Welcome to the 154th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Oracle

On Radio Free Tooting, Andrew Clarke says, “No SQL, so what?” taking as his keynote something Nuno Souto said: “ . . . Google, Facebook, Myspace, Ning etcetc, and what they do as far as IT goes, are absolutely and totally irrelevant to the VAST majority of enterprise business.”

Aman Sharma gives an overview of Library Cache on Arista’s Oracle Blog.

On The Dutch Prutser’s Blog, …

Image by weboo via Flickr

A while ago, about 16 years ago now, I had a desktop computer.  It wasn’t a PC.  It was an Acorn.  It had an ARM processor in it.  Despite the rest of the world starting going crazy for the new Pentium chip, the Acorn with its ARM processor could run rings about it in terms of computing power.  And it was simple and easy to use, I used to write applications in assembly code for it (and it didn't have a fan!).

Not too long after that Acorn went under, Arm was already off on its own to find a new market.  Its …

Look at MySQL bug reports of course? Well actually I’m writing multiple blog posts, and I was confirming additional reference sources and links when I came across MySQL Bug #29847 - Large CPU usage of InnoDB crash recovery with a big buf pool.

Taking the time to actually read the information exchange I stumble upon.

[8 Jun 23:29] liz drachnik

Hello Heikki - 

In order for us to continue the process of reviewing your contribution to MySQL - We need
you to review and sign the Sun|MySQL contributor agreement (the "SCA")

The process is explained here:
http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Sun_Contributor_Agreement

Getting a signed/approved SCA on file will help us facilitate your contribution-- this
one, and others in the future.

Thank you ! 

Liz Drachnik  - Program Manager - MySQL

Oops. Well it made me laugh out loud for so many reasons. First your talking to the …

Forrester put out its Enterprise Data Management Q2 2009 report a few days ago, you can buy it from Forrester but it also seems to now be available for free from Microsoft here.  I don’t actively seek out these reports as they usually just re-enforce common knowledge (this one was no exception), however as it turned up I managed to find some time on the weekend for a quick read through.

Few surprises in this report, but some key mentions are:

• DBMS market expected to grow 8% annually
• IBM, Microsoft & Oracle own 88% of the DBMS market (by revenue)
• Current market estimated at $27 billion, $32 billion by 2013
• IBM, Ingres, Microsoft, Oracle, PostgreSQL, …

(yeah, this company is going to have to get used to the Austin Powers references.)

Groovy Corp put out a press release last night that starts the official launch of their SQL Switch relational database platform.

I have been speaking with Groovy for a few months, and while the press release is a bit noisy there is actually some interesting stuff in it.

First, an overview

• They are an in memory RDBMS
• They have worked with Intel to architect from the ground up for large multi processor concurrency
• Initially they are launching as a multi-core appliance
• They claim 200,000 sql operations per second from a single box
• They are proprietary (not built on MySQL or any other open source …

This blog post was inspired by a recent report of a Database Analyst at American Express stealing Credit Card data.

It’s amazing how many companies still follow a mainly “perimeter security” approach when it comes to controlling access to sensitive information—their focus is on network security using firewalls, advanced authentication options, and so on. Even with such measures, it’s very common to setup strong barriers to the outside world but very little by way of internal limits; most internal people have some level of access to servers that store and process sensitive data.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with pre-screening your stuff, or having access to the sensitive information, or setting up advanced …

This is the 153rd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Let’s start by revisiting a perennial issue with Craig Mullins addresses with the question, Are DBAs Obsolete? “Before we go any further, let me briefly answer the question posed in the title of this blog entry: ‘No Way!’,” writes Craig. “Every time I hear this it makes me shake my head sadly as I regard just how gullible IT publications can be.” He argues that an Internet-paced attitude regarding the work of the DBA may be the first culprit in the devaluation of the DBA’s work.

Oracle

Dion Cho, the Oracle Performance Storyteller, …

Recently on a number of sites the benefits for and against have been debated with, on occasion, these conversations falling into abuse being thrown in both directions.

From a pure technical perspective, the TPC benchmarks make little sense and are probably not relevant to 99% of organizations looking to implement a database technology.  But as a tool for generating visibility, debate and improved public awareness of a vendors technology they still have an impact. 

This is marketing, pure and simple.  Having a great TPC result is akin to an author having a great review on Amazon.  Doesn’t mean it is relevant for you but if faced with a stack of titles you haven’t yet read you’ll probably look more closely at the ones you’ve heard something positive about.

TPC’s are a tool for the marketing department, just the same as any other form of …

Microsoft makes a patent promise. JBoss is certifiable. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Microsoft announced that it will be applying its Community Promise to the ECMA 334 (C#) and ECMA 335 (CLI) specifications, reducing patent concerns related to Mono.

# Red Hat achieved EAL 2+ security certification for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

# A European Commission white paper on standards stirred some controversy with regards to open source. …

Image via Wikipedia

BI/Data Warehousing is an easier market to enter for new database platform vendors.  This is for a few reasons.  Firstly, most BI deployments are custom built projects for each organization.  This means the ability to pick and choose various layers of the stack is much greater. 

Secondly, BI/DW projects success/failure metrics are often tied to database platform driven properties – performance, scalability, load times etc.  The ability to stray outside any existing database platform “standards” to choose a platform that better meets key metrics is more tolerable.

Thirdly, because the ratio of BI to OLTP is low, the associated impact of violating a corporate standard is much lower.  With OLTP …