Mark Halstead presenting "SQL Server Performance Tuning" at SQL Saturday #66 on 2/12/2011 in Colorado Springs

Mark Halstead, is presenting at SQL Saturday #66, in Colorado Springs, Co. on Feb. 12th, 2011. The title of his session is "SQL Server Performance Tuning".

SQL Server performance tuning with an emphasis on finding the bottlenecks, Query design problems and database design problems. Session Level is Intermediate. Here is the link to the event schedule:
http://www.sqlsaturday.com/66/schedule.aspx

Mark Halstead is the SQL Server technical lead DBA for Xtivia working on the Virtual-DBA team. He had been with Xtivia, Inc. for over 5 years and has worked with SQL Server for more than 15 years. He has worked in IT for 20+ years specializing in database administration.

XTIVIA Colorado Springs Holiday Party

I think the Holiday party in Colorado Springs was a success. Most of the team was able to join us and we even had a visit from Santa Clause from the North Pole. Here is the link to view the photo's that I took.

http://picasaweb.google.com/drobincorvette/20101204#

We had some great food and even home made beer that was really tasty! Thank you to all the Xtivia employees in Colorado Springs!

We look forward to seeing pictures and stories from the other offices.

Happy Holidays!

Larry Vs. HP

Came across this today - should HP worry? or is this a case of Larry being Larry?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575651260196782120.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

The Data Quality Challenge

According to a study published by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) entitled Taking Data Quality to the Enterprise through Data Governance, some issues are primarily technical in nature, such as the extra time required for reconciling data (85%) or delays in deploying new systems (52%). Other problems are closer to business issues, such as customer dissatisfaction (69%), compliance problems (39%) and revenue loss (35%). Poor-quality data can also cause problems with costs (67%) and credibility (77%).

Another recurring statement that we come across frequently is : Only less than 5% of our data is “bad”.

If you consider a fact table with 10 million rows, then about 500K rows are bad – which is a huge problem for analytics, operations or anything else you may want to do with the data!!

Even if you choose to ignore all the statistics and studies, it comes down to just a few question –

1. How do we get the information that we need and where do we get it from?
2. Can we trust this information?
3. What does it mean and how can we get this information in the format we need?

Data Quality Definition: Commonly known, data is deemed to be of high quality if it correctly represents the real-world construct to which they refer.

The implementation of Data Quality processes and procedures can dramatically affect the quality and therefore usability of the information in your Data Warehouse.

The Goal: The reason for building a Data Warehouse is to provide consolidating data from multiple sources, both internal and external, into an enterprise solution. This consolidation involves ensuring data consistency, integrity and quality. The data warehouse is the medium to provide enriched analytical data to empower better decision making. The goal is not to copy the same old bad information from multiple locations and provide little or no benefit to the enterprise.

We must consider two key factors to achieve this goal.

• Data Profiling identifies the problems. It provides snap-shots of a company‘s data quality and measures the evolution of data quality over time.

• Data Cleansing corrects, or ―cleanses incomplete or inconsistent data by crosschecking against other databases and reference data. It also enriches data by providing value-add information that actually improves the quality and usefulness of existing data.

I will post more on the two factors soon...

DB2 table reorg performance - Problem Solved

One of our DB2 clients has a 600 GB database that contains two large tables (between 10 and 20 GB each) that needed to be reorged. Our options were limited because the table needs to stay online 24x7. Testing on the development system (same hardware, version of db2 and data) projected an INPLACE online reorg would take several weeks! I tested with an INPLACE reorg so the process could be started, stopped, paused and resumed as needed.

The row size of each table was near the 4k pagesize limit. So as a test, I moved these tables from a 4k pagesize tablespace to an 8k pagesize tablespace. This process included creating the new 8k bufferpool and tablespace, creating the clone tables with a slightly different name in the new tablespace, loading from cursor from the old table to the new table, dropping all constraints on the old table, renaming the old table to *_OLD, then renaming the new table to the correct name and recreating all the indexes, constraints and views. Finally a runstats was required on the tables and all indexes.

The INPLACE reorg now takes 10 minutes! This made the table reorgs simple to run at any time because they are never offline. The reorg helps performance and helps to limit disk space usage.

Informix Replication

It appears that this process has completed as of 11:10 pm MST (2:10 am AST.)

Here are my observations and recommendations.

1.) The session thread was doing quite a bit of sleeping. This normally
occurs when control is handed off to another thread. The session information did not show any other sub-threads for this session. It appears that the thread was waiting for the commit response from the secondary.

Currently, the two servers are configured for synchronous mode. That means that the transaction will not commit on the primary until it gets the commit response back from the secondary. With any network latency, this can be quite slow during bulk processes. It is more apt to be up to date though.

2.) I saw the session wait for a logical log buffer quite often. Not
near as it was sleeping (which was 90% of the time), but it happened often enough to be looked at.

My recommendations:

Change DRINTERVAL from -1 to 0. This will disable synchronous mode with HDR and will go to asynchronous. This is much better for performance as the primary will no longer have to wait for the secondary server to acknowledge to transaction before moving on. Checkpoints are still done synchronously.

Increase LOGBUFF setting from 32 to 64. This will increase the logical log buffers and prevent processes from waiting for them as often as they did.

New SQL Server Customer

We are excited to report that we have added another new customer to our SQL Server support services. This new customer is based out of New York, NY and also with operations in Europe. Customer provides full service online market research solutions. They develop and implement new tools and technologies to provide fast, meaningful and actionable insights via more efficient and engaging consumer experiences.

This customer chose Xtivia as the best of breed support organization to assist them as they require 24x7 availability as well as needing assistance with implementing and managing replication.

Xtivia is getting ready for the Holidays

I returned to our Colorado office this week after being out visiting customers and working trade shows the last month. It was nice to see the office decorated for the Christmas Holiday.

This Friday we have the Xtivia Colorado Potluck Dinner and as I understand it, Santa himself is coming from the North Pole.

Practice Manager Tony Salerno visits Colorado Springs

This week we will have Tony Salerno our Database Practice Manager working in the Colorado Springs Office. As Tony works out of NJ we don’t get to see him to often so will be nice to have him here with his team.

I think he is staying through Friday night so he will be able to join us for the potluck dinner on Friday.

Xtivia Voted By Customers The Top Consultant For Customer Satisfaction In 2009

Recent VendorRate Annual report shows Xtivia ranks as number 1 Consultant overall in the IT World

Colorado Springs, CO, December 21, 2009 — Xtivia, a leader among Information Technology Consultants, today announced that they have been ranked the number one top rated IT consultant for customer satisfaction in The VendorRate 2009 Year End Report recently issued. Xtivia was also rated the #2 vendor by Small Organizations (less than 250 employees) and the #4 vendor by Large Organizations (over 2500 employees).

VendorRate users evaluate vendors’ performance confidentially on ten specific performance criteria that include customer service, reliability, integrity, budget and effectiveness. The VendorRate quarterly report summarizes customer satisfaction ratings entered by technology professionals at the VendorRate website, trade shows, professional conferences, and virtual events. VendorRate is vendor neutral and accepts neither vendor sponsorship nor advertising.

Dennis Robinson, President & CEO of Xtivia, states that we are always “Pleased to receive awards for Xtivia solutions, but even more rewarding are comments received regarding support and service from our customers. Customer satisfaction is extremely important to Xtivia, so it is rewarding to know that our efforts are working and we are very proud to have received this recognition by our customers,” says Robinson.

“Xtivia’s outstanding score, as rated by their customers, shows that Xtivia delivers on their commitment to customer satisfaction,” said Richard Schaefer, CEO of VendorRate. “Congratulations to the entire Xtivia team for being scored as the number one IT consultant for 2009.”

Xtivia, Inc. is a leading information technology and Internet solutions firm that specializes in helping organizations manage critical business information and processes across all communication channels. XTIVIA has offices in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas and is a subsidiary of Matrix-IT Ltd., (www.Matrix-it.co.il) (TASE: MTRX) and a part of the Global technology group Formula Systems Ltd. (www.formulasystems.com) (NASDAQ: FORTY).

For more information visit our Web site at www.Xtivia.com or www.virtual-dba.com, by phone at 888-685-3101, option 2, or email info@xtivia.com
About VendorRate:

VendorRate is a Los Gatos, Calif.-based business intelligence company providing quantifiable, reliable ratings and reports on technology vendors in the IT and telecom industries. Established in 2007, the company works with technology purchasers to improve their overall decision making process. For more information, visit www.vendorrate.com.

End of Support for IDS 7.31

1. Informix Dynamic Server: Flashes

REMINDER: IDS 7.31 enters End of Support status starting September 30, 2009

IDS 7.31 enters End of Support status starting September 30, 2009

http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21383854&myns=swgimgmt&mynp=OCSSGU8G&mync=E

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new IBM Support Portal will provide complete customized support for all IBM software, hardware, and services. Support for System x, System z, and Storage products and additional features will be added over the coming months, but you can preview the IBM Support Portal today.
http://www.ibm.com/support/entry/portal

Xtivia’s Remote Database Administration ServiceVirtual-DBA Celebrates 10 Years

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – June 1, 2009 – Xtivia, Inc. is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its remote database administration support solution, Virtual-DBA
( http://www.virtual-dba.com/ ). Xtivia is a market leader in multi-platform remote database administration with the ability to monitor and support IBM DB2 LUW, IBM Informix, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase.

Since its launch ten years ago, Xtivia has continued to enhance the Virtual-DBA service offering. Most recently Xtivia launched their upgraded client portal providing customers with new functionality including improved reporting on service-hour usage, case management and database statistics, simplified access to assigned primary and currently on call Virtual-DBA support team contact information, enhanced navigation and a more secure environment. All of this information is available to clients online at anytime.
"Over the past ten years we have continually solicited feedback and direction from our customers on how to improve our Remote DBA services,” explains President and CEO Dennis Robinson. ”This process has enabled us to apply unrivaled technical expertise in our customers’ environments no matter what database platform they may be utilizing.”
"Today, any amount of downtime can mean lost productivity, lost revenue, lost customers, and lost opportunities," Robinson added. "Subscribing to Xtivia’s Virtual-DBA service not only realizes automatic return on investment, but enables further benefits because our clients have database technology professionals available when they are needed. That’s redefining ROI¾ return on investment and return on information." Xtivia has won industry recognition as a trendsetting and innovative organization delivering integrated solutions across a range of channels. The company attributes its successful track record to an investment in people, processes and technology.

About XTIVIA:
Xtivia, Inc. is a leading information technology and Internet solutions firm that specializes in helping organizations manage critical business information and processes across all communication channels. XTIVIA has offices in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas and is a subsidiary of Matrix-IT Ltd., (www.Matrix-it.co.il) (TASE: MTRX) and a part of the Global technology group Formula Systems Ltd. (www.formulasystems.com) (NASDAQ: FORTY).

For more information visit our Web site at http://www.xtivia.com/ or http://www.virtual-dba.com/, by phone at 888-685-3101, option 2, or email info@xtivia.com.
# # #

Is your Oracle DBA installing patches?

Survey out from Oracle and the Independent Oracle Users Group, "Security Patching Practices by Oracle Customers" (February 25, 2009). I thought it was interesting that 11% have never applied a patch, and close to 50% were at least 2 cycles (6 months) behind on current patch levels. The worry of impacting the availability or performance of production environments is the major obstacle to the application of security patches, which makes sense.

http://blog.security4all.be/2009/03/is-your-dba-installing-patches-11-never.html

There is a link in the other post to a PDF of the report. I take you through there because I like the image they used :-)

Best Practices for Migrating to Oracle® Exadata Storage Server

Came across this and it was a decent read. You will have to sign up, but they offer a lot of information.

http://virtualizationreview.com/techlibrary/resources.asp?id=901

IBM has lost 80% of Informix users in six years

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=C490073B-AA7E-485D-94DB-0711C628D3DA

Upgrade from IDS 9.4.FC6X3 to 11.10.FC2

John,

A couple of questions:
· How much space is available on the new server? Could you do a restore and then an in-place reorg (move a table from current dbspaces in to a new large dbspace. Repeat this for most (if not all) tables one at a time (could be a script so that it is automated)
· Using the current method, did you remove the index definitions on the new database and then recreate them once the load is complete? This speeds loading up a lot
· Do you have transaction logging on, on the new database server? If “yes” the issue a “lock table” command just before the load command and a “unlock table” after the load.
The only other method I have used before on a large database like this was to use FIFO queue and transferring over the network in parallel. This does require an extremely fast communications network (Gigabit preferred). I don’t know if it will help you or if it will give better results in your case, but let me know if you want to try it. The reasoning behind this is that a standard “load” or “dbimport” takes place in serial. If the machine still have lots of resources available while the import is running, you can double up the effort (and half the time) by running 2 jobs simultaneously. I have found on the previous run I did, that the systems could handle 4 jobs simultaneously with the best results. Perhaps you can split your “load” job in 4 as well and kick off the 4 jobs at the same time to load the data? If you need to discuss this with me, please give me a call.

Regards,JV
IBM Information Management Lab Services - Service Excellence Award Winner - 2006
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello all. I am on-site and we have been attempting to upgrade the client from IDS 9.4.FC6X3 to 11.10.FC2. The reasoning for 11.10 was that when we started this project over a year ago, that was the most stable of the 11.x series and that was what was tested with the client's apps. I realize now that 11.5x is the latest and probably the version to go to. With that aside, let me explain how we are doing things and see if anyone has any suggestions for improving the process.

We have set up an HDR server for the 9.4 instance called the swing server. The purpose for this is to be able to create replicates for the large tables, suspend HDR, start and suspend the replicate, unload the the table from the HDR server, resume HDR, load the table in to the 11.10 instance, resume the replicate and perform a level 0 backup on the 11 instance. This allows us to get a majority of the large tables (by large, I am talking several tables over 100 million rows with some going to over 500 million rows) migrated before the actual weekend of complete migration. Even with this pre-migration work being done, it is still taking 40 hours to complete the migration because of several issues which include:

Some tables are not keeping synched up so they need to be re-done or are held off until migration weekend.
HPL issues with 9.4.FC6 that were unknown were causing data to be unloaded in the wrong columns.
Some of the tables take several hours to unload, copy flat files to the new server, reload and create indexes. (one large table has 44 indexes!!!)
The lack of horsepower on the old server does not allow us to do too many HPL jobs at once.


The reasoning for our method is that the old instance now has over 650 chunks spread out over many disks with some tables having over 100 extents. We dont want snap this configuration to the new server and do an inplace upgrade as that will defeat our purpose of the stabilization of the database. This db is nearly 2TB in size.

I have come up with a couple of alternate methods but have not put them down on paper yet. I am asking this group if there is any other way they could think of to do this re-org. One of the methods I was considering is to do an in place upgrade to 10.x on the current box, install 11.5x on the new box and set up the replicates with the synching mechanism that the two newer engines provide. They may not go for this because their acceptance testing policies are very strict. They are basically asking me to come up with any other way that will not require over 40 hours of downtime.

For the record, our third attempt at this was succesful, but around 18 hours into the new box being in production, the engine crashed due to an unpublished bug that is associated with DD_HASHSIZE and DD_HASHMAX being set at the defaults. This caused unrecoverable table and dbsapce corruption that would have required more downtime to fix than the customer would have allowed requriing us to roll back yet again.

Thanks in advance to any time and thought you can put into this.

JOHN

Indiana Area Informix User Group Forming

I am working with the IIUG to begin the development of an "Indiana-area Informix User Group" currently. We have quite a few Informix users in Indiana, and many more in Ohio and Kentucky that could benefit from an active group in Indiana. Xtivia has two full-time Informix staff based in Indiana now (myself in Muncie, and John Catmull in Indianapolis), so we should have plenty of great technical topics in hand. 

Stay tuned for the announcement of the Indiana group. If you would like to be notified when the group is formed, please email me at mark.scranton@xtivia.com.

Thanks!

Mark

XTIVIA, INC. Expands Consulting Practice to Include the IBM Optim Solutions for Custom and Packaged Applications

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:
XTIVIA, Inc.
Phone: (888) 685-3101 option 2
info@xtivia.com
http://www.xtivia.com
http://www.virtual-dba.com

XTIVIA, INC. Expands Consulting Practice to Include the IBM Optim Solutions for Custom and Packaged Applications

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – January 29th, 2009 – XTIVIA, Inc. announced today that it has expanded its consulting practice to include the IBM Optim solutions for custom and packaged applications. Eight senior database consultants have been certified in IBM Optim solutions. Their advanced training included classroom-led instruction and in-depth hands-on labs.

“The addition of Optim Solutions to the XTIVIA services arsenal increases our ability to assist our clients with the data growth, data privacy and data management issues facing so many organizations today,” said Tony Salerno, Director of Database Technologies of XTIVIA.

“Enterprise applications and their data are the backbone of our customers’ businesses. Optim solutions offer the tools we need to assist our clients in deployment across their applications, databases and operating systems to manage enterprise data,” said Dennis Robinson, CEO of XTIVIA.

IBM Optim provides the control to manage enterprise data through every stage of its lifecycle. Optim enables businesses to align application data management with business objectives, to optimize performance, control cost and reduce risks. Optim delivers proven archiving and test data management capabilities that scale to meet enterprise needs. Organizations can apply a consistent strategy across applications and platforms and quickly achieve measurable benefits. In addition, Optim allows businesses to apply a single, scalable enterprise data management solution across applications, databases (DB2, IMS, VSAM/SEQ, Adabas, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, XML), and platforms (Windows, Unix/Linux, z/OS) to meet the data privacy, data growth and test data management needs of the organization.

Optim makes it possible to segregate historical data from current activity and safely move it to a secure archive. Businesses meet performance targets consistently, which in turn drives revenue growth. Information is readily available, making it easy to respond quickly to client queries and legal requests. With Optim, the privacy and integrity of enterprise data is protected, making it easier to meet compliance initiatives. Optim is scalable optimizing business results from a single application to a global data center.


About XTIVIA:
XTIVIA is a leading information technology and Internet solutions firm that specializes in helping organizations manage critical business information and processes across all communication channels. XTIVIA has offices in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas and is a subsidiary of Matrix-IT Ltd., (www.Matrix-it.co.il) (TASE: MTRX) and a part of the Global technology group Formula Systems Ltd. (www.formulasystems.com) (NASDAQ: FORTY).

For more information visit our Web site at www.Xtivia.com or www.virtual-dba.com, by phone at 888-685-3101, option 2, or email info@xtivia.com.

Colorado DB2 & Informix User Group Meeting

We are very excited to invite you to the first combined IBM Data Users Group meeting! Please join us for a JOINT DB2 & INFORMIX Users Group meeting.

February 5th 2009 IBM Denver Tech Center office, 4700 S. Syracuse, 3rd Floor, Room 312, Denver Co 80237 4:00PM – 6:30PM We are please to present Matthew Emmerton, from the IBM DB2 OLTP Benchmark team. Matthew will discuss features in DB2 LUW v9.5 ("Viper2")and provide a view into the features coming in DB2 LUW v9.7 (“Cobra”) and have a question and answer session.

We are also delighted to have Jacques Roy, Technical Product Manager for Informix will present whats new in Informix 11.5, whats upcoming and a lively discussion of what is on the horizon.
Light refreshments will be provided.

We look forward to a more active group in 2009 and hope that you will take the time from your busy schedules to join us. Please feel free to invite others that may be interested.

Increased Customer Demand for XTIVIA’s Remote Database Administration Services Credited for Rapid Sales Growth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:
XTIVIA, Inc.
Phone (888) 685-3101 x 2
info@xtivia.com
http://www.xtivia.com
http://www.virtual-dba.com

Increased Customer Demand for XTIVIA’s Remote Database Administration Services Credited for Rapid Sales Growth

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – January 22nd, 2009 – XTIVIA, Inc. announced today that new customer demand for its award-winning Virtual-DBA remote database administration support and monitoring service grew rapidly in 2008. XTIVIA cited increased demand for outsourcing mission critical IT Database Support Functions as the reason.

During 2008, XTIVIA saw remarkable increase in demand for the Virtual-DBA remote database administration services which support Informix, DB2 UDB/LUW, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase. XTIVIA has responded to meet the customer need by expanding and re-launching its marketing web site www.Virtual-DBA.com. In the first quarter of 2009, a new Client web portal will launch. XTIVIA also plans to expand and reorganize its staff to meet the demands associated with this growing market.

“As IT managers are tasked to do more with less, IT outsourcing has become a growing market trend. Leading organizations throughout the U.S. and Europe are turning to our Virtual-DBA service. Our Virtual-DBA Service provides our customers with best of breed support and monitoring solutions with on-shore highly skilled Engineers at a fraction of the cost of traditional database support expenditures. I was amazed at the number of new customers we brought on in 2008 and we expect to see similar growth this year based on overall market conditions.” said Nir Gryn XTIVIA’s VP of Sales

“This increased demand for our Virtual-DBA solution is not surprising. The solution was tailor made, triggering companies bottom line and reducing their overall cost of database ownership. In difficult economic times, our Virtual DBA solution is the answer for CFOs and IT managers faced with a tight IT budget. When you add the rest of the Virtual-DBA benefits of reliability, 24/7 support and endless pool of DBA knowledge base, it becomes a no-brainer decision” said Ori Ben Zvi, CFO of XTIVIA.

The goal of Virtual-DBA is to provide a cost-effective solution for organizations seeking to optimize the availability and performance of their critical business information systems. We accomplish this through a comprehensive remote DBA service offering designed specifically to meet the Oracle, DB2, Informix, Sybase and SQL Server database administration, maintenance, management and consulting needs of our clients. XTIVIA’s Virtual-DBA service combines a sophisticated suite of monitoring and reporting tools with expert consulting services to deliver complete database performance management. Virtual-DBA provides proactive, remote database support and maintenance enabling subscribers to focus their resources and improve productivity while enhancing operational benefits.

About XTIVIA:
XTIVIA is a leading information technology and Internet solutions firm that specializes in helping organizations manage critical business information and processes across all communication channels. XTIVIA has offices in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas and is a subsidiary of Matrix-IT Ltd., (www.Matrix-it.co.il) (TASE: MTRX) and a part of the Global technology group Formula Systems Ltd. (www.formulasystems.com) (NASDAQ: FORTY).

For more information visit our Web site at www.Xtivia.com or www.virtual-dba.com, by phone at 888-685-3101, option 2, or email info@xtivia.com.

RSS Feeds for MS SQL Server and Sybase

I am looking to find RSS feeds that we can incorporate into the Blog for MS SQL Server and Sybase DB's News. Anyone have any suggestions?

IT spending in 09, Maintenance down!

Forrester predicts a 3 percent drop in global IT revenues,
Check out the article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10143302-16.html

Informix Error -243

The error -243 Could not position within a table (tracking.nhawb)

The database server cannot set the file position to a particular row within the file that represents a table. Check the accompanying ISAM error code for more information. A hardware error might have occurred, or the table or index might have been corrupted (truncated). Unless the ISAM error code or an operating-system message points to another cause, run the oncheck utility (secheck with IBM Informix SE or tbcheck with IBM Informix OnLine) to check and repair table and index.

Possibilities of the error.
1) Locking issue.
2) Corruption.
3) No space.

Comments:
1) Per our coversation, you folks use "LOCK MODE TO WAIT", in this case
if you don't specify the time, the lock will be held till the user
completes the session. This looks like the possibility of your problem,
because by now the problem should have gone away.

2) Corruption could be possible, I will give you the oncheck command to run during
off peak time, to check the table's consistency. If you have the copy
on development box we can run it on that box to find the time it takes
to complete the command.

3) You have enough space, so there is no issue with disk space.

Xtivia joins forces with IBM Cognos to deliver next generation of business intelligence and performance management solutions

CONTACT:
Xtivia, Inc.
Phone: 719-623-5870
Fax: 719-685-3400
info@xtivia.com
http://www.xtivia.com

Xtivia joins forces with IBM Cognos to deliver next generation of business intelligence and performance management solutions

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – January 14, 2009 – Xtivia, Inc. , a Certified Information on Demand IBM software reseller and a Premiere IBM business partner announced today that it has become a premier solution provider for the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence and Performance Management suite. With this partnership, Xtivia is now well poised to provide customers with total business intelligence and performance management solutions including industry-leading IBM Cognos software and the necessary services to implement the solutions.

“As a leader in providing state of the art Performance Management and Business Intelligence capabilities, Cognos is a natural addition to Xtivia’s core information management and custom application development skills. With this partnership, customers can leverage Xtivia’s expertise to implement industry leading turnkey solutions to convert their information into an asset” said Dennis Robinson, CEO of Xtivia.

“Businesses are realizing lower returns on automation projects because much of that work was completed in the last decade. The next opportunity for significant performance improvement and savings will come from better insight and management of the systems already in place,” said Mangesh Mharolkar, Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Practice Director at Xtivia. “We look forward to helping our customers realize the savings such insights will bring.”

Xtivia’s unique set of core data, presentation and business intelligence knowledge makes the partnership with IBM Cognos ideal for both parties. “In good times and bad, business must have visibility into current operations and future performance in order to manage wisely. The IBM Information Management portfolio, including IBM Cognos, allows customers that insight,” said Dennis Robinson.

Xtivia has provided business intelligence solutions to its clients for more than 10 years with solutions ranging in size from small departmental reporting projects to complex, multi-year projects touching virtually all parts of the enterprise. Combined with over 20 years of information management expertise and consulting and a large portals and enterprise application development group, Xtivia is well positioned to help clients large and small realize the value that Cognos delivers.

Xtivia delivers a broad spectrum of solutions that spans customized information management solutions like the business critical yet infrastructure efficiency oriented solution – Virtual-DBA (www.virtual-dba.com) to fairly complex, enterprise wide solutions encompassing risk, feasibility & readiness assessments, management consulting and performance/maturity assessments.


About Xtivia:
Xtivia is a leading information technology and Internet solutions firm that specializes in helping organizations manage critical business information and processes across all communication channels. Xtivia has offices in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas and is a subsidiary of Matrix-IT Ltd., (www.Matrix-it.co.il) (TASE: MTRX) and a part of the Global technology group Formula Systems Ltd. (www.formulasystems.com) (NASDAQ: FORTY).

For more information visit our Web site at www.Xtivia.com or www.virtual-dba.com, call 888-685-3101, option 2, or email info@xtivia.com.

What is Virtual-DBA?

What is Virtual-DBA?
Virtual-DBA is a Remote Database Administration Service that was originally developed by XTIVIA, Inc. in 2002. The original support service was developed around the Informix DB Platform. After a couple of years and request from our customers it was expanded to provide support to all of the major database platforms. Virtual-DBA now supports Oracle, DB2 UDB, Informix, SQL Server and Sybase.

The service is designed to address the database system administration and database management needs of its subscribers. Through our Remote DBA service we collect operational statistics on a daily basis to ensure system availability, optimum performance and trouble-free operation, while also providing the availability of expert database administrators.

How does Virtual-DBA work?
Statistics about your systems are collected at regular intervals throughout the day and sent to Virtual-DBA service centers, where they are automatically filtered and centrally stored. A heartbeat process monitors the availability of your system and the communications channel to the Virtual-DBA service centers. A primary and backup Virtual-DBA database specialist is assigned to manage and monitor your systems and account.

• When the statistics arrive, if monitored indicators are out of tolerance, an alert is generated automatically and Virtual-DBA database specialists are notified. The Virtual-DBA specialist immediately notifies you of any critical issues and will work with you to a resolution. If non-critical issues are discovered, they will be documented and discussed with you during your regular status briefing, and then tracked to resolution.
• Your Virtual-DBA database specialist reviews past and present operational and performance data for operational trend analysis identification. These trends are important to system planning and in troubleshooting performance issues. Any trends will be documented and discussed with you during your regular status briefings and available reports.
• The statistical information collected about your system and a complete case tracking history of our database specialist’s actions are available in the My Database area of the web site for Virtual-DBA subscribers.
• You will have a dedicated Virtual-DBA available for database administration services and advice regarding any aspect of database design, troubleshooting, administration, or management. Therefore, when you have a problem or want some coaching, you can speak to someone who is already familiar with the key aspects of your system, installation, application, and requirements. These services are available by telephone or on-site consultation. The key feature is that expert help is available when it is needed, whether the need is for 30 minutes or several weeks.