Microsoft is cracking the door to its cloud data warehouse. The Azure SQL Data Warehouse is now ready to accept data from customers in limited use cases.Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Microsoft's cloud-based data repository offering, is available as a limited preview, the company announced yesterday.
Read more http://www.eweek.com/cloud/microsoft-offers-azure-sql-data-warehouse-for-limited-preview.html
SQL Server, with Windows and Office, helped make Microsoft. The database sits in a $13bn business unit and while Microsoft’s server products grew 11 per cent – $1.7bn last year – that was driven primarily by sales of SQL Server.
The man who paved the path was Bob Muglia. A 24-year Redmond veteran, he was SQL Server’s first product manager and led the server and tools business.
That was until 2011, when he was elbowed out by ex-CEO Steve Ballmer in a disagreement over strategy for the server and tools business.
Also, the 2008 DATAllegro acquisition, to build a Netezza-like appliance, had proved to little and too late for Microsoft as the market had moved.
Read http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/24/snowflake_muglia_elastic_sql/
Integrating R to SQL Server is a major improvements for SQL Server 2016.
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Row-level security is great for all or nothing decisions, but there are times when users need access to a subset of the data. For example, the last four digits of a credit card or social security number. This can be done at the application level, but that leaves room for error. You only need to forget the mask one time to leak sensitive data.
SQL Server 2016 attempts to address this with a feature called Dynamic Data Masking. When a column is created with a mask, it defaults to returning only the data exposed through the mask. There are three types of masks currently available:
Read more at http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/SQL-Server-Masking
WHO IS A DBA? A database administrator (DBA) directs or performs all activities related to maintaining a successful database environment. Responsibilities include designing, implementing, and maintaining the database system; establishing policies and procedures pertaining to the management, security, maintenance, and use of the database management system. To make long story short A DBA is the backbone of any mission critical system.
check whether the list is correct.
A common criticism for SQL Server’s security model is that it only understands tables and columns. If you want to apply security rules on a row-by-row basis, you have to simulate it using stored procedures or table value functions, and then find a way to make sure there is no way to bypass them. With SQL Server 2016, that is no longer a problem.
Read more at http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/SQL-Server-Row-Level-Security
This is the question some one asked today. I haven’t done this but I can remember I read this some where. So thought of digging this today.
Some forums are suggesting a product.
http://www.datawatch.com/monarch-is-back/
Out of the box, Datawatch Monarch can work with a wide range of report formats including PDF, XML, HTML, text, spool and ASCII files. Access data from invoices, sales reports, balance sheets, customer lists, inventory, logs and more. The system is easy to use, allowing you to quickly select a file and automatically convert it into structured data for analysis.
Following blog includes how to import several types to SQL Server.
http://sqlage.blogspot.com/2013/12/ssis-how-to-import-files-text-pdf-excel.html
Following blogspot also have lot of links
http://www.forumarray.com/ssis-data-flow-source-component-to-read-a-pdf-file-226359
Following blog is the most relevant one for me. http://sql31.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-to-load-data-from-pdf-file-in-ssis.html
This users script task and you have the option of customizing it.
SQL Server 2016 seeks to make encryption easier via its new Always Encrypted feature. This feature offers a way to ensure that the database never sees unencrypted values without the need to rewrite the application.
Read more at http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/SQL-Server-Always-Encrypted
Enterprises like choices, they abhor vendor lock in, and they like the options that open source gives. But at the same time, too many choices fragments markets and doesn’t allow for the cultivation of larger vendors that can afford to take on the big problems. You need a balance between large enough to scale and so large as to be too overbearing, or sometimes, in the antitrust sense, to be abusive.
With the Hadoop Summit sponsored by Hortonworks going on this week and some tectonic changes in the systems market that have been going on for some months now, we are pondering how this all fits together given the current state of both Hadoop and the systems markets.
Read more http://www.theplatform.net/2015/06/11/we-need-only-three-hadoops-and-maybe-three-systems/
DBAs need access to timely, detailed information in order to act, rather than information that requires further investigation. Read this paper and learn how to leverage event notifications and extended events to monitor in SQL Server, and discover how to these tools enable you to act on issues and avoid outages.
