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Passionately curious about Data, Databases and Systems Complexity. Data is ubiquitous, the database universe is dichotomous (structured and unstructured), expanding and complex. Find my Database Research at SQLToolkit.co.uk . Microsoft Data Platform MVP

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing" Einstein



Monday 28 May 2012

Database Conference Wish List


Database conferences are the place to share ideas and learn new technology.  They are the place to expand ones database horizons and dream. My wish list for conference attendance would have to be

Professional Conferences

SQLBits
UK Location
http://sqlbits.com/
Probably End September 2012

SQLRally Nordic
Copenhagen
http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2012/nordic/
October 1-3 2012

SQL Pass Summit
Seattle, WA
http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2012/
November 6-9 2012

Research Conferences

To explore cutting edge ideas in the database world.

ICDE 29th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
Brisbane, Australia
http://www.icde2013.org/
April 8-11 2013

2013 ACM SIGMOD/PODS 
New York, USA
http://www.sigmod.org/2013/ 
June 22-27, 2013

39th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases
Rive del Garda, Trento
http://vldb.org/2013/
August 26-31, 2013

Data Conferences

Data and information management.  

Enterprise Data World 2012
Atlanta, Georgia
http://edw2012.wilshireconferences.com/index.cfm
April 29 - 3 May 2012

Thursday 24 May 2012

SQL Relay


I attended SQL Relay 2012 in Clifton, Bristol yesterday which brought together  SQL experts from the southwest. The location was fantastic at the Avon Gorge Hotel which overlooks Brunel’s suspension bridge. The al fresco dining for lunch in the glorious Sun added to the interesting SQL discussions.

There were overview sessions from Microsoft in the morning on SQL Server 2012 and Deep Dive sessions in the afternoon from SQL Server MVP's.

The morning sessions delivered by Microsoft by Morris Novello, SQL Server Product Manager and Andrew Fryer, Technical Evangelist discussed the explosion of data volumes, new innovations in the cloud and new development features within SQL Server 2012. The practical overview of SQL Server 2012 new features showed the breadth and depth of the changes to the product which will take SQL Server to a new level.

The afternoon MVP’s Tony Rogerson covered SANless high availability with Always On and Martin Bell covered Distributed Replay. Considering disk geometry added an interesting dimension to Always On and being able to mitigate risk against hardware consolidation and changes using distributed replay was insightful.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Data Warehouse Physical Architecture Options

Custom Data Warehouse Architecture
Scale not defined
Custom design
  
Fast Track Reference Architecture
Scale between 4 and 80TB
Rapid Deployment and Use reference configurations optimized for data warehousing.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/data-warehousing/fast-track.aspx

HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance
Optimised for up to 5TB
Highly tuned solution that integrates hardware and software.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/appliances/hp-bdw.aspx

Parallel Data Warehouse
Scale to 100s of terabytes
Parallel processing (MPP) architecture to gain scalable performance, flexibility, and hardware choices with the most comprehensive data warehouse solution available.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/data-warehousing/pdw.aspx