There are many choices for your next database project. Of course it depends somewhat on the types of information you’re working with, and the types of functionality you require. In addition, up-time requirements will likely come into play. But what if so many of the different access methods you have today were possible and you could pick the engine behind […]
Author: Stephen Wynkoop
GDPR: Don’t forget the AI
We’ve been working down through different systems and infrastructure and working on the different components to GDPR and having systems support what’s needed there. While it’s comprehensive in its stated goals (GDPR), it’s also quite broad and loose in defining how to get there from here. This has led to some interesting meetings and review sessions while people work to […]
Does Breaking Up a Database Make Scale Out Easier?
There are many different strategies and options for creating scalable solutions for SQL Server. Whether you’re building out solutions locally or for cloud-based environments (or both) it’s very important to think through the infrastructure requirements you have, and to understand the limitations of where you may (either now or in the future) be hosting that infrastructure. One of these areas […]
IoT – and your systems
I have been looking into best practices for IoT and allowing access (or not) to various databases and systems that we’re using for a couple of projects. There have been some interesting points that have been made that frankly hadn’t been a consideration before. Today, when you go buy (or provision) that next server, you typically look for a beefy […]
Make Sure You’re Eating the Entire Elephant
Many times you face down a big project and the old elephant analogy comes into play… “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” Referring of course to the fact that the way to get really big, overwhelming things done is to break them into smaller pieces (bites) and then work from there. True of any large […]
Did you know there is additional reporting available? (SQL Server RDS)
DBAs are all about transparency – transparency hopefully about what’s going on with the SQL server. Things like connections and utilization and all of that. You have many standard tools that monitor and analyze your SQL Server, but you also have access to other tools native to the AWS platform. It’s surprising the granularity you can drop down into […]
Design is Critical for Your Systems
The (now) age-old question of “are DBAs going away” is something that’s been beaten up here and other places. One of the first things that usually puts this to rest is the discussion of design. It’s a little strange to watch the pendulum swing back and forth – disk became really inexpensive and people stopped worrying about storage; servers became […]
Amazon RDS SQL Server – (A few of) the lessons learned
With some interesting experiences under our collective belts when it comes to working with SQL Server on AWS, it seems like it might be interesting to share some of the things we’ve learned and seen in the field. AWS’ RDS with SQL Server is a great SaaS deployment of SQL Server that gives you the benefit of the fully-managed environment […]
GDPR Doesn’t Mean Useless Data
A huge challenge with data systems right now is “OK, great. So I have to do all of these things to comply with the GDPR and other privacy laws that are out there now (or will be soon, surely), but I have a conflicting obligation to provide useful information to my company, what do I do?” Depending on your company, […]
Planning that next platform upgrade or migration
Completing a migration, whether it’s for version-to-version migration or for platform updates or even moving to a cloud-based solution from an on-premises solution, is a major project. Even a sideways version swap, accompanied by a platform change can mean all sorts of things in terms of settings, features, capabilities that may have to be modified, for sure have to be […]