A new report on the 'state of the database' offers up a rich amount of insightful information about what's happening in the industry, what various players, such as IBM, are doing to meet enterprise needs, the various disruptive technologies coming into play and, most importantly ,what today's database admins need to know when choosing a solution.

The five primary criteria that need to be addressed when assessing emerging options are:

• Usability
• Performance and scalability
• Security
• Back-end operations
• Business consistency considerations

As the InformationWeek report explains, the criteria isn't just a simple purchase checklist, but a best practice map for the database management effort. For example the report notes that a recent survey indicates just under 25% of enterprises are very satisfied with current database security.

That means it's just a matter of time before more enterprises find themselves in the position that organizers of the World Cup event are in right now. A database breach has put hundreds of thousands of attendee data records related to the 2006 event at risk, according to an InformationWeek news report. It seems someone got hold of personal data such as passport information and birth dates and was trying to sell the data.

So learning what database players are doing, or not doing, with making their solutions more secure is a vital aspect to good database management.

IBM, for its part, is always working to shore up security measures and technologies. Just two weeks ago it announced the availability of InfoSphere Guardium 8. The solution lets organizations simplify security and compliance regulations with a single set of automated and centralized controls for a broader range of enterprise databases and applications. Featuring automated monitoring capabilities, the new software helps businesses meet compliance mandates by delivering stronger information governance controls to ensure the privacy and integrity of corporate data.