Posts

I’ve been hoping this would happen for a while and now it’s here (in beta).

Whenever I take a certification exam, I find it removes my ability to work for most of a day, so I tend to schedule myself for two or three exams in a day, to avoid the overhead. It also means that I tend to limit the number of exams that I would take.

Online proctoring of exams changes all that for me. If I can just schedule an exam for lunch time or night, or weekend from my own office, I’ll be much more inclined to take more certification exams.

2014-12-22

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

As most websites do, we collect analytics on the people visiting our site https://sqldownunder.com

I thought it might be interesting to share the breakdown of visitors to our site. Keep in mind that we have a primarily Microsoft-oriented audience. Enjoy!

No surprise on the native languages:

Country breakdown reflects the amount of local traffic we have for instructor-led courses. Most others are podcast listeners:

We first noticed Chrome slightly outstripping IE a while back but recently, it’s changed a lot. I suspect that IE11 will have been as issue here:

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 and relational databases.

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

2014-10-30

It’s great to see that the Connect site leading to fixes in the product.

I was really pleased when SQL Server Data Tools for BI appeared for Visual Studio 2013. What I wasn’t pleased about where a number of UI issues that came with that version.

In particular, there was a problem with previewing Reporting Services reports. If I create a new report project, add a blank report, and drag on a text box:

2014-10-29

I’m finally catching up on some book reviews.

One that I’ve been meaning to write for quite a while is this review.

It’s hard to describe how awesome I think this book is. I was at a session in the USA some time back, where they were giving out the previous version of this book. I grabbed a copy but didn’t get around to reading it for a while. What a mistake.

2014-09-27

There were a number of great announcements from Scott Guthrie today: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-sql-databases-api-management-media-services-websites-role-based-access-control-and-more

One that particularly caught my eye was a subtle change to the billing for Azure SQL Database. Databases used to be billed at a daily charge.

While this might not have seemed a big deal, the only way to create a transactionally-consistent backup of the database was to first copy it using CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF original database, then to use the database export functions on the copy. The export needed to be done on the copy (not on the original) as it just copied the data in each table, one table at a time.

2014-09-14

I’ve been taking a look at some of the 3rd party tools for SQL Server. Today, I looked at DBForge Studio for SQL Server from the team at DevArt.

Installation was smooth. I did find it odd that it defaults to SQL authentication, not to Windows but either works fine.

I like the way they have followed the SQL Server Management Studio visual layout. That will make the product familiar to existing SQL Server Management Studio users.

2014-08-25

One of the things I’ve been keeping an eye on for quite a while now is the development of the Azure Search system.

While it’s not a full replacement for the full-text indexing service in SQL Server on-premises as yet, it’s a really, really good start.

Liam Cavanagh, Pablo Castro and the team have done a great job bringing this to the preview stage and I suspect it could be quite popular. I was very impressed by how they incorporated quite a bit of feedback I gave them early on, and I’m sure that others involved would have felt the same.

2014-08-25

It seems like anyone that’s talked to me this year has heard me going on and on about how Power Query is just the nicest new bit of tech that’s come from Microsoft lately. We cover it as part of our one-day Power BI Core Skills training class and as part of day 2 in our BI Core Skills classes that we recently updated for SQL Server 2014. Out of all the technologies that people see during that week, Power Query is the one that seems to promote the biggest discussions.

2014-06-28