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 – PowerBI: The Self-Service BI App That Can Change Your Life
Filed Under: Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud, DBTA, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Azure, Business Intelligence, DBA, DBTA
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
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
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
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...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, Challenges, Cloud, Databases, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Video Tagged With: Azure, Backup & Recovery, Best Practices, DBA, Developer, SQL Server 2012, Virtualization
Timewarp: What Is a Relational Database?
Relational?!? Move On, Geezer! Maybe you're thinking that relational databases management systems (RDBMSs), like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, are going the way of punched cards and rotary phones. After all, there's been a lot of hype these days in the IT media about the rise of so-called NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases. Many new and upcoming CS and MIS graduates who like working with data might think that relational databases are, at best, soon-to-be legacy systems and, at worst, are a career dead-end. Wrong!!! It's true that all the cool-cat computing services (Amazon, Facebook, … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Architecture, BigData, Cloud, Cool Technologies, Databases, NoSQL, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Azure, cloud computing, DBA, Developer, NoSQL, Oracle, SQL Server 2012
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...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, BigData, Cloud, Databases, NoSQL, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post, Video Tagged With: Azure, BigData, cloud computing, Crowdsourcing, DBA, Developer, Hadoop, NoSQL, Quest Software, SQL Server 2012, Video
Azure Trust Services
You might have noticed that Microsoft has recently launched a cool set of Trust Services for Azure. This is an application-level encryption framework that can be used to protect sensitive data stored on the Windows Azure Platform. One of the hindrances to adoption of Azure that I keep hearing about is trust and security. If you want to learn more about protecting your data in the cloud you can read up HERE. I'm not pushing you to get into Azure (even though you should), nor am I subtly trying to make you feel guilty for ignoring the cloud in general nor Azure specifically (subtle, ain't … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cloud, Databases, NoSQL, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Azure, cloud, Developer, Security, SQL Server 2012
How is Microsoft IT using the Cloud?
Steve Balmer very publicly pronounced that Microsoft was “all in” for cloud computing and Windows Azure. So that means Microsoft is using cloud for its internal IT as well as building products to utilize the cloud. If you want to learn how Microsoft IT is using Windows Azure to move existing applications to the cloud and creating new applications for the cloud, click here: IT Showcase on Windows Azure. Let me know what you think. Accurate and informative? Or marketing fluff? Thanks, -Kevin Follow me on Twitter! … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cloud, Cool Technologies, On-Line Resources, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Azure, Best Practices, SQL Azure, SQL Server 2012
