Search results matching tags 'SQL Server 2012' and 'Business Intelligence'

Want to Learn SQL Server 2012?

andyleonard — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Or SSIS 2012? SSRS 2012? SSAS 2012? There’s no substitute for getting your hands on the product, in my opinion.

I can hear you thinking, “But Andy, I can’t afford to purchase a copy of SQL Server 2012.” Are you sure? What if I told you that you can get a full-feature version of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition for $50? Well, you cannot… it’s actually less than $50! SQL Server 2012 Developer Edition is available at Amazon on the day of this writing for $41.24USD. That’s about the price of eight cups of fancy coffee.

SQL Server releases follow a cycle. SQL Server 2005 was a major release with big changes from SQL Server 2000. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 were not drastic departures from SQL Server 2005. Take it from me: SQL Server 2012 is a major release.

Is taking your career to the next level worth the price of eight cups of coffee?

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SSIS Design Patterns, the Book

andyleonard — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:37:43 GMT

For the past two years, I have had the honor and privilege or authoring SSIS Design Patterns alongside Jessica Moss, Michelle Ufford, Tim Mitchell, and Matt Masson. Publication of the book – like many projects of this scope – has been delayed. The current publication date is 27 Aug 2012 and I have high confidence in this date.

I take responsibility for publication delays and apologize to those who pre-ordered the book. The reasons for the delays are not important. I have built a career as a software developer and architect based on the following maxim:

Deliver quality late, no one remembers.
Deliver junk on time, no one forgets.

The shared goal of everyone working on this project has been to deliver quality. Proofing the manuscripts, I believe we have achieved that goal.

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Have You Downloaded SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Edition? Why Not?!

andyleonard — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:00:00 GMT

I am installing SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Edition on a virtual machine as I type.

You can do this. Here’s one way:

Grab some virtual machine software. I like Oracle VirtualBox. It’s cool. It’s free.
Install VirtualBox.
Download the 180-day free trial of Windows Server 2008 R2. Also cool. Also free.
Once Windows Server 2008 R2 is downloaded, build a VirtualBox VM.
Download and install SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Edition!

That’s all there is to it. You can get started today, no need to wait until 1 Apr 2012 for media to ship. And, you don’t have to worry about making changes to your laptop or workstation (other than installing VirtualBox).

You can explore the cool new features of SQL Server 2012 for the next six months… for free! What are you waiting for?

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New licensing for SQL Server 2012 and #BISM #Tabular usage

sqlbi — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:11:18 GMT

Last week Microsoft announced a new licensing schema for SQL Server 2012. If you are interested in an extensive discussion of the new licensing scheme, Denny Cherry wrote a great blog post about that.

I’d like to comment about the new BI Edition license. Teo Lachev already commented about the numbers and I agree with him.

I generally like the new licensing mode of SQL 2012. It maintains a very low-entry barrier for SSRS/SSAS/SSIS (Standard Edition). It has a reasonable licensing schema for 20-50 clients. I’ve read on Twitter that Donald Farmer is happy, too: probably QlikView feels that Microsoft is not too much aggressive for them, because BISM Tabular model is not available in Standard edition. However, there is already a free to use product, which is named PowerPivot for Excel.

Probably everyone was expecting an introduction of BISM Tabular in the Standard Edition, maybe with some limitations (like no partitions, for example). This will be not the case. I’m not sure this is a bad news, having BISM Multidimensional with a lower entry price than BISM Tabular could be better, at the end. We will see the customer reaction in a few months.

In reality, what Microsoft really changed is that the Server+CAL licensing of Enterprise Edition is no longer available and it is now called Business Intelligence. Because more advanced SQL Server features will be available only in Enterprise Edition (core-based license only), we will finally see the real numbers of Business Intelligence back-end sold by Microsoft. Until today, in fact, the numbers were always hard to get (also for Microsoft, I think): it wasn’t easy to understand the real adoption and usage of single features. With SQL Server 2012 Microsoft will have clear numbers about what is the real money generated by its Business Intelligence stack.

I think that even if it could appear just a name change, it could be more than that. Having a Business Intelligence license might improve the perception of something that is more valuable and not just a “free add-in to the SQL engine”. Only time will tell!