SS SLUG January 2014 Meet-up Recap

The first SS SLUG meet-up for this year was held at Microsoft Sri Lanka on January 22. We had two sessions on database development and data mining, with 47 attendees in total. Here's a summary of the event, including pictures and downloads

• Session Summary: http://is.gd/ssslug
• Photo Gallery: http://is.gd/ssslug_pic201401
• Slides and Code Downloads: http://is.gd/ssslug_dls2014
• diGIT Live Blog: http://digit.lk/sql-server-sri-lanka-user-group-january-meetup/
• Video: Video of the entire event is being processed by diGIT magazine and will be available soon.

If you had missed the December 2013 meet-up or need to see the action, see these links:

diGIT Live Blog | Photo Gallery | diGIT Photo Gallery | Downloads | Video

Default Database Issues and Best Practices

Default database is a feature which is not used by many. This article is about default databases.

January 2014 Meet-up

Session #1

TITLE: Predictive Modeling with the Microsoft Naïve Bayes algorithm

Join this session where Dinesh showcases the capabilities of predictive analysis using the Microsoft Naïve Bayes algorithm. Naïve Bayes is a classification algorithm that ships with SQL Server Analysis Services and is used to mine for and predict outcomes based on selected parameters.

CATEGORY: Business Intelligence (Data Mining)

SPEAKER: Dinesh Asanka (MVP), Database Specialist (Pearson Lanka)
Linked.In | Blog | Facebook | @dineshasanka

40 minutes approx.

 

Session #2

TITLE: Writing Resilient T-SQL Code - Part II

Continuing from where he left off from November's session, Gogula will guide you through writing better T-SQL code that is more resilient to unexpected issues and common code failures. This session is based on the book Defensive Database Programming by Alex Kuznetsov.

CATEGORY: Development

SPEAKER: Gogula G. Aryalingam (MVP), Technical Architect (Navantis)
Linked.In | @gogula | Blog

40 minutes approx.

 

Time & Location

JANUARY 22, 2013 - 6:00 PM Onwards at MICROSOFT SRI LANKA

11th Floor, DHPL Building, No. 42, Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 2, SRI LANKA

An excellent opportunity to network and learn. Refreshments provided.

Entrance FREE

AI Search Samples

Just for a moment , I moved away from standard database discussions and thought of writing something about AI.

This is something I did for my one of the assignment calls Artificial Intelligence Search.

I used Indian Airlines as a scenario to demonstrate AI search features.

Breadth First Search

Depth First Search

Greedy Search

Uniform Cost Search

A* Search

Watch out for SQL Server 2012 licensing pitfalls

Licensing is little puzzling with all the technologies like virtualization and cloud around.

This article should give us some what understanding about licensing.

What is LocalDB?

It is a new version of SQL Server Express dedicated to developers to help them avoid a full installation of other editions of SQL Server.

Benefits.
Small installer. The 32-bit version has 28.2 MB and the 64-bit version has 33.7 .
Simplified. It does do not require configuration or administration.
Run as a low privileged user.
Simple installation.
Offers the same T-SQL language as SQL Server Express. It supports stored procedures,  geometry and geography data types, triggers, views.

Limitations.
It does not support Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Window 2000.
It does not support WOW. LocalDB doesn't support installing 32-bit version on 64-bit Windows.
Allows only local connections. Only Named Pipes connections.
Only SQL Server 2012 Management Studio (on a computer updated with .NET Framework 4.0.2) can be used to manage LocalDB. SQL Server Management Studio of previous versions of SQL Server cannot be used.
Visual Studio 2010 RTM does not support LocalDB.

Read more at http://www.sqlcoffee.com/SQLServer2012_0004.htm

Data Model Capabilities

In SQL Server 2012, there is a new data model called Tabular which is an addition to the existing Multidimensional Model.

So what are the limits for Tabular data model?

Feature	Multidimensional	Tabular
Calculated measures	Yes	Yes
Distinct count	Yes	Yes (via DAX)
Hierarchies	Yes	Yes
KPIs	Yes	Yes (not trends)
Actions	Yes	No
Linked objects	Yes	No
Many-to-many relationships	Yes	No
Parent-child hierarchies	Yes	Yes (via DAX)
Partitions	Yes	Yes
Perspectives	Yes	Yes
Semi-additive measures	Yes	Yes
Translations	Yes	No
User-defined hierarchies	Yes	Yes
Custom assemblies	Yes	No
Custom rollups	Yes	No
Writeback	Yes	No
Data mining	Yes	No

If you require data mining, writeback, or translations within a data model, this can only be facilitated by multidimensional data models.

Microsoft Launches SQL Server 2014 Preview 2

On Wednesday Microsoft announced the release of SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP2).

SQL Server 2014 was announced a few months ago. It continues much of the technologies of SQL Server 2012, which was shipped about two years ago. However, Microsoft is stressing several new capabilities in SQL Server 2014 CTP2: The use of in-memory online transactional processing (OLTP) technology that formerly went by the code name "Hekaton," and the ability to use SQL Server 2014 with Windows Azure to enable scalability, as was as backup and disaster recovery support.

Microsoft releases SQL Server 2014 CTP2

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 2

Ford drives in the right direction with big data

Nowadays, Ford uses big data to find out what their customers want and to develop better cars faster. Developing a product that requires 20.000 – 25.000 different parts to develop, big data seems to be the only way forward and Ford bets heavily on big data.

Ford actually opened a lab in Silicon Valley to improve its cars with big data. In order to progress their cars regarding fuel consumption, safety, quality and emissions, Ford gathers data from over four million cars with in-car sensors and remote application management software. All data is analysed in real-time giving engineers valuable information to notice and solve issues in real-time, know how the car responds in different road and weather conditions and any other forces that could affect the car.

Ford is also installing numerous sensors in their cars to monitor behaviour. They install over 74 sensors in cars including sonar, cameras, radar, accelerometers, temperature sensors and rain sensors. As a result, it Energi line of plug-in hybrid cars generate over 25 gigabytes of data every hour. This data is returned back to the factory for real-time analysis and returned to the driver via a mobile app. The cars in its testing facility even generate up to 250 gigabytes of data per hour from smart cameras and sensors.

Read more at http://www.bigdata-startups.com/BigData-startup/ford-drives-direction-big-data/?goback=%2Egde_126490_member_5792682009092435971#%21

Getting Started with Data Mining in SQL Server

As database professionals, we typically work in a field of exact science. For example, a common practice in business intelligence (BI) solutions is creating duplicate copies of data sets, then comparing the results from the different sources to make sure they're the same. If you extract five years' worth of data from an application's database and put it into a data mart, the results in the data mart must be the same as the results in the application's database, even if the table structures were changed and older records were archived. You might build a cube or semantic model and again check to make sure the results are exactly the same as the source system. If the numbers don't add up, the results are rejected because you know that something is wrong and must be corrected. I have to confess that not getting a conclusive result when working on a tough data problem sometimes keeps me up at night.

Read more http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/sql-server-data-tools-data-mining-model-designer