PASS SQL Saturday #194 Exeter

The second SQL Saturday in the UK was held in Exeter at the weekend. This was an excellent event for SQL professionals to learn new skills and network.  This event helped extend the breadth and depth of my knowledge on the data platform.

I attended a precon on High Availability Data Platforms for SQL Server 2012 with Windows 2012. This day was packed full of technical details and architectural design patterns for failover clustering and availability groups  including the current state of Windows 2012 features not yet supported on SQL Server 2012.  The new windows 2012 features, Resilient File Systems (Refs) and Data Deduplication are 2 features are not fully supported. Refs doesn’t support instance file initialisation or CHECKDB. 

On the SQL Saturday I attended sessions such as layered partitioning management of large data sets, a session on Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW ) and Polybase.  Polybase sits between the relational and non-relational engine and allows data to be queried using T-SQL.  Then I also attended a couple of sessions within the BI landscape on PowerView and MDX .

On a non technical track I attended a couple of sessions on professional development. These sessions covered the importance of having a learning plan for the year and the other on how to be a successful architect.  A few architecture models were mentioned such as ITIL service Management Application Lifecycle, TOGAF and Perspective Based Architecture (PBA). A few of the resources mentioned were

Microsoft Application Architecture Guide
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ff650706.aspx
Microsoft Patterns and Practices, proven practices for predicable results
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff921345.aspx

This was a great SQL event to start the year with.

Database Management Survey 2013

I wish to say a huge thank you to all those people who participated in the Database Management Survey 2013 for my PhD research. 

I have put together a few demographics which might be of interest to people.  The results of the data will be published in due course once analysis has taken place.  

To view the document.

SQL Server Benchmark and Testing Tools

A list of tools are mentioned for benchmarking and stress testing at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sriramg/archive/2011/06/20/sql-server-benchmark-tools-and-stress-testing-tools.aspx

A few of the tools are listed below. 

SQLIO
SQLIO is a tool provided by Microsoft which can also be used to determine the I/O capacity of a given configuration. SQLIO is provided ‘as is’ and there is no support offered for any problems encountered when using the tool. http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=20163

SQLStress
SQLStress is a tool to stress test a Microsoft SQL Server installation. Its main purpose is to find infrastructure problems within an installation. It can also be used for hardware sizing, system tuning or benchmarking. The focus is on simplicity. http://www.sqlstress.com/Overview.aspx

SQL Load Generator
SQL Load Generator is used to run multiple concurrent queries against SQL Server. The user can choose the number of concurrent queries to run, provide different queries, choose SQL or domain accounts, and provide application name settings. http://sqlloadgenerator.codeplex.com/

Hammerora
Hammerora is a free open source tool, so it’s an extremely accessible, quick way to start benchmarking or simulating load. The autopilot feature also makes running workloads fairly automatic. http://hammerora.sourceforge.net/hammerora_mssqlserver_oltp_v2.7.pdf
More details about it are here http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2012/06/load-test-sqlserver/

SQLQueryStress
SQLQueryStress is a free tool for SQL Server programmers. It is designed to assist with performance stress testing of T-SQL queries and routines http://www.datamanipulation.net/sqlquerystress/ 
More details about this stress tool http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2730/sql-query-stress-tool/

Database Research Groups

With carrying out my own database research wanted to find out how many database research groups exist. I have found that quite a large number of database research groups worldwide exist. 

A few of the ones I have discovered are 

European database research groups

Microsoft Research Database Group

The group is to increase the usefulness of database systems to users by creating, extending, and applying database technology. They are located in Redmond, Washington, which is in the greater Seattle area.

Gray Systems Lab

The Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab is a collaborative effort between Microsoft and the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that started in March 2008.

Database Systems Group University of Wisconsin—Madison

They have been conducting database related research for almost 30 years

Berkeley Database Group

Berkeley has led database systems research for over a quarter century. Their research covers new challenges in data management, as well as data-centric approaches to diverse areas including distributed systems, programming languages, statistical computation, human computing and interaction, and technology for developing regions.

University of Washington Database Group

The University of Washington's database group aims at broadening the focus of database and data management techniques beyond their traditional scope.  They do both theoretical and systems work in areas such as probabilistic databases, stream processing, sensor-based monitoring, databases and the web, XML, data management for ubiquitous computing, data integration, and data mining. 

 

Database Management Survey 2013 Update

The 2013 Database Management Survey is still open for responses. It will be closing at the end of January. There has been a good response to the survey to date from a wide range of countries, job roles, database engines and sectors.  

Currently 36 countries are represented in the responses. It would be good to have some responses from Finland, Iceland and Greenland to complete all Nordic countries and France, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein to complete European countries. Other countries notably absent in the respondents are Mexico, China and Japan. 

The industry sectors that are not as well represented so far are aerospace & defence and telecommunications.

The database applications used are mostly SQL Server related with a third of them relating to Oracle. A number of NoSQL and New SQL application users have replied but there are many new database applications that are not yet represented.  

I must thank every one who has been so kind to complete the survey and would still be most grateful to receive as many replies as possible over the final period of the survey. 

• The survey link is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HSWDBPH 
• The Code of Practice for the Research is http://sqltoolkit.co.uk/survey.htm

Database Management Survey 2013

As part of my PhD with the Open University I am currently undertaking an independent database survey . My research investigates the current practices and procedures that are used and examines the complexities of managing database systems. 

I have responses coming in across the database industry from people who use various different engines including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, CouchDb, Hadoop etc.

My Database Management Survey is at http://svy.mk/UcaxDm and is for database administrators, data professional to complete.  It is a comprehensive survey that maps the end to end lifecycle for managing database systems across the current systems of on premises, cloud, differing databases engines, virtualization and big data.

Please spend 15 minutes of your time to help the database industry and try to complete the full survey. There are no prizes for helping, just the satisfaction that you have helped the database community as a whole and of course my gratitude.

Don’t be left out and have your say in this independent PhD research survey.

Can a survey be saved halfway and finished later?
Survey Monkey says, yes, the system allows respondents to leave the survey and resume it later. However, this functionality is dependent on the settings you create for the collector.
The system saves responses through either a cookie or by the actual survey link. In either case, the [Next] button on a page or the [Done] button at the end of the survey must be clicked to save the page(s) of answers.

Database Management Survey

The Database Management Survey is open and available to complete at  http://svy.mk/UcaxDm .

I am currently undertaking a PhD with the Open University and my research investigates the current practices and procedures that are used in database management and examines the complexities of managing database systems.  The Database Management Survey is for database administrators, data professionals etc to complete for every database engine.

It is a comprehensive survey that covers the end to end lifecycle for managing database systems across on premises, cloud, differing database engines, virtualization and big data etc. The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete and I would be most grateful if you could complete as many questions as possible.

Many thanks for your help with the Database Management Survey 2013 and Merry Christmas.

@victoria_holt