SQL Relay 2014 Bristol

This was the third 2014 event in the SQL Relay.  SQl Relay Bristol was held on 15 October at Future Inns, Bristol.

The Microsoft keynote covered the question of where next after big data. There is a driving force now focusing on data and data culture, looking at how we can leverage an edge and be predictive. How can diverse data be combined together with analytics and people at speed. The three areas  

·         Age of the Algorithm – Machine learning

·         Age of Things

·         Age of Intelligence   – Intelligent systems with ubiquitous computing

Microsoft shared details of a Data Insight Immersions event taking place around the country, details of which can be found here - http://bit.ly/1waXnuD

Some useful resources from the event are listed here:

SQL Server 2014 In-Memory

Some good resources for learning about SQL Server 2014 In-Memory

Channel9 Data-Exposed

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Data-Exposed

In-Memory OLTP – Common Workload Patterns and Migration Considerations whitepaper http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn673538.aspx

Microsoft DocumentDB

Azure DocumentDB is a fully managed service with fast reads and writes and flexible schema. It natively supports JSON and has a simple API for interacting with the data. An introduction can be found

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/documentdb-introduction/

 

Azure Machine Learning

This session on machine learning covered the resurgence in predictive analytics highlighting the benefits for making a breakthrough in machine learning.  The conceptual architecture, data science process and data mining models used were introduced.  The main thing to take away is that BI is reactive whereas machine learning is predictive. The design environment is free to use when you are not processing data. Training available free can be found

Microsoft - http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/machine-learning/

Machine Learning course at www.coursera.org

The Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization http://jhudatascience.org/

Other great session included SQL partitioning design, SQL Azure Backup to the Cloud etc.