Monday, November 27, 2017

Whaddya Mean, Big Data?

It's been going on for a while now. We hear the term "Big Data" used repeatedly and often in contexts that suggest various meanings.  To some people, it seems to suggest an insidious assault on personal privacy. To others, it seems to mean the collection of companies like Facebook and Google that thrive and use their success to influence public policy.

Except among IT professionals, the term seems to mostly be used as a pejorative. Something that evokes fear, or derision, or some force to be resisted. In common usage, Big Data ignites the same sense of dread that Big Petroleum, or Big Government, or Big Pharmaceutical do.

But what does it mean when used in the Information Technology lexicon? Is it something to watch hawkishly, or is it something that holds the promise that we could know more, make better decisions, and innovate more rapidly?

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Who Ya Gonna Trust?

In society of today, we face many questions about what information to trust, whose perspective to trust, and which technologies to trust. Only history will provide us with the right answers, but we have to live in the present, not blessed with the retrospective that will inform our future selves and our progeny.

One of the fabricated perils we have been hearing more about of late is "Big Data." Sometimes it's called "Silicon Valley Elite" or "Tech Elite." And one of the dangers that supposedly comes from this new threat to our way of life is Cloud Computing.

Certainly, since there's a lot of misinformation available about this important development in the world of Information Technology, it's easy to accept viewpoints derived from casual, poorly researched, and superstition-driven irritation or fear. I saw one such article this past week, and perhaps we should forgive the author (Steve Rosseau) for reacting during the heat of the irritation when faced with the possibility that a great deal of his work was lost.

Reduce to Dashboard

When developers use DataWeave, they often come to rely on the reduce() function to fill in any gaps left by the standard Core library. Altho...