(William Pearson) In this article, we will examine the TopCount() function, whose highest value lies in its capability to enable us to isolate best performers from among hundreds or thousands of fellow members. This ranking capability is critical in data analysis and decision support scenarios: In m
Other News
Principles of XML design: When the order of XML elements matters
(Uche Ogbuji) When multiple XML elements occur within another element, does element order matter? Whether it’s the order in which the parser reports elements to applications, or the question of whether or not to mandate specific order in schema patterns, things are not always as simple as they may s
Making Error Handling Robust
Development teams and individual developers have limited experience in writing code that catches application or environment errors, and either recovering from those errors or degrading gracefully. It is largely a thankless task that gets lost in the rush to deliver new or enhanced features more quic
Segments Shrink
(Kimberly Floss) Segments that undergo significant data manipulation language (DML) activity, such as UPDATE and DELETE operations, can become sparsely populated, with chunks of free space within their data blocks. Besides simply wasting space, sparsely populated segments can also lead to poor p
A Chat with PostgreSQL
(Steve Mallett) When most people think of open source database products what comes to mind more often than not is MySQL. But that is changing in the enterprise market, and among demanding developers. The PostgreSQL project has been steadily clawing its way up the ladder in mindwidth since its in
IBM Announces New Software Pricing Options
(Lee Kroon) Two weeks ago, IBM put the software industry on notice that prices for its middleware offerings will reflect the virtual IT infrastructures upon which they run. The company announced that it will offer sub-capacity software licenses not only for many of its own servers, but also for
The i5 Tests Well on SAP Data Warehousing Benchmarks
(Timothy Prickett Morgan) While IBM has shied away from testing the new eServer i5 Power5-based servers on the more common TPC-C online transaction processing or the SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) ERP benchmark test, the company knows that i5 buyers want to see something that allows them to compare
Oracle Taps SAMSys for RFID Reader Sourcing
SAMSys Technologies Inc. has joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork to make SAMSys RFID readers available to the system integrators, value-added resellers, and enterprises using Oracle’s 10g Sensor Edge Server in radio frequency identification (RFID) implementations.
Fixes, features added to SQL Server tool
(Margie Semilof) Microsoft released a second service pack for its SQL Server Reporting Services, which includes new features in addition to the normal bug fixes for a service pack. (R)
Business Metadata: How to Write Definitions
(Bonnie K. O’Neil) Many errors and accidents are made/caused by misunderstandings of the meanings of terms used. How many times have you been in a meeting when the words you heard being said did not match what you thought they were?