Wednesday, September 26, 2007

EnterpriseDB Fall Webinar Series

Sign up for Live Webinars from EnterpriseDB. The December Data Warehouse one looks really good.


October 4, 2007 9AM ET & 2PM ET
Top 5 Ways to Supercharge Your Database
Abstract: - Join EnterpriseDB to learn 5 simple ways to supercharge your EnterpriseDB and Postgres databases to gain the best performance. From Dynatune™ to auto-vacuuming, there are simple ways to optimize your database without sacrificing availability and reliability

Speaker:
Jim Mlodgenski - Vice President, Worldwide Technical Services EnterpriseDB

October 10, 2007 1PM ET
Lowering TCO While Raising Revenues for Business Intelligence Applications

Abstract: - Join EnterpriseDB and JasperSoft to learn how to implement a fully functional BI architecture based on open source technologies that addresses the paradox of lowering your customer’s TCO while improving professional services revenue.

Speakers:
Jose Morales - Vice President, Business Development, JasperSoft,
Bill Doyle - Sr.Vice President, Business Development, EnterpriseDB

October 23, 2007 12PM ET
What is Enterprise-Class? Going Beyond the Checklist to Select the Right Database for Your Application

Abstract: - In this webcast, renowned industry guru Curt Monash provides an objective context in which to evaluate and select the right DBMS based on your application's needs. He will discuss how all DBMS' features are not all created equal in the way they address application-specific demands. Particular focus will be given to the unique requirements of transaction-intensive applications.

Speakers:
Curt Monash - Monash Information Services,
Derek M. Rodner - Director, Product Strategy, EnterpriseDB

October 30, 2007 9AM ET & 2PM ET
Building New Applications on EnterpriseDB Advanced Server

Abstract: - Join EnterpriseDB experts to learn more about building new applications on EnterpriseDB Advanced Server. Topics include:

* PL/SQL compatibility
* Stored Procedures, Packages, Functions, Triggers, etc.
* SQL Query Profiler
* Procedural Language Debugger
* Developer Studio

Speaker:
Derek M. Rodner - Director, Product Strategy, EnterpriseDB

November 7, 2007 9AM ET & 2PM ET
Using EnterpriseDB to Offload Reporting to Increase Performance and Save Money

Abstract: - Learn how EnterpriseDB Advanced Server is being used to offload reporting from production Oracle databases to increase productivity and performance, while saving companies millions of dollars.

Speaker:
Derek M. Rodner - Director, Product Strategy, EnterpriseDB

November 28, 2007 9AM & 2PM ET
Building a High Performance and Scalable Environment with EnterpriseDB

Advanced Server
Abstract: - Vendor solutions like Oracle RAC™ can provide additional performance up to a certain point, but in most cases, the cost of these solutions far exceeds the benefits. Join EnterpriseDB experts as they show you how to architect a highly scalable environment to deliver optimal performance without sacrificing availability or reliability

Speaker:
Jim Mlodgenski - Vice President, Worldwide Technical Services, EnterpriseDB

December 5, 2007 9AM & 2PM ET
Best Practices for Data Warehousing

Speaker: - Join EnterpriseDB experts as they take you on a guided tour of GridSQL™ for EnterpriseDB Advanced Server. From architecture to implementation, learn how:

* GridSQL’s “shared-nothing” distributed architecture is transparent to the application
* Servers can be easily added to the grid to increase performance
* DBAs can monitor and administer the entire grid or a single server from a simple, easy-to-use graphical interface

Speaker:
Jim Mlodgenski - Vice President, Worldwide Technical Services, EnterpriseDB

December 12, 2007 9AM & 2PM ET
Database Worst Practices: The Top 5 Mistakes Developers Make and How to Avoid Them

Abstract: - Applications today are growing more and more complex, and with that complexity comes the increased risk of error. Join EnterpriseDB experts as they discuss the "Top 5" mistakes that developers make and how to avoid them.

Speaker:
Jim Mlodgenski - Vice President, Worldwide Technical Services, EnterpriseDB



Wednesday, September 19, 2007

EnterpriseDB Webinar: Building a Highly Available Infrastructure

A new Webinar about EnterpriseDB (not from me). Building a Highly Available Infrastructure for Your Database and Application.

It's next wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 9am and 2pm Eastern. I guess it repeats. It's an hour long.

Here's the blurb from the email I received:

What does an hour of downtime cost you? Analysts report that just one hour of downtime can cost businesses millions of dollars, and some never recover.

What applications are mission critical today? In the past, only those applications that controlled finances were considered mission-critical. But, today, almost every application, from your e-commerce website to your email and calendaring system, are considered mission-critical and candidates for high-availability planning.

While everyone agrees that downtime is caused by three major areas - people, processes and technology - every effort is being made to ensure that technology is never the cause.

Join EnterpriseDB and Continuent experts as they show you how to implement a highly available environment for your database infrastructure. Topics include:

  • Online Operations
  • Point-in-Time Recovery
  • Back Up and Failover Processing
  • Data Storage Access

You will also discover how Continuent uni/cluster technology can remove all single points of failure in your infrastructure by using a synchronous, multi-master approach to database replication. Key uni/cluster technology capabilities are:

  • "Always On" database and application services with instant, automatic and transparent failover
  • Automatic load balancing - use any database server to process user queries
  • Near-linear scaling of application users and load

Questions and requests for additional information will be addressed to help you with your installation.

I plan to register and check it out. I'll post the highlights afterwards.



Thursday, September 13, 2007

Bob Zurek's Open Letter to the Wall Street Journal

News has been slow in the EnterpriseDB world lately. I haven't posted in a while.

Bob Zurek is EnterpriseDB's (fairly) new CTO. He is an ex-IBM exec and maintains his blog on the IBM DeveloperWorks blog area. He's been blogging for a long time so I'm not sure how he worked out the move from IBM to EnterpriseDB and kept the same area.

Anyway, Bob posted an open letter to the Wall Street Journal about a reporter's take on Open Source. Bob objected to the reporter, Walter K. Mosberg, classifying open source as a two-edge sword.

But open source is a two-edge sword. While it draws on smart developers from many places, nobody is ultimately responsible for the quality of the product, and open source developers have an imperfect feel for how average people use software.


Bob says:
I’d like to respectfully take issue with this statement. As a person active in the tech industry, you know that there has been a strong open source track record in the software industry where many companies, both open source and traditionally commercial have embraced open source in a very big way. These companies include the likes of IBM, Sun and Novell but also emerging open source companies like EnterpriseDB, Talend, Compiere and SugarCRM. All these companies absolutely take responsibility for the quality of the product. I would also say that many of these companies employ some of the best user experience experts in the industry. As a former IBM executive I know that IBM works very hard on providing the user with the best experience in all aspects of their software. Making a statement claiming “open-source developers often have an imperfect feel for how average people use software” is not fair to those projects that employ user experience experts and put a great deal of effort in understanding average users.


I would actually be more inclined to agree with Mossberg. Most open source projects do not "employ user experience experts" or "put a great deal of effort in understanding average users". Not to say it's not good software. Look at postgres. Technically superior software but you still need to edit a complex text file to configure user permissions.

I would say that open source is a two-edge sword for other reasons too. I have spent most of my career working in large enterprises and I can tell you that the question of support, quality and licensing comes up very often.

"Who will support it and how long will they be around?" Can you name all of the company's that started as a support organization for an open source package and are no longer around?

GPL, LPGL, etc are death to large enterprises. The legal touch-points make for some interesting discussions when you are recommending an open source tool. Any time you need the lawyers to use "free" software, you might as well drop it.

That's one of the benefits of having a company like EnterpriseDB around. It's not open source. It's based on open source. Having to pay to use something just seems to make sense to lawyers. Anything else freaks them out.



Saturday, September 8, 2007

EnterpriseDB Install Annoyance

This is just a little peeve of mine. When you install EnterpriseDB, you can choose either a full production license or the free EnterpriseDB Express version. On my laptop, I want to run the express version. I don't need it to use more than 1 gig of ram, more than 1 cpu or more than 6gb of disk. But I can't even install it because my hardware exceeds those specs.

Cannot install EnterpriseDB Express (EDBX)

Oracle Express Edition has the same limitations as EnterpriseDB Express (and so does Microsoft SQL Server Express), but Oracle (and MS) limit their hardware usage by building the limits into the software. You can install the software on hardware as big as you have and the software will limit itself while it is running.

The EnterpriseDB installer won't even let you install. That also has me wondering about using EnterpriseDB. Oracle allows a developer to download, install and use the full blown enterprise edition of Oracle without any kind of key or license beyond the developer license. It looks like developers can only freely use EnterpriseDB on low end software. I wonder how a developer developing for large databases could do so?

It just seems odd that open source developers complain about Oracle but Oracle has a more developer-friendly license than EnterpriseDB. I guess it is a side effect of the way EDB licenses for support vs for the software? I have a question open on the EDB support forum. I'll keep everyone posted on this topic.



Sunday, September 2, 2007

EnterpriseDB and Vars

A neat article in the September 2007 issue of VARBusiness. The article is titled: EnterpriseDB Offers Options To Oracle Lock-In. Not a lot of new info here but there were several good points.

The mention the EnterpriseDB ROI calculator,

EnterpriseDB provides a calculator on its Web site where prospective customers can compare Oracle licensing costs to EnterpriseDB subscription fees.
I blogged about this a while back, EnterpriseDB - Measure ROI versus Oracle.

They also talk about how most of EnterpriseDB sales are direct but EnterpriseDB expects,
that partners could account for as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of EnterpriseDB's sales by the end of next year. "A major part of our revenue pull will be OEMs and companies that sell Enterprise DB with their apps," he says.


I can see that. Many companies should be looking for lower price selections from their partners. In turn that should lower database costs for everyone.

On this I didn't know is that Compiere is certified for EnterpriseDB:

Previously available for Oracle's database, Compiere's software was recently certified to run on EnterpriseDB. "We did that primarily to provide our installed base and sales prospects with a choice," says Bill Freedman, Compiere director of marketing. (Compiere also belongs to Oracle's Partner Network.) Compiere bundles EnterpriseDB Advanced Server licenses with its apps and support services which, in turn, are largely sold through the application vendor's own channel network.


Worth a read.



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