The Bit Bucket

When I work in customer sites, there is a quite a difference between how different sites get data for testing. But it basically comes down to a variation of one of these five:

• Testing? That’s for wimps. (Well perhaps for users)
• I type in all the test data that I need.
• We use a data generator to produce our test data.
• We just periodically get a copy of production data.
• We get production data and it gets masked before we can use it.

It’s the last option that I’m concerned with today. Masking data is challenging and usually much more difficult than imagined. This week, I was working with a masked database and we ended up finding all client details tucked inside a chunk of XML that was used to hold the metadata for a series of images. They had done a good job of removing it from all the normal columns from all tables in the database, but it’s so easy to miss extras like this.

2016-06-12

There’s an interesting scenario that’s come up in creating some new samples for SQL Server 2016.

I know that for many, many years people have asked for a way to limit developer edition to only use standard edition features, or at least to have a way to flag them. I’ve often thought that I’d like a way to set a “target environment” and have the colorization change anything that I can’t use in standard to an obviously different color.

2016-06-03

There is an endless discussion in the development community about whether databases should include declared foreign key constraints or not.

As a consultant, I regularly visit a wide variety of client sites. Many of these have applications designed without constraints. When I ask why there are no constraints, the response is invariably one of the following:

• The app ensures that it’s right
• They don’t work well with our application development
• They are too slow
• What’s a foreign key constraint?

Most of the sites that I work with have sizeable databases. This discussion is important in those situations.

2016-05-31

Several of my customers lately have mentioned that when they’ve added a node to a Windows failover cluster for supporting an Availability Group, that they’ve ended up with an outage because the non-shared drives have been taken offline by the installation process. All commented that it didn’t use to happen on Windows Server 2008 R2 and they were taken by surprise when it happened on Windows Server 2012 R2.

I mentioned it in the MVP list and one of my US buddies Allan Hirt said that we need to uncheck the relevant checkbox during the install.

2016-05-02

Hi Folks,

One of the intriguing options that’s coming as part of SQL Server 2016 is StretchDB. I’ve been spending some time working with it and learning about it, and I’ve ended up with lots of questions.

It was great to get an opportunity to speak to Joe Yong to get all my questions sorted.

Hope you’ll enjoy it too. You’ll find it here:

SQL Down Under Podcast

2016-05-01

Last week I had an opportunity to record a new podcast with Kasper DeJonge from the SQL Server Analysis Services team. Kasper has also been working on Power Pivot and many other areas.

SQL Server 2016 is lining up to be a great release for Analysis Services with significant enhancements for both tabular and multi-dimensional data models.

I hope you enjoy the show. You’ll find it here:

https://podcast.sqldownunder.com

2016-04-09

I spend a lot of my time working with ISVs (or software houses) and with individual developers. For SQL Server to have a long-term future, we need to be appealing to more and more new developers, to get them to understand that SQL Server is a great platform for building their applications above.

One of the most important aspects of this right up front, is making it really frictionless to get started with SQL Server.

2016-04-04

Hi Folks,

I recently got to record a new podcast with Riccardo Muti and Chris Finlan from the SQL Server Reporting Services team.

Over recent years, Reporting Services seemed to be in a rut without forward momentum.

2016 however promises to be a really big year for Reporting Services.

You’ll find the show here: SQL Down Under Podcast

Enjoy!

2016-03-13

In recent months, I’ve been brushing up my R skills. I’ve had a few areas of interest in this:

* R in Azure Machine Learning

* R in relation to Power BI and general analytics

* R embedded (somewhat) in SQL Server 2016

As a client tool, I’ve been using RStudio. It’s been good and very simple but it’s a completely separate environment. So I was excited when I saw there was to be a preview of new R tooling for Visual Studio.

2016-03-10

We normally run our Power BI Core Skills class as the 2nd day of the week in our 5 day BI Core Skills.

We’ve had extra demand for the Power BI day so we’ve added an extra one in Melbourne on May 10th. Details are here:

SQL Down Under Training

Early bird pricing ends April 26th.

2016-03-05