Planet Ingres

Starting Monday I am at MicroStrategy World in Miami. It will be great to get a chance to connect with attendees on hot topics like mobile business intelligence, cloud, and Big Data, one of the major trends of 2012.

MicroStrategy is the gold standard of business intelligence software, and its annual conference is an important event in the BI world – it highlights the most pressing issues and gives attendees the power to stay in front of the latest industry trends and technologies. There are more great sessions than I can possibly attend, but a few that I’ll be sure to attend will cover managed cloud services, building transactions into mobile apps, implementing self-service BI, as well as several case studies featuring Whole Foods, Yahoo!, and Dell.

This year’s conference is a special one for Actian, as it’s the first time we’re attending as a MicroStrategy partner. Last summer, Actian and MicroStrategy started an initiative called Performance2 which combines MicroStrategy technology with Actian VectorWise, allowing companies to deploy more BI to more people by shifting data storage to the cloud, reducing costs and making BI insights accessible anytime, anywhere through any mobile device. Our joint clients have been thrilled with the offering since its inception, so I’m looking forward to hearing feedback from users while at the show.

If you’re planning to attend, I hope you’ll stop by our booth( #45) to say hello and see what we’re up to in 2012 – it will be our most exciting year yet, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone in Miami!

Vectorwise 2.0 is available for download! Vectorwise’s record-breaking performance is now faster, easier to use, and includes richer Analytical capabilities.

Even faster: Load data and run queries faster than ever before. New fast load utility vwload helps make loading data faster and easier with direct loads into Vectorwise tables. Vectorwise’s record breaking performance is now faster and more efficient with new Partitioned Aggregate Functions that allow users to run multiple aggregations on subsets of data in a single query.

More Analytical & Data Features: Additional analytical functions make percentile and ranking queries faster and easier. New data and time features make it easier to structure queries in Vectorwise. And BI users can now perform ad hoc queries faster with Common Table Expression types, allowing temporary query views for easier analysis.

Easier to Manage:  Vectorwise is easier to use with improvements to the management of in-memory updates.

Try it for yourself. Vectorwise 2.0 is available for download here: http://www.actian.com/downloads/vectorwise.

A few years ago I was bestowed the nickname “The Chandler Bing of Ingres”, named for a character in the TV show “Friends” who had a job that was related to data but that none of his friends understood.    I’ve spent countless drunken nights trying to explain the joys of database internals to my friends, but they never seem to get excited about it!  It got to the point where I started lying to strangers on airplanes about what I did  – I’ve been everything from a hand-model to a mortician.   That all changed with the advent of Action Apps. Now I can talk about something that everyone understands: mobile applications that can analyze data from various and multiple sources and let you know when you need to do something – or even better, do it for you auto-magically.

The “aha” moment came with the realization that Mammy McGrattan was able to describe an Action App that she herself would use and could get most of “the girls” from her bridge club excited about!   The idea is simple: populate a repository with every piece of known information about the plant kingdom and then define a set of actions that need to be taken regarding the list of plants the user has subscribed to.

The data repository would include simple stuff like what climates, lighting levels and soil types a given plant is best suited to; what and when pruning is required; what and when to feed it, etc.  The actions would include things like inviting your worst enemy over to prune the roses, a reminder to feed your orchids and so on.    The more she thought about the idea the more sophisticated it became, including adding photos of the leaves, flowers and various stages of the plant’s life-cycle to the repository. This way, one could identify unrecognized species and even do rudimentary diagnostics on sick or infected plants.   I’m almost afraid to raise the topic with her again for fear that she’ll ask why I haven’t implemented it yet, and want to enter a discussion around her royalties.

Have you any Action App ideas you’d like to share?

As Big Data becomes a reality for more and more organizations and as the variety of data that they need to work with becomes more complex, it is increasingly hard for end-users to keep pace using traditional reporting and query tools. The explosion in volume and complexity of data had led to new techniques being applied to how data is presented and explored and one of the key techniques is data visualization.

 Leveraging presentation techniques and exploration methods originally developed for scientific and engineering visualization, companies like Tableau Software have now made visualization accessible, understandable and affordable for companies of any size.  This has enabled business users to present volumes and types of data (e.g. location based information) in compelling and meaningful ways that allow them to identify relationships not apparent using traditional BI techniques.

 At 10:30am Pacific Time on  December 6^th, Actian and Tableau will co-host a webinar called ”Breath Taking Visualization + Record Performance” to launch our partnership and introduce business users to the key concepts around data visualization. Register now for this webinar and see a live demonstration of software of which CFO Magazine said:  In terms of generating useful, multidimensional visual analysis, it’s like going from an Etch-a-Sketch to Industrial Light and Magic. Quite simply, it’s the best piece of software CFO has run across in years.

 Find out why CFO Magazine raved about Tableau Software and learn why Actian believes that data visualization is a highly complementary approach to our own concept of Action Apps. Please join me for this important and informative event!