Database Technology Trends

It’s been a while since I last wrote in my blog. Luckily Google does its magic and still sends visitors to my blog.

This post will be very brief. Recently I was contacted by Sybase to write a couple of articles exclusively for Sybase. I agreed to this and that’s another reason why my blog got neglected.

The first article I wrote was called “Sybase ASE 15.5 – The Need For Speed” and was published in the Database Journal May 26th 2010. Please follow the link below to read the article.

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/sybase/article.php/3883951/Sybase-ASE-155—-The-Need-for-Speed.htm

The second article was on the topic of Semantic Partitions in Sybase ASE. This article was published on Sybase’sweb site as featured article for the month of June.

http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1080387

I hope you enjoyed the articles and if you want more information about me and my company Dobler Consulting, visit the website http://www.doblerconsulting.com and sign up for the news letter.

Thanks for listening,

Peter

As Managing Partner of Dynamic Database Solutions, LLC, I am proud to share a special announcement with you. Dynamic DB is currently launching the ActiveBase software suite into the US market. My goal is to introduce you to new database technology and trends, and ActiveBase is definitely a new technology you should take a closer look at.

Below is the press release about ActiveBase’s inclusion into Gartner’s Cool Vendor list 2010.

ActiveBase, a pioneer in the Dynamic Data Masking market through its ActiveBase Security™ solution, today announced it has been included in the list of Gartner Cool Vendors in the Cool Vendors in Application Security, 2010 report by Ray Wagner, Joseph Feiman, Neil MacDonald, John Pescatore, Earl Perkins April 14, 2010, by Gartner Inc.

While other security and static data masking tools may provide protection for non-production environments, sensitive information in production environments remains mainly unprotected. With ActiveBase, users, external workforce, IT support teams or outsourced personnel cannot access sensitive information if it is not required to perform their job. ActiveBase offers a new approach – Dynamic Data Masking – allowing for application transparent, flexible protection even within packaged applications.

ActiveBase Security™ is the first product on the market in the emerging Dynamic Data Masking market. Static data masking — the only approach offered by most vendors — primarily aims to deter the misuse of data by users of test databases (typically programmers, testers and database administrators) by masking data in advance of testing.

Dynamic (real-time) data masking typically masks data in production databases (for example, from client service personnel working in credit-card call centers).

This technology does not require any changes in applications that access the database, or to the database itself. A caching mechanism minimizes performance effects.

The power of Dynamic Data Masking solution is that it adds a security layer within and around  business applications, reporting, development and database tools, masking, scrambling, hiding or blocking sensitive information in real-time with no changes to applications or databases, while the underlying data is not masked, but it is returned masked at the presentation layer.

ActiveBase Security™ benefits include:

• Dynamically masks, scrambles, blocks, encrypts or hides “in-motion” access to sensitive and personal information in 1/10 the costs and time of applying other solutions.
• Enforces application security policies across applications and tools accessing production database. No need for changes to the applications or the database.
• Reuses ActiveBase Security production rules to mask and protect unauthorized access in testing and QA environments.
• Administered by security operators that are not required to be DBAs.

About Gartner’s Cool Vendors Selection Process

Gartner’s listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn’t do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

About ActiveBase

ActiveBase, Ltd. is a pioneer in the Dynamic Data Masking market through its ActiveBase Security™ solution and performance suite. World leading customers including Coca Cola, GE, Orange, Phoenix Insurance, First international Bank, Israeli Security agency and many more trust our software products in the most demanding environments.

Our software products are built on a patented Database Network Router (DNR) technology, transparently installed between applications and databases, with database traffic routed through it.

ActiveBase was founded 2002 by senior IT industry executives with specific expertise in enterprise security and database performance. ActiveBase is privately held. For more information, please visit http://www.active-base.com or http://www.dynamicdatamasking.com 

###
More information about ActiveBase can be found on http://www.dynamic-db.com and http://www.doblerconsulting.com .

Thank you for reading,

Peter Dobler

Sybase IQ

Sybase’s secret is out. Gartner officially acknowledges that Sybase IQ belongs into the leader quadrant of its Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant. Click here to read Sybase’s announcement.

I am working with Sybase IQ since 2001 and I always knew that the column vector approach has tremendous advantages in a large volume data warehouse environment. As for many other products of Sybase, the focus was solely on the superior database engine. This pretty much excluded all non technical people from experiencing the Sybase IQ advantage. Click here to read about the latest performance record set by Sybase IQ.

With the introduction of Sybase IQ Options, these advantages are now transparent to not so technical people as well. This is an important step in the right direction. Database technology is not driven by DBAs and infrastructure managers, but by business analysts and application architects. Click here to read more about Sybase IQ Options.

I think this will positively impact the role Sybase IQ plays in the data warehouse market. Hopefully Sybase marketing will take full advantage of this opportunity. 

Sybase ASE 15.5 IMDB

In my last post I wrote about in-memory database and their advantages. Sybase ASE 15.5 will provide this so called IMDB in its core engine, which means that there’s no need to change your application code to connect to the Sybase ASE IMDB.

Sybase released a new white paper on how to apply performance tuning to the Sybase ASE in-memory database. Yes, even in-memory databases need some TLC. The report also outlines my comments on where IMDBs are most suitable to solve performance problems. Heavy write intensive applications are the top beneficiaries, as long as the data is not needed for long term storage. E-commerce applications are probably the best example. But there are other situations where an IMDB will provide an alternative. Any data collection application that aggregates data end only writes the result set into a permanent storage is a good candidate for IMDB.  Click here to read the entire report.

Note

This is the latest update from Sybase. As always, please feel free to comment on this post. I would love to hear your feedback.