Oracle or SQL Server White Paper
July 18, 2009
Relational databases are with us for the duration. The problem I have is that today’s data flows do not mesh easily with these technology relics. That does not prevent organizations from buying into an RDBMS that stakeholders, enterprise software vendors, and IT professionals expect to be available. If you are trying to decide between Oracle or SQL Server, you may find some guidance in a white paper by Rick Veague, CTO, of IFS North America. The title of the white paper is “Databases and ERP Selection: Oracle vs SQL Server.
IFS is, according to the company’s Web site:
IFS, the global enterprise applications company, provides software solutions that enable organizations to become more agile. Founded in 1983, IFS pioneered component-based enterprise resources planning (ERP) software with IFS Applications, now in its seventh generation. IFS’ component architecture provides solutions that are easier to implement, run, and upgrade, and that give companies the flexibility to respond quickly to market changes, new business opportunities, and new technologies. IFS has a solid, growing presence in the North American business software market. IFS North America serves medium-size to large companies in a variety of key industries, including aerospace and defense, industrial manufacturing, automotive, high-tech, construction, and process industries such as food and beverage.
Getting the white paper requires that you sign up for a Bitpipe.com account. (Bitpipe.com is an outfit that charges companies to publish white papers. A person looking for a white paper can then search Bitpipe.com, download the paper, and revel in the information. Students find Bitpipe.com useful. Bitpipe.com sends the emails and particulars of those who download papers to the companies paying to publish their white papers. I use a special email address for these documents and the follow up mailings, which makes it easy to keep track of these communications.)
The main points of the white paper seem to me to be:
- The industry standard for databases is Oracle. Therefore, SQL Server is probably not the right choice for those who have the right stuff
- Oracle is not any more expensive than Microsoft SQL Server. Therefore, Microsoft’s cost pitch is not exactly accurate.
- Oracle scales. SQL Server scales but it is more work, more expensive, etc. Therefore, for big jobs, use Oracle.
In short, this white paper makes a case for Oracle, not SQL Server.
That’s okay. I understand that white papers are marketing collateral. However, the thoughts that zipped through my mind as I read this document were:
- RDBMS are tomorrow’s mainframes. Once you have an application hooked into these puppies, that app is going to require the Codd technology. Getting divorced is not an option.
- Big data flows will create some interesting challenges. The read write issues require that programmers find ways to handle deltas and near real time index updates. But the volume of data will continue to increase making the fracture lines of Codd architectures more easily visible.
- New database vendors and data management vendors may have to improve their marketing. Aster Data, among others, have a modest profile in the world that IFS inhabits. Absence concedes the sector to the marketers with the bigger air horn.
- Search is a significant issue. Oracle has a low, low profile with regard to SES10g, Ultra Search, Text, or whatever the solution is called. Microsoft has its SQL search functionality and the yet-to-be-delivered Fast ESP solution for structured data. Therefore, how does one get stuff out of these systems in a speedy, easy, economical way? I would use a third party solution based on my experience. So that’s an extra cost for the Codd solution. Not mentioned in the white paper.
My thought is that white papers constitute an interesting class of information. I don’t feel comfortable using the term “disinformation”, but for a person taking an argument at face value can provide a skewed view of the data management options. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, July 18, 2009
InQuira IBM Knowledge Assessment
July 18, 2009
A happy quack to the ArnoldIT.com goose who forwarded the InQuira Knowledge Assessment Tool link from one of my test email addresses. InQuire, a company formed from two other firms in the content processing space, has morphed into a knowledge company. The firm’s natural language processing technology is under the hood, but the packaging has shifted to customer support and other sectors where search is an enabler, not the electromagnet.
The survey is designed to obtain information about my knowledge quotient. The url for the survey is http://myknowledgeiq.com. The only hitch in the git-along is that the service seems to be timing out. You can try the survey assessment here. The system came back to life after a two minute delay. My impressions as I worked through this Knowledge IQ test appear below:
Impressions as I Take the Test
InQuira uses some interesting nomenclature. For example, the company asks about customer service and a “centralized knowledge repository”. The choices include this filtering response:
Yes, individuals have personal knowledge repositories (e.g., email threads, folders, network shared drives), but there isn’t a shared repository.
I clicked this choice because distributed content seems to be the norm in my experience. Another interesting question concerns industry best practices. The implicit assumption is that a best practice exists. The survey probes for an indication of who creates content and who maintains the content once created. My hunch at this point in the Knowledge IQ test is that most respondents won’t have much of a system in place. I think I see that I will have a low Knowledge IQ because I am selecting what appear to me to be reasonable responses, no extremes or categoricals like “none” or “all”. I note that some questions have default selections already checked. Ideal for the curious survey taker who wants to get to the “final” report. About mid way through I get a question about the effectiveness of the test taker’s Web site. In my experience, most organizations offer so-so Web sites. I will go with a middle-of-the road assessment. I am now getting tired of the Knowledge IQ test. I just answered questions about customer feedback opportunities. My experience suggests that most companies “say” feedback is desirable. Acting on the feedback is often a tertiary concern, maybe of even lower priority.
My Report
The system is now generating my report. Here’s what I learned: my answers appear to put me in the middle of the radar chart I have a blue diagram which gives me a personal Knowledge IQ.
Surfray and Xerox
July 18, 2009
Surfray popped on my radar thanks to an email from a reader in Canada. The reader noticed that Xerox lists SurfRay XP Search as one of its office products. You can view the listing here. The full listing for the Surfray search system references the following features for – and I quote — “Multi-channel secure-routed dynamic document production and printing APPIC StarJet.” I am not sure what this Xerox product is. The product brochure is here. According to the Xerox document:
StarJet modular solutions suite is a Project and Enterprise wide Dynamic Document Management system. Using StarJet, any organization from middle range to the most global company can: graphically and interactively create forms, and forms catalogues, perform highly flexible dynamic document production, while integrating diverse legacy systems data sources, tailoring documents according to dynamic data, or according to destination; in addition, it allows to manage media and printing resources, as well as document files redirection (email, fax, FTP
transfer, ASCII,XML…).
From the looks of this Xerox information, Surfray is alive and kicking. Information about Surfray is here on June 10, 2009. A query for the Xerox “XP Search” returned no hits on the Surfray Web site. I did get hits to a produce about Ontolica plus a news release dated April 20, 2006. Anyone know what’s shakin’ and bakin’ with this Danish firm?
Stephen Arnold, July 17, 2009
Kapow Technologies
July 17, 2009
With the rise of free real time search systems such as Scoopler, Connecta, and ITPints, established players may find themselves in shadows. Most of the industrial strength real time content processing companies like Connotate and Relegence prefer to be out of the spotlight. The reason is that their customers are often publicity shy. When you are monitoring information to make a billion on Wall Street or to snag some bad guys before those folks can create a disruption, you want to be far from the Twitters.
A news release came to me about an outfit called Kapow Technologies. The company described itself this way:
Kapow Technologies provides Fortune 1000 companies with industry-leading technology for accessing, enriching, and serving real-time enterprise and public Web data. The company’s flagship Kapow Web Data Server powers solutions in Web and business intelligence, portal generation, SOA/WOA enablement, and CMS content migration. The visual programming and integrated development environment (IDE) technology enables business and technical decision-makers to create innovative business applications with no coding required. Kapow currently has more than 300 customers, including AT&T, Wells Fargo, Intel, DHL, Vodafone and Audi. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. with additional offices in Denmark, Germany and the U.K
I navigated to the company’s Web site out of curiosity and learned several interesting factoids:
First, the company is a “market leader” in open source intelligence. It has technology to create Web crawling “robots”. The technology can, according to the company, “deliver new Web data sources from inside and outside the agency that can’t be reached with traditional BI and ETL tools.” More information is here. Kapow’s system can perform screen scraping; that is, extracting information from a Web page via software robots.
Second, the company offers what it calls a “portal generation” product. The idea is to build new portals or portlets without coding. The company said:
With Kapow’s technology, IT developers [can]: Avoid the burden of managing different security domains; eliminate the need to code new transaction; and bypass the need to create or access SOA interfaces, event-based bus architectures or proprietary application APIs.
Third, provide a system that handles content migration and transformation. With transformation an expensive line item in the information technology budget, managing these costs becomes more important each month in today’s economic environment. Kapow says here:
The module [shown below] acts much as an ETL tool, but performs the entire data extraction and transformation at the web GUI level. Kapow can load content directly into a destination application or into standard XML files for import by standard content importing tools. Therefore, any content can be migrated and synchronized to and between any web based CMS, CRM, Project Management or ERP system.
Kapow offers connections for a number of widely used content management systems, including Interwoven, Documentum, Vignette, and Oracle Stellent, among others.
Kapow includes a search function along with application programming interfaces, and a range of tools and utilities, including RoboSuite (a block diagram appears below):
Source: http://abss2.fiit.stuba.sk/TeamProject/2006/team05/doc/KapowTech.ppt
Big Data, Big Implications for Microsoft
July 17, 2009
In March 2009, my Overflight service picked up a brief post in the Google Research Web log called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data.” The item mentioned that three Google wizards wrote an article in the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data.” You may be able to download a copy from this link.
On the surface this is a rehash of Google’s big data argument. The idea is that when you process large amounts of data with a zippy system using statistical and other mathematical methods, you get pretty good information. In a very simple way, you know what the odds are that something is in bounds or out of bounds, right or wrong, even good or bad. Murky human methods like judgment are useful, but with big data, you can get close to human judgment and be “right” most of the time.
When you read the IEEE write up, you will want to pay attention to the names of the three authors. These are not just smart guys, these are individuals who are having an impact on Google’s leapfrog technologies. There’s lots of talk about Bing.com and its semantic technology. These three Googlers are into semantics and quite a bit more. The names:
- Alon Halevy, former Bell Labs researcher and the thinker answering to some degree the question, “What’s after relational databases”?”
- Peter Norvig, the fellow who wrote the standard textbook on computational intelligence and smart software
- Fernando Pereira, the former chair of Penn’s computer science department and the Andrew and Debra Rachleff Professor.
So what do these three Googlers offer in their five page “expert opinion” essay?
First, large data makes smart software smart. This is a reference to the Google approach to computational intelligence.
Second, big data can learn from rare events. Small data and human rules are not going to deliver the precision that one gets from algorithms and big data flows. In short, costs for getting software and systems smarter will not spiral out of control.
Third, the Semantic Web is a non starter so another method – semantic interpretation – may hold promise. By implication, if semantic interpretation works, Google gets better search results plus other benefits for users.
Conclusion: dataspaces.
See Google is up front and clear when explaining what its researchers are doing to improve search and other knowledge centric operations. What are the implications for Microsoft? Simple. The big data approach is not used in the Powerset method applied to Bing in my opinion. Therefore, Microsoft has a cost control issue to resolve with its present approach to Web search. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
Stephen Arnold, July 17, 2009
Overflight Adds IBM Omnifind
July 17, 2009
Short honk: We have added IBM Omnifind to the ArnoldIT.com real time search vendor updates. You can access the Overflight report here. Each free report includes a brief description of the vendor, a link to vendor’s Web site, basic contact information and information snagged from various RSS feeds.
Stephen Arnold, July 17, 2009
Bozeman’s Hot Idea
July 16, 2009
I have had several conversations with individuals who have had in the course of their working lives some connection with law enforcement and military intelligence. What I learned was that the Bozeman idea has traction. The “Bozeman idea” is the requirement for city job applicants to provide their social networking details. Among the details requested as part of the job application process was log in details for social networking services.
According to the Montana News Station’s “Bozeman City Job Requirement Raises Privacy Concerns”,
The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person’s “background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records.” “Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.
What I have now learned is that a number of European entities are discussing the Bozeman idea. Early word – unofficial, of course – is that Bozeman has had a Eureka! moment. Monitoring is much easier if one can log in and configure the system to push information to the interested party.
I am on the fence with regard to this matter. Interesting issue.
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2009
Open Source Versus Commercial Software
July 16, 2009
Keir Thomas’ “How Open Source Can Beat the Status Quo” hits some of the Whack a Mole buttons that kill the little beastie. He also punches some buttons that lets the creatures live to pop up another day. Two readers insisted that Mr. Thomas’ analysis was on a par with sliced bread and power gardening equipment.
The point of the write up for me is that open source is a hot topic. No push back from me there. The leap is that open source is a problem for Microsoft in general and in particular because of the Google. The Google is using open source as a way to turn up the heat on Microsoft. He wrapped up his PC World article with:
Google has always been an open source company. Its search engine has run on Linux since day one, and when it was looking for a platform on which to build its Android mobile operating system, it didn’t hesitate in choosing Linux (imagine how unthinkable it would be had Google decided that it would use Windows CE instead; such a decision would have been greeted with hoots of laughter). Google has also made efforts to support Linux with its desktop products, such as Google Earth (even if the products themselves aren’t open source). There’s little doubt that, should Google launch any further software products or platforms in future, there’s a strong chance they’ll be open source. In many key ways, Google uses open source as a weapon with which to beat Microsoft over the head. Google uses open source to define itself, and thereby illustrate the difference between itself and fuddy-duddy Microsoft (a trick also used by Apple, at least a few years ago). The Google people also know how much open source irritates Microsoft and how using open source destroys Microsoft’s traditional “fear, uncertainty and doubt” (FUD) approach to discrediting open source. The next time somebody asks you what Linux ever did for anybody, point out that the Google search they just did was facilitated by it.
Now here’s one of the issues I have. Notice the word “always” which I have put in bold. That’s one of those categorical affirmatives like “infinite” that can drive some folks crazy. Check out the Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity by Amir Aczel.
I am not sure that the Google is an open source company. I have documented in my Google trilogy some innovations that are not likely to find their way to a Sourceforge link. I also pointed out in this Web log or one of my talks that Google’s implementation of Java is a one way street. Google makes it easy to get in. Google makes it a bit harder to get out of its walled garden.
Second, Microsoft’s problems extend beyond open source. These include cash outflows from most of its business units, leaving the company vulnerable to a company that can chop into desktop application and server revenue. Maybe the Zune will hit a home run? Maybe the Bing billions will pay off? But these are problems that have little to do with open source, and, as such, are in my line of thinking, more fundamental.
Finally, the fear uncertainty doubt game is now in the major leagues. Every company plays it, including Google, and most of the start ups pitching to organizations literally uncertain of what to have for lunch, let alone what to have in the organization’s computers.
The article is okay, but I don’t think I can cheer for it as loudly as the readers who see the analysis as one of those cherished moments in intellectual history like Boston Consul ting’s cow dog star diagram or Parkinson’s Law.
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2009
SharePoint Certification
July 16, 2009
Short honk: Want to get SharePoint certification. Piece of cake. Check out “70-630 Passed! Do You Really Call This a Certification!” Just the ticket when working with SharePoint.
Stephen Arnold, July 16, 2009
Google and UPnP Functions
July 15, 2009
UPnP is a standard that enables devices to be plugged into a network and automatically know about each other. Most people don’t worry too much about standards for networked devices behaving and doing what their owners expect.
My thought is that savvy readers of this Web log might want to take a gander at four patent documents filed on December 7 and December 8, 2008, and published on June 11, 2009. Please, dear reader, do not remind me of these points:
- Patent applications may mean nothing; in fact, for one former Microsoft person, patent documents are often red herrings
- Patent applications may be little more than management keeping some engineers happy or giving their parents something to show the neighbors to help explain what their progeny does for a living
- Patent applications may not contain anything new, existing to recycle other, more prescient innovators ideas because the patent system is broken.
I think these four patent documents are reasonably interesting. You can get your very own copy from the ever snappy USPTO service or by paying one of the commercial outfits who will do the retrieving for those with better things to do than fool with mere busy work.
The four documents that caught my attention were:
- 20090150480, Publishing Assets Of Dynamic Nature In UPnP Networks
- 20090150481, Organizing And Publishing Assets In UPnP Networks
- 20090150520, Transmitting Assets In UPnP Networks To Remote Servers
- 20090150570, Sharing Assets Between UPnP Networks
I am reluctant to ignore these because the Google revealed that the inventors form what looks to me like an innovation team; to wit:
The italics show the three Googlers who played a part in all four patents. One can conclude that this group of seven individuals forms a core of UPnP knowledge at the Google.
So what can one do with the Google inventions disclosed in these four documents?
I will be discussing these in detail in my client briefings, so I will highlight one of the documents and offer some observations. For more, you can find out the method by looking at the About page for this Web log.
Let’s look at 20090150481. The title provides a clue: “Organizing and Publishing Assets in UPnP Networks”. The first order of business is to get up to speed on UPnP because the Google doesn’t provide the basic information needed for a person not skilled in the art to figure out what’s going on. You can start with this Wikipedia page. The information is useful but not 100 percent of the picture. I think it is a useful place to begin, however. The write up explains that connections in the home are one place where UPnP plays a role. Good clue that, particularly the reference to entertainment.
Now let’s look at what Google says the patent document 20090150481 is about:
System and computer program products for allowing a renderer in a UPnP network the capability of being able to render general Internet content of static or dynamic nature, which the renderer was not designed to render in the contents original data format and file type. The system queries all devices on the local network, queries specific remote servers over the Internet, and retrieves data feeds from remote sources. The queried and retrieved data that is not in a format and file type that can be rendered by the renderer is loaded into a template and turned into a format and file type acceptable by the renderer. The queried and retrieved data in the proper format and file type is organized in a custom format and made available for rendering to the renderer. The system has the capability of transmitting content or the metadata of the content within the devices on the local network to a hosting service over the Internet. Additionally, a second local network has the capability of accessing the content stored on the first local network.
The invention points to a more sophisticated media system, involving devices, content, and metadata. Strikes me as germane to Google’s interest in online games and other rich content.
Stephen Arnold, July 15, 2009
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