To Spark … and Beyond!

One of the very exciting thing about Spark is that there is the potential to have one ubiquitous tool to solve my aggregate, machine learning, graph, and other statistical / analytics problems.  And while I am proud of my time with the SQL Server team and we had achieved some amazing lofty goals (e.g. Yahoo! 24TB Analysis Services cube), I had been drawn back to my statistical roots. Statistical Roots? It may surprise you that I had been bouncing between the path of becoming a Doctor (…you know, Asian parents) or a statistician (my father was a Statistics professor).  …

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SQL Server Reporting Services Disaster Recovery Slides and Webinar

Back in March 2014, Ayad Shammout (@aashamout) and I – and hosted by Julie Koesmarno (@mssqlgirl) had the opportunity to present real world SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Disaster Recovery as part of the PASS DW/BI webinar series.  In this session, we dived into lessons learned from the robust end-to-end DR solution at CareGroup Healthcare. This DR method will involve both automatic and manual failover in the form of content switches, SQL Server failover clustering, and database mirroring. You can find the slides below. SQL Server Reporting Services Disaster Recovery Webinar from Ayad Shammout and Denny Lee As well, the webinar…

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Analysis Services Multidimensional: It is the Order of Things

Jem’Hadar Warrior: “I am a Jem’Hadar. He is a Vorta. It is the order of things.” Captain Sisko: “Do you really want to give up your life for the ‘order of things’?” Jem’Hadar Warrior: “It is not my life to give up, Captain – and it never was.” — From Rocks and Shoals, Star Trek DS9, written by Ronald D. Moore —– Authors: Denny Lee, Akshai Mirchandani, and Dianne Wood Earlier in the year (2013), Dianne Wood and I had presented Yahoo! Big Data and Microsoft Bi – Bigger and Better Together and the PASS Business Analytics Conference.  One of…

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Presentation: Yahoo!, Big Data, and Microsoft BI: Bigger and Better Together

About three and a half years ago, I had virtually joined the Yahoo! Targeting, Analytics, and Optimization (TAO) Engineering team where we embarked on an incredible journey to create the largest single instance Analysis Services cube.  Mind you, that was not our actual goal – our actual goal was to create fast interactive analytics against a massive amount of display advertising data from Yahoo! sites.  The requirements were staggering as noted in the slide below.   Ultimately, we took 2PB of data from one of Yahoo!’s large Hadoop cluster and created a 24TB Analysis Services cube so users could do…

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Enterprise Reporting Services Jump Start Guide

While there is a lot of deserved and great interest with Power View, almost forgotten is the IT workhorse SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services for your corporate / managed reporting infrastructure.  For great references on SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services, my suggestions include: What’s New In SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog Robert Bruckner’s Reporting Services and Power View Blog – Principal Architect within SQL Server Reporting with excellent insight into both Reporting Services and Power View. In my former life, I had worked on some pretty complex Reporting Services customer projects.  While these references…

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Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional Performance and Operations Guide

A while back, Thomas Kejser (@thomaskejser | http://blog.kejser.org/) and I had written a couple cool guides on Analysis Services Multidimensional: SQL Server 2008R2 Analysis Services Operations Guide Analysis Services 2008 R2 Performance Guide To make it easier to consume, Technet has created a new series of E-books which can be found in the E-Book Gallery for Microsoft Technologies.  Included in the first series of eBooks, you can find the combined Performance and Operations Guides in the links below.   Description Download this book to learn about Analysis Services Multidimensional performance tuning from an operational and development perspective. This book consolidates…

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Announcing SSAS Maestros v1.2

In homage to the maestro, the Battlestar Galactica image links to Bear McCreary’s All Along The Watch Tower. Note, This is a re-post of Announcing SSAS Maestros v1.2 on the SQLCAT blog. — We are proud to announce that SQLCAT will continue with the SSAS Maestros course in June and July in Redmond and Madrid. SSAS Maestros 1.2 Courses Join us for a five-day deep-dive course on Analysis Services 2008 R2 UDM and join the SSAS Maestro Program.  Prepared and presented by SQLCAT, top industry experts and the SQL Server Analysis Server team, this intensive 500-level course gives top SSAS…

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Why the obsession with random I/O within the context of SSAS?

As many of you know from the various blogs, whitepapers, and conferences from SQLCAT, there is a big obsession or compulsion toward I/O by various members of SQLCAT.  If you’re not already familiar with this topic, definitely reference Mike Ruthruff’s whitepaper Predeployment I/O Best Practices. But as could be seen from the SSAS Maestros session in Redmond this week (for more information, check out What is the SSAS Maestros?), there is even an obsession for IOps even within the context of Analysis Services as noted in the papers below Please click through to continue reading: Why the obsession with random…

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