Category: Sysadmin

System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.

5 Common Server Setups For Your Web Application

5 Common Server Setups For Your Web Applicationcombined

Covering:

  1. Everything on one server.
  2. Separate database server.
  3. Load balancer (reverse proxy).
  4. HTTP accelerator (caching reverse proxy).
  5. Master-slave database replication

Extract, Transform, Load

I’ve been doing all kinds of data migrations and system integration for years now.  But only yesterday I’ve learned that there is a very specific term linked to the process.

In computing, extract, transform, and load (ETL) refers to a process in database usage and especially in data warehousing that:

  • Extracts data from outside sources
  • Transforms it to fit operational needs, which can include quality levels
  • Loads it into the end target (database, more specifically, operational data store, data mart, or data warehouse)

ETL systems commonly integrate data from multiple applications, typically developed and supported by different vendors or hosted on separate computer hardware. The disparate systems containing the original data are frequently managed and operated by different employees. For example a cost accounting system may combine data from payroll, sales and purchasing.