pureQuery improves application throughput on DB2(R) for z/OS(R) by making it easy to deploy static SQL for Java(TM) for any new or existing application. For new applications, this can be accomplished by using the pureQuery DAO interfaces and annotated methods. The client optimization feature enables capture and bind of SQL in any Java application, including those using a framework. This article has been updated with the latest performance numbers from the Version 2.2 release of the Optim(TM) pureQuery Runtime.

Oracle's software is freely available for personal use but you'll have to pay for access to technical notes, patches, and other specialized content. Plus, there's a technical/legal catch; you can't use My Own Support to find database articles under a different product license. In terms of compliance, you really need a database product. Enter Oracle Database Personal Edition.

Sybase today announced the results of a Global Association of Risk Professional (GARP) study on "Risk Management Systems in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis."

Julian Stuhler shares his pick of the most important current trends in the world of IBM Information Management. Some are completely new and some are evolutions of existing technologies, and he's betting that every one of them will have some sort of impact on data management professionals during the next 12-18 months.

Increasingly more organizations are turning to Business Intelligence professionals to provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations on their critical information. As a Business Intelligence consultant, your challenge is not usually the sourcing or delivery of the information, but how that information is used going forward once you have left the organization.

Microsoft announces new solutions and offerings to help customers and partners realize the benefits of cloud computing, including the Windows Azure Platform appliance.  Read the blog post by Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of Server and Tools.

A database administrator can create ad-hoc packages to implement ETL via SSIS or use methods based on software programming principles. Ad-hoc packages may seem advantageous but can lead to duplication of effort. Learn how to implement the second of these options by taking advantage of package variables.

The third beta release for PostgreSQL version 9.0 is now available. This beta contains numerous fixes and several changes since Beta2, including a final clean-up of Streaming Replication and Hot Standby.

Multi-master replication for MySQL is easy to setup, is similar to master-slave replication and provides a host of features and options not available with the regular master-slave setup. Add to that the MMM database management tool, and you have a flexible, highly available MySQL cluster on which to host your application.

Predictive analytics software helps you to find non-obvious, hidden patterns in large data sets. Current tools for predictive analytics, such as SPSS (an IBM company) and IBM InfoSphere Warehouse, expect data to be represented in an appropriate way before the actual analysis can take place. However, you may have cases where the data you want to analyze is not readily available in a format these tools can recognize. For example, SAP systems are widely used by many companies across a variety of industries, but data in SAP systems is not directly accessible to these tools. This article shows you how to use IBM InfoSphere Information Server to extract data from SAP systems for analysis within InfoSphere Warehouse and SPSS PASW Modeler.

Database administrators have both an Instance level and a Database level auditing approach with IBM DB2 9.5 and 9.7. Understanding auditing at the database level requires a little more work than the instance level. Rebecca Bond shares some tips that will start you on your way with database level auditing.

Written by Eugene Saburi, Business Platform GM, Microsoft

At this year’s World Partner Conference (WPC) I’m leading a breakout session on how partners can achieve competitive advantage by investing in the Microsoft Application Platform. I’ll discuss how we enable partners to deliver amazing solutions based on our platform and how we continue to create new opportunities for our partners in areas like the cloud and business intelligence.

Topics for this session include:

1. Sharing our business priorities
2. Quantifying the opportunities for our customers
3. Showcasing successful partners

Additionally, you will have the opportunity to share your learning, experience and provide feedback to help us further innovate the platform for your needs.

I welcome your feedback on any topics or specific content you would like to hear from us at the event. You can find me on twitter at www.twitter.com/eugenhs or send feedback through our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/sqlserver.

Session details:

• Date: Monday, July 12th
• Time: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM ET
• Location: WCC-149AB
• Session Type: Breakout Session
• Track: Application Platform
• Speaker(s): Eugene Saburi

Details of this and other Application Platform sessions available here

SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP contains all the cumulative updates for SQL Server 2008, and fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms.  These include supportability enhancements and issues that have been reported through Windows Error Reporting.

SP2 CTP applies to:
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
SQL Server 2008 Evaluation Edition
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition
SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition
SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
SQL Server 2008 Workgroup Edition

SP2 is expected to release in CY 2010

Download SQL Server 2008 SP2 CTP

Sybase today announced results of a survey showing that increasing demands for competitiveness and the need for speed are altering the front lines of trading.

Database change control is always difficult even under the best scenarios. Using Oracle's DBMS_METADATA_DIFF becomes a great weapon for DBAs to regain control.

A database administrator needs to plan for both planned and unplanned failovers, based on business requirements and service level agreements with customers. This article runs through the very basic starting points of a MySQL failover strategy then walks through a two-node, planned, manual failover.

A IBM Cognos 8 SDK application that provides enhanced auditing for IBM Cognos 8 BI. The version of the application is 1.5.05 and it will work with IBM Cognos 8 BI versions 8.3 and up.

As was recently observed by web analytics and download feedback, there is a lot of interest in PowerPivot within the Healthcare industry.  A recent blog posting noted that healthcare was the top industry when viewing PowerPivot Interest by Industry.  One of the key reasons is that while healthcare systems have a lot of data (i.e. patient transactional data), it is often left to the analyst using Excel to understand the meaning behind all of this information.

How often are patients coming back?

A common question in hospital settings is that once a patient who has stayed at a hospital leaves (i.e. discharged from the hospital), how often are they coming back to the hospital (i.e. readmitted to the hospital).  This type of re-admission analysis is very important because it ultimately allows analysts to determine why patients are coming back to the hospital within a set number of days of being discharged.

Healthcare Readmission Analysis Example Scenario

Below is an example screenshot of obfuscated sample readmission data from a healthcare customer.  As you can see, there are some large disparities between department discharges (in blue) and the re-admission rates (in red).  For example, while the pulmonary department has relatively few discharge cases, they have the highest re-admission rate near 35%.  Meanwhile, internal medicine has the largest number of discharges, yet one of the lower readmission rates.

Why is this important?

There are many reasons why these disparities exist.  For example, pulmonary medicine will often see higher readmission rates because the complexities involved (e.g. asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, etc.) while internal medicine will see lower re-admission rates because of the larger number of patients (i.e. internal medicine encompasses a lot of different sub-specialties).  While this is outside the scope of this blog, the key point here is that with PowerPivot, our healthcare customer is now quickly able to understand readmission rates of their patients.  With this information in hand, they can now perform further analysis to understand the root causes of the higher readmission rates and the possibility to reduce preventable reasons for readmission (e.g. incorrect prescription, adverse reactions, etc.)

Understanding re-admission analysis allows us to reduce the cases of preventable patient re-admissions.  This saves money, time, and improves patient health. As noted, in CMS' Stealth Health Reform, re-admissions are an indicator of quality failure and 75% of all re-admissions are preventable. And reimbursements for some of re-admissions may be modified or denied if deemed preventable.

… And we can now do this analysis with PowerPivot.

Why PowerPivot?

Because PowerPivot for Excel is an add-on to Excel, analysts were able to focus on understanding the data instead of focusing on learning the new technology.  As with most healthcare IT departments, there is a lot of data coming from a lot of different databases and vendor systems.  With PowerPivot, they were able to quickly import in data from the many disparate data sources and immediately start analyzing.  Once the analysis was completed, they can securely share this information within PowerPivot for SharePoint.

Discussion

I had enjoyed working with our healthcare customer on their PowerPivot project.  Because what we were doing here wasn’t just testing out PowerPivot’s features and creating analysis for the sake of analysis.  With PowerPivot, they were now able to perform readmission analysis - one they were not able to do before - in a matter of hours.  In a matter of hours, we could start helping patients stay healthy.

SQL Server Management Studio has some neat tools for keeping database objects in source control, but they only work if everyone is on board. Red Gate SQL Source Control is a simple and elegant solution that doesn't depend on other developers using the snap-in... and it works.

Join us for MySQL Sunday, a half-day technical conference packed with the latest on MySQL, on September 19, 2010. You’ll also hear what's new and what's next directly from Edward Screven, Oracle Chief Corporate Architect, and other visionary technologists at the "MySQL Fireside Chat" general session.