Two TechNet Radio Sessions You Don’t Want to Miss

I was recently honored to speak on TechNet Radio in two separate sessions about BigData & Hadoop and cloud databases (specifically SQL Azure).  The show debuted on the TechNet homepage under “Today’s News” and on the TechNet Edge homepage.  In each of these shows, I did what I like to do for all the parties I attend - bring a friend.  To make my life easier, I simply reposted the verbiage that TechNet used, rather that to write my own. About the BigData/Hadoop video: Microsoft SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline and Vice President of Database Development at Quest Software Guy Harrison (blog | … [Read more...]

PASS Summit 2011, Day 3 – A Tribute to Wayne Snyder

First things first, Wayne Snyder is rolling off the board of directors for PASS this year.  We'd worked together, shoulder to shoulder along with Joe Webb (blog | @joewebb) and other outstanding members of the SQL Server community, for many years of on the PASS board of directors and I'm certain that my tenure on the board and as president of the organization would've been nothing but trouble had Wayne not been there, covering my blind side(s), at every turn.  Here's my tribute to Wayne Snyder: If you were to mention “Wayne Snyder” to me, I’d instantly start to grin and, probably, nod a … [Read more...]

What I’m Reading, July 22 2011

I read too much, and that, my friends, is an entirely separate topic for a blog post. But I thought I'd share with you a little more about what I'm reading because sometimes, if I'm lucky, it might be something you'd enjoy too. So I'm going to start sharing what I'm reading at least once per week, partly so that I don't firehose too many reading links directly into your brain (where I to do it say once per month) and partly to solidify in my own mind the information that I'm reviewing. So here are a few good links for the seven days leading up to July 22, 2001: Microsoft and Whitehouse … [Read more...]

Getting Ahead of the Curve – Big Data

I have to confess that I'm incredibly excited about BigData.  I haven't been this excited about new innovations in IT since relational databases first appeared on the scene early in my career.  But what is BigData? Back in those days, I can still feel the echos of adrenaline when I was hired to work on a NASA project that would involve over 100Mb of data.  ONE HUNDRED MEGABYTES! Good grief, that was fantastically huge to us on the team.  (That database was over 130Mb when I finally moved on to another project).  And remember - PC software was installed using 640Kb floppy disks at the time.  … [Read more...]

NOSQL- A Quick Overview

Several attendees at the SQLRally were asking about NoSQL ("Not Only SQL") and its benefits. This article gives a quick overview: HERE. Also, two good resources have come out from my friend Guy Harrison. This piece on Cassandra, one of the most popular NoSQL databases, was published a while back in Database Trends and Applications Magazine. I also really liked these entries from Guy at TechRepublic and TechTarget.  Guy also had the good fortune of having one of his articles published on GigaOm and then picked up in the New York Times Technology section. The article, titled “Real World … [Read more...]

Adventures in the Land of CloudDB/NoSQL/NoAcid

Last year, some of my friends from Quest Software attended Hadoop World in New York. In 2009, I never would've guessed that Quest would be there with products, community initiatives, as a major sponsor and with presenters? There were just under 1,000 attendees who weren’t the typical devheads and geekasaurs you'd normally see at very techie events like Code Camps, SQL Saturdays, Cloud Camps and or even other NoSQL events such as the Cassandra Summit. We're talkin' enterprise customers with active Hadoop projects underway. Some observations from the show that may be of interest to … [Read more...]

DBTA: What’s the Fuss about Data Deduplication?

Listen to a group of database professionals talk for awhile and someone will eventually bring up the topic of data deduplication. Data deduplication is a means  to eliminate redundant data, either through hardware or software technologies.  To illustrate, imagine you've drafted a new project plan and sent it to five teammates asking for input.  That single file has now been reproduced, in identical bits and bytes, on a total of six computers. If everyone's email inbox is backed up every night, that's another six copies backed up on the email backup server.  Through data deduplication … [Read more...]

TN Summit 2010 – Surviving the Data Avalanche

Here's the link to my revamped presentation on Surviving the Data Avalanche The Abstract for this presentation is here. The slides for this presentation are here. … [Read more...]

DBTA: The Big Keep Getting Bigger

In this season of recession and financial meltdowns, a common question seems to be, "How big is ‘too big to fail'?" Titans of the financial industry made big bets with lots of risk and, when they didn't pan out, American society overall has to pay the price.  But, that aside, the very scale of our financial system, by just about every metric, has reached amazing heights, be that number of financial transactions per second, number of traders, number of funds traded, amount of money changing hands—you name it. [READ MORE] … [Read more...]

Video: The Growing SQL Server World- Surviving the Data Avalanche

An expert roundtable discussion hosted by SQL Server Expert Kevin Kline and featuring speakers from Microsoft, EMC, Avanade, HP and Quest Software. With the release of SQL Server 2005 and its focus on Business Intelligence, SQL Server professionals are faced with unprecedented amounts of data to manage. How are you dealing with the flood of data? At the PASS Community Summit 2006, experts from Quest Software joined forces with a variety of other SQL Server industry experts for a panel discussion around the implications of managing large volumes of business critical data on SQL Server and … [Read more...]