Last week Microsoft announced several new offerings for “Big Data” - and since I’m a stickler for definitions, I wanted to make sure I understood what that really means. What is “Big Data”? What size hard drive is that? After all, my laptop has 1TB of storage - is my laptop “Big Data”? There are actually a few definitions for this term, most ...

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of the word “Cloud”. It’s too marketing-oriented, gimmicky and non-specific. A better definition (in many cases) is “Distributed Computing”. That means that some or all of the computing functions are handled somewhere other than under your specific control. But there is a current use of the word “Cloud” ...

One thing that has always infuriated me about SSIS is the fact that every package has three different type systems; to give you an idea of what I am talking about consider the following: The SSIS dataflow's type system is made up of types called DT_*  (e.g. DT_STR, DT_I4) The SSIS variable type system is based on .Net datatypes (e.g. ...

Introduction Earlier this month, David Woods decided to drop his MVP award. The move inspired some interesting comments and discussion among MVPs. David's points are: MVP Expertise Microsoft Technology Products Microsoft ''Listens'' Cost-Benefits for an MVP MVP Expertise After mentioning he's encountered MVPs who are not experts, David ...

There's a Session Preference Survey live at the TechEd North America 2011 website. I like this idea a lot: getting feedback from the Community! :{>

David Taylor! There were a lot of really great comments on the post titled A Visual Studio 2010 MSDN Seeding Card Giveaway Contest! The judging was completely subjective - just me reading the comments and making a call. One suggestion was apparently plagarized... bummer. All of the projects sound awesome and I hope those who commented will ...

I have a Visual Studio 2010 MSDN Seeding Card to give away. It's good for a year. Rather than just hand it out, I've decided to hold and judge a contest. So tell me - in the comments of this post - what cool project you would like to use the software you can access free for a year? Tell me what you think you can do - what you'd like to try. I'll ...

I often visit companies where they asked me “What is SQL Server’s Roadmap?” What they mean is that they want to know where Microsoft is going with our database products. I explain that we’re expanding not only the capacities in SQL Server but the capabilities – we’re trying to make an “information platform”, rather than just a data store. But ...

I got a great e-mail from a friend that asked about how he could foster a better relationship with his vendors. So many times when you work with a vendor it’s more of a used-car sales experience than a partnership – but you can actually make your vendor more of a partner, as long as you both set some ground-rules at the start. Sit down with your ...

I do a presentation (and a class) called ''SQL Server for the Oracle DBA''. It's a non-marketing overview that gives you the basics of working with SQL Server if you're already familiar wtih how Oracle works. This class and these links DO NOT help you with ''Why should I use Oracle/SQL Server instead of Oracle/SQL Server'' - I'll assume you're ...