Tag Archives: directly

Understanding and Using RSS Feeds for your Blog

You love reading blogs but you don’t have the time to search from blog to blog finding a story that interests you. Try setting up an RSS feed to that blog instead. It’ll save you boatloads of time by making all the latest blog updates and news stories available for you right on one screen.

An RSS is basically is a set of web feed used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. It actually stands for really simple syndication and usually contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. An RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with your favorite websites in an automated manner that’s much easier than checking each website or blog manually.

One of the many positives about subscribing to RSS headlines and stories is they are immediate, and in real time. The moment a blog or news site publishes or updates their site with a feed at the source server, the next thing you know is it is on your screen. That is just one of the reasons why you need to start using RSS feeds. Here are some others:

  • News – Get the latest news on your favorite sports team, upcoming election news made by a political candidate or a feed from the local newspaper in your town.


  • Hobbies and interests – If you are interested in cooking, web design, painting, or perhaps cats, there are virtually hundreds if not thousands of conversations and bits of advice available to be fed directly to your computer screen.


  • Photos – If you’re one of those people who like to change your wallpaper daily or maybe update different pictures on your personal website, RSS feeds provide an excellent way to get the latest from photographers across the internet.


  • Catching up with friends – Maybe you have an old college roommate or a friend from high school that moved to the other side of the country and started up a blog. Now you can keep up with everything going on in their life by having all their latest entries fed directly to your screen.

Ok now that you know what makes these RSS so great and useful, here is how you can get yourself one and how they can work for you:

  • First, you choose an easy to use RSS reader. Most RSS readers are available all over the internet, free to use, and extremely easy to get the hang of.


  • Then, load up the RSS feeds into the reader you selected. You can do this any number of different ways. Depending on the blog or your own personal preference, you choices are through visiting the website feed directly, copy-pasting the special code from an email, or uploading copies from someone else’s RSS reader screen.


  • You’re all set and ready to start reading your web feed news. You only need to simply log in to your RSS reader page, or start your RSS software, and you can instantly scan all your web feeds. You can arrange and store the RSS feeds into folders, much in the same way you can with email, or you can set alerts and sounds for when a particular web feed is updated.

Understanding and Using RSS Feeds for your Blog

You love reading blogs but you don’t have the time to search from blog to blog finding a story that interests you. Try setting up an RSS feed to that blog instead. It’ll save you boatloads of time by making all the latest blog updates and news stories available for you right on one screen.

An RSS is basically is a set of web feed used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. It actually stands for really simple syndication and usually contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. An RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with your favorite websites in an automated manner that’s much easier than checking each website or blog manually.

One of the many positives about subscribing to RSS headlines and stories is they are immediate, and in real time. The moment a blog or news site publishes or updates their site with a feed at the source server, the next thing you know is it is on your screen. That is just one of the reasons why you need to start using RSS feeds. Here are some others:

  • News – Get the latest news on your favorite sports team, upcoming election news made by a political candidate or a feed from the local newspaper in your town.


  • Hobbies and interests – If you are interested in cooking, web design, painting, or perhaps cats, there are virtually hundreds if not thousands of conversations and bits of advice available to be fed directly to your computer screen.


  • Photos – If you’re one of those people who like to change your wallpaper daily or maybe update different pictures on your personal website, RSS feeds provide an excellent way to get the latest from photographers across the internet.


  • Catching up with friends – Maybe you have an old college roommate or a friend from high school that moved to the other side of the country and started up a blog. Now you can keep up with everything going on in their life by having all their latest entries fed directly to your screen.

Ok now that you know what makes these RSS so great and useful, here is how you can get yourself one and how they can work for you:

  • First, you choose an easy to use RSS reader. Most RSS readers are available all over the internet, free to use, and extremely easy to get the hang of.


  • Then, load up the RSS feeds into the reader you selected. You can do this any number of different ways. Depending on the blog or your own personal preference, you choices are through visiting the website feed directly, copy-pasting the special code from an email, or uploading copies from someone else’s RSS reader screen.


  • You’re all set and ready to start reading your web feed news. You only need to simply log in to your RSS reader page, or start your RSS software, and you can instantly scan all your web feeds. You can arrange and store the RSS feeds into folders, much in the same way you can with email, or you can set alerts and sounds for when a particular web feed is updated.

Effective database activity monitoring (Page 1 of 2)

There are a number of reasons for organisations to deploy Database Activity Monitoring or DAM solutions, which can range anywhere from compliance to cover overall security.

DAM is a data centre technology, which monitors how the data that is stored in core databases and file servers is being accessed; it works on analyzing access behaviour to detect data breaches, if any; and takes action accordingly to mitigate them.

Various rules and regulations, compliance laws, etc also are increasingly forcing organisations to tighten their control over sensitive data they store, and have a verifiable audit trail that can be signed off, if required, by the appropriate organisational executives.

Database Activity Monitoring Architecture

Different DAM vendors have different ways of tracking activities in a database and therefore implementation of architecture is also slightly different.

A DAM with single appliance or single server architecture provides 1-to-1 mapping of a database server with a monitoring appliance; thus it acts both as a sensor and a collector of appropriate data. DAM with this configuration is good for a small database; however, for larger databases it might not be enough effective. Then there is DAM with 2-tier architecture, consisting of a centralised management server; this server collects information from a set of remote sensors or collection points. With this architecture there is a better degree of system scalability.

DAM with hierarchical architecture builds further onto the 2-tier architecture; this system is best suited for larger organizations; these DAMs are capable of supporting a larger number of sensors and collectors, distributed across a large enterprise.

Advanced Database Activity Monitoring Techniques

The process through which all SQL traffic to a database is monitored is called Network monitoring. Network monitoring allows monitoring multiple databases simultaneously; all the commands that are sent across to databases under scrutiny, are kept track of. The activities of users that are logged directly into the server via a local console are not recorded. Performance of a database is not affected by network monitoring, as no overhead is placed over the database directly.

In remote monitoring, a SQL collector is placed on the database with administrative privileges; the native database auditing is also enabled. The collector aggregates all activity collected by the auditing tools. This type of monitoring imposes an overhead on the database as logging is enabled on the database server, causing it to work more. The advantage of remote monitoring is that all database activities are collected, including that of a user who is logged directly into the server.

One can install local agents on each database that is being monitored, but it is not necessary that they would be successful in detecting all database activity; it would depend on how these agents have been configured, and how much closer to the database they are allowed to sit.