Hi friends, I know a lot of you regularly read my blog either on my home page at KevinEKline.com, on SQLBlog.com, or one of the locations where it's syndicated. And you may also regularly take in my content on SQLSentry.TV or my monthly column on Database Trends & Applications magazine. Click the image to see my new weekly video series on SSWUG.org! Now I'm adding a new video format to the mix, in partnership with my friend Steven Wynkoop and SSWUG.org. I've been a frequent speaker in the SSWUG virtual conferences over the past several years and, we thought, why not … [Read more...]
Now Playing on SSWUG TV!
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Opinion, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, Business Intelligence, cloud computing, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Management, Professional Development, SQL Server 2012
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...]
Filed Under: Cloud, Databases, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Azure, Backup & Recovery, cloud computing, DBA
New on DBTA.com: Database Benchmarking Tools, the final article in the database benchmarking series
In the last several articles on Database Trends & Applications, I've been describing the benefits of reading and analyzing the benchmarking case studies released by the Transaction Processing Council. I've given you from a broad overview of the TPC benchmarks and shown ways that the vendor-published TPC benchmarks can help you save money and how the vendor-published TPC benchmarks must explain in disclaimers how they tweak their workloads. I have described how to run your own benchmarks and explained how to properly prepare your environment for a benchmark test. Pictured (L-R): Scott … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, Cool Technologies, Databases, DBTA, Hardware, IO, Opinion, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: Benchmarking, Best Practices, Career, DBA, Performance, Tools, Tools & Scripts
My Advice About Growing as an IT and Data Professional
First off, I should apologize for not blogging in quite a while. I've been traveling extensively and, because traveling can be so exhausting, I usually have to queue up blog posts to hit while I'm traveling in order to remain active while on the road. I didn't do that for these most recent trips. And, as you can see, there's quite a gap between this post and my last few posts. On the other hand, I've experienced an unexpected surge in requests for mentoring and advice from friends and colleagues about career growth. I'm always happy to help out a friend and, in fact, there's little in my … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Interviews, Opinion, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Management, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development, Writing
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...]
Filed Under: Cloud, Cool Technologies, Databases, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Azure, cloud computing, DBA, MySQL, Oracle, sql, SQL Programming
What’s the Data Modeling Standard for Business Intelligence Systems?
I had the good fortune to overhear some of my good friends and fellow MVPs discussing the process of data modeling for business intelligence systems. So what are the industry standard approaches for modeling dimensional data modelling? The short answer is that Kimball's dimensional modeling is the most widely adopted standard for any sort of data warehouse. Inmon is also well respected. But the consensus is to stick with Kimball, especially if you're looking for something an enterprise standards team is going to recognize as "standard". The book on my shelf and which I most … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Architecture, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Databases, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Architecture, Best Practices, BI, Business Intelligence, Data Modeling, Data Warehouse, MVP, SQL Server 2012, SSAS
Hear the SQL Server 2012 story on DotNetRocks
I was privileged to have a chat with my buddies over at www.dotnetrocks.com, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, episode number 876 (876!). Listen to the most popular internet audio talk show for .NET developers! Here's the abstract: Carl and Richard talk to Kevin Kline about the latest features in SQL Server 2012. The conversation starts out talking about the new features that developers will love, like windowing - no need for cursors anymore, you can request a window of records from a set and move easily window-to-window. Kevin also talks about the new column store index that is especially … [Read more...]
Filed Under: BigData, Cool Technologies, Databases, Interviews, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Trends, Virtualization Tagged With: Azure, cloud computing, Developer, Fusion-io, Hekaton, In-Memory Databases, NoSQL, sql, SQL Server 2012, SQL tuning
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...]
Filed Under: Cloud, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, Virtualization Tagged With: Azure, cloud, Virtualization, Windows
Cheaters Never Win, Even in TPC Benchmarks
In this column, I want to tell you about one of my favorite aspects of the TPC benchmarks – CHEATING. Keep in mind that I use the term “cheating” in a joking manner with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. But I’m also half-serious. One of the of the things that is great about the TPC benchmarks is that each of the vendors are required to fully describe all of the shortcuts, tweaks, and special operating configurations they use in order to achieve their spectacular performance numbers. In a sense, the Transaction Processing Counsel requires that all benchmarked platforms declare all of … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, DBTA, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, DBTA, Monitoring, Oracle, Performance, SQL Server 2012
Use TPC Database Benchmarks to Save Money
Last month, I began a series of articles describing database application benchmarking. In the first article, I told you about different ways that you can construct your own database application benchmark. However, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Transaction Processing Council (www.tpc.org) has already created a large number of database benchmarks that are extremely useful and informative. I also described last month how the TPC provides several different types of benchmark tests. For example the TPC-C and TPC-E benchmarks are extremely useful for measuring transaction throughput. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, DBTA, Oracle, Performance, SQL Server 2012
