Databases Archive

As new species of XML docs are emerging, vendors are unveiling increased RDBMS support for XML.

In order to address a potentially serious (although rare) server startup failure that was recently reported, PostgreSQL version 7.3.4 was released. This release is critical for users of PostgreSQL version 7.3.3, and highly recommended for all other PostgreSQL users. This release, as with all minor releases, does not require a dump/reload to be upgraded.

"Many enterprise software users and vendors have made significant commitments to open source technologies. Projects such as the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, and the Perl programming language, have proven themselves as viable alternatives to equivalent commercial offerings. But what about the tools used to hold core information assets? Are open source databases ready for the enterprise?" Read the article at LinuxWorld.au.

Ellison faces pressure from both sides of the database market -- IBM on top, and Microsoft below. A little more than a year ago, Gartner Group principal analyst Colleen Graham issued a study that showed IBM taking the lead over Oracle for the first time in the cutthroat corporate-database market.

Database users who rely on Linux operating systems are drooling over the list of features promised by the soon-to-be-released 2.6 kernel. Read the report at eWeek.

"When will RAM prices make disk drives obsolete for database developers? I first came across this question when talking with Michael "Monty" Widenius, one of the visonaries behind the MySQL database. For some applications, running entirely in RAM is not news at all. One major platform, the Palm Pilot, relies entirely on battery-powered RAM. Disks are used only occassionally for remote backups." Read the article at DevChannel by Peter Wayner.

This tutorial demonstrates the techniques needed to build a Web service in C# that accesses an IBM DB2 Universal Database using the DB2 managed data provider.

Microsoft may be pulling out all the stops for its 64-bit database Thursday, but if you ask Oracle, this is a non-event. In a series of interviews with CRN Tuesday, one executive after another repeated that the company plans no direct response to Microsoft's 64-bit SQL challenge. Microsoft has positioned that database as proof that SQL Server is ready for the enterprise.

MySQL is aiming for speedier development cycles than most database companies. The company is currently focusing on two products: MySQL versions 4.1 and 5.0. It released the binaries of 4.1 this week and plans to unveil a final version in about eight months. A final version 5.0 should be available about six months after that. Read the report at News.com.

Get yourself accustomed to the FireBird database under Linux with this intro article.

MySQL still lacks many features big customers want, but the software maker and CEO Marten Mickos have dazzling opportunities ahead. Intersting article, but too bad the article doesn't also mention PostgreSQL, BerkeleyDB and Firebird.

Microsoft showed off some of the forthcoming programmability features of "Yukon," the next version of its SQL Server database, here at the VSLive! developer conference on Thursday. Yukon won't be an XML database, but will rather integrate support for XML data types into the relational SQL Server database.

Although open source databases are picking up steam in the commercial market, breaking into the enterprise market and competing with the likes of Oracle and IBM's DB2 will be tough. "This is rocket science," Aberdeen's Bill Claybrook said. In the meantime, the SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) addresses specific issues discovered in SQL Server 2000 since its ship date.

The major PostgreSQL news this week is the upcoming release of 7.3.1, which will provide some fixes for early adopters of 7.3. In other SQL news, the Firebird team is pleased to announce the release of the Firebird v1.0.2 update for Win32 and Linux.