James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last eleven years. Before that he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 40 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
Azure Data Lake Analytics (ADLA) is a distributed analytics service built on Apache YARN that allows developers to be productive immediately on big data. This is accomplished by submitting a job to the service where the service will automatically run it … Continue reading →
I previously talked about PolyBase and its enhancements (see PASS Summit Announcements: PolyBase enhancements). There is some confusion on PolyBase use cases as they are different depending on whether you are using PolyBase with Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) or … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database (SQL DB) has increased its max database size from 1TB to 4TB at no additional cost. Customers using P11 and P15 premium performance levels can use up to 4 TB of included storage at no additional charge. … Continue reading →
Below I have attempted to list the various options for reporting off of Hadoop (HDInsight, HDP, Cloudera) using Power BI Desktop and Excel. Some of the data sources prompt you to choose the Data Connectivity mode of either Import or … Continue reading →
I see a lot of confusion when it comes to Azure Data Factory (ADF) and how it compares to SSIS. It is not simply “SSIS in the cloud”. See What is Azure Data Factory? for an overview of ADF, and I’ll assume … Continue reading →
There can sometimes be confusion, in IoT scenarios, between IoT Hub and Event Hub, as they can both be valid choices for streaming data ingestion. My Microsoft colleague, Steve Busby, an IoT Technology Specialist, is here to clear up the … Continue reading →
Microsoft’s end goal is for Azure to become the best cloud platform for customers to run their data workloads. This means Microsoft will provide customers the best environment to run their big data/Hadoop as well as a place where Microsoft … Continue reading →
In a perfect world a data warehouse would always return all queries very quickly, no matter what the size or complexity of the data warehouse. But the reality is that sometimes we won’t get the performance we need from the … Continue reading →
Microsoft has created data gateways as a way that cloud products such as Power BI and Azure Machine Learning can access on-prem data, often called a hybrid model. This is most useful for companies that do not want to put … Continue reading →
I have been seeing the term “HTAP” mentioned a lot recently, and I thought I would briefly explain the term. HTAP stands for Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing. HTAP is used to describe the capability of a single database that can … Continue reading →
For a long time clients would ask me how to determine the cost savings by migrating their applications and databases to Azure. I never had a good answer until now: The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator. Now in preview, just … Continue reading →
Azure Advisor is a really cool personalized recommendation engine that provides you with proactive best practices guidance on High Availability, Security, Performance and Cost when using Azure. It is in public preview. Learn more about Azure Advisor here. Azure Advisor … Continue reading →
Microsoft has a new release for the Analytics Platform System (APS). This appliance update is called APS 2016 and has been released to manufacturing and is now generally available (it’s also called AU6). APS is Microsoft’s scale-out Massively Parallel Processing … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Next up is the PolyBase enhancements. PolyBase is a technology that accesses and combines both … Continue reading →
Microsoft Connect(); is a developer event from Nov 16-18, where plenty of announcements are made. Here is a summary of the data platform related announcements: Azure Data Lake Analytics is generally available in two datacenters in US (EMEA coming in Feb). … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Next up is the Microsoft Professional Program for Big Data. A few months back, … Continue reading →
With Windows Server 2016 just been released, now is the perfect time to build an Azure VM with SQL Server 2016 on Windows Server 2016. In a matter of minutes you can be playing and learning both platforms. Below I will … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Next up is the free trial of Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW). Azure … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Next up is the technical Preview for Power BI reports on-prem in SSRS. The … Continue reading →
Microsoft usually has some interesting announcements at the PASS Summit, and this year was no exception. I’m writing a set of blogs covering the major announcements. Perhaps the biggest one is the introduction of the Azure Analysis Services Public Preview (OLAP). … Continue reading →