Posts Tagged ‘SQL Server’

In my first post in this series, I talked a little about the basics of cloud BI and Microsoft’s Windows Azure public cloud platform.  I gave a brief glimpse of what services Azure offers for BI.   So to begin with, let’s recap the Azure data services offerings in terms of the cloud computing models available.  Azure’s […]

This article was pointed out to me by a colleague, and I found it a pretty compelling read:  How Microsoft helped this bar figure out that vodka was costing it a fortune. Of particular interest to me is the Natural Q&A feature, which is mentioned prominently. Now, my time in the data warehousing trenches tempers my […]

As with “All Things Cloud” for the last year or so, Cloud BI is a subject of much buzz. But if you look around, aside from a few niche vendors that have developed Software as a Service (SaaS)  and Platform as a Service (PaaS) BI packages, there’s not a lot of clear information or even thinking. Something close […]

Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of working with some of the world’s largest companies in a variety of industries. One thing in common with all of these engagements was using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) as the tool of migrating data for the companies’ business intelligence collateral. I have developed […]

So, have you heard about Power BI yet?  The whiz-bang new cloud-centric BI front end tool from Microsoft?  Well, this video from the 2013 WPC breaks down the story — in a very entertaining manner…  So, having watched, let’s assume we all remember Mariah’s chart-toppers and instead review the greatest hits of the Power BI […]

Introduction If you follow the SQL Server community at all, you’ve probably heard a lot of buzz around PDW (Parallel Data Warehouse).  This is the first in a series of blogs I am going to be writing about PDW.  In this series, I am going to cover everything from PDW nuts and bolts to how […]

A source system that contains dynamic or customer-defined data fields is both an old problem and a sticky one in the  DW/BI environment.  A standard approach of flattening the dynamic data into name/value pairs is recommended for a relational-type database.   But what about multidimensional modeling or OLAP storage?  Name/value pairs are just the beginning.  To […]

So if you are like me you have more development VMs than SSD space and do everything you can to keep your VM space down. One of the biggest things you can do is set your database options to Simple recovery model. This means that you won’t be able to do point in time backups […]

For quite some time now, I’ve been working on a global design/deployment where there are multiple pools located throughout the globe.  Throughout this design, I’ve seen the flexibility of Lync Server 2013 at its very finest and gained a much better appreciation for how Lync Server was designed by the Product Team at Microsoft.  Due […]

Forbes had an interesting article this week – An Interview with the Most Powerful Woman in Health Care.  The woman is Judy Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems. According to  KLAS’ 2012 Best in KLAS Report, Epic was rated as the #1 Overall Software Vendor, #1 Overall Software Suite, and #1 Overall Physician Practice Vendor based […]

I’m in New Orleans, LA this week for the annual HiMSS Conference and Microsoft Health User Group Meeting (MSHUG). The MSHUG meeting on Sunday March 3rd gave Healthcare Providers the opportunity to learn how they can better leverage their investment in Microsoft technologies to drive down cost and deliver innovative solutions to their customers. My […]

When dealing with any product that has been around for a while, it’s not uncommon to observe a progression of common tasks becoming less clumsy as the tools mature. In this post, I take a look at how pagination has evolved with SQL Server resultsets in order to highlight TSQL features introduced last year in SQL […]