10 Things You Should Know About Databases

Technology in the database realm can have a long life expectancy. Still, in 2007, database administrators had a few new morsels to chew on, and some trends to look forward to in 2008.

Oracle Database 11g added among other things the ability to store XML data as a binary data type and extended greater support for XQuery, a proposed standard that allows users to extract information from an XML file. IBM also updated its XML technology in DB2 9.5, adding a standardized extension to XQuery that allows the user to modify, insert or delete individual elements and attributes within an XML document.

Not new, but improved. 11g included OLTP (online transaction processing) table compression, as well as the ability to compress the unstructured or file data stored within the database. IBM has put an emphasis on compression capabilities in its DB2 product as well, and Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 is expected to bring several compression features, such as backup compression, to its customers. Netezza, which specializes in analytic appliances, announced that it will add what it calls its “Compress Engine” to its data warehousing appliance this year.

Replace a single instance of expensive hardware with lots of cost-effective hardware.

Netezza did this by programming on a PowerPC chip. Greenplum, a provider of database software for business intelligence, does this using the storage controller.

The automated deployment of patches in a virtual environment can save DBAs some headaches.

The growth of Vertica Systems and ParAccel, as well as the recent success of Sybase’s IQ Analytics Server, show column-based DBMS models are on the upswing.

Dataupia added massively parallel processing-based facilities to the back end of Oracle, SQL Server or DB2, which will allow the expansion of those systems and take away a lot of the administrative pain at the same time.

More and more vendors are embracing an SAAS (software as a service) model, among them EnterpriseDB. Though the market is still immature, several companies are banking on the idea that organizations will be willing to put more and more of their data in the cloud.

Several vendors have made noise about new spatial capabilities. In 2008, Microsoft will support spatial data and operations natively, catching up to its major competitors in the database field.

ANTs Software has been working on technology it calls the Compatibility Server, which allows applications to connect to the new target database through the server without having to be recompiled or rewritten.