It’s been an interesting ride, optimizing SQL Server, figuring out best use cases for the different flavors of SQL Server that we have come to rely on, and we’re seeing those choices pay off in terms of management, performance, and cost savings. The “flavors” I’m speaking of? AWS RDS SQL Server, Azure SQL DB specifically. Our event platform is based […]
Author: Stephen Wynkoop
SQL Server Backups and The Cloud
It used to be that SQL Server backups were the topic of every other webinar that was hitting the airwaves. Nowadays, that’s not the case; so many things have happened that make the backups just automatic. Not the least of these is the fact that your cloud provider may well be taking care of backups for you, making sure they […]
Analytics, Reporting and Fine Line of Privacy
It can be very challenging to pull together reporting, analytics, data privacy expectations and support for legislation for information in your systems. People – those users that you support – are learning to request more and more from reporting. They’re expecting systems to be smarter about the information stored in your databases. Azure does amazing things with analytics, looking at […]
Bridges Between Servers
Many times as you build out environments, you’re left pulling information from different SQL Servers and different sources, so you can assemble it in a common location. This may be the case where you’re pulling information from a SQL Server, a MySQL server, Oracle and other systems, so you can create reporting and analytics runs at the information. These bridges […]
Upgrades, Tuning and SQL Server
One of the areas that is coming up more and more frequently with the ability to move from version to version of SQL Server pretty fluidly with the cloud is that of tuning and tweaking your systems as you upgrade. Before any gets concerned, yes, these things apply if you’re working with on-premises systems, and these apply if you have […]
Complexities of "It Just Works"
There is a lot of talk about technical debt – that thing where systems have been allowed to run because, well, they work. Why poke a sleeping troll, or whatever that saying is. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. But this leads to technical decay that can be hard to quantify and hard to pull into any kind of […]
Selecting a Data Platform
The whole process of selecting the right platform and the right tools to support it is continuing to become more and more complex. It’s not just a matter of selecting a provider, but an approach to getting the job done. There are many different things to consider at different levels of this choice, and it will depend quite a lot […]
Data Drift, Data Maturation and Working With It
Azure ML datasets have a new tool just out, that of looking at datasets and monitoring for data drift. Not the latest fad in racing, but rather the changing of data over time. This is quite important to be aware of on a few different levels as you work with these datasets that track behavior (more later this week) and […]
Data Protection on Your (and Your User’s) Travel Times
Some really interesting posts coming out about proper caution when you’re connecting to networks as you travel about for the holidays. Of course, it really applies all the time, in all cases. But at this time when travel is such a key part of the year, some good reminders. One of the things I’ve personally seen more and more are […]
TIL: Columnar Encryption Might Be Susceptible to Abuse
I was reading a post talking about some SQL encryption technologies and statements (because, you know, that’s what I do just sitting around…) and found a new potential vulnerability that I’d never really considered before. I don’t pretend that I know *all the things* about security and encryption – it’s a constant process to keep learning and figuring out what […]