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R with Oracle

May 4, 2014 12:10 PM / Leave a comment

The data presentation graphic at right, and many of those sprinkled throughout this article (click them for better resolutions), are highlights from an enthusiast’s gallery which have been produced by the R statistical software package. R is an open-source programming language and environment which has gained much popularity among academics who want to apply statistical methods Continue…

Probing Oracle’s NoSQL Agenda

August 14, 2013 11:40 AM / Leave a comment

There’s been media noise of late around the question of Oracle’s intentions (some would say laziness) concerning keeping it’s acquired MySQL database product relevant within the BD website backend niche. Two topics of conversation arise: the contest between MySQL and newcomer MariaDB in this arena, and the re-positioning going on concerning Oracle’s own flagship database regarding NoSQL and Big Data. Continue…

Will the real Data Scientist please stand up?

July 26, 2013 12:32 PM / Leave a comment

guess my bi job

When fresh buzz is still shaking out around a trend in IT, e.g. now, things like job descriptions and resumes and internal hot project hype can distort to the max. Roles and expectations are well solidified for something like an operational grid DBA, but during this wild and woolly shakeout period for dataists, everyone has their own ~~shtick~~ approach. Continue…

Medical Advances via the Semantic Web

July 9, 2013 10:13 PM / Leave a comment

images of human chromosome pairs

I attended a product demo given by IO Informatics, the semantic health care analytics company, last month. The most intriguing service showcased was their Sentient Server and Knowledge Explorer tool. It can integrate with Oracle 11g (and other databases such as MySQL) as the backend data warehouse supporting typically billions of medical assertions. Continue…

Business BD vs. Science BD

April 22, 2013 10:31 AM / Leave a comment

jaron lanier, 2013

I’m a Jaron Lanier fan — may as well get that stated up front. As a thinker, innovator, and trenchant inside commentator upon technology, the culture, and the web, he uniquely blends a scientist’s depth, a nerd’s enthusiasm, and a philosopher’s searching grasp of the Zeitgeist. His influential earlier book laid out the landscape concerning Lanier’s view of inadvertant financial and livelihood fallout brought on by certain structural biases built in to the Web. Continue…

Beautiful Data Gallery

March 3, 2013 2:27 AM / 1 Comment on Beautiful Data Gallery

Just a roundup of some recent takes on what people are up to in the area of data visualization. Also, some interesting places to look for more and a few notable blogs where you can keep posted about related topics. Continue…

Muddy Picture in BD/Health Care

February 20, 2013 1:09 PM / Leave a comment

soybean gene mapping

Plenty of swirling news items connected with large-scale data efforts in Health research of late. There’s a wild west nobody-in-charge feeling to some of it. This recent NY Times piece describes a process in which centralized data collectors who were early to the game and on top of their lobbying and bill tailoring skills are reaping massive rewards, but those providers who bought their pitch are having a harder time realizing the benefits. Continue…

Netflix’s Big Adventure

February 1, 2013 1:03 PM / Leave a comment

Netflix has been open and unrepentant about publicizing it’s strategy for cultivating value from all the event data at it’s fingertips due to it’s streaming service user base. Their data miners have been taking things far beyond the level of Amazon’s ‘smart’ book recommendations. This new drama, premiering tonight, has been statistically vetted regarding timeslot, programming, script, and even cast with heavy input from their S3/Hadoop cloud (they use AWS for their platform) of user preference and activity data. Continue…

Big Data Comeuppance Sightings

January 27, 2013 5:00 PM / 1 Comment on Big Data Comeuppance Sightings

Gartner Hype Cycle graphic cited by Sicular

I’m no market analyst, but I have to admit that among my first early reactions to noticing all the BD buzz afoot back in 2010 was to wonder: exactly who besides the odd Google, Amazon, Facebook or Twitter with their godzillabytes datapile cultures would need this stuff for real? I’m exaggerating, since I can see plenty of research opportunities within BioTech, communications analysis, financial, and other sectors as possibilities. But the real question is whether the average corporate data heap’s need for BD and NoSQL is actual, or just hype. Continue…

MapReduce – SQL Coding Comparison

January 21, 2013 12:10 PM / Leave a comment

Here’s something neat! Been wondering what the general differences are with MapReduce coding as compared to SQL queries? Rick Osborne, a Web developer and blogger, has a neat graphic depicting just that. The specific databases he looks at are MySQL and MongoDB. But on the relational database front, the SQL looks to be ANSI, and would be rendered identically in Oracle. Continue…

Hearing the Oracle