The Bit Bucket

Since I posted some StreamInsight info the other day, I’ve had a bunch of people asking me what StreamInsight is used for.

StreamInsight is Microsoft’s implementation of Complex Event Processing. This is not a new market but it is new territory for Microsoft.

Complex Event Processing (CEP) is all about querying data while it’s still in flight. Traditionally, we obtain data from a source, put it into a database and then query the database. When using CEP, we query the data *before* it hits a database and derive information that helps us make rapid business decisions, potentially also including automated business decisions.

2010-01-11

One of the new items coming with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 is the Data-Tier Application. It is designed for (what are described as) departmental applications.

What a “deparmental” application is deserves some thought. Mostly it relates to the size of the application. What percentage of your databases (count of databases not their volume) would be under say 2GB? What about 10GB? The argument is that for most sites, it’s a surprisingly high percentage. Even most sites I see at the Enterprise level have one or two very large databases and the rest are fairly small. Does that apply to your sites?

2010-01-09

While building content for the upcoming Metro training for SQL Server 2008 R2, Bill Chesnut and I were puzzled about the Adjust option for AdvanceTimePolicy in the AdvanceTimeSettings for a stream. It was described in Books Online as causing the timestamp for the event to be adjusted forward to the time of the latest CTI (current time increment). No matter what we tried though, we couldn’t seem to get it to do anything.

2010-01-09

Our Microsoft RD lead Kevin Schuler has asked us to post predictions for 2010 that will appear in a special edition of TheRegion. Here’s mine:

Against all perceived wisdom, I suspect that the interest in developing general applications for the iPhone store will peak this year, unless Apple comes out with a more innovative platform. At present, Apple have completely won the mindshare in relation to phone applications, not just the hardware game. All major websites I deal with are starting to create iPhone friendly versions. Early on, we heard amazing stories of how developers had made a fortune through the appstore. I see a few problems becoming more apparent this year:

2010-01-09

OK, I’m sure many will have already seen this but if you haven’t:

Create a folder in Windows 7 and rename it to: 

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Then check out it’s contents. That’s seriously geeky and cool.

2010-01-09

Hi Folks,

I was recently interviewed by Andrew and Michael and their Frankly Speaking podcast. Was great fun. The show is here: http://www.noisetosignal.com.au/franklyspeaking/?p=71

Greg

2010-01-06

I’ve been doing a lot of work lately with StreamInsight, coming in SQL Server 2008 R2.

There are three development models you can use with StreamInsight: Implicit Server, Explicit Server and IObservable/IObserver.

When I was working through material on the IObservable/IObserver pattern, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me where it had come from. It’s based on the Rx Framework for .NET (Reactive Extensions). I finally got to watch the PDC Online session from Erik Meijer on the Rx Framework a few days ago and so many things suddenly fell into place for me.

2010-01-06

I was doing some varied reading this morning and stumbled across this article by Paul Graham. I want to highlight this passage:

“We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia may be the most famous. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they miss the critical point: it’s good enough. And it’s free, which means people actually read it. On the web, articles you have to pay for might as well not exist. Even if you were willing to pay to read them yourself, you can’t link to them. They’re not part of the conversation.”

2009-12-27

With the climate summit in Copenhagen now finished, I wanted to make a few comments about a trend that really annoys me. I’m fairly “green oriented” in my outlook but amongst “green” scientists and advocates, there is an endless desire to make each cause sound much stronger than the facts permit. I think this does their support more harm than good. The recent expose on modified emails bore that out only too well but I want to show a few simpler examples.

2009-12-20

On a client site the other day, I came across a situation (unfortunately too common) where a column in a table was being used for two purposes. It could either hold an integer value or a string. Only about 100 rows out of many millions had the integer value. Some of the client code needed to calculate the maximum value when it was an integer. First step I tried was to add a persisted calculated column like so:

2009-12-05