database

You don't have to own a Mac to use FileMaker's new Bento for iPhone and iPod Touch--released Tuesday in the iTunes App Store--but if you do, wireless sync adds extra incentive to take your personal databases to go.

Bento ($4.99) offers non-Mac users a portable personal database for storing everything from birthdays and home expenses to recipes and an exercise log, with 25 templates to start. Integration with the address book, dialer, Safari browser, e-mail in-box, and Google Maps make Bento a useful iPhone app offering that could become a master storehouse for your separate lists; and … Read more

Net Viewer describes itself as an opportunity for users to expand their ability to surf the Web. This program gives users a wealth of options for customizing their Internet experience, but many of these may hinder and not help Web surfing.

Net Viewer instantly tries to help users get familiar with the program. Two windows immediately open up, one being Net Viewer, and another providing helpful tips to getting started. Net Viewer has a basic interface that looks a little dull, since it lacks sleek graphics. It includes a large empty area for showcasing saved Web sites and a short … Read more

TreedBNotes Pro is a personal information manager, database program, and word processor. TreedBNotes Pro also includes an alarm and reminder feature plus password protection and encryption capabilities. Still not impressed? TreedBNotes Pro's e-book feature helps you write that great American novel or training manual (that is, formatting the text, sharing or not with other readers, and creating a Table of Contents and fully searchable text; the creative writing part, well, TreedBNote Pro leaves that to aspiring Melvilles and Grishams).

TreedBNotes Pro sets itself apart from similar programs in the way it stores data in tree-like structures which lets users … Read more

IBM is going on the offensive against the pending merger of Sun Microsystems and Oracle.

IBM announced Wednesday that it nabbed 100 of Sun's and Hewlett-Packard's customers last quarter alone for its high-end servers and mainframes, with half the deals worth over $1 million each, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The bigger news, however, may be IBM's partnership with EnterpriseDB, the commercial backer of the open-source PostgreSQL database, to embed EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server technology into IBM's DB2 9.7 database product. EnterpriseDB's technology basically allows applications written for the Oracle … Read more

Password Manager XP promises to safeguard username and password information for various accounts. However, a glitch produced several error messages when we put the program to the test.

The user interface is pretty basic, with menu and shortcut commands at the top of the window for saving databases and adding files and folders. A tree menu displays all of the created databases. Once the program was activated, we created a new database and browsed the Web, visiting sites that required a username and password. As soon as we signed in, the program prompted us to save the information. The first … Read more

Chronicling our lives has been part of our culture for as long as we have kept personal diaries. Today, technology offers many different ways of recording our thoughts and feelings, which makes the task far easier.

Ten years ago, Gordon Bell, a principal researcher at Microsoft, set out to chronicle his life by recording everything that happened to him. Visit him in his office and you will face microphones and video cameras. As he travels, he goes "laden down with stuff."

The Microsoft-funded project is still going, and Bell sees it as "one of the most important … Read more

While Sun Microsystems' MySQL gets the limelight, with its 55 percent quarterly billings increase, other open-source database competitors like Ingres and Enterprise are also doing well.

Ingres on Tuesday reported a significant uptick in its 2008 revenue, climbing 32 percent to $68 million over $52 million in 2007. EnterpriseDB didn't provide revenue numbers, but it also recently reported a banner year, with greater than 50 percent growth in new customer accounts and "comparable bookings growth."

New Ingres customers in 2008 include Air Enterprises, Allied Express, Banca IFIS SpA, BBP Partners, CondeNast Publications, Connected Wedding, C&K … Read more

Perhaps Sun Microsystems' valuation of MySQL wasn't too far off. Sun acquired the open-source database leader in January 2008 for a whopping $1 billion, a sum that many rational people thought was way too high.

Perhaps they were wrong; $1 billion is beginning to look like a bargain.

Sun's quarterly earnings report for MySQL suggests that the company brought in $81 million in billings for the second quarter of 2009, a 55 percent jump over the $52 million in sales it did during the first quarter.

That is phenomenal growth, and it puts MySQL on a fast track … Read more

Correction: Sybase reported a 13 percent increase in license revenue, based on constant currency.

Update at 7:49 a.m. PST, with comments from the conference call.

Sybase posted fourth-quarter results on Wednesday that sailed past Wall Street's earnings expectations.

With earnings driven by strong growth in its core database business, company shares jumped 7.8 percent to $27.87 in early-morning trading.

Revenues during the quarter rose to $305.1 million, up 3 percent over the same time a year ago. Wall Street was expecting the enterprise software company to make $300.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters. … Read more