I recorded another podcast today. This time it’s SQL Server MVP Erin Welker discussing dimensional modelling and being a BI consultant.
The show is online now: https://podcast.sqldownunder.com
Enjoy!
2013-02-23
Over the last few months, I’ve been a tech reviewer on John Sirmon and Heidi Steen’s new whitepaper.
It’s published today on MSDN: Hardware Sizing a Tabular Solution (SQL Server Analysis Services)
Its goal is to help you determine the amount of memory and CPU resources needed to accommodate query and processing workloads in a production environment.
Recommended!
2013-02-13
There are some terms in IT that make their way straight into the hype stratosphere. Unfortunately “big data” is one of these. I see very few systems that I’d contend are actually “big data”. However, I endlessly see the term applied to data stores that are trivial by today’s standards. This might help the marketing teams but it’s sad none-the-less. There are some technological challenges that really do start to bite as the data volume really does start to become large, and as the proportion of unstructured and semi-structured data increases. There are also some very interesting new tools that allow us to process larger volumes of data faster, particularly in relation to analytics, and a large market building around Hadoop and its derivatives.
2013-02-10
SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 and SQL Server 2012 SP1 introduced sys.dm_db_stats_properties. This DMV is a new way to check the number of rows that have been modified since the last time a set of statistics was updated. It is described here
In the latest version of Ola’s tools, he’s made use of this new DMV for customers that are on one of these SQL Server versions. For customers on earlier versions, he continues to use sys.sysindexes in the same way he did previously.
2013-02-08
SQL Down Under show 54 is now available for download.
In this show, I spoke with Grant Fritchey on his experiences with query tuning and reading SQL Server execution plans. We also discuss SQL Kilts.
You’ll find the show at our podcasts page: https://sqldownunder.com/Resources/Podcast.aspx
Enjoy!
2013-02-02
There has been a lot of discussion over the years about whether or not it’s a good idea to introduce new functionality in service packs (for SQL Server, the OS, and others). The concern is that it can invalidate testing, invalidate documentation, books, courseware, etc. However, it can also introduce much-needed features without having to wait for another version of the product. It’s been even-less likely that new functionality would be introduced in a cumulative update (or CU), which are basically a set of rolled-up hotfixes.
2013-01-27
I promised there would be a bunch of shows this year. The second one is now published.
In this show, SQL Server MVP Grant Paisley describes PowerPivot, Power View, Analysis Services Tabular vs Multidimensional and shares the lessons he’s learned when working with these tools.
The show is here: https://podcast.sqldownunder.com
Enjoy!
2013-01-22
One of the issues that is often raised with Windows Azure SQL Database is that you don’t get to pick the name of your server, so you end up with a bizarre name such as:
yy2l95dk1k.database.windows.net.
I can understand why the team did this. Apparently when they first set it up, they allowed you to pick your own server name, so everyone started registering Coke, Pepsi, etc. Not wanting to have yet another place for people to argue about name ownership, they quickly removed that ability. I’m glad they did.
2013-01-21
When I’ve been putting data into Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD) in the past, I’d normally been providing the dates from my own system. This week, I had the first time where I wanted to put a column default that provided a date in WASD. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t sure what timezone the date would be from. As I was using the Southeast Asia data centre (in Singapore), I was presuming the value would be based on Singapore’s timezone. So it was time to find out.
2013-01-20
Hi folks, I’m back into the swing with a bunch of new podcasts coming, featuring SQL Server 2012. First up is Clustering MVP Allan Hirt discussing SQL Server HA with AlwaysOn. Allan also discusses the deployment of SQL Server on Windows Server Core.
Thanks for all the emails that said they loved the shows and told me to get them happening again soon. I think you’ll like the ones that are lined up. You’ll find the shows here: https://sqldownunder.com/Resources/Podcast.aspx
2013-01-13
