Continuing the awards for the “best of” information management tools for 2007, I move to the proverbial “back end” and offer up some “best of” products that provide the foundations of our environments. Thinking back over the products I’ve worked with in 2007, I have to repeat my belief that it was the “Best of” year in information management.
Best Open Source DBMS
MySQL Enterprise Fall 2007 Release – This is the commercial subscription offering for the popular MySQL open source database (which makes it “low cost” not free – for those who associate open source with free). It includes a comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools, and premium support services for corporate developers and DBAs. MySQL provides a full suite of database drivers and graphical tools to help developers and DBAs build and manage their MySQL applications.
Best Data Warehouse Appliance
I take this opportunity to say there is no ‘best’, only best for a given situation because indeed there are many with good value propositions.
Best Federated Query Facilitator
SQL Farm Combine 1.9 – While I still believe a proper data warehouse is necessary in modern information architecture, as a stopgap or bridge measure, you may need to query multiple SQL Server databases without co-habitating the data. With SQL Farm, users can query multiple databases and SQL servers or instances, receive one result set from all data sources, and save the aggregated results to relational databases or data warehouses.
Best Data Warehouse SMB storage
Sun StorageTek 2530 array – I like it’s Common Array Manager software, which was designed to be an un-intimidating implementation for an unseasoned administrator and leverage the same look and feel from Sun’s server management software.
Best Data Warehouse Prototyping Tool
WhereScape 24 - WhereScape 24 is installed on data warehouse developer PCs and connects to both data sources and the target data warehouse database and generates native Teradata, Oracle and SQL Server scripts.
Best “Next Product I need right now” – Email me. Architecture and Tool Selection, Development and Planning is one of our offerings.
Technorati tags: data-warehouse, data-warehouse-appliance, wherescape,mysql,sql-farm,2530,open-source,dbms
Posted January 2, 2008 1:50 PM
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Isn't MySQL still lacking a 64-bit ODBC driver for Windows? That is a major black mark in my book, and for anyone who has standardized on 64-bit Windows servers.
Most of my MySQL clients use it on Linux and don't connect from Windows machines other than HTTP. However, MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.1.1-beta was released last month and contains a 64-bit
driver. The release announcement can be found here: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?3,188042.