Microsoft and Cray announced today an affordable supercomputer: only $25,000 on Amazon.com...and they are giving one away.  The contest is open to employees of US companies only.

AUSTIN, Texas — Nov. 18, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — Today at the Supercomputing 2008 conference, Microsoft Corp. debuted in the top 10 of the world's most powerful supercomputers with Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd., which ranked at No. 10 with 180.6 teraflops, the parallel computing speed, and 77.5 percent efficiency. A truly incredible achievement considering that 12 months ago in Reno, Nevada, Microsoft was at 116 on the Top500 list at Top500.org. This is on the heels of Windows HPC Server 2008 releasing to the manufacturing industry in September.

Register to Win a Cray Supercomputer

This week CA announced that CA ERwin® 7.3 is available.  The link below gives the full press release, but the items that I find the most interesting:

• BusinessObjects Crystal Reports: reporting the way you want it.
• ODBC access to the models, so you can report on modes with existing tools and skills.
• CA ERwin Data Modeler Community Edition: a free, limited functionality version for students and new modelers.  I believe this is limited to 25 entities.
• CA ERwin Data Profiler: Based on Exeros data profiling technology, this product will help modelers get a better handle on what the data says about itself -- not just what a model or document says.

For more information:

New Release of CA ERwin® Data Modeling Suite Brings Integrated Data Profiling, Data Modeling and Powerful Reporting Capabilities to the Masses

Whether or not you follow what's going on today in Washington, no matter how you voted or wanted to vote, as an IT professional you should be encouraged by these words from President Barack Obama's inauguration speech:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.  We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise healthcare's quality and lower its cost.  We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.  All this we can do. And all this we will do.

I believe strongly that we need to invest in technology education and training, for both short term and long term benefits.  Perhaps some of this investment can be made in data quality, data protection, and information management.  Fewer surprises, fewer sudden failures that increase the risk of public harm.

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening

In a data modeling session about this time last year, we discussed dropping support for a business practice that was fading away.  This model is more of a pattern model, so we have more authority and responsibility to do these sorts of things than in a normal business data model.

The topic was layaways, where customers agree to purchase items, then leave them in the store until a series of installment payments are made.  Once the payments have been completed, the items can be retrieved.  After some discussion both for and against, it was decided that since the decline of this practice was mainly seen in the western world, we'd leave it in for those cultures and businesses that still made use of this business practice.

Guess what?  With the current economic issues, this business practice is coming back into fashion at retailers everywhere, even high end retailers.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15379a9c-e2a6-11dd-b1dd-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

The arrangement, a feature of retailing in the 1940s and 1950s, faded as credit cards and credit accounts became widely available. Wal-Mart, for instance, closed its lay-away programme in 2006.

But as the downturn takes hold and consumers find credit harder to obtain, some retailers are taking advantage of layaway as a marketing tool. During the holiday season, Kmart, owned by Sears Holdings and the third largest US discount chain, started drawing attention to its layaway service in television advertising.

Sears department stores also responded to the prevalent mood of thrift by introducing a layaway service in the run-up to Christmas, having ended the service for products other than jewellery two decades ago. Kmart said this month that its December sales "benefited from a year-over-year increase in sales made through our layaway programme", as it delivered comparable sales that were better than Wall Street expected, although still down 1.1 per cent.

Makes me wonder what other retro business practices we will see again in the coming months. House calls?  Delivery services? Customer service?

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening

An industry standard data model (ISDM) is a data model available to the public or members of an industry trade or professional association. It is usually managed by volunteers who work for members of the association. It is usually provided for free or for a minimal charge. It is vendor, tool, and DBMS independent.

Examples of ISDMs are:

• Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) Data Model
• Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM)
• Public Petroleum Data Model (PPDM)

There are others, but they are hard to find, as most of these models are managed by not-for-profit or public organizations with slim marketing and SEO budgets.  Another reason is that there is no industry recognized term for these types of pattern or universal data models.  That's why I coined the term industry standard data model.  Perhaps if we all start using it, it will be easier to find these models.

I've posted about a Gartner research note on this topic.

Do you know about other ISDMs out there? Let me know.

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening