James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last nine years. Before that he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 35 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
Exciting news! Microsoft announced today that SQL Server 2012 has released to manufacturing (RTM). Customers and partners can download an evaluation (or here) of the product today and can expect general availability to begin on April 1 (see Microsoft SQL Server … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2012 contains six new features for SSRS: Excel Renderer for Microsoft Excel 2003, 2007 & 2010 – Excel renderer will support the Excel 2007 XLSX format. To enable this feature, Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint must be … Continue reading →
Database Recovery Advisor is a new feature in SQL Server 2012 that introduces significant user experience enhancements to the ways DBAs can now restore databases using SQL Server Management Studio: An enhancement for point in time recovery using a new visual timeline feature, … Continue reading →
Extended Events is a general event-handling system for performance monitoring that was introduced in SQL Server 2008. It has a highly scalable and highly configurable architecture that allows users to collect as much or as little information as is necessary to troubleshoot or identify a … Continue reading →
Given two types of underlying data sources (a data warehouse and a OLAP cube built from the data warehouse) there are many different possible presentation layers (client tools) that serve different user communities with varying usage profiles. There is a … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2012 introduces several significant enhancements to spatial types, such as support for new subtypes of circular arcs, new and updated methods and aggregates for all subtypes, improved precision, and updates to the geography type. More info: New Spatial … Continue reading →
FileTable is a new feature in SQL Server 2012 that is built on top of SQL Server FILESTREAM technology, which allows BLOB data to be stored as individual files separate from a database’s data files. Interactions with the FileStream files … Continue reading →
I’m hoping to do a presentation at SQLRally in Dallas on May 10-11, but I need your help! There is a Community Vote for the remaining 20 sessions, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would go to http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2012/dallas/CommunityChoice.aspx and vote … Continue reading →
Version 2 of PowerPivot (download) is being made available with SQL Server 2012. There are many new features, and my top 5 are: Diagram View – Instead of looking at the defined relationships in a list format, v2 allows you to view the … Continue reading →
Microsoft StreamInsight, first introduced in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, is a way to effectively analyze large amounts of event data streaming in from multiple sources. You can derive insights from critical information in near real-time. StreamInsight is a platform … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2012 has a number of new T-SQL features. Listed below are all of the new features, along with the best links I have found that describe each feature: WITH RESULT SETS, OFFSET AND FETCH, THROW, SEQUENCE: See New T-SQL … Continue reading →
A problem that has plagued SQL Server for a long time is that a database is not very portable. Sure, you can backup or detach a database and restore or attach it elsewhere, but when you do that, you are … Continue reading →
SQL Azure is a cloud-based service from Microsoft that uses a special version of SQL Server as its backend. SQL Azure helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any … Continue reading →
Microsoft Connect (blog, twitter) is a site where you can post feedback to improve the quality of many Microsoft products and impact the direction of those products. As of this writing, the site accepts bugs for 51 products and suggestions for 34 … Continue reading →
Data Quality Services (DQS) is a brand new feature in SQL Server 2012. In short, DQS enables you to build a knowledge base, and use that knowledge base to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks such as correction, enrichment, … Continue reading →
When designing a data warehouse, how you handle changes to dimensional data over time is the most important decision to make. It is rare that a dimension will remain static over time. For example, a customer may change their phone number or … Continue reading →
Ok, I know that creating a time dimension down to the millisecond is extremely rare. After all, we are talking about 86,400,000 records. In my case, it is needed for a customer with a 50TB database that contains stock trades that … Continue reading →
While using a cube in SSAS is usually a great source for reporting, it is not always the best choice. Sometimes it is better to report off of the data warehouse that the cube is built from. For example, say … Continue reading →
Here is a situation I ran into recently concerning using a fact table in SSAS. This experience may help you out if you run into something similar: A data warehouse has an advertising table that has these four fields: Product Type, Inches, … Continue reading →
As your SSAS cube gets bigger, cube processing time will become a problem. This is especially true as more and more companies want cube processing during the day instead of the usual off-hours time when no one is using the … Continue reading →