Oracle hurls MySQL at Microsoft database wobblers
Migration tools come and go in the turf wars between the enterprise vendors.
Over the years we’ve had Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange migration tools and tools to swap one company’s database for another.
Under the latter category, Oracle is now throwing open source at Microsoft in the form of a migration tool to shift users off of Redmond’s latest database.
Oracle new migration tools will move data from Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL, which Oracle bought from Sun. The tools come as part of the MySQL Workbench.
Oracle claimed the migration tool would also shift database tables and data to MySQL and “quickly” convert existing apps. Read more...
OSCON: Akiban targets MySQL users with its new database software
To generate interest from developers, Boston-based Akiban Technologies has released as open source its flagship database software, called Akiban Server. The company also released a connector for replicating a MySQL database within Akiban, and it has forged a partnership with platform hosting provider Engine Yard.
"The data that we capture grows more and more complicated. We designed a database that can handle increasing levels of depth and complexity," said Ori Herrnstadt, who is a cofounder and Chief Technology Officer for Akiban.
The company announced the release at OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source Conference), being held this week in Portland, Oregon.
Through a novel way of grouping data, the Akiban database can complete operations 10 or more times faster than MySQL, the company has claimed. It also provides developers multiple ways for their applications to work with the database. Read more...
Over 450,000 emails and passwords allegedly stolen from Yahoo
A group of hackers on Thursday published a list of over 453,000 log-in credentials on the Internet that were allegedly stolen from a database associated with an unnamed Yahoo service.
The group of hackers calls itself "the D33Ds Company" and claims to have hacked into the database by exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability found on a Yahoo subdomain.
"The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage," the hackers said in their release notes.
The leaked information includes MySQL server variables, names of database tables and columns, as well as a list of 453,492 email addresses and passwords in plain text.
The exposed log-in credentials don't only include yahoo.com email addresses, but also email addresses from other public and non-public email providers. Read more...
Amazon pitches MySQL in the cloud for $19 a month
Amazon Web Services has introduced a micro version of its cloud-based database service RDS running MySQL and priced from $19 a month, the company said on Monday.
Just like Amazon's other cloud services, RDS (Relational Database Service) takes care of set-up, operations and scaling. For example, the service automatically patches the database software and backs up data.
Code, applications, and tools that IT staff already use with their existing on-premise databases can also be used with RDS, according to Amazon.
The micro RDS instance or virtual server is designed for Web applications with lower traffic demands, test applications and small projects, Amazon said. Read more...
HP shares database smarts with EnterpriseDB
EnterpriseDB is trying to pump up the PostgreSQL database to do battle with Oracle 11g and, to a lesser extent, IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL. So the database upstart is upgrading its Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 - and kicking it onto Amazon's EC2 compute cloud to peddle it alongside Amazon's own Relational Database Service.
As El Reg previously reported, the open source PostgreSQL relational database was updated to the 9.1 release level last September, with a lot of the work being done by a team at EnterpriseDB, which has become the "Red Hat for PostgreSQL," led by Robert Haas, the senior architect at the company. Read more...
Amazon Web Services launches managed database service
Amazon Web Services on Wednesday launched a managed NoSQL database service that lets users easily launch a database and scale it up or down as needed.
The service meets the needs of web companies that are collecting, storing and processing an increasing amount of data. Without such a scalable database, AWS users would sometimes spend weeks forecasting and preparing their databases to perform during heavy usage periods, the company said. That's because traditional databases were not designed to scale quickly.
"Managing and scaling databases has always been the Achilles heal of web apps," said Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon. To scale, companies could either buy bigger hardware or split databases across servers, he said. "Both approaches are increasingly complicated and expensive," he said. "Plus, there's a real shortage of technical people who have the specialized skills to do this." Read more...
Oracle’s ‘thrown in the towel’ on database patching, researcher claims
A security researcher today criticized Oracle for neglecting to patch its core database products, noting that the massive update slated for later Tuesday will set a record for the fewest fixes.
Alex Rothacker, director of security research of Application Security's TeamShatter vulnerability group, said that Oracle has "thrown in the towel on fixing database vulnerabilities."
"Assuming the January 2012 CPU [critical patch updates] report stays the same as the preview, they will have set a new record low of just two database fixes," said Rothacker in an email today. Read more...
Kenyan startup claims Google ‘scalped’ its data after staging a STING
Google has been accused of "fraudulently" accessing a rival Kenya-based business listings database and then attempting to sell the internet giant's competing GKBO product to that customerbase.
That's the remarkable claim made by Stefan Magdalinski of startup Mocality.
The outfit alleges that some of Google's staff based in both Kenya and India had contacted nearly 30 per cent of the people listed on Mocality's database as of 11 January.
The evidence provided by Magdalinski is certainly compelling as it appears to have caught Google employees acting inappropriately.
"Our database IS our business, and we protect and tend it very carefully. We spot and block automated attacks, amongst other measures. We regularly contact our business owners, to help them keep their records up-to-date, and they are welcome to contact our call centre team for help whenever they need it," said Magdalinski, who told The Register that he was yet to hear from Google, following publication of his damning blog post earlier today.
He noted that Google launched its Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO) site in September last year. Read more...
FCC approves first white spaces database, device
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved the first database of unlicensed wireless spectrum that can be used by new so-called white spaces devices.
The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology on Thursdat also approved a device from KTS (Koos Technical Services) that can operate in the white spaces, which are unused bands in the area of spectrum used by television stations. The KTS device will operate in conjunction with the approved white spaces database, from Spectrum Bridge.
KTS makes a broadband transmitter device designed to operate in the white spaces. Read more...
Salesforce.com’s Heroku launches standalone database service
Salesforce.com's Heroku division has launched a standalone version of its PostgreSQL-based database, giving developers a "battle-tested" way to build applications with the cloud platform of their choosing, the company announced this week.
"Heroku Postgres has successfully and safely written 19 billion customer transactions, and another 400 million write-transactions are processed every day," Heroku said in a blog post. Customers who use the service can focus on other application development tasks besides database administration, Heroku said.
The option joins Salesforce.com's previously announced Database.com service, which exposes the database infrastructure within its Force.com development platform. Read more...
Cassandra database now ready for mere mortals
The NoSQL database Cassandra has hit 1.0-level maturity with a heavy play for enterprise customers.
Jonathan Ellis, vice president of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Cassandra project, is reported to have announced that the NoSQL database is now ready for "mere mortals".
"You don't have to know as much as you did about the nuts and bolts" to operate the database, Ellis said here.
Developed by Facebook, Cassandra has mostly been picked up by web hyper-scale giants – including Digg, Rackspace and Twitter – to process huge amounts of data in real-time. Read more...
Really big data: The challenges of managing mountains of information
If you think the storage systems in your data centers are out of control, imagine having 449 billion objects in your database, or having to add 40 terabytes of new data each week.
The challenges of managing massive amounts of big data involve storing huge files, creating long-term archives and, of course, making the data accessible.
While data management has always been a key function in corporate IT, "the current frenzy has taken market activity to a whole new level," says Richard Winter, an analyst with Wintercorp Consulting Services, a firm that studies big data trends.
New products appear regularly from established companies and startups alike. Whether it's Hadoop, MapReduce, NoSQL or one of several dozen data warehousing appliances, file systems and new architectures, the data analytics segment is booming, he says.
"We have products to move data, to replicate data and to analyze data on the fly," says Winter. "Scale-out architectures are appearing everywhere as vendors work to address the enormous volumes of data pouring in from social networks, sensors, medical devices and hundreds of other new or greatly expanded data sources." Read more...
Oracle rigs MySQL for NoSQL-like access
Speculation has been running rampant that Oracle may introduce its own NoSQL database at the OpenWorld conference, to be held next week in San Francisco.
While Oracle thus far has been quiet about the rise of the NoSQL database movement over the past few years, its developers have been at work devising ways to bring NoSQL-like speed and flexibility to its MySQL open-source database.
For OpenWorld, Oracle has scheduled a number of sessions and demonstrations (PDF) devoted to something called the Oracle NoSQL Database. The work that the company has done thus far to equip MySQL with NonSQL functionality might provide a clue as to the nature of this new offering.
Oracle's work has focused on combining the responsiveness of NoSQL systems with the full range of options of SQL-based systems such as Oracle's own. Read more...
Sega customer database hacked
Video game company Sega had a database hacked and sensitive information on about 1.3 million customers has been compromised, according to media reports.
The database of the Sega Pass website includes customer names, dates of birth, email addresses, and encrypted passwords.
Various media outlets have been able to confirm the attack with officials from the Japanese company. The news site Playstation Lifestyle posted the text of an email that Sega reportedly sent to Sega Pass registered users on Friday night informing them of the breach. Read more...
Open source analytics options grow
The options for open source data warehousing and analytics grew on Tuesday, with a number of announcements from Infobright, Jaspersoft, and Ingres.
Infobright unveiled the 4.0 version of its analytic database, placing special emphasis on the release's ability to crunch machine-generated data from sensors, telecom infrastructure, and other sources in "near-real time."
A technology called DomainExpert reduces query times, optimizing performance by "adding intelligence about a particular data domain -- such as Web, financial services or telecom," according to Infobright. Read more...