This article discusses the benefits that are available when you replicate parts of production databases for software development and software testing.

The increasing use of XML asks for systems that store semi-structured data without forcing it into inadequate data structures. These requirements are met by both native XML databases and relational databases with integrated XML support. The question is: Why should you prefer a native XML database over an XML-aware classic database or the other way around? This article compares the approaches of a number of varying solutions, including eXist, Mark Logic, and IBM DB2 Express-C. The differences are translated into practical advantages and disadvantages.

This article presents leading concurrency control mechanisms used for data replication in distributed environments wieth techniques used by Oracle RAC, TimesTen, and GigaSpaces and NoSQL databases.

The inception of the Extreme Programming methodology has brought test-driven development and continuous integration into mainstream Java development practices. Applying these techniques to Java server-side development can quickly become a nightmare if you don't have the right tools. This article describes how to deal with continuous integration and how to use DbUnit in conjunction with JUnit to control the test environment end-to-end by setting up the state of the database before each test.

Today’s data protection direction is to reduce both storage and storage overhead costs. Data can be the key to healthy organizational growth, but in order for an enterprise to prosper, the data must be managed effectively. There is a high demand for data accumulated by organizations, and this has led to intense demands for storage. In many cases the process of managing, protecting and storing data assets can appear to exceed an organization’s abilities.

Author Thomas Myer shows experienced PHP developers how to add CouchDB to their technical toolboxes.

This five-part series walks you through building a simple photo-sharing Web site using Perl and Apache to access Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and SimpleDB. In this installment, get a feel for the benefits and drawbacks of S3 and SimpleDB by taking a tour of their architectures and starting to design your photo-sharing site.

This five-part series walks you through building a simple photo-sharing Web site using Perl and Apache to access Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and SimpleDB. In this installment, follow your site's interaction with SimpleDB by learning how the URL creates a SimpleDB record for the uploaded file. Also learn how to create, edit, and delete comments as SimpleDB records on a photo for a particular user.

How do you manage the history of data in an open, decentralized system, like for example the Internet? CVS, Subversion, WebDAV or versioning file systems help you to remember old versions on one specific server. GIT, Mercurial and others let you do that in a decentralized, less dependent way, but the data needs to be managed in individual projects. In documentation systems, like Wiki servers, CMS systems, data history is seen as a key feature. These histories are managed centralized and scoped on one document only. In this article I'm going to analyze different aspects of the data history in a decentralized system and try to model a corresponding concept.

When it comes to embedded systems and mobile devices software, developers face a choice between flat file and embedded database, as any future change can be very risky and expensive for their application, in a demanding market where shortcomings can result in failure.