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Computerworld - ... at the Demo 2006 conference with an eye to the near future. You didn't have to wander far in the tightly packed pavilion on the grounds of the sprawling Pointe South Mountain Resort in Phoenix last week to get a glimpse of the gadgets, software and services that were being rolled out for IT's sharp-eyed perusal. And there was a little something for everybody.

BALL: Analyze massive databases quickly.

Let's say you've got monster databases that your end users want to paw through to find bits of gold for the business. The folks at Panoratio Data-base Images Inc., a Siemens AG spin-off based in Munich, were showing off their .pdi Generator and .pdi Explorer tools, which can sort and display enormous data sets. How big? Well, Cal Ball, vice president of sales and marketing at Panoratio's U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, was analyzing every play ever run in the National Football League along 110 dimensions -- everything from the weather, missed tackles and whether there was a blitz or regular pass defense during the play. And he was getting answers instantly as he clicked through different parameters. That would be impressive enough if Ball was running the data on some fancy-schmancy eight-way server. But the files created by Generator and shown in the Explorer client were firing on a beat-up old 32-bit laptop. Michael Haft, Panoratio's chief technology officer, says that by late this year, the software will be able to handle vastly larger data sets even faster when Explorer is ported to 64-bit systems. By the way, Ball claims that he knew the Pittsburgh Steelers would win the Super Bowl. Pittsburgh is 8-0 in indoor games when the game-time temperature is between 66 and 70 degrees, he says. Super Bowl XL was played at 68 degrees. Bookies, take note.
Don't deploy a wireless LAN ...
... with lowest-common- denominator technology. That's when lower-speed 802.11b devices drag down performance for end users with 802.11g hardware, says David Confalonieri, vice president of corporate marketing at Extricom Inc. in New York. The Wi-Fi standard's backward-compatibility requirement devolves an entire WLAN to 802.11b speeds

Extricom's 24-port switch prevents 802.11g slowdowns.

when a slower device hits your 802.11g network, Confalonieri says. But, he adds, you can forget that concern next month, after Extricom ships new AnyBand AnyMode Dual Channel software for its EXSW switches. What's more, since the company's WLAN access points are all managed through the switches, you can configure them so they create a single channel, eliminating handoff problems for end users between access points. An eight-port switch starts at $10,000 with an equal number of access points. More than a few Demo participants probably wish Extricom had started shipping the software earlier, given the occasional snafus involving wireless network troubles at the conference. Perhaps then the common lament about wireless problems wouldn't have followed the occasional Demo demo disaster.
Database failures are so . . .
. . . yesterday, thanks to virtualization. Alan McMillan, CEO of Toronto-based Avokia Inc., had words of hope for Demo attendees worried about Web application reliability: "True continuous availability of databases is possible by virtualizing the data layer." Avokia protects online transactions by running its apLive software on an application server. The software grabs the reads and writes before they hit the database, caches them and then immediately sends the data to fail-over systems that can be located more than 1,000 miles away. McMillan claims that no data is ever lost, even if there is a hard crash of your primary database server. He also estimates that by using apLive, you can reduce the number of servers needed for applications by more than half. Avokia's tool works with DB2, Informix, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase databases. It's written in Java, but Avokia will add a .Net version in June. Pricing is $225,000 per application for up to 32 CPUs.
Help your help desk to help hapless ...
... end users. You can start by considering giving help desk staffers the Support Appliance from NetworkStreaming Inc.

NetworkStreaming's appliance queues up PC problems for help desk staffers.

in Ridgeland, Miss. End users who click on a help desk button on their PCs are directed to the appliance, which asks them if they're willing to download a one-time plug-in for the help desk session. Problem notifications are put into the queues of help desk personnel, who can take control of PCs remotely and either solve the problems or escalate them to someone else. CEO Joel Bomgaars says Version 9.0 of the appliance's software, which was previewed at Demo, will let end users describe their problems through pull-down menus and text entries. The upgrade, which is scheduled to ship at the end of the first quarter, can handle up to 20 help desk staffers concurrently. Pricing for the appliance starts at $3,500 with a single concurrent-user license.

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