database

Popular microblogging platform Tumblr is still suffering from an outage that started yesterday.

"We're working quickly to recover from a major issue in one of our database clusters," Tumblr wrote on its Twitter page about 21 hours ago. "We're incredibly sorry for the inconvenience."

Tumblr hasn't provided any information about how the company's database cluster was affected, and has only promised to "be back shortly." In a follow-up tweet released earlier today, Tumblr said that it is working through "a slow and painful recovery." It promised to share … Read more

BMC Software said today that it is acquiring GridApp Systems, a company that specializes in database provisioning, patching and administration.

According to BMC, it will use the GridApp acquisition to expand its lineup of automation and configuration tools. These systems will then be added to its enterprise application deployment and management portfolio.

The GridApp software is already integrated with BMC's BladeLogic Server Automation. GridApp automates database admin tasks. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Separately, BMC said that it will add change, problem, and configuration management to its ServiceDesk on Force.com software.

Read more of "BMC acquires GridApp Systems; Expands Salesforce.com partnership&… Read more

Last week a discussion emerged in regards to the necessity of the NoSQL moniker associated with a new wave of open-source distributed database projects like CouchDB, MongoDB and Cassandra.

CouchOne, the commercial entity behind CouchDB even announced that it's moving away from associating the company with NoSQL as focuses on enabling offline data and applications.

The current orthodoxy would have you believe that if you are trying to get your head around "big data" or "Web scale" (see video), NoSQL is the answer. If you are dealing with preset data definitions being accessed by all … Read more

Anyone who uses the Web for a while knows that login information starts to pile up quickly. With online e-mail accounts, login information for online banking, and countless forums, most users start to use the same passwords for everything. It's pretty easy to see how this is a bad security practice.

Fortunately, you can download 1Password, which remembers all your passwords so you don't have to. Simply come up with a secure master password and then train 1Password to log in to sites for you. It integrates seamlessly with Apple's Mac OS X Keychain and generates complex … Read more

In 2010, the talk about a "big data" trend has reached a fever pitch. "Big data" centers around the notion that organizations are now (or soon will be) dealing with managing and extracting information from databases that are growing into the multi-petabyte range.

This dramatic amount of data has caused developers to seek new approaches that tend to avoid SQL queries and instead process data in a distributed manner. These so-called "NoSQL," such as Cassandra and MongoDB databases, are built to scale easily and handle massive amounts of data in a highly fluid manner.

And while I am a staunch supporter of the NoSQL approach, there is often a point where all of this data needs to be aggregated and parsed for different reasons, in a more traditional SQL data model.

It occurred to me recently that I've heard very little from the relational database (RDBMS) side of the house when it comes to dealing with big data. To that end, I recently caught up via e-mail with EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian, whose company provides services, support, and training around the open-source relational database PostgreSQL.

Boyajian stressed four points:

1. Relational databases can process ad-hoc queries

Production applications sometimes require only primary key lookups, but reporting queries often need to filter or aggregate based on other columns. Document databases and distributed key value stores sometimes don't support this at all, or they may support it only if an index on the relevant column has been defined in advance.

2. SQL reduces development time and improves interoperability

SQL is, and will likely remain, one of the most popular and successful computer languages of all time. SQL-aware development tools, reporting tools, monitoring tools, and connectors are available for just about every combination of operating system, platform, and database under the sun, and nearly every programmer or IT professional has at least a passing familiarity with SQL syntax.

Even for the types of relatively simple queries that are likely to be practical on huge data stores, writing an SQL query is typically simpler and faster than writing an algorithm to compute the desired answer, as is often necessary for data stores that do not include a query language. … Read more

Do you own many DVDs? Do you loan them to friends and then forget? Maybe you have VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray versions of the same movie. You need help, and not for chronic videophilia. Something to help you manage your movie collection is in order, like Personal Video Database (PVD) from Nostradamus. It's optimized for cataloging and maintaining a large movie collection. This free program's grouping and searching features make it easy to find movies, and it accepts plug-ins that can retrieve detailed information online. It even has a loan tracking feature that can help you keep track … Read more

A new database and software, called ChIP Enrichment Analysis, or ChEA, is set to revolutionize how researchers identify drug targets and biomarkers, developers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York reported in today's issue of Bioinformatics.

The team says that until ChEA was developed, no centralized database integrated results from, for instance, ChIP-seq and ChIP-chip experiments (these are used to identify how "transcription factor" proteins might regulate all genes in humans and mice). Now this new computational method should help streamline how scientists analyze these gene expression experiments.

"Our program allows researchers to … Read more

Today, Xeround officially announced the release of the private beta of its "MySQL for the Cloud" service--an elastic, linearly scalable, relational database designed to run applications in cloud environments.

Xeround is based on an in-memory database and has been tested in a number of telco production environments, according to CEO Razi Sharir. The software utilizes virtual partitions where data partitions are decoupled--or abstracted--from physical resources. These virtual partitions hold copies of both the data and the indexes, in order to ensure high availability and performance.

Despite the ubiquity of open-source MySQL, the database has in the past suffered … Read more

Marvel Illusions specializes in software optimized for paranormal investigations. Their ParaTracker Ultimate is a modular package designed to give field investigators a comprehensive yet easy-to-use tool for recording, compiling, and analyzing paranormal investigations. It has searchable Documents and Research Notes databases for collecting data entered on a variety of preconfigured forms. It also packs an image, video, and sound recorder; witness statement module; and reporting and printing options, including PDF and Excel.

We've tested some unusual software, but a ghost-hunting utility sets a new standard. Or maybe "ghostbusting," since ParaTracker's job is to collect and manage … Read more