In a year dominated by the dark cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tragedies that ensued, we seem to be ending on a hopeful note. We saw the incredible power of human ingenuity, as not one but several vaccines have been developed at breakneck speed, surpassing even the most optimistic of expectations. We…
As businesses work to reopen and students return, in-person, to schools nationwide, track and trace is a critical component to mitigate potential resurgences in COVID-19 cases. The more densely populated a city, the harder track and trace will be. However, getting urban and suburban areas moving again is critical to jumpstarting the US economy.…
A few months ago, companies went into crisis mode, globally – figuring out how to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, most organizations have overcome the initial shock and disruption and figured out how to adapt their workforce and business processes for a remote-work environment. When this started, the hope was that COVID-19…
Due to the global outbreak of COVID-19, schools worldwide had to shut down quickly. While many schools already operated with some online component, most were not equipped to become 100% digital in a matter of days. Further, it’s looking as if most school districts and higher education campus systems will have to adopt some sort…
Understanding SQLite’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Over the past three months this blog series has explored why developers gravitated toward SQLite for embedded data management. Some developers chose SQLite because members of the extended team knew SQL and wanted to leverage that knowledge to support data management or the extraction of data for…
Part Three: SQLite, the “Flat File” of Databases Over the past few articles, our SQLite Blog series has been looking at SQLite Serverless Architecture and how it is unsuitable for IoT Environments. Those of you who have been following can jump ahead to the next section, but if you’re new to this discussion, you…
Two weeks ago, I likened the performance of SQLite to that of a Banana Slug. Now, some may consider that a bit of hyperbole (and some UC Santa Cruz alumni may feel that I impugned the good name of their mascot, which was not my intent) but the numbers don’t lie. The measurable difference…
Earlier this month, I kicked off a series of blogs about SQLite. The first looked at the advantages that SQLite offers over both flat files and the heavier lift of an enterprise-grade SQL databases – and it does offer distinct advantages over both. To a point. And that point was five years ago. Here's…
In December, January, and February, I posted a short series of blogs on Flat file systems. The series of blogs focus on the continued use of flat files and why they are no longer viable for use in the future. The first installment focused on flat files and why embedded software application developers readily adopted…
Why Embedded Software Application Developers Loath Databases Last week I wrote an initial blog on flat files and why embedded software application developers readily adopted them. Simply put, they’re always there – if you’ve got an Operating System that’s more than a bare-bones executive kernel it’s there and it’s free. Also, flat files are…
Why embedded software application developers adopted flat files Recently, my colleague here in Actian Product Marketing, Pradeep Bhanot, wrote a great blog on Data Historians in which he called for their retirement in favor of more modern databases to support time-series data processing and analytics. But, in some ways, historians are not as historic…
IoT devices create plenty of data – much more that you might think. When you multiply this amount of data by the number of devices installed in your company’s IT ecosystem, it is apparent IoT is a truly big data challenge. Two common questions IT staff and data management professionals have been asking during…
During the past few years, IoT devices have evolved from being a consumer novelty to a core part of next-generation IT ecosystems for businesses of all sizes. IoT devices (such as smart watches, fitbits, home sensors, RFID point of sale scanners, heartbeat monitors, etc) have become attractive and useful because of their inexpensive price…
Face the inevitable: Local persistent data at the Edge will happen It’s indisputable that Edge Intelligence will grow, whether that’s mobile applications running on Smartphones, IoT applications running in Smart Cars (or the underlying sensors), in the entertainment center, navigation systems, etc. There will be countless mobile and IoT – taken as a whole,…
This week Lifeboat announced their new contract to distribute our Actian product lines through their vast reseller channels as well as direct to their customers (you can find details here). Speaking as the Actian Product Management and Marketing lead for one of those product lines, the Actian Zen Edge database family, this is a…
The Internet of Things (IoT) World conference is the largest IoT event in the world, combining some 12,000 industry professionals and innovators with hundreds of workshops, breakout sessions, and a 100,000 square foot expo hall filled with more than 300 exhibitors and startups. The event takes place between Monday, May 14 and Thursday, May…
Early in my career I studied Systems Engineering at night which is where I first came across the term IPO which is an acronym for Input-Processing-Output. My lecturer taught us every software function has three basic sequential steps, reading input data, processing that data and eventually outputting it. In a more complex system, such…
Actian is sponsoring three challenges on Topcoder this month, featuring our Vector and Zen database products and thousands of dollars in prizes. All you need to do is sign on to Topcoder (for free), read and follow the instructions for the competition, and win! It's that easy. Now, the challenges themselves are all different,…
Interested in jolting your data analytics and database performance? Join Actian in two separate meetings this week in both Detroit, Michigan and Cambridge Massachusetts to talk about hybrid data, performance, analytics, and dataintegration: Tuesday, March 13: Come to the JOLT YOUR PERFORMANCE BREAKFAST between 7:30–9am at the award winning Apparatus Room Restaurant conveniently located…
The release of Service Pack 1 for Zen (PSQL) v13, Actian’s zero-dba, embedded nano-footprint database, provides a number of new features, including one we’re looking at today to make Btrieve API code more efficient -- the GetNextExtended LIKE Support. First, let's review the concept of "Extended Operations." The low-level Btrieve API (also known as the…
The next big data and analytics conference is right around the corner with the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, hosted at the Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas from March 5-8, 2018 and Actian will be present, both on the show floor and in a presentation. Emma McGrattan, SVP, Engineering, will…
Interested in Actian's newest databases, Zen IoT Server and Zen IoT Core, and want to link them up to something cool and amazing for everyday use like Raspberry Pi? And you live in Austin? You're in luck--you're invited to our Austin office for a special gathering of the Austin Internet of Things Meetup group…
Starting off the new year in style by hitting Las Vegas and attending the annual TDWI Conference focused on big data and analytics? Come see Actian at on the exhibit hall floor, Booth #205, Forum Ballroom of Caesar's Palace, at these times: Tuesday, February 13: 11:15am - 2:15pm and 5:00pm-7:00pm (Leadership Summit reception in…
One of the questions we get asked for Vector Cloud deployments is how to load data from Amazon S3 into Vector in a fast and convenient way. This Blog should help answer some of your questions with a step-by-step guide. S3 is a popular object store for different types of data - log files,…
The Age of Data has arrived, with new data sources, targets and processing models proliferating madly across enterprises of all sizes. While data has never been more valuable to a business — it now informs the who, what, where, when and how of decision making — this new hybrid data landscape introduces new challenges.…
Loraine Lawson, always does a wonderful job covering the world of integration, and this article that covers the integration challenges and opportunities of the Internet of Things (IoT) is no exception. Besides big data, I see the IoT as one of the most interesting data integration challenges coming down the road. Perhaps it’s time…
Telemetry is the automated communications process by which measurements are made and data collected at remote points. The data is then transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring. The word ‘telemetry’ is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure. Telemetry is not a new concept, that’s for sure. We’ve been watching…