(Uche Ogbuji) The XML declaration is optional in XML files, and defaults determine most of the information in the file. However, problems are common when these defaults do not match reality — for example, the document could use an encoding other than one of the defaults. It’s always safer to make t
Other News
Manageability: What’s In It for the DBA?
(Sushil Kumar) Oracle’s director of product management for database manageability explains the strategic importance of the self-managing capabilities of Oracle Database 10g.
Review of Guru’s Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals
(James Travis) The book flows quite well and has a nice reference quality to it. It is well laid out into Parts and Chapters which are broken down into nice encompassing topics. There are many exercises in the book that help test your knowledge of what you just read. I, however, did not like that th
When We Think That the Optimizer Doesn’t Get It Right
(Alexander Kuznetsov) IBM DB2 Universal Database comes with a very intelligent optimizer, yet sometimes its choices may seem off the mark. The optimizer, however complex it might be, is still a program. It processes input data, such as physical database structure and statistics, and generates execut
The Secret Texts of DB2 Connect
(Leon Katsnelson and Paul C. Zikopoulos) Much of the world’s data is managed on IBM* z/OS* and OS/390* servers running DB2* Universal Database* (UDB) (DB2 for z/OS) software. Several products that allow distributed applications to access DB2 for z/OS data typically provide one or more standard d
SOAP Client in Windows XP
(Bosco Wilfred) This article covers the basics of using the SOAP Client software included with Microsoft Windows XP Professional to access Web Services using SOAP. It begins with a brief introduction to SOAP and WSDL standards and then discusses how to implement a client that can communicate with a
Understanding Microsoft Internal Storage Management
Microsoft SQL Server is built in such a way that it can be managed by Database Administrators (DBA) with a wide range of skills and experience. SQL Server masks the complexity of managing a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to make it more appealing to administrators with various skill s
Troubleshooting .NET Applications
(Karthik Ravindran) Instrumenting and tracing XSLT transformations by treating XSLT as a regular programming language can provide very useful diagnostic data to help analyze and troubleshoot problems.
Checking SQL Server’s Heart Beat
(Muthusamy Anantha Kumar) It is imperative to have monitoring tools to monitor the services running in a windows operating system based server. However, small shops do not have that kind of budget to get tools for monitoring. Data Base Administrators should be notified as soon as one of the SQL Serv
Virtual Private Database
(Arup Nanda) Virtual Private Database (VPD), also known as Fine Grained Access Control, provides powerful row-level security capabilities. Introduced in Oracle8i, it has become widely popular and can be found in a variety of applications ranging from education software to financial services.