Category Archives: Uncategorized

Some major enhancements and a convergence on features from Azure to on-premise. The ‘R’ capabilities and seamless integration with big data are game-changers. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/sql-server  

Here’s factoid that most people, even many at the IT management level don’t realize: A 128 GB Thumb drive which can be had for under $40.00 can store enough information to accomplish identity theft for the population of the entire … Continue reading →

In my pursuit of understanding asset markets, I’ve maintained a SQL Server database with a lot of information about the stock market and other indexes. Using some data services along with SSIS, this database has been kept current to the … Continue reading →

We’ve all seen the news about the latest data security breaches. While bureaucrats blame these on sophisticated hacks from China, the reality is that these are mainly due to negligence and are so simple that a child with basic computer … Continue reading →

I’ve spent quite a bit of time the last few days trying to get Power BI preview to work for accessing a tabular model so am sharing my experience. Based on that experience, I am making some assertions that are … Continue reading →

Americans are increasingly becoming aware of the vulnerability of their private data with breaches now up in the millions that have not only disclosed credit card information, but even more potentially dangerous information such as social security numbers linked to … Continue reading →

A common misconception with SQL Server views is that only indexed views can provide update capability. Actually, any view that is schema-bound can be enabled for update by simply using an “INSTEAD OF” trigger.  Although an indexed view may also … Continue reading →

After finishing the PhD, I’m back into the lab to test out some new high-speed computing experiments. Recently, I retrieved one of my servers from co-location and put it back into my home-office lab giving me 3 servers with Fusion-IO … Continue reading →

In slowly changing (SCD) dimensions, type-2 attributes involves ending a dimension row when the attribute value changes with the current date and creating a new row starting from the current date. While this works great to capture history once a … Continue reading →

I just went through the experience of a corrupted transaction log for a large SQL Server database. It was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. I ended up restoring from a backup and then putting the … Continue reading →