Databases Archive

InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a first look at Oracle NoSQL Database, the company's take on the distributed key-value data store for the enterprise. 'There are dozens of small ways in which the tool is more thorough and sophisticated than the simpler NoSQL projects. You get a number of different options for increasing the durability in the face of a node crash or trading that durability for speed,' Wayner writes. 'Oracle NoSQL might not offer the heady fun and "just build it" experimentation of many of the pure open source NoSQL projects, but that's not really its role. Oracle borrowed the best ideas from these groups and built something that will deliver good performance to the sweet spot of the enterprise market.'

The release of the first beta of version 9.1 of the open source PostgreSQL database has opened a new era in enterprise-class reliability and data integrity that can compete with the big names, say its developers. CIO recently interviewed Josh Berkus, Kevin Grittner, Dimitri Fontaine and Robert Haas about PostgreSQL 9.1 and its future.

MySQL 5.5 delivers significant enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, and Mac OS X. The MySQL 5.5 Community Edition, which is licensed under the GNU GPL, and is available for free download, includes InnoDB as the default storage engine.

Database security is the single biggest concern with today's Web-based applications. Without control, you risk exposing sensitive information about your company or, worse yet, your valuable customers. In this article, learn about security measures you can take to protect your PostgreSQL database. Be sure to download the sample code listings used in this article.

A while back, we covered the release of the free Cloudera distribution of Hadoop-- handy software to manage data across a multiplicity of servers-- the same software behind Yahoo!, Facebook, and other successful companies. Though Hadoop and Cloudera's Hadoop have been truly stellar at what they do, it's all essentially been done via command line, which for many people isn't the most productive or user-friendly type of interface. The folks at Cloudera knew this, so they've gone ahead and created a graphical interface to communicate with Hadoop.

Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the effect recent developments in the MySQL community will have on MySQL's future in the wake of Oracle's acquisition of Sun. Even before Oracle announced its buyout, there were signs of strain within the MySQL community, with key MySQL employees exiting and forks of the MySQL codebase arising, including Widenius' MariaDB.

Hadoop, the same software that lies at the heart of successful companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and others, has been proven time and again with said companies to be a successful data management server, keeping data secure and fault-free spread across multiple servers. It isn't the easiest piece of software to configure, however, which is why the Cloudera company has just announced a freely downloadable and easier to use custom distribution of Hadoop to bring the power of entities like Google to smaller businesses.

In an almost indiscernible and confusing article filled with various scientific terms that most cringe to hear, it was described how in October of 2008 scientists successfully stored and retrieved data on the nucleus of an atom-- and all for two short lived seconds. With this new type of storage, a traditional bit can now be both zero and one at the same time, but in order to understand just how this is possible, translate the article linked above to plain English. Data integrity returns after two seconds at 90% and storage is obviously impermanent, so there are many kinks to work out before atomic storage actually serves a purpose, but give these scientists a couple of decades, and it's theoretical that we'll one day have nuclear drives the size of USB drives today (or MicroSD cards, or why not even specs of dust?) that can hold hundreds of terabytes-- even pentabytes-- of information.

When Sun announced it would offer certain plugins and features for enterprise customers only, and maybe even make them closed-source, the open source community was up in arms. It seems that MySQL and Sun have listened to the criticism, as these plans are now off the table. In fact, these plans did not originate within Sun in the first place.

The Firebird RDBMS 2008 Roadmap is now publicly available. During this year, Firebird users can expect two final releases (2.1 and 2.5) and the first alpha of FB 3. Many new features are planned, as described in the roadmap. In addition, RC1 of 2.1 has been released.

MySQL AB and Sun have announced that MySQL has been bought by Sun. "Sun Microsystems today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately USD 1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the USD 15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor." More here.

"In a world of people obsessed by turning the tiniest idea into something profitable, Dr Richard Hipp's best-known software stands out for two reasons - he actively disclaims copyright in it; and at a time when multi-megabyte installations are booming, he has a self-imposed limit on the size of his product: 250KB. And he's stuck to both aims. 'I think we've got 15 kilobytes of spare space,' he says of the headroom left in the code."

Microsoft has released a second free service pack for its popular SQL Server 2005 database application. The update makes SQL Server 2005 compatible with Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 suite, and adds a number of data compression, manageability and interoperability enhancements. Microsoft has also changed the terms under which SQL Server 2005 can be run using virtualisation software.