Oracle

PAGE 42
MIGRATING TO CLOUD
REQUIRES A 3- PRONGED
ONE COMPLETE MARKETING PROGRAM
STRATEGY FOR SUCCESS

IBM
PAGE 44

THE NEW
MOVING A RELATIONAL
DATABASE FROM GROUND
TO CLOUD

WORLD OF
IDERA
PAGE 46
THE EVOLUTION OF

DATABASE
ENTERPRISE DATA
ARCHITECTURE

TmaxSoft

TECHNOLOGIES
PAGE 47
DATABASE DILEMMA:
BEST PRACTICES FOR
AVAILABLE DATABASE
OPTIONS

Influx Data
PAGE 48
TIME SERIES: THE NEXT
REVOLUTION OF DATABASE
TECHNOLOGIES

Couchbase
PAGE 49
COUCHBASE DATA
PLATFORM FOR
EXCEPTIONAL
ENGAGEMENT IN RETAIL

Best Practices Series

40 JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA
Nine Reasons to be
Optimistic About
TODAYS DATABASE
TECHNOLOGY CHOICES
Best Practices Series
Theres no question that todays data
environments are complex entanglements
that are growing uncontrollably. The days
of laboring over database servers, writing
scripts, and troubleshooting performance
snags may be fading, as things move toward
more automated approaches that are
boosted by intelligent solutions and lever-
age an abundance of services from cloud
providers and open source communities.
At the same time, existing data infra-
structures and solutions can be supported
and migrated in an incremental way
to the new world of data technologies,
reducing the risks inherent in moving
and retraining staff with new solutions.
The key to all this is building a great deal
of flexibility into approaches to data.
Here are the nine key areas where
data environments are changing:
1. UNDERNEATH IT ALL,
THINGS ARE GETTING VERY
SERVICE-ORIENTED.
There are two ways data environments
can be supportedvia cloud or onsite
hardware. The advantage with cloud is
that data managers, developers, or testers
who need a database environment can
provision one almost instantaneously,
without going through their respective
IT, finance, or top managers or needing
to acquire new servers or storage arrays
to support their efforts. Cloud databases,
also referred to as database as a service
(DBaaS), can be SQL or NoSQL, open
source or relational, and allow custom-
ers to choose the environment that is
best suited for their particular use cases,
whether that is support for streaming
data pipelines or a data warehousing for
analytics. Flexible scaling and the ability
to offload time-consuming database
administration tasks to the cloud vendor
are additional advantages. This means
that what used to take weeks or even
months to set up now can be done within
a matter of minutes by spinning up
cloud instances. As applications expand
and grow, databases can expand and
grow with them, as well as be downsized
accordingly. And, data environments
accessed incorporate all the latest security,
performance, and upgraded features. As
a result, database teams can spend their
time delivering capabilities to the busi-
ness in terms of analytics and transaction
support versus being mired in building
and tuning databases.
2. A
 LSO UNDERNEATH IT ALL, THINGS
ARE GETTING A LOT FASTER.
Rapid processing of big data is being
enabled by frameworks such as Hadoop
or Spark. In-memory technology has
also become a ubiquitous part of the
data world, now available through most
major database vendors. In-memory can
process workloads up to 100 times faster
than disk-to-memory configurations.
This, in turn, enables business at the
speed of thought, as queries are deliv-
ered at blazing fast speeds. Along with
faster processing, storage is also moving
into new modes. There has been a rise
in new types of storage, such as flash
storage, and solid-state disks. In addi-
tion, many organizations are moving to
cloud-based storage now, as business
and IT leaders grow more comfortable
withand even begin to depend on
the security that cloud vendors are able
to provide. These new storage formats
enable data to be maintained without
the latency seen with disk drives.
3. W
 ERE BURYING MORE OF THE
COMPLEXITY, AS THINGS GET
MORE COMPLEX.
Lets face itdata environments have
become increasingly complex, and big
data isnt making the job any easier. As
a result, many data managers are turn-
ing to a range of solutions, including
automation, as well as appliances that
essentially serve as data warehouses or
security infrastructures in a box. Auto-
mation is also making its mark, with a
large range of products that eliminate
manual processes, particularly when
it comes to troubleshooting issues or
distributing workloads.

4. THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO
MANY DATABASE CHOICES.
The selection of databases is vast, and
choices depend upon needs seen within
enterprises. Those enterprise teams
seeking rapid development and fast
access to unstructured data sources may
find the NoSQL databases suited to their
requirements. Even for structured, rela-
tional data, there are open source and
cloud database offerings that promise
much of the basic functionality formerly
only seen within major relational data-
base management systems.
5. DATABASE DEVELOPERS
HAVE MANY MORE PLATFORM
AND TOOL CHOICES AND
HAVE A LOT LESS GRUNT-LEVEL
CODING TO DO.
Database developers have a wide
array of resources available from open
source communities, cloud providers,
and tool vendors. The open source
communities have provided a num-
ber of robust, well-tested solutions,
ranging from databases themselves to
frameworks and development lan-
guages. Notably, there has been a rise
of languages that directly support data
analysis, such as R or Python, that are
realigning data operations.
6. DATA IS GETTING MORE
ACCESSIBLE, REGARDLESS
OF FORMAT OR ORIGIN.
Enterprises are beginning to learn
new ways to open up data to employees
and customers. Database-as-a-service
is an example of this trend. Many
small to medium-sized companies, for
example, dont have the staff, expertise,
or desire to run and maintain data
environmentsyet, the ability to do so
is critical in todays data-driven economy.
Even units within larger organizations
find it difficult to justify adding more
capabilities to their data operations. In
these cases, DBaaS is available through
cloud sites, as well as provided by the
major database vendors. Enterprise search
is another form of deployment that may
reshape the nature of database access.
7. FOR END USERS, DATA HAS BEEN
COMING ALIVE, AND HAS NEVER
BEEN SO BRILLIANT.
For years, static reports and dash-
boards sufficed. But as organizations seek
to compete on analytics, theres a need for
more sophisticated front-end interfaces
that tell the story with more clarity. To
meet these requirements, there are power-
ful data visualization tools now available
at the front end. With the ability to shape
and visualize data trends, business users
can spot anomalies within seconds, as
well as be able to map trends affecting
their organizations and customers.
8. LATENCY IS SO 2010: REAL-TIME
OPTIONS ARE INCREASING.
Real-time data flow or data stream-
ing is becoming a part of corporate data
strategies. As industries are disrupted by
real-time, data-savvy startups, companies
are increasingly embracing these capa-
bilities themselves. The ability to speed
time to market is one of the most critical
forms of competitive advantage required
in todays economy. Enterprises seek data
environments that are blazing fast and can
respond on a subsecond basis to events. Its
a key competitive differentiator to be able
JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA 41
to provide personalized customer expe-
riences based on real-time information.
Many legacy systems may rely on day-old
data from ETL processes, but a new gen-
eration of tools and platformsincluding
in-memory technology, flash storage, and
cloudare easing the transition to real-
time in a cost-effective way.
9. E
 VENTUALLY, DATA MANAGE-
MENT AND STORAGE MAY BE
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DATA
USERS THEMSELVES.
The future of databases may not be
in self-contained databases as we know
them today, but perhaps in some vast, dis-
tributed uber-database that extends to all
corners of cyberspace. Thats the thinking
behind blockchain technology, which
shifts many database services and func-
tions to an independently maintained
global ledger that is seen as secure due
to its redundancy and immutable nature.
This represents a significant transition
from the way data has been tradition-
ally organized within enterprises. For
instance, control over the data shifts from
enterprise overseerssuch as database
administrators or IT executivesto the
data owners or creators, administered by
a global network with no owners. Ulti-
mately, this provides enterprise users with
greater control over the information that
is employed in transactions and services.
While blockchain is still in its formative
stages, many enterprises are showing
considerable interest in the approach, and
vendors are likely to follow suit, building
services and support on top of blockchain
implementations. n

 Joe McKendrick
42 JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA
Migrating to Cloud Requires a
3-Pronged Strategy for Success
In the early days, Cloud Computing was heavily leveraged for
technology experiments, lower cost proof of concepts, early
stage startups, transient-repeatable batch based workloads and
just generally for temporary activities. Today, as Cloud
Computing has matured, migrating to the Cloud, which has a
completely different tone of permanency, is an increasingly
hot topic of discussion.
Lines of Business and Information Technology providers
are migrating to Cloud, across small to medium sized business
and at the Enterprise level. The desire for an increased velocity
to innovate and execute is driving this movement. Further,
Cloud provides more efficient, and at times, lower cost
approaches to common activities such as setup and teardown
of development and test environments, scale on demand
disaster recovery sites and an improved ability to pay for what
is used rather than for peak demand forecasting. Surprisingly,
in a reverse trend from the cautions of early adoption, Cloud
is proving to reduce risk in areas of security and compliance
as the largest contributing factor to failures in these areas, the
human factor, is normalized across thousands of businesses
that leverage the same hardened processes and technologies.
Cloud value can be described at a basic level as automation
and self-service of the Data Center. Cloud providers then add
velocity boosters such as Platform Services to help accelerate
new development and Software Services that provide immedi-
ate and material benefits for operating a modern business.
ORGANIZATIONS LOOK TO A HYBRID APPROACH FOR
FLEXIBILITY AND REDUCED RISK
Migrating to Cloud is not just about technology, it is also
about processes and people. Choosing a migration approach
that facilitates leveraging the benefits of Cloud while under-
standing the impact on processes and the people behind them
can be an important factor in successful Cloud migration. For
this reason, many businesses are finding value in a Hybrid
approach. A well-defined hybrid approach can provide access
to Cloud automation and self-service while providing the
flexibility to plan for workload migration in a way that
reduces risk and maximizes value because you can control that
workload migration in lock step with a change in processes.
Oracle is taking a dual pronged approach to delivering a
hybrid Cloud capability for businesses planning a Cloud
migration. First, by providing a basic technology stack
management capability that can see and manage resources
uniformly across both on-premises and cloud. Second, Oracle
literally brings the Cloud to you, via Oracle Cloud Machines
that deliver the same technology stack that runs Oracles
Public Cloud behind your own data center firewalls. Oracle
Cloud Machines extend the reach of your on-premises systems
Sponsored Content
to Cloud values at your site and through to the Oracle Cloud,
giving you complete choice of how to govern the migration of
workloads across Public Cloud, Private Cloud and on-prem-
ises environments.
TEST CLOUD MIGRATION BENEFITS BY STARTING WITH
THE RIGHT KIND OF WORKLOAD
The workloads that are moving to Cloud first are the ones
that have an incremental and controlled impact on the people
and processes that, in turn, impact the business critical side of
operations. Development and test is by far the most prevalent
activity migrating to Cloud and the workloads associated with
that activity vary from extremely light weight functional
testing to large scale systems tests. Given the variation in
workload characteristics associated with development and
test, it provides an opportunity to get value out of using
Cloud in a number of important ways.
The lightweight workloads associated with functional
testing provide a perfect opportunity to leverage consolida-
tion of workloads, looking for highly cost effective shared
infrastructure or containerized deployment targets. The trick
here is to make sure that you still have effective control of
data and process isolation with your consolidation approach.
Technologies found in the Oracle Cloud like Oracles mul-
titenant can enable this kind of secure consolidation, allowing
100s of tenants per compute core instead of giving each
functional tester a large unnecessary slice of compute that just
wastes money. Further, Oracle Cloud integrates agile pro-
cesses used for development and test like test master database
creation and lifecycle management into Cloud automation
while providing portability of data and security policies back
and forth with on-premises deployments. Bringing the
benefits of consolidation while enabling a modern continuous
integration and delivery pipeline for data driven applications
though tight integrations with a modern developer stack
service.
ORCHESTRATION FOR YOUR ENTIRE STACK IS KEY
On the other hand, the large scale system test aspect of
development requires a Cloud automation capability that can
setup and teardown complex architectural topologies quickly,
scaling up and scale out to the level required to support the
eventual production deployment footprint. A key to the
quick setup and teardown for predictable and repeatable
testing is a full stack orchestration capability that can handle
all layers of the application architecture. Declarative orches-
tration that can describe a software stack and the required
infrastructure (compute, network and storage) needed to run
that stack and that can execute to automatically create all of
Sponsored Content
the resources and deploy all of the software on demand, run
the series of test, teardown the stack to free up the resources
and/or stop the billable costs. In this process, the most
challenging aspect is dealing with the database layer as the
storage and access of data is at the heart of most stateful
application stacks and dealing with the database means
dealing with data in transactional workloads where your
availability and recoverability SLAs come into play.
Oracle Cloud provides orchestration capabilities for the
entire stack, not only providing orchestration of infrastructure
and any custom software required, but also orchestration of
Oracle Database best practice Oracle Maximum Availability
Architecture. The ability to orchestrate Real Application
Clusters (RAC), Data Guard or even advanced platinum SLA
level architectures that combine RAC, Data Guard, Golden
Gate to provide proven business critical system stacks. As
workloads move into production, high availability and disaster
recovery characteristics of a maximum availability architec-
ture become essential aspects of migrating to cloud while
retaining the confidence to deliver business critical SLAs.
MINIMIZE DOWNTIME AND RISK WHEN YOU LIFT AND
SHIFT
Departmental workloads are often a great target for a lift
and shift migration to cloud. One can apply the orchestration
techniques discussed above for application runtime lift and
shift. The sticky part is migrating the existing data into the
Cloud. The good news is that Oracle Database Cloud Services
use the same Oracle Database engine as that found on-prem-
ises, so the same software, architecture and tools used
on-premises can help you with a Cloud migration. Of course,
the techniques and tools used will depend on factors involving
network bandwidth and storage IO characteristics along with
the specific data type and size and the requirements for
business continuity for the application services.
If you are migrating non critical applications that can take
extended maintenance windows, basic data movement
techniques such as file copy, export/import, transportable table
spaces (useful for heterogeneous data movement) and tools
that expose those like data pump, RMAN and SQL Developer
can be applied. However, if you are looking to minimize
downtime in a lift and shift of critical applications, you can
consider leveraging Oracle Cloud automation to setup a hybrid
disaster recovery site from on-premises to cloud, then perform
a switchover operation to bring the production workload to
the Cloud. Oracle makes it very easy to use tools like RMAN
with Cloud Service automation hooks to easily instantiate
Cloud service instances from on-premises database backups
and turn those into replicas for minimal downtime migrations.
JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA 43
Migration of modern data driven workloads that are
combining streaming, unstructured, structured and NoSQL
data into intelligent analytical workloads are actually less
common as these applications are typically born in the cloud.
For these modern applications, migration is most commonly
dealing with data movement. A combination of software
appliances that integrate on-premises files systems to Cloud
object storage, technologies for continuous real-time data
transfer like Golden Gate and brute force techniques like
physical storage appliance migration services that ship to your
data center where data is loaded and then brought to the cloud
provider all come together to fulfill the spectrum of data
migration needs.
Once these new types of data arrive in the Cloud and are
put into the specific technologies handling the unique
workloads for that data type, the data is not locked into
isolation silos making it unusable for future business applica-
tions. Oracle Cloud makes the migration and use of these data
types easy by providing an open platform of services from Big
Data to NoSQL to traditional Relational while integrating the
technologies to work together in a modern data management
platform service. Oracle Cloud eases migration by handling
any data type, any workload, at any scale, then uniquely
integrating these point solutions with a singular standards
based access using SQL. Oracle will let your existing SQL
tools have access to the data across the platform, in a single
view of all the data, and allow you to process that data without
having to move it. This is possible because Oracle extends its
engineered systems architecture to provide the building blocks
for a Cloud infrastructure that is intelligently powering an end
to end data management experience.
GET READY TO CAPITALIZE ON THE CLOUD
Migrating to the Cloud can unlock tremendous value for
the business. Planning a path that considers technology,
processes and people will provide the most effective return on
your effort. Capitalizing on new forms of automation to
optimize costs with evolving processes and dynamic processes
is only the beginning. Unlocking the power of new modern
techniques to leverage all kinds of data in any workload and at
any scale will bring the competitive advantages necessary to
succeed in the businesses digital transformation to Cloud. n
Robert Greene is a senior director, product management
at Oracle.
44 JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA
Moving a Relational Database
From Ground to Cloud
This article was authored by:
Roger E. Sanders, Db2 Offering Manager, IBM
There is a bias among many database administrators (DBAs)
that public clouds are neither capable of meeting the demands
often placed on relational database management systems nor
secure enough to house personally identifiable information (PII).
Because of this, the use of a public cloud for database deploy-
ments is an option many DBAs are unwilling to explore. But, after
a few years of using the cloud for other applications, companies
are finding that the benefits of cloud computingfaster access to
infrastructure, greater scalability, and higher availability top the
listare living up to expectations set by cloud providers. Conse-
quently, cloud adoption is growing and the use of a public cloud
for relational database deployments can no longer be avoided.
WHY DBAs SHOULD BE CONSIDERING PUBLIC CLOUDS
In addition to reports produced by Gartner, IDC, and
Forrester, one of the things many cloud experts watch for are the
results of the State of the Cloud Survey that is conducted each year
by RightScale, an enterprise cloud management company. In
January 2017, just over one thousand technical professionals
responded to this survey and results indicate that cloud comput-
ing is being used across a variety of industries, by small and
midsized businesses, as well as large enterprises.
To segment and analyze organizations according to their levels
of cloud adoption, RightScale uses its own Cloud Maturity
Model, which consists of four distinct stages of cloud maturity:
Cloud Watchers: organizations that are developing cloud
strategies but have not yet deployed applications in the cloud.
Cloud Beginners: organizations that are new to cloud computing
and are working on proof-of-concepts or initial cloud projects.
Cloud Explorers: organizations that have multiple projects or
applications already deployed in the cloud.
Cloud Focused: organizations that are heavily using cloud
infrastructure and are looking to optimize cloud operations and
minimize cloud costs.
According to the RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report,
although it appears that smaller organizations are more
likely to be Cloud Focused, an almost equal portion of enter-
prise respondents are in the two most mature stages of cloud
deployment (as shown in the chart on the following page).
This same report indicates that hybrid and public cloud adop-
tion is growing, while the use of private clouds is going down.
Based on these findings, its clear that the move to deploy
enterprise-level relational databases in a public cloud is inevita-
ble. But, what advantages can DBAs expect to gain by this move?
It turns out, there are several. For example, a DBA can utilize a
public cloud to:
Support new development and testing initiatives without
having to manage multiple database environments.
With a managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) offering like
Sponsored Content
IBM dashDB and IBM dashDB for Transactions, a DBA only
has to focus on data object creation and data delivery; the
service provider (in this case IBM) takes care of everything else.
Support proof of concept (POC), prototype, and pilot projects.
Utilizing a private cloud, DBAs can experiment with the latest
database technologies in a cost-effective environment that
doesnt require additional data center resources (i.e., floor space,
power, networking, etc.).
Mitigate risks for unplanned downtime while keeping
infrastructure costs to a minimum.
Using a hosted DBaaS offering such as IBM DB2 on Cloud, a
DBA can quickly set up a disaster recovery (DR) environment
without the need of a second, off-site data center.
Consolidate smaller on-premises databases.
With a hosted DBaaS offering, DBAs can consolidate sprawl-
ing, on-premises systems without having to change the
management processes and tools they are familiar with; with a
managed offering, they can let the cloud provider take over the
maintenance and management of the databases that were
consolidated so they can focus on other priorities.
PERFORMING A GROUND-TO-CLOUD MIGRATION
When people think of moving a database from one location
to another, movement of data is usually the first thing that
comes to mind. But, a relational database consists of much more
than just data. There are data objects like schemas, tables,
indexes, and views, that control how data is stored (and in some
cases how it is organized). There can also be system objects like
buffer pools, storage groups, table spaces, and transaction log
files that provide, among other things, data integrity, optimal
performance, and high availability.
Many, if not all, of these objects must be taken into consider-
ation before a ground to cloud migration can occur. Objects
available to an on-premises database may not be supported by the
cloud DBaaS offering desired. This is particularly true for system
objects that are tied directly to a databases underlying storage. Or,
data objects such as user-defined functions and stored procedures
that rely on external libraries to provide functionality.
The process used to move a database from one location to
another usually consists of the following steps:
1. E
 nsure both the source and the target databases are
accessible to someone who has the authority to retrieve the
source databases data.
2. G
 enerate the Data Definition Language (DDL) statements
needed to recreate objects found in the source database
with IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows (DB2 LUW),
this can be done with the db2look utility.
3. Create the appropriate objects in the target database, using
the DDL produced in the previous step.
Sponsored Content
Cloud Maturity by Size
1002 Respondents
SMB 7% 14% 20%
Enterprise 4% 14% 24%
Cloud Watchers Cloud Beginners
No Plans Planning First project
4. Extract data from the source database and store it in a secure
place, temporarily (with DB2 LUW, this can be done with the
Export utility or IBM Optim High Performance Unload).
5. Copy data that was extracted from the source to the
target (with DB2 LUW, this can be done with the Import
or Load utility).
However, because of subtle differences that often exist between
on-premises databases and public cloud DBaaS offerings, the
DDL generated from the source will most likely need to be
altered before it can be used against the target. For example,
DDL statements for system objects like buffer pools and table
spaces may have to altered (or removed). And, DDL statements
for data objects like triggers and materialized query tables (MQTs)
may have to be separated and written to a second file so they can
be created after the target cloud database has been populated.
PROTECTING SENSITIVE DATA DURING A GROUND-TO-
CLOUD MIGRATION
Encryption, a process that transforms data into an unintelligible
form so it cannot be obtained or can only be obtained using a special
decryption process, is the most effective way of protecting sensitive
information that is transmitted through untrusted communication
channels or stored on some form of electronic media (for example, a
disk drive). More often than not, data is encrypted using an industry
standards-compliant cryptographic algorithm like the Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES) cipher, together with a 128- or 256-bit
key. Once data is encrypted, the key, together with the algorithm, can
be used to return it to its original form.
When sensitive data like PII is moved from an on-premises
database to the cloud, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology
sometimes referred to as Transport Layer Security (TLS) technol-
ogyshould be used whenever possible. SSL is a standard security
protocol that is used to establish an encrypted link between two
communicating computer applications; it provides both data
encryption and data integrity.
JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA 45
21% 38%
30% 28%
Cloud Explorers Cloud Focused
Apps running Heavy Use
Source: RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report
And, if sensitive data is to remain in the cloud, some form of
encryption that is provided by the cloud database offering (not
the underlying storage infrastructure, which can be vulnerable in
some situations) should be used to keep the data secure at all
times. (DB2 Native Encryption, which is implemented within
the DB2 kernel itself, is used to perform this vital task with DB2
LUW, DB2 on Cloud, dashDB, and dashDB for Transactions.)
It is important to keep in mind that when data is extracted
from an encrypted database, it is no longer encrypted. Because it
is assumed that the individual extracting the data has the
authority to do so, this does not present a problem. However,
once a file containing un-encrypted data leaves the workstation
it was created on, the data can no longer be considered secure.
Therefore, if sensitive data is to be moved as part of a ground to
cloud migration, it is imperative that the individual performing
the migration is the only one allowed to access such data files. If
these files are transferred to the cloud provider for any reason,
the security of the data can no longer be guaranteed. And it goes
without saying that files containing un-encrypted data should be
securely deleted once a ground-to-cloud migration is complete.
CONCLUSION
Although many DBAs are reluctant to use a public cloud for
database deployments, research shows that the movement of
some on-premises relational databases to the cloud is inevitable.
By embracing the public cloud instead of avoiding it, DBAs can
off-load the management and maintenance of select database
systems to cloud providers so they can focus their attention on
mission-critical databases that are at the core of their business.
However, the migration of any on-premises database to a private
cloud takes careful planning. And, it is crucial that data integrity
and security be maintained throughout the migration process. n
IBM
www.ibm.com
46 JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA
The Evolution of Enterprise
Data is proliferating at an accelerated
rate, with all the mobile and desktop
apps, social media, online purchasing,
and consumer loyalty programs available
today. These data sources have not only
changed the way we operate on a day-to-
day basis, but also significantly increased
the volume, velocity, and variety of data
being created.
Faced with this growing trend, data
professionals now have to look beyond
the relational database to NoSQL
database technologies to fully address
their data management needs. The
four categories of NoSQL databases are
column-oriented, key-value, graph, and
document-oriented databases, and each
one is best suited to fill a specific data
management niche.
Document-oriented databases, which
store data in JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) documents, are commonly
used to collect machine-generated data.
This data is often generated rapidly and
in high volume, and therefore is often
difficult to manage and analyze with
systems other than document-oriented
databases.
MongoDB is one example of a
document-oriented database and,
although it excels at solving the
problem outlined above, its schema-
less architecture can pose problems
related to data quality. For instance,
in a single MongoDB collection, you
could technically have different fields
for accountNumber, AccountNumber,
and accountnumber (note the different
case usage). The data quality problem
arises when a report is written that
requires customer account numbers, but
only queries the AccountNumber field
and, therefore, only receives a subset of
records. To steer clear of this problem,
it is recommended to spend some time
modeling your data before implementing
a MongoDB system.
ER/Studio Data Architect makes
modeling MongoDB easier with
Data Architecture
support for native reverse-engineering,
plus a special modeling notation for
the embedded object arrays used in
MongoDB. This is-contained-in
notation indicates the array relationship
for nested objects in the model view.
Additionally, Data Architect can
forward-engineer a MongoDB model to
blank-sample JSON, providing round-
trip support. The MongoDB sources can
be accessed securely through Kerberos
and SSL authentication and encryption.
Other applications for big data often
use Apache Hadoop as the underlying
data management platform. Due to
Hadoops schema-less architecture and
its ability to horizontally scale over
commodity hardware, data storage is no
longer the limiting factor for performing
in-depth analytics. Hadoop gives data
professionals the ability to keep up with
the volume, velocity, and variety of data
being created. However, its schema-less
architecture does not mean that data
modeling can be avoided.
Since data stored in Hadoop is almost
always used for analytics, and because
of its immense volume and wide variety,
the need for data modeling has never
been greater. As an example, if a micro-
targeting strategy relies on personal data
captured from a campaign website, then
a dimensional data model should be
used to dissect the data into facts such as
website visits by potential supporters and
dimensions such as location and time of
their visits. This is necessary information
for properly analyzing the data.
ER/Studio Data Architect
provides support for Hadoop Hive
with native reverse-engineering and
DDL generation, and is compatible
with many of the major third-party
implementations such as Hortonworks.
The reverse-engineering process
generates datatypes and storage
properties specific to Hadoop Hive.
Once all of the data sources are
integrated into the modeling tool,
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the data architecture becomes the
foundation for the enterprises data
strategy. To effectively leverage corporate
data as an asset, business and IT teams
must work together on the data strategy.
While business leaders must drive the
data culture in the organization, data
architects serve as the champions for
data value and data quality, ensuring that
everyone understands what the data is
and the value it brings to the business.
ER/Studio is IDERAs flagship data
architecture solution that combines
data, business process, and application
modeling in a multi-platform
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modelers and architects can handle
larger, more complex data models and
manage numerous stakeholder groups
that require access to information assets.
Business stakeholders can participate in
the data definition process, contribute
to the glossary metadata and terms,
and access information on models and
metadata at the appropriate level for
reporting and analysis. All of this can
be accomplished in a flexible and agile
workflow environment that responds to
evolving business needs.
The ER/Studio suite expands
visibility across the enterprise data
landscape for improved alignment
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With all the available database options,
it can be hard to determine which one
is right for an enterprise. The three key
issues most central to an organizations
database needs are performance, secu-
rity and complianceso what are best
practices for each deployment option to
manage those priorities?
ON-PREMISE/PRIVATE CLOUD
Examine expected ROI. Traditionally, the
break-even/ROI for on-premise deploy-
ment is between 24 and 36 months;
this is a guide and may not work for all
organizations.
Where a customer is located relative
to where the data is located can impact
legacy applications. If users located
in one part of the globe are accessing
the database in another, there can be
problems with applications like music
streaming. Network constraints must be
examined and mitigated. Security mea-
sures as well as disaster recovery must be
architected into a solution as well.
A key consideration with this option
are compliance issues for organiza-
tions in countries subject to strict data
residency and sovereignty laws. Ensuring
compliance in these regions is imper-
ative, especially for industries such as
financial services and healthcare.
HYBRID CLOUD
A hybrid cloud is flexible and customiz-
able, allowing managers to pick and choose
elements of either public or private cloud
as needs arise. However, this can lead to
sprawl, where the growth of underlying
IT services is uncontrolled, and exceeds
the resources required. Therefore, its
important to have a governance strategy to
manage sprawl. In addition, integrating an
on-premise cloud into a public one is com-
plicated and may lead to security issues, so
data migration must be well-architected to
ensure security and reduce complexity.
Database Dilemma: Best
Practices for Available
Database Options
And, as noted above, if an organiza-
tion is subject to local data sovereignty
and security laws, it can mitigate some
of their restraints with a hybrid cloud;
some data can stay local and some can go
into the cloud.
PUBLIC CLOUD
A public cloud is Opex friendly, but it can
get expensive after the first 36 months. It
is crucial to manage cost, so keep ROI in
mind when deploying a workload via the
public cloud.
More importantly, latency issues can
occur depending on how the public cloud
has been architected and how applica-
tions and infrastructure are deployed. In
either case, the user experience can be
greatly affected. To improve performance,
distributing apps and data close to a user
base is a better solution than the tradi-
tional approach where everything is in
one data zone.
Security with a public cloud is
always a challenge, but can be mitigated
with proper measures such as at-rest
encryption and well-thought-out access
management tools or processes.
Sprawl can also plague the public
cloud, and strategies to contain it must
be embedded into an organizations
cloud initiatives.
APPLIANCE BASED
An appliance database is utilized by an
enterprise that has specific needs or
when there is a tight coupling between
applications, hardware and
the database.
Traditionally, this is an on-premise
solutioneither managed by a vendor
or in an enterprises own data center. If a
vendor is chosen, be confident that it is
the right fit both now and for the future.
Appliance databases are often expen-
sive, so ensure the implementation is
cost-effective over time.
JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA 47
VIRTUALIZATION
With virtualization, patching can
sometimes be an issue; each OS sits on
top of a hypervisor and IT may have to
patch each VM separately in each piece
of hardware.
Its best to plan for a higher initial
Capex, because the cost of installing a
database needs to be accounted for. An
enterprise can opt for an open-source
solution like KVM, but this solu-
tion often requires additional set-up
expenses. In addition, its a strategic
imperative to have a fault-proof disaster
recovery plan because the enterprise
itself is the single point of failure; if
hardware fails, VMs go down.
Also keep in mind that network
traffic issues may arise due to multiple
applications accessing the same network
card. This is just one reason why an
enterprise server must be purpose built
for the virtualized environment.
Finally, examine older hardware and
see if it can be repurposed and, if pos-
sible, consolidate multiple applications
onto a single server in a virtualization
environment.
Using these deployment option best
practices as a starting point will help
an organization determine the right
database for its environment based on
performance, security and compliance
needs. n
Franco Rizzo is senior pre-sales
architect at TmaxSoft. Franco can be
reached at franco.rizzo@tmaxsoft.com.
48 JUNE/JULY 2017 | DBTA Sponsored Content

Time Series: The Next Revolution

of Database Technologies
The DB-Engines Ranking ranks data-
base management systems according
to their popularity. This is created and
is maintained by solid IT. Time Series
databases are their own category as
shown in the graph.
WHAT IS TIME SERIES DATA
Time Series are simply measurements
or events that are tracked, monitored,
downsampled and aggregated over time.
This could be server metrics, application
performance metrics, network data, sen-
sor data, events, clicks, trades in a market
and many other types of analytics data.
The key difference with time series data
from regular data is that youre always
these users are building custom monitor- summarization and large range scans of
asking questions about it over time. An
ing solutions from scratch to track their many records are what separate Time
often simple way to determine if the data-
servers, VMs, containers and network Series from other database use cases.
set you are working with is time series or
hardware and later as a generalized metrics Time Series often request a summary
not, is to look and see if one of your axes
platform for application developers within of a larger period of time. This requires
is time.
the organization. Others are using a Time going over a range of data points to per-
Time Series data comes in two forms:
Series Database to supplement commercial form some computation like a percentile
regular and irregular. Regular time series
APM products to instrument portions of to get a summary of the underlying series
consist of measurements gathered at reg-
the stack for which no probes or agents to the user. This kind of workload is very
ular intervals of time (every 10 seconds,
exist, or to stitch together metrics from difficult to optimize for a distributed key
for example). Many people refer to these
multiple monitoring solutions. value store. Time Series is optimized for
as metrics. Irregular time series are event
With real-time analytics we see orga- exactly this use case giving millisecond
driven either by users or other external
nizations at all sizes. Some are building level query times over months of data.
events. Summarizations of irregular series
applications that will face their users with With Time Series its common to keep
become regular themselves. For example,
a Time Series database as the underly- high precision data around for a short
summarizing the average response time
ing database. Others are instrumenting period of time. This data is aggregated and
for requests in an application over 1 min-
business, social or development metrics in downsampled into longer term trend data.
ute intervals or showing the average trade
real-time for internal consumption. Users Every data point that goes into the data-
price of Apple stock every 10 minutes
frequently start with the DevOps monitor- base, will have to be deleted after its period
over the course of a day.
ing and metrics use case, then move into of time is up. This kind of data lifecycle
HORIZONTAL USE CASE real-time analytics once the platform is management is difficult for application
Time Series may seem like a niche and deployed. Time Series databases eventu- developers to implement on top of regular
specific use case. How many organizations ally becomes the central store for all Time databases. They must devise schemes for
or developers actually have a need for a Series, sensor and analytics data. cheaply evicting large sets of data and con-
Time Series solution? Time Series database In the realm of IoT there are many sub- stantly summarizing that data at scale.
customers and users span four primary use cases. Weve seen users in industrial InfluxData is designed as a Time Series
use cases: custom DevOps monitoring settings like factories, oil and gas, agricul- database with solutions built in for sum-
and metrics, Real-time analytics, and IoT/ ture, smart roads and infrastructure. There marization and data lifecycle manage-
sensor data monitoring. Anyone that has are also users in consumer grade IoT like ment. These come out of the box with no
servers, VMs, applications, sensors, users, wearables, consumer devices and trackers. application level code required from the
or events to track could benefit from using developer. To learn more, take a look at
a Times Series database. THE TIME SERIES WORKLOAD our customer use cases. n
For users in the DevOps monitoring Time Series data has a few properties
and metrics space, most are either in that make it very different than other data INFLUX DATA
medium to large organizations. Some of workloads. Data lifecycle management, www.influxdata.com
 Sponsored
Sponsored Content
Content
RETAIL IS BEING DISRUPTED BY
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
The retail universe is in the midst of unpar-
alleled digital transformation. Consumers
can now buy anytime, anywhereinclud-
ing on websites, mobile apps, devices, and
even gaming consoles. Digital purchases are
climbing, and according to research firm
eMarketer, worldwide retail eCommerce
revenues will increase from $1.915 Trillion
in 2016 to over $4 trillion in 2020.
During this transformation, the key
challenges facing retailers are rising cus-
tomer experience expectations, omnichan-
nel delivery requirements, and support of
unpredictable demands. Retailers must find
a way to deliver exceptional customer expe-
riences with fast, personalized, and context-
and location-aware engagement. Simulta-
neously, they must manage exponentially
growing volumes of users and data, while
reducing cost and time to market.
LEGACY TRANSACTIONAL DATA-
BASES CANT MEET THE CHALLENGE
It takes nearly flawless engagement
throughout the customer lifecycle to
create lasting relationships with todays
demanding consumers, especially when
their switching costs are so low.
Legacy transactional databases have
rigid schemas, poor scalability, perfor-
mance challenges, and high scale-up
costs. Theyre simply not built to meet
the demands of modern retail customers.
Thats why hundreds of digital retail
leaders, including Walmart, Tesco,
Auchan, Ladbrokes, eBay, Fanatics,
StubHub, Staples, and Cars.com, are
embracing next-generation engagement
databases to build and run their modern
web, mobile, and IoT applications.
HOW GLOBAL RETAIL LEADERS
DRIVE SUPERIOR INTERACTIONS
Top retailers use the Couchbase Data Plat-
form to create extraordinary experiences
Couchbase Data
Platform for Exceptional
Engagement in Retail
that convert interactions into engagement
that build toward lifelong relationships.
Database challenge: Tesco is the
U.K.s largest retailer. As part of a major
initiative to drive greater agility and data
sharing across channels via a microser-
vices architecture, they needed to provide
a centralized product catalog service that
was easy to maintain and update. The
catalog had to store massive data, support
a flexible schema for frequent changes
to product data, and provide very low
latency access to millions of documents.
Solution: Tesco uses Couchbase to store
a variety of information, including SKUs,
product and accounting hierarchies, and
GTINs (barcodes and ISBNs). The data is
ingested at great velocity from multiple data
formats. Couchbase easily and inexpensively
scales to support data for 10 million prod-
ucts at 35,000 requests per second.
Database challenge: eBay is a global
eCommerce leader. eBays costly trans-
actional database lacked native sharding
and robust replication, and inhibited
the customer experience due to subpar
performance. eBay needed an engagement
database to support tens of billions of
database calls/day with geo-distributed
replication and sharding.
Solution: For operational dashboarding
and session database functionality, eBay
now runs Couchbase Server across 1,400
nodes and 2,000 servers. Couchbase
serves as both a key-value store and a
document database for multiple applica-
tions with over 80 billion database calls/
day. With Couchbase, eBay also achieved
active-active bidirectional replication
with built-in cross datacenter replication
(XDCR), a flexible document model for
developer agility, and SQL integration
with N1QL (Couchbases SQL for JSON).
THE DATA PLATFORM FOR
ENGAGEMENT
The Couchbase Data Platform is the
JUNE/JULY
JUNE/JULY 2017
2017 | DBTA 49 49
| DBTA
Engagement Database built for change.
Its lightning fast, secure, highly scalable,
cloud-native, always on, and seamlessly
mobile. Learn more at Couchbase.com
COUCHBASE UNIQUELY HELPS
RETAILERS DRIVE EXCEPTIONAL
ENGAGEMENT
Memory-centric architecture: The
Couchbase Data Platform takes full
advantage of all available memory to give
applications the sub-millisecond respon-
siveness your shoppers expect.
Integrated cache: While other data-
bases like MongoDB require a third-party
cacheadding cost and complexitythe
Couchbase Data Platform has a fully
integrated cache that delivers blazing
performance.
Powerful, SQL-based query language:
Only Couchbase provides N1QL (nickel)
a powerful query language that lets
developers easily query JSON data using
familiar, SQL-like expressions.
Built-in high availability and disas-
ter recovery: Couchbase comes with
high availability within a cluster and
market-leading XDCR capabilities to
support disaster recovery and data locality
requirements. You have full control over
the topologyunidirectional, bidirec-
tional, or any configuration.
Complete GUI-based admin console:
Couchbase has a fully integrated GUI-
based management console, complete
with hundreds of prebuilt metrics and
easy-to-use tools like push-button scaling,
rebalancing, and memory tuning.
Always-on mobile support: Couchbase
Mobile is a complete solution for mobile
application support. It includes Couchbase
Lite (an embedded database for devices)
and Sync Gateway (a prebuilt solution that
syncs the device with the cloud). You can
easily support use cases such as person-
alized in-store apps, POS systems, and
mobile-optimized digital catalogs. n