Charles Garry

The long expected acquisition of Siebel Systems by Oracle was finally announced today. Somehow I dont expect the same cries of despair we heard from all concerned parties when Oracle was going to acquire PeopleSoft. Perhaps the market had already seen this as inevitable. Perhaps PeopleSoft was just one of those beloved software companies that […]

Microsoft hates DBAs. Ask anyone. OK, ask anyone who is a DBA, especially those who dont really support SQL Server. I have attended my share of IOUG and IDUG conferences in my day. I always enjoyed the performance-related presentations where one could debate the relative impact of locking scenarios and dynamic versus static SQL, or […]

I saw a recent online poll asking the question “Will automation make the DBAs job obsolete?” Over 73 percent of the 726 people who responded felt that automation would never make the database administrators job obsolete. No surprise really, since the poll was taken on a site that caters to DBAs. The interesting fact is […]

Is it just me, or is there a new security vulnerability every day? Oracle seems to be taking the brunt of things in the database space, while Microsoft continues to have its Windows vulnerabilities dragged through the muck and mire that is IT media. Ok, well, perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic—there really isnt […]

Its fascinating how true innovation works. Its never right the first time, and it is always built upon earlier concepts and invention. In the hardware space, innovation and improvement have resulted in a steady increase in performance relative to price. For 40 years this has been so, but what of software price performance? I believe […]

When I think of companies that are emerging around the open-source software phenomenon, I cant help but think of an old Saturday Night Live sketch. You remember how they use to show fake commercials? The one Im thinking of was for The Change Bank. It had people telling personal stories of how they needed to […]

In one of my recent articles I described, what I view, as a dim future for IBM DB2 in the Linux, Unix and Windows market. I received a number of e-mails and was directed to a number of discussion threads where the article was debated. By some I was lauded as being “an excellent writer […]

I find it fascinating how differently database administrators react to security alerts depending on the platform they support. There is clearly a caste system when it comes to database software. Mainframe DBAs look down their noses at everyone. The Oracle DBA looks down on everyone else. SQL Server DBAs just shake their heads at the […]

The billions of dollars companies shell out for database software so that their most precious corporate assets will be both available and secure create a powerful motive for a vendor to want to keep any security vulnerabilities from becoming public. The central issue is often protecting the vendors brand name, if not the actual security […]

Compliance is one of those umbrella terms consultants and vendors use to scare the living daylights out of clients so that they spend more money. Not to say that they arent giving them sound advice—in fact, some organizations may need to feel real, palpable fear to finally take action. For the most part, however, I […]