Articles and News about SQL, XML, SQL/XML, XQuery, databases and computing. http://www.SQLSummit.com Copyright 2004-2011 Ken North Computing, LLC knc@SQLSummit.com knc@SQLSummit.com http://www.SQLSummit.com/images/SQL120.jpg http://www.SQLSummit.com 120 54 SQLSummit logo Information Difference has produced the data warehouse landscape for Q4 2010. Vendors were ranked according to technology and market strength, which was based on breadth of partner network, data warehouse revenues, financial strength, growth, and geographic coverage. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm Sentrigo released version 4.1 of Hedgehog Enterprise, an integrated software suite for database activity monitoring and vulnerability assessment. Version 4.1 adds support for Sybase and MySQL databases in Hedgehog DBScanner, which checks for 4,000 potential weaknesses. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm Predictive Analytics World features a lineup of 30 speakers and a program that includes two tracks with case studies from leading enterprises. The conference will run March 14-15 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel. Post-conference workshops will run March 16 and 17, 2010. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm Amazon has announced the availability of several Oracle applications on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The list of available applications includes Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite and J.D. Edwards Enterprise One software. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm Writing for the Database Blog at Dr. Dobb's, Ken North discusses hardware solutions for accelerating web services and database processing. Part II of "Specialty Hardware, Databases, Mainframes, and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)" discusses specialty processors, including the zIIP and zAAP, that can handle Java and XML workloads. http://www.SQLSummit.com/index.htm Progress Software has announced drivers for salesforce.com's database in the cloud. The JDBC driver for database.com is in beta test. An ODBC driver will be available in the second quarter of 2011. http://www.SQLSummit.com/index.htm GigaSpaces announced the first cloud-based social casino platform uses the GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP). Yazino has built a bridge between social gaming and online gambling that requires scalability for more than 500,000 players. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm Google has announced support for hosted SQL databases using Google App Engine for Business. SQL support is expected to be available by the second quarter of 2011. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News.htm As cloud computing gained momentum, attention inevitably turned to hosting databases in the cloud. Issues such as horizontal scaling, the model best suited for public and private clouds, have prompted the development of a new generation of data stores. In "Databases in the Clouds: Elysian Fields or Briar Patch?", Ken North discusses the new data stores. He also examines cloud computing with SQL platforms, column-oriented databases, RDF stores and tuple spaces variants. http://www.SQLSummit.com/index.htm The most recent updates to the catalog of drivers and providers at SQLSummit.com adds Devart dotConnect dataproviders. http://www.SQLSummit.com/DataProv.htm The latest update to the SQLSummit catalog of JDBC Drivers and Servers revises the data sources supported by JNetDirect and Progress Software. JNetDirect SimpleDB not supports Amazon SimpleDB. Progress DataDirect now has a driver for Force.com and Database.com. There are more than 100 vendors or other providers listed in the JDBC driver catalog. http://www.SQLSummit.com/JDBCVend.htm Videos, slides and podcasts of recent conference presentations have been published for on-demand playback on the World Wide Web. Videos recorded at DataServices World in New York and San Jose feature speakers such as Geoff Brown (m2mi), Dr. Michael Carey (University of California, Irvine), Peter Coffee (salesofrce.com), Dr. Stef Damianakis (Netrics), Parand Darugar (Yahoo!), Mike Gorman (Whitemarsh), Mark Hapner (Sun Microsystems), Dr. Carlo Innocenti (DataDirect), Susan Malaika (IBM), Ken North (KNComputing), Dr. William O'Connell (IBM), Mike Pizzo (Microsoft), Tom Tague (Thomson Reuters) and Jeff Vroom (Adobe). The video is available for media players that support the Flash, Windows Media, MP4 and Quicktime formats, as well as 3GP for mobile phones. http://www.SQLSummit.com/News/DataServicesWorld.htm A 90-page report by Ken North Computing, LLC discusses the role and importance of data access middleware. "Middleware in Action: Industrial Strength Data Access" describes how middleware plugs into architectures for distributed applications and services, including SOA, OLTP and ESB. It explains defining characteristics of best-of-breed data access middleware, including features for performance and scalability. The report, and a separate executive summary, provide a features checklist for compiling a report card for database drivers and data providers. http://www.SQLSummit.com/Articles/DataAccessMiddleware.htm At various conferences in Canada, the UK, US and Europe, data access workshops and panel discussions assembled a cast of experts to explore databases, SQL data access and technology trends. The panels included well-known gurus Rick Cattell, Joe Celko, Don Chamberlin, Paul Cotton, Jim Gray, Jim Melton, Mike Pizzo and other experts. Slides from some panel presentations are now available at SQLSummit.com. http://www.SQLSummit.com/Workshops/DBGurus.htm Michael M. David returns to SQLSummit.com to explore two approaches to transforming XML hierarchical data structures. He explains the difference between restructuring and reshaping XML data, with the latter driven by the semantics of the data structure. http://www.SQLSummit.com/Articles/XMLRestructuring.htm Researchers have recently uncovered security vulnerabilities in the OpenSSL toolkit that's deployed on 60% of the web servers on the Internet. The potential problems include buffer overruns, denial-of-security attacks, forging of digital certificates and compromising of confidential information. Ken North discusses these OpenSSL vulnerabilities, recent research about an RSA attack based on Simple Branch Prediction Analysis, and the effect on digital certificates used for authentication and secure communications. http://www.SQLSummit.com/Articles/RSAVulnerability.htm IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have taken the SQL:2003 path to integrating native XML with SQL. Michael M. David presents an alternative approach to hierarchical processing for any SQL DBMS that implements the 1992 or 1999 SQL standards. He explains platform-neutral XML integration using left outer join, lowest common ancestor and sorted outer union techniques. http://www.SQLSummit.com/Articles/XMLSQLOuterJoin.htm