• Details and analysis of the VoltDB argument

    Updated: 2010-06-30 08:37:37
    Todd Hoff (High Scalability blog) posted a lengthy examination of the case and use cases for VoltDB. That excellent post, in turn, is based on a Mike Stonebraker* webinar for VoltDB, for which the slide deck is happily available. It’s all nicely consistent with what I wrote about VoltDB last month, in connection with its [...]

  • Infobright’s Release 3.4

    Updated: 2010-06-27 09:09:41
    Infobright called a couple weeks ago to discuss, among other subjects, its subsequently-released Infobright Release 3.4. I made no effort to distinguish between community/open source and professional/chargeable editions, but leaving that aside, it seems fair to characterize Infobright 3.4 as having two overlapping primary themes: Performance and bottleneck cleanup. “Omigod, you mean you didn’t have that feature [...]

  • Lots of Aster Data analytic packages

    Updated: 2010-06-27 05:35:28
    A number of vendors had announcements last week, notably: Netezza (user conference) Aster Data (to steal some of Netezza’s thunder) Infobright (so far as I can tell, just because it was time for a product release, and also to get ahead of the summer doldrums) Northscale (ditto) Time to play some catchup. I’ll start with Aster Data, which added to the [...]

  • Netezza’s version of EnterpriseDB-based Oracle compatibility

    Updated: 2010-06-26 06:17:11
    EnterpriseDB has some deplorable business practices (my stories of being screwed by EnterpriseDB have been met by “Well, you’re hardly the only one”). But a couple of more successful DBMS vendors have happily partnered with EnterpriseDB even so, to help pick off Oracle users. IBM’s approach was in the vein of an EnterpriseDB-infused version of [...]

  • Flash is coming, well …

    Updated: 2010-06-25 10:42:26
    I really, really wanted to title this post “Flash is coming in a flash.” That seems a little exaggerated — but only a little. Netezza now intends to come out with a Flash-based appliance earlier than it originally expected. Indeed, Netezza has suspended — by which I mean “scrapped” — prior plans for a RAM-heavy disk-based appliance. [...]

  • Insurers Embracing Agility

    Updated: 2010-06-24 18:07:33
    Reload the page to see effects . None Untitled Document First time here Register Now Keep up with industry news , exchange ideas and more Blog : Collaborative Underwriting 2.0

  • Analytics Allowing For Better Risk Management, Marsh Brokers Say

    Updated: 2010-06-24 01:00:00
    , Reload the page to see effects . None Untitled Document First time here Register Now Keep up with industry news , exchange ideas and more Blog : Collaborative Underwriting 2.0

  • My talk this morning

    Updated: 2010-06-23 05:33:18
    Netezza’s Enzee Universe conference is now almost over, and I still haven’t figured out what my gig as “conference blogger” entails. More precisely, I’m operating from our unspoken fallback plan, namely “If all else fails, do what you’d do anyway, but do more of it.” For me to live up to that, all Netezza had [...]

  • Insurance Technologies Adds Data Management to Illustration System

    Updated: 2010-06-22 01:00:00
    Reload the page to see effects . None Untitled Document First time here Register Now Keep up with industry news , exchange ideas and more Blog : Collaborative Underwriting 2.0

  • What kinds of data warehouse load latency are practical?

    Updated: 2010-06-21 06:15:17
    I took advantage of my recent conversations with Netezza and IBM to discuss what kinds of data warehouse load latency were practical. In both cases I got the impression: Subsecond load latency is substantially impossible. Doing that amounts to OLTP. 5 seconds or so is doable with aggressive investment and tuning. Several minute load latency is pretty easy. 10-15 [...]

  • Netezza’s silicon balance

    Updated: 2010-06-21 06:00:12
    As I’ve mentioned in a couple of other posts, Netezza is stressing that the most recent wave of its technology is software-only, with no hardware upgrades made or needed. In other words, Netezza boxes already have all the silicon they need. But of course, there are really at least three major aspects to the Netezza [...]

  • The Cost of Information and News

    Updated: 2010-06-14 04:52:49
    I admit Mary Matalin and James Carville are not people with whom I am familiar, but James said a few things worth noting here: Some problems with information overload are really problems with having too little information. Some problems with a lack of information happen in an abundance of information. News is expensive. Opinion is cheap. For example, [...]

  • Sticky Organizations and How They Make Smart People Stupid

    Updated: 2010-06-08 16:53:13
    : Sign In Home KM Topics KM Overview Case Studies About Us Search Sticky Organizations and How They Make Smart People Stupid By Victor Newman on June 8, 2010 Comments 0 The thrill of being headhunted to a senior role in a successful , knowledge-intensive corporation on the basis of expertise is only balanced by the downside of finding yourself trapped in a cycle of ritualized meetings , unable to influence the strategic direction of the organization that paid the recruiter so well to recruit you . In such a situation , several options become available : Lie back and enjoy the management cycle of activity like pedaling a static exercise bike with minimal resistance Get upset about the fact that you have become a corporate adornment who can't influence strategy , become cynical , and

  • David Childs

    Updated: 2010-06-04 22:59:45
    Talking to Algebraix reminded me that David Childs is still alive and kicking. I only ever encountered Childs once, in the early/mid-1980s, when he was pushing his company Set Theoretic Information Systems. The main customer example for STIS was General Motors, for which he had achieved a remarkable amount of database compression. It was something [...]

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