-- IN THIS ISSUE --

META DATA CONUNDRUM CARRIES ON

ERP FUNDAMENTALS

WHAT ARE THE HOT TRENDS IN IT?

Features

Analysis & Commentary

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
A reader takes issue with Mark Hurd's (president of NCR Corporation and chief operating officer of Teradata) article: "We Can win the Information War with Today's Technology, Seven Common Misconceptions" published in the February 12 edition of DSstar.

META DATA CONUNDRUM CARRIES ON
by Richard Adhikari
A new approach to managing meta data currently in the works will free CIOs from having to cope with constantly changing technological standards. The Needham, Mass.-based Object Management Group (OMG) is leading work on this approach with the support of major software vendors, including IBM, Sun Microsystems and Oracle.

COMPUTER CONTROLS QUESTIONED IN AIB ROGUE TRADING
After five days of investigation into the $750m losses incurred at Allfirst, a US subsidiary of the Allied Irish Bank, it is still no clearer how foreign exchange trader John Rusnak appears to have so spectacularly bypassed the battery of controls meant to prevent rogue trading.

ERP FUNDAMENTALS
by Adrian Mello
When most people imagine the IT systems of a large enterprise they probably conjure a vision of air-conditioned rooms stuffed with computers busily humming away. But by and large, it's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that lies at the heart of a large enterprise's computing activity.

POINDEXTER TAKES OVER NEW AGENCY TO THWART ATTACKS ON U.S
John M. Poindexter, the retired Navy admiral who was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, has returned to the Pentagon to direct a new agency that is developing technologies to give federal officials instant access to vast new surveillance and information-analysis systems.

WHAT ARE THE HOT TRENDS IN IT?
Security technologies, artificial intelligence, third-generation networking products and services, voice over Internet protocol, and all things wireless are the hot technology areas and trends that IT executives who spoke at the annual Harvard Business School Cyberposium have on their radar screens.

SECURITY HOLES FOUND IN ORACLE SOFTWARE
Despite the vendor's claims, the Oracle9i database is breakable, a United Kingdom security firm has reported. Several security flaws were discovered in the company's software, including one that could allow a hacker to gain access to Oracle's database server without a user ID or password.

WEB SITES SEEN AS TERRORIST AIDS
A major financial institution this week will receive a report outlining the extent to which its Web site exposes it to potential attacks by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and other terrorists.

Leading Edge R&D

CRACK COMPARISIONS
A series of experiments by University of Arkansas researcher Kelvin Wang showed that digital acquisition of highway data overcomes the comparability problems of different analysis methods and gives highway engineers better information for allocating scarce resources.

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY CHOOSES IBM DB2 ON LINUX
Florida International University, a leading public research university, has selected IBM's DB2 database software running on Linux to power its High Performance Database Research Center. The university selected DB2 based on its reliability, scalability and superior performance capabilities.

AI EARLY WARNING SYSTEM INSTALLED AT THE OLYMPICS
The U.S. has never seen security measures like those now in Salt Lake City for the Olympics. One little known measure, just put into place, gives early warning of a possible bioterrorist attack. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer system analyzes patient data from emergency rooms and instant care facilities across the state. If it detects a significant pattern, it pages the on-call state public health physician.

YOU CAN SURF, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE
Making a phone call has always been a game of chance. You never know whether the person you are calling is available. You just punch in the numbers and hope to get lucky.
Business & Money Trail

GOOGLE TO OFFER NEW SEARCH PRODUCT FOR COMPANIES
Google, which operates a popular Internet search engine, unveiled a new corporate search product to help companies locate documents within their own databases.

SAND TECH SIGNS ALLIANCE PARTNERSHIP WITH KPMG CONSULTING
A leading business solutions integrator, KPMG Consulting forms complementary alliances with application providers such as Sand Technology to enable the delivery of end-to-end business and technology solutions.

Top Of The News

Short Takes

Financial Watch
Data Junction Lands KBtoys.com
Northrop Grumman to Manage Data Center for Texas DCJ

Quote Of The Week

"Bad guys can be really clever. But even when they're not clever, data aggregation can make targeting possible." (regarding there being too much readily accessible critical information on Web sites) -- Dan Morrison, director of risk consulting at Arthur Andersen LLP in Chicago

DSstar