Azure

Azure Cortana Intelligence Suite – with Azure Data Catalog

Mr. Fox SQL4 Comments

[read this post on Mr. Fox SQL blog]

I presented at our local Melbourne SQL Server User Group (SSUG) this week on Azure Cortana Intelligence Suite – and the integration with the Azure Data Catalog.  If you are interested to see the presentation then have a look here – https://mrfoxsql.wordpress.com/presentations/

One of the things which stood out to me from attendees is that the number of new services and new cloud terms which are being introduced across the industry is sometimes difficult to keep track of – especially when you have a day job to do!  Right now I cannot think of another time in IT where the rate of change is so dramatic.

More-so it can also sometimes be hard to know which services to use together to get the best architecture outcome.

So this blog post is aimed to explain at a high level the Azure Cortana Intelligence Suite of services and one example of how they could be deployed together in a cohesive architecture.

I will talk to each of these services in the context of a business solution to manage a farm of wind turbines!

And so, lets get into some discussion on Azure IoT Solutions!

WindFarms

 

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Azure DocumentDB – Preparing, Loading and Querying Data

Mr. Fox SQL10 Comments

[read this post on Mr. Fox SQL blog]

Recently I have been using Azure DocumentDB (aka CosmosDB) to validate several business use cases for a variety of application purposes.

For those SQL DBA’s and others who are new to Azure CosmosDB, its a recent entrant to the NoSQL document database world, and as its a PaaS document database cloud service it has the agility, scalability and availability of the Azure Cloud.

Being a schema-less Azure PaaS “document database” for my use case I wanted to verify…

  • basic costing and performance levels
  • methods to create valid JSON documents from SQL Server
  • methods to load JSON documents into Azure CosmosDB
  • performing basic like-for-like document query comparisons with SQL Server

Some homework reading for those interested…

 

22 May 2017 [EDIT]

As hinted above, Microsoft have just recently added significant new functionality and also formally renamed Azure DocumentDB as Azure CosmosDB – a major evolution of the NoSQL database engine.  The details on the renamed service is here – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/dear-documentdb-customers-welcome-to-azure-cosmos-db/

 

And so… let get into the belly of Azure DocumentDB CosmosDB!

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PASS 2015 Session Report – Azure SQL DW Integration with the Azure Ecosystem & End of PASS 2015

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PASS 2015 continues (and finishes up today!) in Seattle.

Its been an amazing conference this year with a few things really hitting home;

  • Amazing technology announcements around SQL 2016 CTP3
  • Incredible advances in almost every component in Azure Data Services
  • Full and seamless SQL/Azure ecosystem integration – and by that I mean both On-Prem and/or within the Azure Cloud.  The story of either On-Prem or Azure Cloud is compelling enough individually, however the Hybrid story is now a reality for SQL and enables dynamic and flexible architectures well beyond what competitors can offer.
  • BUT what astounds me the most is actually the pace of change – barely a day goes by where I don’t receive a new services or feature update related to SQL 2016 CTP3 or Azure.
  • I don’t recall a time (in recent memory) where the step changes have come so thick/fast – its certainly changed from where I started as a DBA on RDB/VMS back in 1994 where patches arrived by mail on tape cartridge! 🙂
  • (As a quick aside a chief designer on RDB was Jim Gray, the same who joined Microsoft to lead the SQL Server architecture to stardom soon after Oracle bought-out and shelved DEC around 1995+)

 

Enough reminiscing already – moving along – Today I attended 5 back-back sessions, and again I cannot blog about all of them in the time I have (or want to spend), but the one which stands out the most was Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Integration with the Azure Ecosystem by Drew DiPalma of Microsoft.

This session focused specifically on the Azure ecosystem surrounding the Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) and how it can seamlessly interact with other Azure components to create different operational solutions.  To me this was very compelling, not necessarily due to the SQL DW technology (which I know well already as the on-prem APS appliance), but more-so as it showed just how easily all parts of Azure can happily work together.

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PASS 2015 Session Report – Understanding Real World Big Data Scenarios

Mr. Fox SQL1 Comment

PASS 2015 continues in Seattle, and today was my session at 1045am on Using Azure Machine Learning (ML) to Predict Seattle House Prices.  The background and info on my session is here http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2015/Sessions/Details.aspx?sid=7794

Overall I was pretty happy with how it went - and I think everyone who attended had a lot of fun with some of the games and tests I injected into the presentation.  Everyone had a chance to be a Real Estate Agent :) - and at the same time learn some great methods around performing Azure ML Regression Predictive Analytics.

 

BUT – moving right along – I also attended 3 other sessions today, again I cannot blog about all of them in the time I have, but the one which made me think the most about technology implementations and how they can improves lives was Understanding Real World Big Data Scenarios by Nishant Thacker of Microsoft.

It wasn’t about use cases for big data (as this is a horse already bolted), but more around really innovative and interesting ways the ecosystem of Azure technologies could be deployed to solve some complex business problems, or moreso simply ways to make our lives better!

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PASS 2015 Session Report – KeyNote and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines: Features, Best Practices & Roadmap

Mr. Fox SQL1 Comment

So PASS officially kicked off this morning leading into the next 3 days of back to back sessions.

You could certainly tell that the keynote was on… I mean the dining room was pumping…!

WhereTheBloodyHellAreYou

 

 

Oh that’s right, everyone is at the keynote!

KeyNoteDay1

 

 

So the Keynote session was hosted by Joseph Sirosh Group Vice President, Data Group.

The big tell for the key note was undoubtedly the SQL Server 2016 CTP3 and just whats packed to the rafters within the software.  If you want to learn more about that then I recommended step across to this link here http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2015/10/28/sql-server-2016-everything-built-in.aspx

Key Takeaways from the Keynote;

  • SQL 2016 is really a major release that really solidifies the Microsoft view of a solid foot in both the On Prem and In Cloud data platform camps.
  • “The future is both earth and sky!”
  • The release offers much On Prem capability like Polybase (to APS), R integration (advanced analytics), Always Encrypted, SSAS/SSRS improvements
  • The release also provides the ability to seamlessly integrate from On Prem to Azure Cloud – and/or back like Polybase (to HDInsight), Stretch Database – and SQL already has capability to use Azure VM’s for SQL AAG solutions and Azure backups.
  • An interesting takeaway – the human size of human genome is approx 1.5 Gigabytes, or about 2 CDs worth of storage space.  How small do you feel now?

 

I then attended 4 sessions, but today there is really only time to blog about this one, mostly for me it was the most impressive in regards to capability and just how far its come!

The session was SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines – Features and Best Practices and was presented by Luis Vargas is a Senior Program Manager Lead in the SQL Server team.

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