefits of using the Data Server .NET Provider. The article also provides examples to help you quickly get started using the IBM Data Server .NET Provider.

The concept of shell sharing between Eclipse-based products means that you can share the core Eclipse components so that they are not duplicated between each Eclipse-based product. Shell sharing can save disk space, eliminate duplication of components, and enable products to interact with each other, making each product stronger than if it were run stand-alone. This article explains the process of sharing Eclipse shells between many different IBM products by showing an example of this using InfoSphere Data Architect (IDA), Optim Development Studio (ODS) and Optim Database Administrator (ODA).