In Depth

In Depth

Database management

• Get ready for CCPA: Implications for UK businesses

  The California Consumer Privacy Act, a wide-ranging data privacy and consumer protection law, comes into effect on 1 January 2020. How does CCPA differ from the EU GDPR regulations and what are the responsibilities for UK businesses operating in the...  Continue Reading

• What is QLC flash and what workloads it is good for?

  QLC flash offers low per-gigabyte costs and lots of capacity, but can be limited by endurance and I/O performance. It can be a good disk replacement for several workloads, however  Continue Reading

• Alternative databases set for mainstream adoption?

  The rise of non-relational databases has been a feature of the data management landscape in the wake of big data – but to complement or replace relational?  Continue Reading

• First Bus blends Infor asset management with SAP core ERP

  When First Bus decided to upgrade its asset management and maintenance systems, it avoided senior management’s first choice, SAP, which provides its main business systems, and plumped for Infor  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Structured data and its storage needs

  Structured data is declining as a proportion of all data but its importance to business applications and its organised nature make its storage requirements very specific  Continue Reading

• Currency of data separates leaders from laggards

  With customer data growing in ever-evolving volumes, we look at how companies are using data analytics to stay in control  Continue Reading

• Congolese health workers and patients benefit from Couchbase database

  Belgian public health consulting firm AEDES has worked with a local partner in the Democratic Republic of Congo to deliver a health information management system based on Couchbase  Continue Reading

• Systems of insight light way ahead for data

  Computer Weekly looks at why data management must become oriented towards business outcomes, not technology management outcomes  Continue Reading

• How the Met Office is handling a deluge of data

  ‘Lazy’ open source tools are helping the UK weather forecasting service open up unprecedented volumes of data to all  Continue Reading

• Data management: What does the future hold?

  We explore how firms are replacing transactional database management systems with new database architectures  Continue Reading

• Tips on how to get a Hana implementation off the ground

  The confusion around SAP’s in-memory database is holding many customers back. We look at some of the approaches being taken to simplify implementation  Continue Reading

• How Hana is disrupting SAP hosting services

  We look at the differences from traditional SAP architecture that are introduced by the software supplier’s Hana technology  Continue Reading

• Netherlands needs ‘bottom up’ approach to create smart cities

  Dutch municipalities see the need to make their cities smarter, but often lack the necessary knowledge and do not know where to begin  Continue Reading

• CW@50: Spreadsheets and ERP – 50 years of software coding business

  Business software has been a rich field for IT professionals over the past five decades, and we are on the cusp of a new era of customers rolling their own for competitive advantage  Continue Reading

• NoSQL database technology finds use cases, but still minority sport

  From managing water meter data, through Bitcoin and video data, to web publishing, NoSQL database technology is finding real use cases. But it's likely to be stuck at 10% of the market for some time  Continue Reading

• NoSQL offerings from Microsoft and Oracle

  Cloud and big data applications have led to a new wave of NoSQL data stores. We look at what Microsoft and Oracle have to offer  Continue Reading

• Graph database technology starts to come of age beyond social media

  Graph databases, based on mathematics known for three centuries, are starting to yield value for businesses beyond Facebook and Twitter  Continue Reading

• How to tease out patterns in divergent data stacks

  Graph databases – the technology that links relations between datasets – will revolutionise the insights of data analytics  Continue Reading

• Three steps towards a hierarchy of needs for smart cities

  Smart cities face challenges around network connectivity, standardisation and data governance, say IoT experts, and these needs must be met for them to flourish  Continue Reading

• Getting dirty with open source databases

  With many companies looking at more agile, open source alternatives to proprietary databases, how do you choose which is the best fit for your needs  Continue Reading

• How Asean organisations are untangling big data storage challenge

  If organisations are to benefit from the promise of big data they must get on top of a legal and regulatory minefield when it comes to storing data. How are Asean IT departments navigating this?  Continue Reading

• Analytics helps Asean organisations read between the lines

  Asean organisations need to develop an enterprise-wide approach to analytics and draw on customer insight if they are to maximize the business value of data  Continue Reading

• Australian businesses running the numbers on analytics-driven customer service

  Australian businesses, such as the University of Adelaide, are gaining customer insights from large volumes of data through data analytics technology.  Continue Reading

• Spark versus MapReduce: which way for enterprise IT?

  The younger, nimbler Spark technology looks set to replace MapReduce in big data architectures. What is the pace, scope and scale of replacement?  Continue Reading

• Welsh Water billing replacement programme offers customers new tariffs

  Welsh Water (Dŵr Cymru) scooped a Computer Weekly award for a billing replacement programme for which it was its own systems integrator  Continue Reading

• Oracle cloud makes headway in eastern Europe

  Oracle’s cloud services have been making headway in eastern Europe, including at Romania’s Banca Transilvania  Continue Reading

• How Ordnance Survey will use 250 years of data to support startups

  Ordnance Survey is embarking on a project to foster startups, applying its vast repository of data to solving emerging challenges around urban spaces and smart cities  Continue Reading

• Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

  Online hotel booking site explains how the use of public cloud and NoSQL database tech has benefited its business  Continue Reading

• Financial applications are on a journey to the cloud

  CFOs in Europe embrace cloud-based financial applications as a result of security and delivery model improvements  Continue Reading

• NoSQL and NewSQL edge into Belgian railways and Austrian yellow pages

  NoSQL, NewSQL and graph databases are finding uses in mainstream European industry sectors from origins in US dotcoms  Continue Reading

• Single inventory accuracy: the holy grail of retail

  The ability to accurately pinpoint where stock is at every point in the supply chain is one of the biggest challenges facing retailers today  Continue Reading

• Customer experience is big differentiator for organisations

  It has become hard for firms to stand out from the crowd in pricing, products or services. Now customer experience is the big differentiator  Continue Reading

• What are the options for electronic patient records in the NHS after NPfIT?

  Many hospitals lack comprehensive electronic patient record (EPR) systems. What are the options now, in the wake of the NPfIT disaster?  Continue Reading

• SAP bets future on cloud in central and eastern Europe

  SAP’s turn to cloud services for the delivery of its business applications seems especially energetic in central and eastern Europe  Continue Reading

• How the BBC became digital in three-and-a-half years

  The BBC has undergone a digital transformation that started 18 months prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games  Continue Reading

• Managing workloads in an era of changing datacentre architecture

  Different workloads require different basic resources and hybrid cloud needs more intelligent workload management  Continue Reading

• Q&A: MarkLogic CEO Gary Bloom talks strategy

  Gary Bloom, CEO of NoSQL database supplier MarkLogic, talks to Computer Weekly about strategy  Continue Reading

• In-memory database technology puts Mitie and Wooga in the fast lane

  Mitie uses IBM Cognos running on a DB2 Blu in-memory database taking data from Oracle. And gaming firm Wooga is using Exasol to speed up design  Continue Reading

• Soundwave tunes to MongoDB to track music consumption on mobile

  Irish startup Soundwave is using NoSQL database MongoDB to help it track what people are listening to on mobile devices  Continue Reading

• Unilever puts SAP at the captain’s table

  Consumer goods company Unilever works hand in glove with SAP in “speeding up its growth”, according to senior executives at the two firms  Continue Reading

• Write-through, write-around, write-back: cache explained

  Cache is vital for application deployment, but which one to choose – write-through, write-around or write-back cache? We examine the options  Continue Reading

• Nordics lead initiative to share European patient records data

  The Nordic countries have played a leading role in epSOS, an EU project to establish infrastructure for patient records data exchanges  Continue Reading

• Using NoSQL databases to gain competitive advantage

  NoSQL is attracting growing interest from businesses - we examine three case studies: Amadeus, i2O and Temetra  Continue Reading

• Mölnlycke Health Care and Axfood demonstrate divergent ERP strategies

  Two Swedish firms, Mölnlycke Health Care and Axfood, demonstrate divergent ERP strategies - one standardised, one customised  Continue Reading

• Cloudera CTO: enterprise ‘data hub’ is smartphone to data warehouse SLR

  Amr Awadallah is the chief technology officer and a co-founder at Hadoop distributor Cloudera. Here he briefs Computer Weekly on how the supplier is advocating the concept of an ‘enterprise data hub’  Continue Reading

• SAP execs predict more innovation as economic outlook improves in 2014

  SAP executives are looking to 2014 as a year to establish the supplier’s innovation agenda of in-memory database technology, cloud and mobile  Continue Reading

• Minerals firm Imerys upgrades IFS ERP as economy lifts

  Imerys has 30 different ERP systems around the globe. A plan to move to a single instance of ERP, thrown off course by recession, was achieved in 2012; other business benefits have accrued  Continue Reading

• Top 10 information management stories of 2013

  Top 10 information management stories of 2013. Putting analytics to work emerged as the most popular theme, with Tesco, McLaren, and Telefonica Ireland among those leading the data analytics pack  Continue Reading

• Optimising application performance with flash storage

  At a Computer Weekly roundtable, IT leaders heard how Cancer Research UK achieved a 30% improvement in application performance  Continue Reading

• Skillpages develops DataStax Cassandra to rank trades with NoSQL

  How do you find a good tree surgeon you can trust because he or she has been recommended by someone in your social circle?  Continue Reading

• Basho CTO Justin Sheehy describes NoSQL movement as ‘Cambrian’

  Justin Sheehy (pictured), CTO at NoSQL database company Basho, describes the NoSQL movement as ‘Cambrian’  Continue Reading

• Big data journalism exposes offshore tax dodgers

  How journalists harnessed big data to challenge offshore financial secrecy  Continue Reading

• CW500: Why Channel 4 is crunching big data

  Bob Harris, Channel 4's chief technology officer, charts the broadcaster's technology strategy to use big data to form closer links with viewers  Continue Reading

• CW500: Thinking outside the big storage box

  Big data doesn’t necessarily mean big storage infrastructure  Continue Reading

• How to manage the risk of the human factor in database administration

  Fail to manage the risk of the human factor in database administration and you court disaster. DBAs, like air traffic controllers: work in pairs?  Continue Reading

• Online gambling sector bets on business intelligence

  Online gambling and gaming industries crave structured business data. Volumes can be huge and they need to react to customer behaviour  Continue Reading

• Cloud APIs at hand to connect to databases

  The pros and cons of using cloud application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect users to databases via mobile or web  Continue Reading

• Aster Data founders explain unified approach to data, big and small

  Aster Data’s founders explain their approach to handling relational data and, within the same engine, multiple forms of non-relational data: the principle of closure  Continue Reading

• Irish dairy exporter plots expansion with data matching

  Irish Dairy Board aims to match consumer preferences with the dairy produce of farmers and processors. Aligning data from multiple sources is critical if data matching is to sub-serve export growth  Continue Reading

• Teradata CTO: 'Big data' technology starting to hit the mainstream

  Teradata’s chief technology officer Stephen Brobst reflects on the “big data” landscape, in-memory as hype, cloud data warehousing and mobile consumer intelligence.  Continue Reading

• 'Big data' applications bring new database choices, challenges

  The dormitory world of databases has been roused from slumber by “big data” and associated technologies: MapReduce, Hadoop, MPP, NoSQL. Andy Hayler details big data’s impact and the issues it raises.  Continue Reading

• In-memory database technology gains ground, but challenges remain

  In-memory database technology improves specific application performance notably. But challenges need to be met before in-memory database becomes the norm.  Continue Reading

• Sway the board: How to build a business case for data management plans

  The more rigorous the business case is for a data management project, the more business value it will deliver. Consultant Andy Hayler outlines the fundamentals.  Continue Reading

• Roundtable: Modern data integration best practices to be more agile

  Our roundtable of experts considers the question of how modern organisations should best think about and approach agile data integration programmes.  Continue Reading

• Oracle: Embedded BI detects, analyses and acts

  Oracle’s senior director for business development, BI in the UK Nick Whitehead argues that the company’s BI Foundation Suite delivers the capability to act on insight.  Continue Reading

• Travel company bucks odds, touts success of data governance programme

  Three-quarters of data governance programmes don’t achieve much success, based on survey results. The Travel Corporation bucked the trend with a three-step programme that goes beyond IT.  Continue Reading

• IBM: BPM and BI take place in "IT without boundaries"

  IBM's Nancy Pearson explains how BPM, BI and analytics fit in to the new business IT paradigm.  Continue Reading

• DBAs and data warehouse architects in high demand

  Demand for senior DBAs and data warehouse architects has risen sharply. How can UK organisations find needed database skills, and how should skills availability influence database purchasing plans?  Continue Reading

• Data classification: why it is important and how to do it

  Organisations have a lot to gain from data classification and identification, but there are a few boxes to tick to make sure it’s being done right  Continue Reading

• Choosing the right database management system

  Databases should be chosen to match a company's strategy  Continue Reading