DBMS of the Year

SQL Server is the DBMS of the Year.
http://db-engines.com/en/blog_post/67

DB-Engines.com write "Microsoft SQL Server is the database management system that gained more popularity in our DB-Engines Ranking within the last year than any of the other 315 monitored systems. We thus declare Microsoft SQL Server as the DBMS of the Year 2016"

Cloud Platform Comparison Chart

2017 begins with a cloud platform comparison chart created by Endjin for services by Microsoft, Amazon and Google. It can be downloaded from
https://endjin.com/thought-leadership/cloud-platform-comparison

Cortana Intelligence and Machine Learning 2016 Blog Review

The Cortana Intelligence and Machine Learning Blog shared a summary of the top 10 posts of 2016. They included:










10. Recent Updates to the Microsoft Data Science Virtual Machine
9. Introducing Microsoft R Server 9.0
8. Microsoft and Liebherr Collaborating on New Generation of Smart Refrigerators
7. Introducing the Team Data Science Process from Microsoft
6. Game On! Introducing Cortana Intelligence Competitions
5. A One-Step Program for Becoming a Data Scientist
4. Building Deep Neural Networks in the Cloud with Azure GPU VMs, MXNet and Microsoft R Server
3. Data Science with Microsoft SQL Server 2016 – Free eBook
2. Announcing R Tools for Visual Studio
1. Making R the Enterprise Standard for Cross-Platform Analytics, Both On-Premises and in the Cloud

Read more about the articles here.

Happy New Year

Data past, data present and data future

Database and data management practices are changing and new practices need to be adaptive and agile. Here are a few data thoughts for data past, data present and data future.

Data of Christmas Past

•  Reports and dashboards have become standard place within the business. 
•  Big data is just the new look of data.
• DevOps has become mainstream.

Data of Christmas Present

• There is an increasing plethora of database architecture designs to choose from which means selecting the right design and database engine for the right job is harder than before.
• Business is driving the need for data. 
• Best practice delivery is hard in a fast changing environment. 
• Complexity is increasing in a diverse landscape.

Data of Christmas Yet to Come 

• The face of database administration is changing with multiple of types of engines, tools, applications and cloud offerings. 
•  It is necessary to have broad range of database knowledge to ensure best practice configurations are deployed for the plethora of tools.  
• Predicative analytics are becoming critical for business. 
• Deep learning utilizes machine learning to model data at high levels of abstraction which will transform how we live.
• Research is starting to become embedded in industry with the need to drive the next innovation.

SQL Server vNext

Microsoft announced the next version SQL Server for Windows and Linux http://tcrn.ch/2f4oUND

You can now download the SQL Server vNext community technology preview. The preview doesn’t include the business intelligence stack yet but will include improved support for R Services and a number of new machine learning and deep neural networking features.

SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1

SQL Server 2016 SP1 is released with key innovations accessible across all SQL Server editions. Microsoft want to make it easier for developers and partners to build and upgrade applications that take advantage of advanced performance, security, and data mart capabilities. Full details are here http://bit.ly/2eH8VGJ  

Features now available in all versions