Posts tagged data
Data Visualization for People Who Don’t Visualize Data: CA ERwin 8.2
Feb 3rd
In enterprises everywhere, including even the largest ones, the transition to cloud-based architectures has brought a new class of managers into the computing process. Suddenly, personnel managers and folks whose purview had been limited to finance and personnel, are being doubled-up with oversight roles for cloud deployments. The back office is no longer in the back (or the basement), and now these new managers are wondering: What is all this we’re dealing with?
Donna Burbank – who’s a senior director of product marketing for CA Technologies’ long-time data visualization tool, ERwin, has a new phrase for this class of customers: business sponsors. “When I talk to our customers, they tell me it’s a whole new… thing, for lack of a more technical word. They’ve heard of SQL Server, but what is this SQL Azure thing? They don’t have the skill sets, and may be nervous about that. These business sponsors might not be moving the information, but they want to see it. And they don’t want to look at those database scripts. They want to look at something they can understand.”
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So it is that CA Technologies found itself in the business of manufacturing a class of software that a new and growing chunk of its customers might not actually care about all that much: database visualization tools. ERwin has been the market share leader in this category ever since its creation in 1998. Its typical customers have been database architects (DBAs), the people whose jobs are to model the classifications and structures for the relational data that businesses rely upon every day.
Welcome to Your World
But the shift to cloud technologies has partly been fueled by the need for tremendous space for data warehousing – to house the huge data stores generated by millions of Internet customer transactions. It’s that shift which is pushing data outside of the constraints of traditional SQL relational databases. That push is forcing businesses to examine, some for the very first time, the structure of their data. And what they’re seeing, they don’t understand.
“A lot of the move to the cloud is a business decision. The technical people doing the move are probably still the DBAs, but they’re challenged,” CA’s Burbank tells RWW. “There will always be that core group of people who want to use a data model, that’s our sweet spot right now: the data architect, the DBA. Those people and more would like to use a Web-based interface.”
ERwin’s new Web portal, she explains, is a browser-based interface for information that has otherwise been modeled for DBAs by ERwin Data Modeler (which itself moves to version 8.2 this week). This new portal will help both architects and Burbank’s “sponsors” to analyze the relationships of data from a business impact standpoint. “If I’m building a data warehouse, I want to see how data moves from the source system to the target warehouse to the reporting tool. Maybe I’m changing a data element; what other parts of the organization are affected? You could sort of get that through ERwin’s repository [in Model Manager] with some queries, but it wasn’t the tool for that.”
The new, more objective breakdown aims to give multiple classes of users a comprehension of the data that they may have never had before. A “sponsor” who wants to search for relationships is going to expect search to behave like Google, Burbank explains. So the Web Portal tool gives that user a text-based search query line (shown above). What that user gets in return will be something that may explain what tables or fields relate to the search criteria, but it might not directly correlate to the model as the original DBA intended.
As Burbank explains, the business user, not getting a complete overview from the initial response, may decide to export the data he’s seeing into Excel, and generate some PivotTables from them. The DBA, on the other hand, may use the Portal’s new graphical impact analysis tools to drill down further, or perhaps execute a “What If?” experiment. If a column is changed on a table, for instance, the DBA can see how the rest of the schema is impacted. “It’s that type of drilldown over the Web that they could never do before,” she remarks.
Big data vs. “lots of data”
All this said, ERwin is not quite yet a data warehousing assistance tool. While CA’s Donna Burbank says it’s something her company is considering, she points out that Hadoop and the restructuring of data it entails, lend themselves to very different situations.
“I’ve done several presentations where I’ve explained to people that there’s ‘big data,’ and then there’s ‘lots of data,’” she relates. “And these are different use cases. Maybe I’m an energy company, and I’m trying to use a Hadoop-type structure to see uses across my different [operating units], and I need to eventually manage that in a warehouse. It’s that analysis of that big data that then goes into a data model. One use case [involves] massive volume, real-time, more of a programmatic approach to data. There’s a lot of messaging there around, is data modeling going away? Is data warehousing going away? Today, it’s two different use cases. You’re doing an analysis, and then you use the data model to make sense of that raw data. And if I’m going to use it for a BI report, that’s when your data model comes in. I’ve done my data analysis with the big data; here’s my data model to say which pieces of that I used in the warehouse.”
Real-time analysis of big data, she goes on, may enable DBAs to add some elements to the relational data model that they may not have seen before.
As for the other use case, Burbank agrees that data modeling may never be appealing to 100% of the “sponsor” audience. But making it appeal to a somewhat greater audience through more intuitive graphics, along with Google-like search, could go a long way toward enabling those tasked with new responsibilities to be able to better understand what they are, and carry them out with a greater sense of confidence.
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EFF: One Way or Another, We’re Getting That Megaupload Data Back
Jan 31st
In the aftermath of the Megaupload shutdown that unfolded nearly two weeks ago, the story has splintered into a few interesting directions. One of the more controversial issues is the fate of the personal data stored on the now-defunct service’s servers.
Yesterday, news broke that the data could be at risk of deletion as early as this week, if Megaupload’s former hosting service providers decide to do so. Well, not if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has anything to do with it.
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The EFF has joined forces with one of the companies from which Megaupload rented server space to try and figure out the best way forward for users whose content was not infringing on anyone’s copyright. MegaRetreival.com was launched today by the organization in conjunction with Carpathia Hosting and is now soliciting feedback from former Megaupload users who feel they were wronged.
For Megaupload Users, an Unclear Way Forward
Exactly how they will manage to resolve the issue is unclear at this early stage, as there are a number of technical and legal hurdles to overcome. A resolution could come in the form of a lawsuit against authorities, as has already been threatened by other groups. Alternatively, it could involve cooperation between the EFF, Megaupload, the hosting service providers and federal authorities, EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels told us.
“Right now the possibilities are almost endless,” Samuels said. “We are open to anything.” Whether legal or more diplomatic, the organization is seeking justice for the Megaupload users who were blocked from accessing their personal files despite not having broken any laws.
The Megaupload saga has put some users in a very weird position. Because the shutdown of the site happened without warning, they had no chance to retrieve any legitimate, non-infringing files they may have been storing there.
Uniquely Screwed
Of course, it also meant that people who were using the site for illegal purposes couldn’t jump on and download the last season of “The Wire” real quick. Still, there’s nothing stopping people from using MediaFire, RapidShare, the Pirate Bay or any number of other sources to grab copyrighted content. The users who kept personal files on Megaupload can’t just tap into another service and get access to that content. They are uniquely screwed.
Normally, as Samuels explained, actions like this are taken using civil lawsuits rather than police helicopters and FBI agents. Thus, there’s typically time for users to take the necessary precautions to back-up any files they couldn’t afford to lose. Putting aside debates about the wisdom of keeping personal files exclusively in the cloud in the first place, the users of Megaupload never had an opportunity to salvage their stuff.
“That’s what’s really fundamentally troubling here,” Samuels said. “People woke up, went to turn on their computer and found that they could not access their accounts.”
Like the legal case of Kim Dotcom and his associates, it will be some time before this affair is resolved. For now, the EFF is hoping to open a dialogue with former users of the site and work with all of the parties involved in order to eventually come to a conclusion that works for everyone.
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AdWords Performance Grader Tool Touts More Accurate PPC Data Reports
Jan 30th
WordStream has updated their AdWords Performance Grader, released in August, 2011. Peer report data is now more accurate, as the tool has analyzed almost half a billion in annualized PPC spend, about 1.5 percent of Google’s total ad revenue.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Yandex Joins Bing, Yahoo In Using Nokia-Navteq Map Data
Jan 30th
Russian search giant Yandex announced that it will be licensing data from Nokia-owned Navteq to offer better and more comprehensive maps coverage around the world: Yandex . . . has purchased a license for digital maps supplied by the leading global location content provider, NAVTEQ. These digital…
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Data Privacy: What Bill Gates Said 10 Years Ago
Jan 28th
Today is International Data Privacy Day, an event backed by companies like Intel, Ebay, Facebook and Microsoft, and dedicated to educating data owners about best practices in protecting the privacy of consumer data.
The need to keep people from being exploited on account of violations of their privacy is clear, well-known, intuitive and amply articulated by highly capable people. The up-side of making use of peoples’ data is far less so. The two concerns are closely tied together. That’s something Bill Gates is likely very aware of, if his comments 10 years ago are any indication.
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The forthcoming era of computing is all about data. In as much as that data is associated with people, it’s essential that data owners feel secure in the belief that they can make use of their data in computing without concern it will be misused.
Bill Gates got this about the last era of computing, the first instances of e-commerce and the web. He wrote a famous company-wide memo ten years ago this month all about the importance of what he called Trusted Computing.
“If we don’t do this, people simply won’t be willing — or able — to take advantage of all the other great work we do. Trustworthy Computing is the highest priority for all the work we are doing. We must lead the industry to a whole new level of Trustworthiness in computing.”
Regarding Privacy in particular, the Gates memo put some things in ways we can relate to today, but other things seem antiquated.
“Users should be in control of how their data is used. Policies for information use should be clear to the user. Users should be in control of when and if they receive information to make best use of their time. It should be easy for users to specify appropriate use of their information including controlling the use of email they send.”
Users should be in control of when and if they receive information to make best use of their time! Can you imagine that? Info overload as privacy violation. It makes sense, yet it seems hopelessly antiquated too.
“In the past, we’ve made our software and services more compelling for users by adding new features and functionality, and by making our platform richly extensible,” he wrote.
“We’ve done a terrific job at that, but all those great features won’t matter unless customers trust our software.
“So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine and improve that security as threats evolve.”
Here’s how the International Data Privacy Day organization puts it today.
“In this networked world, in which we are thoroughly digitized, with our identities, locations, actions, purchases, associations, movements, and histories stored as so many bits and bytes, we have to ask – who is collecting all of this data – what are they doing with it – with whom are they sharing it? Most of all, individuals are asking ‘How can I protect my information from being misused?’ These are reasonable questions to ask – we should all want to know the answers.
“Data Privacy Day promotes awareness about the many ways personal information is collected, stored, used, and shared, and education about privacy practices that will enable individuals to protect their personal information.
Robert Siciliano, an Online Security Evangelist at McAfee, paints a much more negative picture in a blog post yesterday – probably even about the companies participating in International Data Privacy Day. McAfee is owned by the primary sponsor of the event, though, Intel. Siciliano speaks for many people when he says:
“Lately, it seems that barely a day goes by when we don’t learn about a major Internet presence taking steps to further erode users’ privacy. The companies with access to our data are tracking us in ways that make Big Brother look like a sweet little baby sister.
“Typically when we hear an outcry about privacy violations, these perceived violations involve some apparently omnipotent corporation recording the websites we visit, the applications we download, the social networks we join, the mobile phones we carry, the text messages we send and receive, the places we go, the people we’re with, the things we like and dislike, and so on.
“How do they do this? By offering us free stuff to consume online and infrastructure for the online communities that tie us together. We gobble up their technologies, download their programs, use their services, and mindlessly click ‘I Agree’ to terms and conditions we haven’t bothered to read.”
It’s a cynical perspective that refers to all the glory of the Interwebs as simply free stuff to consume with mindless clicks.
I think I prefer the description Gates might have offered. The global computer is now rich with features and opportunities, but those will be put at risk if people don’t trust the network. Please, Mr. Zuckerberg, don’t spoil this opportunity.
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Measuring ROI: How to Collect Meaningful PPC Conversion Data
Jan 27th
Learn how you can track and collect significant conversion data and then bring it all together in one dashboard. Use these three levels of conversion data tracking that vary in terms of pros/cons, costs, effectiveness, and sophistication.
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AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson Blasts FCC, Hints At Higher Prices and Data Restrictions
Jan 26th
AT&T has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission. In the mobile operator’s quarterly earnings call this morning, CEO Randall Stevenson blasted the FCC over its leadership in making additional spectrum available to carriers to handle the explosion of mobile data flowing through the operators’ pipes. Stevenson and AT&T are bitter after the FCC blew up its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. Stevenson said that because of AT&T’s spectrum crunch it will be forced to raise prices and take additional actions against the highest data users.
Stevenson’s remarks come as AT&T announced that it sold 9.4 million smartphones including 7.6 million smartphones the the fourth quarter of 2011. AT&T has been crying about its spectrum paucity for several years now with the iPhone and other smartphones driving the company’s desperation. See Stevenson’s harsh message to the FCC below.
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Here are Stevenson’s pertinent comments during the scripted portion of AT&T’s earnings call. Since it was scripted, this message was something that Stevenson and AT&T thought quite a bit about before issuing the statements.
The No. 1 issue for us, and the industry I believe, continues to be spectrum. This industry continues to see just explosive mobile broadband growth. It provides one of the few bright spots in the U.S. economy but I think we all understand that this growth cannot continue without more spectrum being cleared and brought to market. Despite all the speeches from the FCC, we are still all waiting. The last significant spectrum auction was nearly five years ago now. This FCC has made it abundantly clear that they will not allow significant M&A to help bridge these delays in clearing up new spectrum. So, in absence of options, our company and others have taken the logical step to make smaller transactions to acquire the spectrum we need to meet demand.
But, even here we need the FCC’s action and leadership and unfortunately even the smallest and most routine spectrum deals are receiving intense scrutiny from this FCC, often times taking up to a year and sometimes longer for these to be approved.
Now, I hope I am wrong but it appears the FCC is intent on picking winners and losers rather than letting the markets work. A lot of recent comments and speeches by certain members of this FCC suggest that they and not congress should decide how spectrum auctions are conducted including who can participate and what the conditions should be for participating. Meanwhile we pile more and more regulatory uncertainty on top of an industry that is the foundation for a lot of today’s innovation, making it difficult for all of us to allocate and commit capital. In this industry we all know that capital investment equals jobs. So, the end result of this is that we have an industry that is just really stuck in creating real capacity.
We will certainly do our part to provide leadership on these issues but it is also clearly time for Congress and the FCC to step up. In the interim, this environment has clear implications for our business.
First, while our overall spectrum position is competitive, we’ve led the way in mobile data. Therefore our utilization rates are running very hot and demand continues to accelerate. So, we will continue to do a number of things. In a capacity constrained environment we will manage usage-based data plans, increased pricing and managing the speeds of the highest volume users. These are all logical and necessary steps to manage utilization. LTE deployment is also going to play a roll. We ended 2011 with 74 million LTE POPS covered and will accelerate that pace considerably in 2012 setting us up to complete deployment to 80% of the U.S. population in 2013. LTE does give us a 30%-40% lift in network efficiency but at current growth rates that equates to only a year’s growth in traffic. So, LTE is important but it is not the silver bullet in terms of capacity planning. What that means is that to meet customer demand we need to continue our spectrum push.
Note: Bold emphasis ReadWriteWeb.
What does this boil down to? AT&T says it needs more spectrum and is threatening the FCC that it will end up punishing users with data restrictions and higher prices if it does not get it. This message is relatively unchanged from the spin that AT&T used when trying to buy T-Mobile.
Steveson also said that AT&T no longer has plans for rolling out rural broadband. The spread of broadband to the far-flung reaches of the country is a big goal of the Obama administration and the FCC. AT&T said that it would be able to reach near 99% of the country with broadband if it was allowed to purchase T-Mobile. Now, it has little strategy outside of a vague notion of rolling rural broadband outside of building up its LTE network across the country. At that, LTE still will only be available to 80% of the U.S. population on AT&T’s network by 2013.
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New Google Privacy Policy Combines User Data From All Google Services
Jan 25th
A new unified Google privacy policy is coming in March. The big change: Google clearly states that it will combine information from signed-in users from one product to other Google products in order to show more relevant search results and ads.
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EU Draft Data Law Warmer on Patriot Act, Colder on “Right to Be Forgotten”
Jan 25th
There were two big expectations from this morning’s release of the initial draft of data protection regulations from the European Commission, both of which were built up through quite a bit of fanfare from EC Vice President Viviane Reding’s office last November. One was that the Commission would “stick it to” the U.S. Patriot Act – the law that enables American law enforcement agencies access to private data elsewhere in the world, under controlled conditions. Another was that citizens of E.U. member states would be granted a “right to be forgotten” – to order online firms collecting personal data about them to purge their records.
The initial draft of these new Data Protection regulations show moderation on both counts.
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Taking a stand on behalf of whatever
With respect to what constitutes fair handling of E.U. citizens’ personal data by other countries, the proposed law would essentially reserve the right for commissioners to make that determination from time to time.
Specifically, the draft regulation states that a transfer of data from a European member state to an outside country (“third country”) may only take place after the Commission has ascertained that this country would also be able to provide “an adequate level of protection.” A country meeting that standard would be judged by the Commission on the following characteristics: “the rule of law, relevant legislation in force, both general and sectoral, including concerning public security, defense, national security and criminal law, the professional rules and security measures which are complied with in that country or by that international organization, as well as effective and enforceable rights including effective administrative and judicial redress for data subjects, in particular for those data subjects residing in the [European] Union whose personal data are being transferred.”
That phraseology would give the Commission the authority to use its own judgment to declare, for instance, the United States an inappropriate handler of E.U. citizens’ personal data, depending also upon whether an independent monitoring authority was in place to ensure U.S. compliance with E.U. rules. Exactly when such judgments would be made, the draft regulation does not say. It would be difficult to imagine authorities making these determinations on a case-by-case basis. More likely, the Commission would make a judgment call about each country where an entity requests a personal data transfer soon after the first request was made, and would apply that judgment to subsequent cases.
But should the U.S. change its stance toward enforcement of the Patriot Act, or even if the E.U. should change its policy toward whether such enforcement endangers the rights of its citizens, the regulation as drafted would give the Commission the freedom to change its mind without changing the law. As drafted, the law does not codify any notion that it is necessarily wrong for foreign investigating bodies to seek data on E.U. citizens. It does state, however, it would be wrong for foreign governments not to afford those citizens “effective administrative and judicial redress” should they wish to protest the actions of foreign governments or foreign companies in court.
Should a company retain personal data in some archival form, just in case it receives such a request from a foreign government? The draft law makes clear: No, it should not. “A controller should not retain personal data for the unique purpose of being able to react to potential requests.” (Here, “a controller” refers to a person tasked with managing or processing collections of personal data.) However, a controller may retain personal data about a specific individual beyond the maximum time allowed for member states (two years) in individual cases where a member state or the E.U. is investigating that person. (It can’t retain the entire database containing that person’s data for that long.)
The context in which the inspiration for these laws was originally considered was a world where databases reside in easily addressable file systems on hard drives within servers addressable through a URL. In just the past few years, data centers have evolved into states and configurations that laws and regulations have only just now begun to consider, and certainly not everywhere in the world. The big problem the E.U. faces today lies with the reluctance of companies there to partake in public and hybrid cloud computing – the most revolutionary and potentially beneficial architectures for the enterprise since the decline of the punch card reader – for fear that virtual machines that happen to contain databases including E.U. citizens’ private information will egress into U.S. territory. There, it might be subject to a U.S. law enforcement investigation, and businesses are worried that if they let that happen, they’ll be held responsible by the E.U. for violating its laws.
The media loophole
With respect to the issue RWW profiled yesterday involving possible exceptions to the “right to be forgotten,” journalists would indeed be granted a kind of limited exemption from these data protection laws. The key to how judges would interpret this law, presuming it’s passed, is how they interpret the concept of “journalists.” While the Commission has been liberal in describing the term as including people who do journalism, there does not appear to be exclusions against corporations that do journalism.
And the official description of the regulation (not the law itself, but part of the draft that explains how it should be applied) explains that the law would leave it up to member states to determine how the concept of a journalistic endeavor applies to it specifically. This could lead to an interesting discussion about a possible loophole for organizations that collect data for marketing purposes and also conduct journalism – a possibility which the official explanation leaves open, in the name of freedom of speech.
“In order to take account of the importance of the right to freedom of expression in every democratic society, it is necessary to interpret notions relating to that freedom, such as journalism, broadly,” the explanation reads. “Therefore, Member States should classify activities as ‘journalistic’ for the purpose of the exemptions and derogations to be laid down under this Regulation if the object of these activities is the disclosure to the public of information, opinions or ideas, irrespective of the medium which is used to transmit them. They should not be limited to media undertakings and may be undertaken for profit-making or for non-profit making purposes.”
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New Google Privacy Policy Update: Your Data Now Combined Across Google Services
Jan 24th
Earlier this afternoon, Google announced plans to begin tracking users across e-mail, YouTube, Google+, search, and almost all of the other Google products. The change, which combines 70 privacy documents into one, will go into effect on March 1st. Since the new privacy policy will collect large amounts of personal data across multiple Google properties [...]
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