Women's issues have headlined the news media for the past several months. Many stories, ranging from the #MeToo movement to the "Brogrammer" email blast at Google, have shown that women in technology (WIT) face negative work conditions and social pressures. In light of that, it seemed appropriate to dive into the topic of WIT within the SQL Server community (aka, the Data Platform community) and gauge where we're at. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

The SQL Server Vulnerability Assessment tool (VA) is a feature within SQL Server Management Server (SSMS) 17.4 that scans your SQL Server instances of version 2012 and later, identifies security issues, and suggests fixes to the vulnerabilities it finds. It works for on-premises SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, whether housed on physical or virtual servers. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

New Year's Day is a holiday we mark both with a big party and with reflection and re-evaluation. New Year's resolutions are a time-honored tradition here in the U.S., with more than 40% of Americans making conscious decisions to do things differently. (Yes, there are people who actually keep track of these statistics.) Yet, despite all of the good intentions, less than 10% of people who make New Year's resolutions are able to keep them. In the spirit of new beginnings, here are a handful of promises for the SQL Server professional which adhere to the three cardinal rules of successful New … [Read more...]

This year's PASS Summit packed more than 5,000 data professionals into the Washington State Convention Center for hardcore technical sessions covering all aspects of the Microsoft data platform. Here are some highlights. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

At this year's Microsoft Ignite, a variety of executives made a host of announcements that are important and relevant to data professionals. It is worth noting that there were actually four areas of focused innovation discussed at the keynote level: enabling IT and developer productivity, providing a consistent hybrid cloud, unlocking intelligent solutions (read: AI), and ensuring trust through security, privacy, and cost controls. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

With all of the hype around data being "the oil of the 21st century" and the rise of "the algorithm economy," it seems reasonable to make it a priority to learn more about how laws affect our lives as DBAs. The first law that I have targeted is probably the best-known data law in the U.S.—HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

Microsoft announced the first release candidate (a.k.a. RC1) for SQL Server 2017 on Monday, July 17th. Release candidates are not a final and finished product, but they are feature complete. No new features are expected after Microsoft moves into the RC phase, only adding polish (for example, brushing up the documentation and UI) and performance to the existing feature set. The full product release is planned for some time in the second half of 2017. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

The next release of Microsoft SQL Server, announced as SQL Server 2017, is available for download in CTP2 at http://tinyurl.com/SQLvNextLinux and offers many cool new features. One set of features that I really like focus on adaptive query processing. These new features speed processing of workloads, especially those that have historically been the hardest to tune. Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]

Not only has the Microsoft SQL Server engineering team added more and stronger leadership, outstanding individual engineers and staff members, but it is also radically moving its entire development process into a "cloud-first" ethos. Now, I'd like to show one of the most salient results of this new development process-accelerated product releases. It was only a few years ago (and is still the case for other data management platforms) that a major new release takes at least 2, but more likely 3 years. With the "production-ready" release of SQL Server 2017 Community Technology Preview 2.0, we … [Read more...]

I always look forward to new research from Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., publishers of this magazine and other great products for data professionals. The latest report which you should read is "SQL Server Transformation: Toward Agility & Resiliency 2017; PASS Database Management Survey." Click HERE to read more … [Read more...]