Lisa Vaas

Open source scored its latest government takeover, with MySQL AB nabbing a five-year contract with the General Services Administration that will put its open-source database at the fingertips of government customers. As it is, MySQL already hums under thousands of federal, state and local government entities, including Los Alamos National Labs, the U.S. Census Bureau, […]

DataSynapse Inc. is gluing its GridServer grid software into Informatica Corp.s PowerCenter data integration platform, the two companies announced Monday. The partnership will result in a seamless interface that lets PowerCenter users scale their data integration processing across pooled resources with GridServer, the companies said in a statement. “A seamless interface with DataSynapse helps Informatica […]

Massachusetts has appointed an acting CIO to fill in for Peter Quinn, who is walking away from the job after bringing OpenDocument and a concomitant fire of controversy to the Commonwealth. The acting CIO, Bethann Pepoli, was formerly the chief operating officer of the states IT division. Pepoli is a candidate to take the position […]

Its so simple. If only Id remembered. Instead of dissing Oracle and trying to wrap my head around SQL injections, all I have to do to get readers attention is this: Write an article comparing the “lite” versions of proprietary databases to MySQL. Without mentioning Firebird or PostgreSQL. Thats exactly what I did recently, and […]

A Trojan horse program is churning out bogus Google ads promoting products Google eschews—gambling, cheap Viagra, girlie photos and adult dating. The ads, being targeted at small publishers, are identical to Google AdSense ads except that referral graphic buttons are being converted to text, apparently due to a bug in the Trojan, according to the […]

Not to pick on MySQL—Im glad to see they were picked to be editors choice in Builder AUs recent road test of databases, which compared MySQL, SQL Server Express, DB2 Express and Oracle 10g Standard Edition. “Release 5.0 of MySQL is really taking it to…Oracle and DB2 with advanced features such as cluster support and […]

Database security breaches have been coming fast and furious as the year draws to a close. Last week, role-playing game company White Wolf Publishing Inc. reported that it was the victim of attempted extortion after international hackers exploited a software flaw and threatened to post stolen user data including user names, e-mail addresses and encrypted […]

Marriott Vacation Club International is missing backup tapes with personal information for 206,000 customers, owners and associates, the company disclosed on Wednesday. A spokesman for the timeshare division of Marriott International Inc. told eWEEK that the tapes—which went missing from the companys Orlando, Fla., corporate office—may have contained addresses, credit card numbers and, in some […]

Microsoft Corp. has issued a security advisory for what Secunia is deeming an “extremely critical flaw” in Windows Metafile Format (.wmf) that is now being exploited on fully patched systems by malicious attackers. Websense Security Labs is tracking thousands of sites distributing the exploit code from a site called iFrameCASH BUSINESS. That site and numerous […]

Editors Note: This story is part of , a continuing series of stories from the reporters and editors of Ziff Davis Internet. Instead of the usual mile-high look at the year ahead, these articles examine particular technologies and markets in transition, including whats in store for them. Theres innovation, and then theres innovation. The dark […]

Security and law enforcement professionals are appalled that their personal information has been leaked by Guidance Software Inc., a security software and training company they say should have known better than to leave an unencrypted database exposed on the Internet. “I was shocked that a company like Guidance would be this sloppy,” said Peter Garza, […]

Oracle wants to be the market leader in enterprise applications. The companys most recent quarterly results show its not doing a very good job so far. More to the point, its not going to get there just by making stuff up. Case in point: Oracle cooked some numbers in a Wall Street Journal ad that […]