Author: Kevin Kline

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. Not only has the Microsoft SQL Server engineering team added more and stronger leadership, outstanding individual engineers and staff members, but it is also radically moving its entire development process into a “cloud-first” ethos. Now, I’d like to show one of the most salient results of this new development process-accelerated product releases. It was only a few years ago (and is still the case for other data management platforms) that a major new release takes at least 2, but more likely 3 years. With the “production-ready” release of SQL Server 2017 Community ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. I always look forward to new research from Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., publishers of this magazine and other great products for data professionals. The latest report which you should read is “SQL Server Transformation: Toward Agility & Resiliency 2017; PASS Database Management Survey.” The survey was sponsored by Dell EMC and VMware, and Joe McKendrick, lead analyst at Unisphere Research, wrote the survey report.The DemographicsThe survey was conducted in partnership with the Professional Association for SQL Server (http://sqlpass.org), the worldwide association for SQL Server professionals, and included responses ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. Way back in the summer of 2014, I told you about how I used DB-Engines to determine the popularity of various data management tools and vendor platforms.At that time, I explained how I used DB-Engines.com and to see where the overall trends that I’m interested in are headed. Staying up with the trends isn’t just for fashionistas!We are the Champions, My FriendThe surprise came when Microsoft SQL Server was announced as the DBMS of the year for 2016 by DB-Engines.com. For the 12 months of 2016, SQL Server experienced a steep rise ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. There’s a very handy new tool from Microsoft called the Database Experimentation Assistant (DEA). The DEA makes it very easy to conduct A/B testing for SQL Server upgrades, providing quantitative insight into the performance differences across two versions of a database workload on SQL Server.In days gone by, this was a time-consuming and difficult process that had to be done manually. And, with every roll-out of a major upgrade to either our production applications or the vendor DBMS, the process was required to ensure that no major regressions might surprise us with ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. One of the long-standing differentiators between SQL Server’s Enterprise Edition (EE) and Standard Edition (SE), besides price, was the large number of features available only in EE. This is also true for other lower editions of SQL Server such as Web Edition and Express Edition. But there’s big news in the air! Microsoft has opened up many EE-only features as part of the SE, Web, and Express Editions!What’s Included?Microsoft’s intent with this raft of features was, in my opinion, to promote adoption of SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition and lower. In addition, Microsoft ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. If you are a SQL Server professional, but you don’t know about the PASS Summit, then you are missing out. The annual conference is convened every fall in downtown Seattle, the backyard of Microsoft, and attracted over 6,000 attendees this year. And, since it’s so close to the Microsoft Redmond campus, hundreds of the SQL Server developers and program managers get to attend—answering user questions, delivering sessions, and presenting chalk talks and panel discussions. Oh, and just in case you’ve been to other IT conferences, but not the PASS Summit, you should ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. I've been telling you about how Microsoft is experiencing explosive growth in its data science and analytics feature set (www.dbta.com/Editorial/Think-About-It/ Microsoft-on-the-Ascent-in-Business-Intelligence-and- Data-Science-110196.aspx). I have also covered important new feature sets such as Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and advancements in self-service BI using Microsoft PowerBI. Despite all of these new and very useful tools, the rapid growth shows no signs of slowing. Let’s look at some additional new features in this  space.Microsoft Cognitive Services: Language, Computer Vision, and Academic Knowledge APIsOne of the great promises of AI is contextual processing that come naturally ... Read More

Feed: Database Trends and Applications : All Articles. As a heavy user of other RDBMS data platforms, I have long appreciated the extra effort that Microsoft put into their data management and administration tool, the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Other database platforms certainly tried, for example Oracle’s OEM, but at the end of the day TOAD (full disclosure, I am a former employee of Quest/Dell Software) earned my loyalty on that platform.While SSMS is an outstanding administration and T-SQL programming tool, it does have its minor qualms and quibbles. At the top of the list was that previous versions ... Read More