In response to my editorial on designing a database warehouse that is statistically relevant, Sarita asks, “what do you mean by statistically relevant or maintain data? Are you referring SQL server statistics or mathematical statistics?” That is a great question. Looks like I wandered around too much in the editorial, and never clarified the primary concept. If you have a […]

I can’t count how many data warehouse applications I have built over the years. One common theme has always been, “How do we keep it up to date?” A data warehouse can quickly become a data tenement (not a term I coined) if it contains useless data, or the data is not statistically current. The definition of Statistically current changes […]

There are many different reasons to place data in NoSQL data stores. Most often it is used for performance. You can shard your massive volumes of data, and pass your smaller program to different machines for execution. This is the reverse of having a centralized program pulling from multiple data stores. In this case, the program is passed around (potentially) […]

Cloud Use Changing – Bursting? Paul Zikopoulos of IBM has been talking about both the "now" of cloud usage and the future look at how things will lean on the cloud for different types or modes of functionality. The concept is started here in this article, but I think there are a few interesting and important takeaways in this whole […]

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How do you obtain meta-data when you use an NoSql data store? Is it even important? Perhaps the reason you used a NoSql data store in the first place, is that meta data is not important to you. So, to define the playing field, lets take a look at some of the kinds of meta data that are available in […]

Over the years I have observed and experienced many different ways to select technology and architect solutions. I thought I would share some of them today. Please note, these are not necessarily recommendations; just observations of real world decision making. Follow the vendor. This methodology is based on the vendor who provides the most fringe benefits to the decision maker […]

I have recently been reminded of one of the powerful enhancements in the HTML5 specifications; web events. While this is not a technology needed for every web site, it is more than simply a tool for writing an instant messaging application. What brought this technology to mind? A web client that monitors a queue. This is actually a fairly common […]

Insider Threats to Data – Often Overlooked Ben wrote in asking about insider threats – and what can be done to help protect your information against that type of access. If you’ve missed the last two editorials on security, grab the link at the top of this page, but we’re talking about protecting information with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), encryption, […]

Illegitimate Legitimate Access to Data One of the points I made in yesterday’s editorial was that TDE is great for data at rest, but it doesn’t help with "legitimate" access. A couple of people wrote asking what exactly that meant – legitimate access – I mean, surely there’s authorized access and "everything else," right? Well, sort of. You protect access […]