Azure

Hi Folks, we’ve been working hard on a new Azure Machine Learning course. Come and spend a solid day finding out why Azure Machine Learning should be part of your arsenal. Our first Melbourne offering of Azure Machine Learning Core Skills is 31st July. I’d love to see you there: http://www.sqldownunder.com/Training/Courses/25

2015-04-15

Have you looked into Azure Machine Learning as yet? If not, this might help. It’s a free eBook on getting started with it. Click the book to follow the link:

2015-04-14

I know that many of my readers appreciate finding out when free eBooks become available. Microsoft Virtual Academy has been releasing quite a few lately. You’ll find them here: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/eBooks?PRID=MVP-AU-7914 In particular, SQL Server and database folk might want to take a look at the following: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2 Introducing Microsoft Azure HDInsight Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model

2015-02-20

Recently I published a series of blog posts that provided scripts for rebuilding clustered columnstore indexes. Niko Neugebauer sent me a suggested update to the latest version of those scripts and it makes sense. The change will help to filter out row groups that are not compressed and Niko noted that as Microsoft have started to include more objects (like Tombstone values) into sys.column_store_row_groups in Azure SQLDatabase, he believes that will help to prevent future SQL versions having a problem with the scripts.

2015-01-31

When I attend events like TechEd, like many people I usually find the networking time more valuable than the session time. There is a pretty tight limit on the number of sessions you can attend, no matter how hard you try. So I often watch the sessions later when I can. At one of the earliest TechEd Australia events that I attended, they gave us CDs of the TechEd USA sessions.

2015-01-09

I spend a lot of time working with software houses, helping them to make their applications work well with SQL Server. One thing that I’ve heard loud and clear over the years is that most software houses won’t write a single line of code that will only run on the enterprise edition of SQL Server, because they are not prepared to limit their potential pool of customers to those running enterprise edition.

2014-12-12

We’ve been so excited having local data centres for Microsoft Azure. The one disappointment has been that Office 365/Power BI has still been based out of Singapore data centres. That has an effect on people that worry about data sovereignty and it also means that we’ve had higher latency on the connections. But no more! I was really pleased to read an article in the newspaper yesterday that mentioned that Microsoft is moving Office 365 to the Australian data centres.

2014-12-10

The regional MVP folk have organised another MVP ComCamp event. Sessions are available in 5 different languages and many sessions are being broadcast. (Most are English) There are two tracks: Enjoy the PC Life Embrace Cloud and Apps If you’d like to attend any of these events, you’ll find more detail here: http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/comcamp.aspx The list of sessions is here: Live Webcasts Nov 17 - Nov 21, 2014 56 live webcasts, in 2 tracks, featuring MVP speakers will be broadcasted during ComCamp Week, covering a wide range of topics about Office applications and Cloud.

2014-11-17

Over the last year, I’ve delivered a number of partner enablement events for Microsoft. These events are low cost training sessions that run for three days. Days 1 and 2 cover SQL Server 2014 content, mostly regarding in-memory OLTP, clustered columnstore indexes, and Azure integration with hybrid systems. Day 3 covers the full Power BI stack. We’re pleased to be running another set of these around the country: Melbourne: November 5th to 7th

2014-10-30

I had the pleasure of recording another SQL Down Under show today. Show 64 features Microsoft Azure DocumentDB product group member discussing Azure DocumentDB and what SQL Server DBAs and developers need to know about it. JSON-based storage has been one of the highest rated requests for enhancements to SQL Server. While we haven’t got those enhancements yet, DocumentDB nicely fills a gap between NoSQL databases (I use the term loosely ) and relational databases.

2014-10-30