Excess Computing Capacity Usages – Virtual Machines We’ve been discussing some of the changes we have seen in information technology implementations due to the increasing capacity and reduced cost of computers and networks. We considered multi-layered software applications as a continuing emerging strategy. Another strategy that continues to emerge with higher capacity hardware is Virtual Machines. When virtual machines first […]

Using extra computing capacity Older computer systems required optimized code and hardware capacity in order to produce the quickest results. Those familiar with the CRAY super computers know what this is about. The CRAY was designed physically to have the shortest wires to different components in order to get optimum performance from all subsystems. Today we have multi-gigabit network speeds […]

SSWUGtv – New Employee Risk With Stephen Wynkoop Should you take on a promising employee that you know you’ll have to spend substantial time training, but could pay off? Laura Rose shares her experience with us on this edition of SSWUGtv. Watch the Show Where Do We Go From Watson A frequent topic I have with software professionals is the […]

Readers Notes on Unique Keys for Multiple DataCenters Today we have some responses from folks having to implement multiple datacenters with unique keys. Giles: First, thanks for all the good articles you provide every day! Using a GUID to identify a record can produce some problems if you don’t take care of the function used to generate the GUID! From […]

Reverse Sharding Data When you shard data you find a differentiation factor in the data to distribute the data. Today I am going to finish up on this series of merging data from distributed data stores into a single data store through replication. The issue we have been discussing is how to generate primary keys in remote data stores allowing […]

SSWUGtv – Should you Buy a Surface Tablet? With Stephen Wynkoop Before you go and buy the Surface tablet, listen to Steve’s thoughts on it — it might surprise you! Watch the Show Replicating Data from Multiple Locations to a Centralized Database Yesterday we started this discussion regarding replicating data from multiple locations into a single centralized database. The question […]

Unique Keys with Multiple Database Replication One system I worked on years ago had a central database containing the contents of all regional databases aggregated into a single database through replication. The architecture was perfect for the company. Regional databases contained data required for regional operations without overhead of accessing the entire corporate data. Because their data storage was local, […]

Continuous Integration Continuous Integration is a popular process where software is developed incrementally, and each increment is integrated into the package as a whole. You’ll find this techniques for many different software development lifecycles because it is not constrained to a specific flow. The only constraint is that each incremental software aspect is completed it is rolled into the current […]

Continuous Integration Continuous Integration is a popular process where software is developed incrementally, and each increment is integrated into the package as a whole. You’ll find this techniques used for many different software development lifecycles because it is not constrained to a specific flow. The only constraint is that as each incremental software aspect is completed it is rolled into […]

Maintain Performance Statistics If you maintain a history of the performance statistics on your database servers there are a number of uses for that data. Here is a quick brainstorm of things I have done or read that others are doing. When performance appears to degrade you can compare it to a baseline and historical trend to determine possible causes […]