Search results matching tags 'Tools', 'Developer', and 'Cloud Computing'

What I'm Reading, July 22 2011

KKline — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:43:00 GMT

I read too much, and that, my friends, is an entirely separate topic for a blog post. But I thought I'd share with you a little more about what I'm reading because sometimes, if I'm lucky, it might be something you'd enjoy too. So I'm going to start sharing what I'm reading at least once per week, partly so that I don't firehose too many reading links directly into your brain (where I to do it say once per month) and partly to solidify in my own mind the information that I'm reviewing. So here are a few good links for the seven days leading up to July 22, 2001:

Microsoft and Whitehouse partnership on BigData: BigData isn't a particularly new concept. But I was intrigued to learn that the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, and 13 other teams were partnering on developing better BigData analytics for lots of government data from activities such as healthcare, economic development, education, transportation, and the power grid. Cools stuff! Plus, Microsoft has developed a new tool called Project Daytona to better harness the power of the cloud, in general, and Windows Azure, specifically.
While we're on the topic of Federal IT in the Cloud be sure to read this linked article from ComputerWorld. Say what you will about our government, but putting government IT in the cloud and increasing both its transparency and availability will make a huge difference in how the Federal government will be able to service the public. We're talking as big a difference as corporations experienced between the "catalog on the web" experience of the 1990's to the Web2.0 experience of today.
If you're the social media type, give this article a read discussing the Power of Hashtags in Social Media.
The Register, of the UK, whose tagline is "Biting the hand that feeds IT" has a great article on a spat over database technologies between the IT sage Michael Stonebreaker and Google. It's a great read if for no other reason than to prove that databases are worth fighting over.
And if you think Microsoft is still towing the relational database barge without thinking about other technologies, you need to read up on Projects Dryad and Daytona.
Finally, I'm still getting lots of questions about when and where to limit SQL Server's Max Degrees of Parallelism. Be sure to read Microsoft's Recommendations and Guidelines for 'max degree of parallelism' configuration option here.

And just because so many of us in IT are closet or former musicians, there's Live Guitar Lessons with Steven Krenz, sponsored by my hometown boyz at Gibson Guitar. Got a favorite article or tool tip? Let me know! Enjoy,

-Kev

Follow me on Twitter.

Have You Heard About Project Lucy?

KKline — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:17:00 GMT

Lucy, You Got Some 'Splainin to Do!'

Quest Software's latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse. The best things about Project Lucy include:

It’s Free - just like our SQLServerPedia website, Project Lucy is free to anyone who wants to upload a trace file
It’s 1oo% web-based - you don’t have to download or maintain anything and updates roll out seamlessly, all the time
It really helps - just generate a SQL Trace on a SQL Server 2000, 2005 or 2008 instance, upload it on www.projectlucy.com, and see for yourself

This initiative empowers DBAs and IT professionals to gain a better understanding of their database performance through automated analyses and collaboration with their peers. Our goal is to allow users to go beyond the benefits of installing and using a commercial product, and tap into an online community to share and compare experiences and results. Our goal is to test the best ways we can help users learn and understand what their performance data really means, and how they should act upon that data – if at all – in a collaborative, meaningful way. For this debut, Project Lucy will accept SQL Trace files, or zip files containing multiple traces, and will provide a summary of the content and areas where performance can be improved. As y'all use the service, information will become available to help you compare your performance and engage in meaningful discussions with others about the issues you are facing. Your feedback, your feedback, and participation will drive how Project Lucy evolves. Get involved by participating in the pilot program! And let me know what you think.

Go to www.projectlucy.com to get started!

Enjoy! -Kev

Twitter at kekline

Azure, a Beautiful Color, and So Much More...

KKline — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:04:00 GMT

Windows and SQL Azure Resources

Cloud computing is more than just the latest buzz word in the IT trade papers. It is a remarkable paradigm shift with as much potential to "turn over the apple cart" of IT computing as client-server had for the world of mainframe and minicomputers. If you're not spending time to learn about cloud computing, in general, and SQL Azure, in particular, then you're missing the boat in a big way. (Ha! Two big metaphors in one afternoon. My high-school English teacher would be proud.) There are mountains, literally MOUNTAINS, of free and high-quality content to be had. For example:

SQL Azure in Windows Azure Platform: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sqlazure/
Microsoft 2010 PDC presentation on SQL Azure Databases: Present & Future: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVC52

Late last year, Microsoft released a whole training pack of sessions lead by David Aiken from Microsoft, including:

the Azure Training Kit: http://bit.ly/AzureTrainingKit
the Windows Azure developer account application site:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure
PDC on-demand sessions (look for Azure): http://www.microsoftpdc.com

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Fireside Chat Webcasts

Fire Side Chats are invitation only Live Meetings. They are an hour in length, repeated at different times of day so you don’t need to attend at 3:00am because of time zone issues. Each Fire Side Chat has a key Microsoft individual talking about their area of expertise and answering questions from the audience. The Fireside Chats are aimed at technical experts, MVPs, user group leaders and the like. But they have content of interest for everyone. When looking at the archives, I noticed that there didn't seem to be many recent chats. But some of the older ones still looked interested. You can register to see one at http://ug.gitca.org/sites/FireSideChats. ~~~

Microsoft Team Blogs of Interest

Do you ever wish that Microsoft consolidated all of their blogs in one easy to find central clearinghouse? Well, your wish was answered, actually quite a long time ago. BlogMS consolidates almost 250 Microsoft team blogs across a variety of Microsoft product and online services portfolio, with usually about 70 - 80 blog posts per week. Yes, children, that's two to three HUNDRED blog posts per month. You'll find important announcements and details of Microsoft news, product releases, service packs and important support issues. On top of that, I really like all of the great links to Microsoft web resources on the right hand side of the website. If you're like me (and let's be honest, most rational or just sane people would not want anything of the sort), you'll probably bookmark quite a few of those links. The following BlogMS Resource Guides may also be of use:

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MVPs are More Than Athletes

You might be familiar with the term "Most Valuable Player", but haven't heard that MVPs exist in the professional world too. Microsoft has nearly 3,000 designated "Most Valuable Professionals". These folks are designated experts who know their subject matter at an expert level and, as an added bonus, they don't smell like a basketball locker room (SQLRockstar, Thomas LaRock, being a notable exception to this rule). You can find out more about Microsoft's MVPs at the MVP directory. And be sure to check out the MVP program blog. ~~~

Launching the Microsoft Desktop Player

Late last year a cool new tool was launched called Microsoft Desktop Player. The player aggregates contextual technical content (webcasts, podcasts, white papers) from across all sorts of Microsoft websites having an IT Pro adoption lifecycle. In addition, it also provides links to local resources and news for the Developers and IT Pros based on their local settings, helping to drive the local engagement/relationship. You'll need Microsoft Silverlight to run the website, but it's oh-so-cool looking. Check out the details here: http://www.microsoft.com/click/desktopplayer.

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Enjoy!

-Kevin, Twitter at kekline