A Data Platform for the Future

More Microsoft announcements arrived yesterday for the ever evolving data platform.

“Satya outlined his vision of a platform built for an era of ambient intelligence. He also stressed the importance of a “data culture” that encourages curiosity, action and experimentation – one that is supported by technology solutions that put data within reach of everyone and every organization.”

There are 3 major changes in the data platform space.

SQL Server 2014 which includes the in-memory functionality for all workloads http://bit.ly/1iYbDxP . It is completely cloud aware.

Analytics Platform System (APS) which includes Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and HDInsight which utilises Hadoop & PolyBase for data querying (a tool to jointly query structured and unstructured data) http://bit.ly/1noP8WI

Azure Intelligent Systems Service a cloud-based service to connect, manage, capture and transform machine-generated data regardless of the operating system or platform. This is what Microsoft call our Internet of Things cloud service  http://bit.ly/1jIECc0

The data platform has significantly evolved over the last few years and it is centred on people, data and analytics. It is an amazingly exciting time at the moment.

SQL Server 2014 Resources

SQL Server 2014 was released to manufacturing on 1 April 2014. Some useful resourses to start with.

SQL Server 2014 What's New (Database Engine)

http://bit.ly/1qet6bb

A useful sumary of the new features and enhancements of the SQL Server Database Engine. 

  

Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014

http://bit.ly/1dPkPZf

A technical overview by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner

This books helps you understand the capabilities of SQL Server 2014. 

SQL Server Data Tools for SQL Server 2014 
http://bit.ly/PNJwu5

SSDT with support for SQL Server 2014 for Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 

Editions of SQL Server 
http://bit.ly/1g3KR9L

Principal Editions 

 SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition

 SQL Server 2014 Business Intelligence

 SQL Server 2014 Standard Edition 

Specialized Editions 
 SQL Server 2014 Web Edition

Breadth Editions

  SQL Server 2014 Developer Edition

  Express Editions details http://bit.ly/1g3KR9L 

Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2014
http://bit.ly/1lIG5Ql

Features supported by the different editions of SQL Server 2014

Founder’s Day Lecture Drowning in Data

I attended the Founder’s Day lecture at the University of Bath entitled Drowning in Data: who and what can we trust. Professor Rhind gave an introduction to big data giving examples rather than using the 3’v definition (volume, velocity and variety) which is regularly used for explaining big data. He described a framework of 3 types of data including the following

Open Data
Freely useable data
NII - National Information Infrastructure
Transparency of open data  http://data.gov.uk/

Personal Data
Held by governments and collected through statutes
(data as a commercial set)

Risks associated with this are privacy vs public benefit, keeping the data safe and the role the state has to play.

Commercial Data
Individual
Social media
Lifestyle, spending etc

He mention a BBC article which talked about data growth between 2010 and 2013 as being inaccurate but now quoted everywhere. There was no mention of the IDC data growth research .
http://idcdocserv.com/1414 or http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/index.htm

He concluded raising questions of public trust and asked does using open data have more benefits than risks.