DBTA – PowerBI: The Self-Service BI App That Can Change Your Life

Here’s a real-world story: Data collection and analysis is, ironically, for a data management profession, one of the toughest parts of my job. I regularly pull data from our various databases and packaged application reporting systems for CRM, licensing, and user information. If you’ve ever worked with a packaged product, such as a CRM system, that includes reporting and querying features, then you know how inflexible they are. It can be infuriatingly difficult to get data out of these systems, systems for which you paid big money, without losing sleep, hair, and peace of mind. Working with … [Read more...]

DBTA – Other News in SQL Server 2014 RTM

  A while back, I told you about some of the coolest new features in the recent RTM for SQL Server. The RTM was announced during the “Accelerate your insights” webcast by a boatload of Microsoft’s top executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, COO Kevin Turner, and CVP Quentin Clark. They had lots of useful information to share and demos to show, but a few other items of note about Azure SQL Databases may have dropped under your radar because they came to light a few days after the big dog-and-pony show/webcast. Read the rest of the article … [Read more...]

DBTA – Microsoft SQL Server and the Big Data Play

  When it comes to implementing a big data strategy in a Microsoft SQL Server shop, you’re generally going to consider one of three strategies. In the first strategy, which I won’t be addressing today, you might choose to tackle your big data architecture by pushing your relational database to its scalability limits, perhaps by making greater use of special features such as SQL Server’s columnstore indexes and special optimizations for BI applications. Read the rest of this article … [Read more...]

DBTA – Cloud Computing Enhancements in SQL Server 2014

  There’s no doubt that cloud computing is growing due to the strong cost benefits, simplified management, and reduced hosting complexities.  So it’s only fitting that we cap this series on the new features of Microsoft’s upcoming SQL Server 2014 (SQL2014) release of their flagship database by going over the highlights for SQL2014’s new cloud computing features. Here’s what SQL2014 will do for you with regards to business cloud computing: Read the rest of this article … [Read more...]

Interested in Self-Service Analytics at the PASS Business Analytics Conference?

I don’t know if you’re planning to attend the PASS Business Analytics Conference. But you'll be missing a ton of great content especially for data, analytics, and business intelligence professionals. There's still plenty of time to register and, if you use my discount code – BABS2B – you'll get $150 off the conference registration fee.  There will be more than 60 sessions at the event by BA/BI experts from Intuit, Microsoft, SurveyMonkey, Wells Fargo, and more. Last year’s inaugural event was quite the shindig, bringing in around 900 business analysts, data scientists, architects, and BI and … [Read more...]

New Windows and SQL Azure Resources for the IT Pro

Thanks to Microsoft DPE for the Central Region, Keith Mayer (blog | twitter), for these great tips! Windows 8.1 RTM and Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM bits available on MSDN and TechNet subscription sites. This is the version I'm waiting for since it fully preserves the Start menu. Note that updates are expected between RTM, now, and GA, October 18th.  Be sure to check Windows Updates 2-to-3 times weekly if installing these bits.  I'm not saying they're unstable. But they are definitely changed frequently as the dev team makes final tuning and tweaking changes. New Virtual Labs on … [Read more...]

Windows Azure and SQL Database News

This morning Microsoft released some great updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: SQL Server AlwaysOn Support: General Availability support with Windows Azure Virtual Machines for High Availability and Disaster Recovery Notification Hubs: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Notification Hubs (broadcast push notifications for Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS and Android) AutoScale: Schedule-based AutoScale rules and richer logging support Virtual Machines: Load Balancer Configuration and Management Management Services: New Portal Extension for Operation … [Read more...]

MySQL, NoSQL, and NuoDB

I've been keen on MySQL ever since I first started using it heavily more than a decade ago.  In fact, I liked it well enough to include it as one of the four main database platforms, over and above the ANSI-ISO SQL standard, in my popular book SQL in a Nutshell. However, with the advent of NoSQL data platforms in the last few years, the waters have been muddied.  It's no longer a quick easy decision as to which database platform you should use, both because there are many new platforms to choose from and because the old, easy choices aren't as cut and dried as they used to be.  MySQL, for … [Read more...]

New On-Line Resources for Windows, Virtualization, and Cloud!

Ever since returning from the UK for the SQLBits conference, I've been snowed under a mountain of action items.  I've got such a backlog of things to get done, emails to answer, and family to not ignore that I'm starting to feel really guilty. So with that in mind, I wanted to whip out a quick blog post to let you know I'm still alive and thinking of y'all.  What could be quicker and easier than some cool new resources you might not have seen?  For your perusal: Whitepaper: Managing Windows 7 and Windows 8 … [Read more...]

The All-New ‘Database Lifecycle Management” is available on MSDN

The initial release of Database Lifecycle Management is now available on MSDN. The site is something called "curated content". This means it's a single consolidated location to look up lots of disparate articles and content, all in one easy to search location. This “curated content view” contains the best content, video, and community-centric information from Microsoft, including topics like: SQL Server Data Tools · Get started with sample projects, code samples · Video demos by Gert Drapers (blog) · Script common data portability tasks using Sqlpackage.exe · Link to the SSDT … [Read more...]