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• I want a trivial example of where MongoDB can scale but a relational database will have trouble

  - by Ryan Weir

  I'm just learning to use MongoDB, and when discussing with other programmers would like a quick example of why NoSQL can be a good choice compared to a traditional RDBMS - however the scenarios I come up with and can find online seem pretty contrived. E.g. a blog with lots of traffic could be represented relationally, but will require some performance tuning and joins across tables (assuming full denormalization is being used). Whereas MongoDB would allow direct retrieval from one collection to the same effect. But the response I'm getting from other programmers is "why not just keep it relational and then add some trivial caching later?" Does anybody have a less contrived example where MongoDB will really shine and a relational db will fall over much quicker? The smaller the project/system the better, because it leaves less room for disagreement. Something along the lines of the complexity of the blog example would be really useful. Thanks.

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• I am not speaking at SQL Connections February 2011 meeting in Chicago suburbs

  - by Alexander Kuznetsov

  Usually it is an honor when we get to present to a user group, but not this time, so let me explain. I have no idea how my presentation got briefly mentioned in the invitation which went out today, without my consent. I have never asked or agreed to speak at SQL Connections February 2011 meeting in Chicago suburbs. Yet I apologize for any inconvenience it might have caused. I was going to speak at the meeting of December 2010, which was agreed by email with the person in charge. I had spent some...(read more)

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• Upcoming speaking engagements – want to meet me?

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  I have a very busy time ahead of me, with lots of travel, lots of speaking engagements, and hence lots of opportunity to meet and catch up with what has become known as the SQL Family. (An excellent term, by the way – it describes exactly how it has always felt to me!) So, for everyone who want to know when and where they can meet me (as well as for everyone who wants to make sure to stay as far away from me as possible), here is my schedule for the rest of the year, in chronological order: · September...(read more)

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• Which Edition of SQL Server 2008 R2 should you use?

  - by BuckWoody

  SQL Server 2008 R2 has just released to manufacturing (RTM’d) as I write this. With each new release, we make changes to the “Editions” we offer. A SQL Server “version” deals with the major changes in the product – and “edition” is a set of features and capabilities within that version (you’re welcome). So… definitely run over to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(v=SQL.105).aspx and check out the changes. For instance, did you know that SQL Server Express now supports 10GB databases? Well, then get over there and read what each edition does. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• SQL Saturday #274 Slovenia

  - by Dejan Sarka

  Yes, here it is SQL Saturday #274 is coming to Slovenia (#sqlsatSlovenia). The event will take place on Saturday, December 21st, at company pixi* labs, Informacijske tehnologije, d.o.o. Poslovna cona A 2 SI-4208 Šencur This company generously offered to host the event. We, the whole Slovenian SQL Server community, are very grateful for this. At this time, a call for speakers went out, and we are already getting the first proposals. We are especially happy that we will get possibility to show the foreign speakers how beautiful Slovenia and especially the capital Ljubljana is in December. Expect a lot of partying right on the streets, no matter of weather. Be prepared, we have slightly weird customs when it comes to drinks. For example, our regular special discount offer is not three drinks for the price of two; it is six drinks for the price of five. If you are a speaker or want to become one, consider sending a proposal. Since most of the sessions will be held in English and you don’t want to speak, consider coming as a visitor as well. Or maybe you would be interested to become a sponsor. Although we are targeting a low budgeted event, any kind of sponsorship is very welcome. Please feel free to contact the organizers if you are interested to become a sponsor: Matija Lah – [email protected], Mladen Prajdic - [email protected], or Dejan Sarka  - [email protected]. Looking forward to see you all!

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• DATEFROMPARTS

  - by jamiet

  I recently overheard a remark by Greg Low in which he said something akin to "the most interesting parts of a new SQL Server release are the myriad of small things that are in there that make a developer's life easier" (I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the actual quote but it was something like that). The new DATEFROMPARTS function is a classic example of that . It simply takes three integer parameters and builds a date out of them (if you have used DateSerial in Reporting Services then you'll understand). Take the following code which generates the first and last day of some given years: SELECT 2008 AS Yr INTO #Years UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM   #Years y here are the results: That code is pretty gnarly though with those CONVERTs in there and, worse, if the character string is constructed in a certain way then it could fail due to localisation, check this out: SET LANGUAGE french;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d;SET LANGUAGE us_english;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d; Notice how the datetime has been converted differently based on the language setting. When French, the string "2012-01-02" gets interpreted as 1st February whereas when us_english the same string is interpreted as 2nd January. Instead of all this CONVERTing nastiness we have DATEFROMPARTS: SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),    [LasttDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM   #Years y How much nicer is that? The bad news of course is that you have to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 or migrate to SQL Azure if you want to use it, as is the way of the world! Don't forget that if you want to try this code out on SQL Azure right this second, for free, you can do so by connecting up to AdventureWorks On Azure. You don't even need to have SSMS handy - a browser that runs Silverlight will do just fine. Simply head to https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net/ and use the following credentials: Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly One caveat, SELECT INTO doesn't work on SQL Azure so you'll have to use this instead: DECLARE @y TABLE ( [Yr] INT);INSERT @y([Yr])SELECT 2008 AS Yr UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),      [LastDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM @y y;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM @y y; @Jamiet

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• A proposal for #DAX Code Formatting #ssas #powerpivot #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently published a set of rules for DAX code formatting. The following is an example of what I obtain: CALCULATE (     SUMX (         Orders,         Orders[Amount]     ),     FILTER (         ALL ( Customers ),         CALCULATE (             COUNTROWS ( Sales ),             ALL ( Calendar[Date] )         ) > 42 + 8 – 25 * ( 3 - 1 )             + 2 – 1 + 2 – 1             + CALCULATE (                   2 + 2 – 2                   + 2 - 2               )             – CALCULATE ( 4 )     ) ) The goal is to improve code readability and I look forward to implement a code formatting feature in DAX Studio. The DAX Editor already supports the rules described in the article. I am also considering whether to add a rule specific for ADDCOLUMNS / SUMMARIZE because I would like to see the “pairs” of arguments to define a column in the same row or with a special indentation rule (DAX expression for a column is indented in the line following the column name). EVALUATE CALCULATETABLE (        CALCULATETABLE (         SUMMARIZE (             Audience,             'Date'[Year],             Individuals[Gender],             Individuals[AgeRange],             "Num of Rows", FORMAT (COUNTROWS (Audience), "#,#"),             "Weighted Mean Age",                 SUMX (Audience, Audience[Weight] * Audience[Age]) / SUM (Audience[Weight])         ),         SUMMARIZE (             BridgeIndividualsTargets,             Individuals[ID_Individual]         ),         Audience[Weight] > 0        ),        Targets[Target] = "Maschi",     'Date'[Year] = 2010,     'Date'[MonthName] = "January" ) I would like to get feedback for that – you can use comments here or comments in original article. Thanks!

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• Other SCOM users at SQLSaturday #65 Vancouver?

  - by merrillaldrich

  After a little hair-graying fun around passport renewal and family logistics, it looks like I'll be at the Vancouver SQLSaturday ! I am pumped. (I was entirely convinced they would call it "SQLSaturd' eh?" and I'm frankly a little disappointed about the name... :-) I'm on the tail end of a three-month deployment of System Center Operations Manager with the SQL management pack - if you are a DBA and SCOM user, too, I'd love to meet you and talk shop at the SQLSaturday event. Please drop me a line...(read more)

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• Observable Adapter

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  .NET 4.0 introduced a pair of interfaces, IObservable<T> and IObserver<T>, supporting subscriptions to and notifications for push-based sequences. In combination with Reactive Extensions (Rx), these interfaces provide a convenient and uniform way of describing event sources and sinks in .NET. The StreamInsight CTP refresh in November 2009 included an Observable adapter supporting “reactive” event inputs and outputs.   While we continue to believe it enables an important programming model, the Observable adapter was not included in the final (RTM) release of Microsoft StreamInsight 1.0. The release takes a dependency on .NET 3.5 but for timing reasons could not take a dependency on .NET 4.0. Shipping a separate copy of the observable interfaces in StreamInsight – as we did in the CTP refresh – was not a viable option in the RTM release.   Within the next months, we will be shipping another preview of the Observable adapter that targets .NET 4.0. We look forward to gathering your feedback on the new adapter design! We plan to include the Observable adapter implementation into the product in a future release of Microsoft StreamInsight. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Free eBooks - SQL Server and other Microsoft Technologies

  - by Greg Low

  Great to see the advice from Gail Erickson about the release of a number of SQL Server related eBooks on the new Microsoft eBook Gallery site. It's good to see this sort of content moving over to eBook formats.The e-books that are currently available include: SQL Server 2012 Transact-SQL DML Reference Master Data Services Capacity Guidelines Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn Solutions Guide for High Availability and Disaster Recovery QuickStart: Learn DAX Basics in 30 Minutes Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional Performance and Operations Guide You'll find details of them here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11608.e-book-gallery-for-microsoft-technologies.aspx

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• Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• SQL Server 2008 R2: StreamInsight changes at RTM: Count Windows

  - by Greg Low

  Another interesting change in the RTM version of StreamInsight is the addition of a new window type. Count Windows aren't time based but are based on counting a number of events. The window type provided in this release is called CountByStartTimeWindow. Based on that name, you'd have to presume we might get other types of count windows in the future. This new window type takes two parameters. The first is the number of events. The second is an output policy, similar to the policies now required for...(read more)

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• Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010

  One of the powerful aspect of Visual Studio is its ability to be extended and many people do that. You can find numerous extensions at the Visual Studio Gallery. The VSX team links to a 4-part blog series on how to create and share templates. You can also look find extension examples on the vsx code gallery.With Visual Studio 2010, you can search for items and install them directly from within Visual Studio's new Extension Manager. You launch it from the Tools menu:When the dialog comes up, be sure to explore the various actionable areas on the left and also note the search on the right. For example, I typed "MP" and it quickly filtered the list to show me the MPI Project Template:Others have written about this before me, just bing Extension Manager (and note that Beta2 introduced changes, some of which you can witness in the screenshot above). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• TechEd North America 2012 – Day 1 #msTechEd

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Yesterday I and Alberto delivered the PreCon day about BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012. We received very good feedback and now I am looking forward to meet people that read our blogs and our books! Ping me on Twitter at @marcorus if you want to contact me during the conference. This is my schedule for the next few days: ·         Monday, June 11, 2012 o   10:30am-12:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   I will try to watch some sessions in the afternoon o   6:30pm-7:00pm I will be at the O’Reilly booth meeting book readers and doing some book signing ·         Tuesday, June 12, 2012 o   12:30pm-3:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   5:00pm-6:15pm I will attend the Alberto’s session DBI413 Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (room S330E) o   6:15pm-9:00pm Community Night & Ask the Experts, we’ll discuss about Analysis Services, Tabular and Multidimensional! ·         Wednesday, June 13, 2012 o   11:15am-11:30am Don’t miss this special demo session at the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Data Platform Theater in the Technical Learning Center area (next to the SQL Server 2012 zone). I and Alberto will present Querying multi-billion rows with many to many relationships in SSAS Tabular (xVelocity) and you’re invited to guess the response time of DAX queries on a 4 billion rows table with many-to-many relationships before we run them! We’ll give away some 8GB USB key if you guess the right answer! o   12:30pm-1:00pm I and Alberto will have a book signing session at the TechEd Bookstore o   3:00pm-5:00pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) ·         Thursday, June 14, 2012 o   2:45pm-4:00pm I will deliver my DBI319 BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular breakthrough session in room S320A. I expect many questions here! And if you want to learn more about Analysis Services Tabular, we announced two more online sessions of our SSAS Tabular Workshop: ·         July 2-3, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone ·         September 3-4, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone Register now if you are interested, the early bird for the July session expires on June 19, 2012! I will also deliver a SSAS Workshop in Oslo (Norway) on August 27-28, 2012.  

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• Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 5: OR Logic

  - by smisner

  When you combine multiple filters, Reporting Services uses AND logic. Once upon a time, there was actually a drop-down list for selecting AND or OR between filters which was very confusing to people because often it was grayed out. Now that selection is gone, but no matter. It wouldn’t help us solve the problem that I want to describe today. As with many problems, Reporting Services gives us more than one way to apply OR logic in a filter. If I want a filter to include this value OR that value for the same field, one approach is to set up the filter is to use the IN operator as I explained in Part 1 of this series. But what if I want to base the filter on two different fields? I  need a different solution. Using the AdventureWorksDW2008R2 database, I have a report that lists product sales: Let’s say that I want to filter this report to show only products that are Bikes (a category) OR products for which sales were greater than $1,000 in a year. If I set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = Bikes [SalesAmount]   > 1000 Then AND logic is used which means that both conditions must be true. That’s not the result I want. Instead, I need to set up the filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value =Fields!EnglishProductCategoryName.Value = "Bikes" OR Fields!SalesAmount.Value > 1000 Boolean = =True The OR logic needs to be part of the expression so that it can return a Boolean value that we test against the Value. Notice that I have used =True rather than True for the value. The filtered report appears below. Any non-bike product appears only if the total sales exceed $1,000, whereas Bikes appear regardless of sales. (You can’t see it in this screenshot, but Mountain-400-W Silver, 38 has sales of $923 in 2007 but gets included because it is in the Bikes category.)

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• Azure Search Preview

  - by Greg Low

  One of the things I’ve been keeping an eye on for quite a while now is the development of the Azure Search system. While it’s not a full replacement for the full-text indexing service in SQL Server on-premises as yet, it’s a really, really good start. Liam Cavanagh, Pablo Castro and the team have done a great job bringing this to the preview stage and I suspect it could be quite popular. I was very impressed by how they incorporated quite a bit of feedback I gave them early on, and I’m sure that others involved would have felt the same. There are two tiers at present. One is a free tier and has shared resources; the other is currently $125/month and has reserved resources. I would like to see another tier between these two, much the same way that Azure websites work. If you have any feedback on this, now would be a good time to make it known. In the meantime, given there is a free tier, there’s no excuse to not get out and try it. You’ll find details of it here: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/search/ I’ll be posting more info about this service, and showing examples of it during the upcoming months.

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• Differences in documentation for sys.dm_exec_requests

  - by AaronBertrand

  I've already complained about this on Connect ( see #641790 ), but I just wanted to point out that if you're trying to make sense of the sys.dm_exec_requests document and what it lists as the commands supported by the percent_complete column, you should check which version of the documentation you're reading. I noticed the following discrepancies. I can't explain why certain operations are missing, except that the Denali topic was generated from the 2008 topic (or maybe from the 2008 R2 topic before...(read more)

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• GNOME Amazon Referral Fees April 2010

  <b>Blog of Jaap A. Haitsma:</b> "In April 2010 the GNOME Foundation received the following Amazon referral fees:"

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• Set and Verify the Retention Value for Change Data Capture

  - by AllenMWhite

  Last summer I set up Change Data Capture for a client to track changes to their application database to apply those changes to their data warehouse. The client had some issues a short while back and felt they needed to increase the retention period from the default 3 days to 5 days. I ran this query to make that change: sp_cdc_change_job @job_type='cleanup', @retention=7200 The value 7200 represents the number of minutes in a period of 5 days. All was well, but they recently asked how they can verify...(read more)

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• PASS summit 2013. We do not remember days. We remember moments.

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    "Business or pleasure?" barked the security officer in the Charlotte International Airport. "I’m not sure, sir," I whimpered, immediately losing all courage. "I'm here for the database technologies summit called PASS”. "Sounds boring. Definitely a business trip." Boring?! He couldn’t have been more wrong. If he only knew about the countless meetings throughout the year where I waved my hands at my great boss and explained again and again how fantastic this summit is and how much I learned last year. One by one, the drops of water began eating away at the stone. He finally approved of my trip just to stop me from torturing him. Time moves as slow as a turtle when you are waiting for something. Time runs as fast as a cheetah when you are there. PASS has come...and passed. It’s been an amazing week. Enormous sqlenergy has filled the city, filled the convention center and the surrounding pubs and restaurants. There were awesome speakers, great content, and the chance to meet most inspiring database professionals from all over the world. Some sessions were unforgettable. Imagine a fully packed room with more than 500 people in awed silence, catching each and every one of Paul Randall's words. His tremendous energy and deep knowledge were truly thrilling. No words can describe Rob Farley's unique presentation style, captivating and engaging the audience. When the precious session minutes were over, I could tell that the many random puzzle pieces of information that his listeners knew had been suddenly combined into a clear, cohesive picture. I was amazed as always by Paul White's great sense of humor and his phenomenal ability to explain complicated concepts in a simple way. The keynote by the brilliant Dr. DeWitt from Microsoft in front of the full summit audience of 5000 deeply listening people was genuinely breathtaking. The entire conference throughout offered excellent speakers who inspired me to absorb the knowledge and use it when I got home. To my great surprise, I found that there are other people in this world who like replication as much I do. During the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, SQL Server MVP Ted Krueger was writing a script for replicating the food to other tables. I learned many things at PASS, and not all of them were about SQL. After three summits, this time I finally got the knack of networking. I actually went up and spoke to people, and believe me, that was not easy for an introvert. But this is what the summit is all about. Sqlpeople. They are the ones who make it such an exciting experience. I will be looking forward to the next year. Till then I have my notes and new ideas. How long was the summit? Thousands of unforgettable moments.

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• More free geek-read.December SolidQ Journal is online

  - by Greg Low

  I'm really excited to see the last SolidQ Journal for this year out the door. It's our free online magazine. I've been wondering about the future of printed technical magazines for a long time. I doubt they have much of a future, as online publications become more prevalent and more timely. By the time a print magazine gets to you, it's such a long time since the author wrote the material that it's hard to even retain relevance in a fast moving world. That's why I'm so happy to have the format we...(read more)

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• finding a WUXGA or matte laptop

  - by John Paul Cook

  UPDATED: HP still sells 17" WUXGA laptops - details in the new paragraph at the end. Lenovo, Dell, Sony and Sager do not sell a 1920x1200 (WUXGA) laptop. I understand that manufacturers provide what there is market demand for. I also understand that HDTV and the 1080p standard is heavily influencing both monitor and laptop screen resolutions. But I do not understand why there is so little demand for a WUXGA laptop. Nor do I understand the popularity of glossy displays. I really don't like to look...(read more)

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