Every now and then, I feel compelled to write a column that isn't much more than a disguised list of leads to products, documents or freebies I hope some of you will find really interesting.
Do you still run NetWare 3.x? Lots of folks do. Finally (only three years too late, but that's another matter), Novell is shipping an almost bulletproof Novell Upgrade Wizard 2.1 for migrating both the NetWare 3 bindery and file system to an existing intraNetWare (NetWare 4.1). In the process, all bindery objects are upgraded to NDS objects. Free at www.novell.com/int ranetware/upgrade/wizard.html. If, on the other hand, you're thinking of upgrading to NT, I recommend you check out the 21-slide, on-line seminar/presentation on the "how and why" of NT 4.0/NetWare integration and migration. www.microsof t.com/ithome/resource/seminar/default.htm. As you'd expect, there's also a good deal of information including a downloadable white paper on interoperability with NetWare on Microsoft's NT server site at www.microsoft. com/ntserver/guide/netwareinterop.asp. For starters, you'll want to know that the NetWare "supervisor" right is named "full control" in NT and that NetWare's "access control" right translates into "change permissions" in NT.
Free posters and PDFs
* Y2K Survival Guide: www.clicknet. com/y2k/understandingy2k/y2ksgform.html.
* SANS (System Administration, Networking, and Security) Roadmap To Network Security Wall Poster and Web Security Roadmap Poster at www.sans.org/roadmap.htm with great information such as the 10 most commonly exploited UNIX vulnerabilities, top security mailing lists, and so on.
* Yellow tech guides (www.techguide.com): Vendor-written, but containing good content categorized into four broad areas: data warehousing (A Practical Guide to Getting Started with Data Warehousing, Building a Decision Support Architecture for Data Warehousing, Data Warehousing: The ROI of Year 2000 Compliance, Delivering Warehouse ROI with Business Intelligence, Enterprise Storage for Today's Data Warehousing Environments, Leveraging Visual and Analytic Data Mining, Managing the Warehouse Throughout its Lifecycle, Meeting the Data Integration Challenge, Mining for a Competitive Advantage in Your Data Warehouse, Putting Meta Data to Work in the Warehouse, Right Sizing Your Data Warehouse), networking and communications, Internet technology, and document management. Requires registration.
* Component Road Map (including discussion of components vs. objects) from the Hurwitz Group (www.hurwitz.com).
* Other good analyst sites with some good free database and middleware content: www.bloor.co.uk and www.ovum.com.
* DataBase Associates has a very useful on-line InfoBase (www.dbaint.com /infobase/in fobase.html) which contains technical and product information in the areas of client/server computing, data warehousing and Web technology. Their "Corporate IT Road Map" provides "frameworks" for client/server, data warehousing and Web enablement. The frameworks are very useful at categorizing the often overwhelming list of products. The site also has over a dozen technical white papers.
* If you're interested in getting a free poster of the DB2 (Release 4 or 5) system catalog tables or the Oracle8 Data Dictionary, check out Craig Mullins' "Techno Goodies" section of his database tips page at www.platinum.com/databasetips. If you're interested in seeing Informix-Online Dynamic Server 5.x or 7.x system table or stores database diagrams, check out www.iiug.org/ techninfo/articles where you can download the ER diagrams.
* Shaku Atre, a respected consultant and author in the database and data warehousing field, has posted a copy of her "12 Steps" (to data warehousing) poster at www.atre.com.
* Find really good scripts for Oracle at Hayden Worthington Inc.'s (www.mindspring.com/~hayden/i ndex.html).
* My favorite site for Sybase T-SQL routines is Ed Barlow's Sybase site: www.tiac.net/users/sqltech.
* To subscribe to what I consider the best Oracle mailing list, send a message to LISTSERV@dbinfo.com.
* To subscribe to the Sybase list, send a SUBSCRIBE SYBASE-L message to listserv@ UCSBVM.ucsb.edu.
* Stats junkie? NIST's Statistical Reference Datasets (StRD at www.itl.nist.gov/div898/strd) are "intended to complement the testing of statistical software by providing datasets and corresponding 'certified values' of statistical parameters which are commonly estimated by software packages." You can download data sets for linear or nonlinear regression, balanced one-way ANOVA and univariate methods.
Not free, but worth paying for: Traveling Software's LapLink. This incredibly useful utility supports remote file transfer as well as direct file transfer between two computer systems via parallel or serial links. Sample scenario: you've just bought a new PC for home. Use LapLink to quickly move important files to the new PC. www.travsoft.com or 800-433-0049.
Karen Watterson (karen_watterson@ msn.com) is an independent San Diego-based writer and consultant specializing in database design and data warehousing issues. She has written several books including Visual Basic Database Programming and Client/Server Technology for Managers.
Be the first to comment on this post using the section below.