(Erland Sommarskog) In many aspects SQL Server is a very good DBMS that permits you implement powerful solutions with good performance. However, when it comes to error handling… To be blunt: error handling in SQL Server is poor. It is a patchwork of not-always-so-consistent behaviour. It’s also we
Other News
The transition from logical to physical data model
(Susan Sales Harkins and Arthur Fuller) A logical model helps clarify your application’s domain by defining the necessary tables, the relationships between those tables, and their cardinality. At the logical level, each column’s attributes are defined, such as whether to accept null values, default
Analytic Functions in Oracle 8i and 9i
Analytic Functions, which have been available since Oracle 8.1.6, are designed to address such problems as “Calculate a running total”, “Find percentages within a group”, “Top-N queries”, “Compute a moving average” and many more. Most of these problems can be solved using standard PL/SQL, however th
DB2 Index Extensions by example and in detail
(Knut Stolze and Torsten Steinbach) This article will demonstrate in detail how to use DB2 Index Extensions as well as quering Interval Trees and filtering by User-defined Predicates. DB2 Universal DatabaseTM offers a wide variety of extensibility mechanisms, including user-defined functions, sto
Linux Databases: DB2 vs. Oracle
This is a report prepared by Branham Group Inc. that compares the two leading commercial database software packages for Linux: Oracle 9i version 9.2 Enterprise and IBM DB2 version 8.1.2 ESE. Comparison is based on cost of ownership, ease-of-use, reliability, and scalability. The results of the repo
The State of Web Services, A.D. 2003
(Jeremy Geelan) The visionary in question was Allan Vermeulen, coauthor of the codehead’s classic The Elements of Java Style, and now CTO of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon. com. The Edison employee was Sam Unsell, whose contribution to the development of technology – Vermeulen explained
BEA Continues to Woo Developers
(Jim Wagner) Furthering its commitment to Java developers, BEA Systems launched two programming aides and a Web site tracking standards-based initiatives. The Java Page Flow Portability Kit and XML Beans as Apache Project are just the two latest developer tools released by the San Jose, Calif.-b
XPath Tutorial–Free
XPath is a set of syntax rules for defining parts of an XML document. XPath is a major element in the W3C XSLT standard. Without XPath knowledge you will not be able to create XSLT documents.
Tracking the Business Intelligence Market
(Lynne Harvey Zawada and Peter O’Kelly) For more than 30 years, industry watchers have viewed the Business Intelligence (BI) segment as an area of opportunity for both established enterprise software vendors and software startups. Year after year, the BI segment experiences steady and continuous gro
To REBIND or not to REBIND
(Roger Miller) I think of this question as a soliloquy. “To REBIND or not to REBIND, When is the question. To ponder whether its nobler to suffer the the slings and arrows of outrageous access paths now or to be struck in the back later.” The question is not so much whether to REBIND, but rather