New Video Show Posted
SQL Server 2008 Features: Chris Shaw takes a look at some of the new features of SQL Server – and how they work. This is a special airing of his session from the June Virtual Conference. Find out about key features, what benefits they offer, how they could apply to your work and your upgrade efforts and more.
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Featured Article(s)
Working with XML Files Using C#
The XML markup language is an accepted standard world wide as a language for data exchange. The Wikipedia states, "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own elements. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet, and it is used both to encode documents and to serialize data." This article takes a look at how one can read and write XML files using C#.
Lots of Feedback on the Data Uses, Expectations and Controls
Continuing to get some great comments on data uses. I think it’s pretty clear that people are wrestling with this – who is responsible for information, how it’s used, how it’s stored and how it’s managed? This crosses a number of lines – and it seems that "traditional" DBAs are of the mind that they’re more responsible for the administration of the database engine as a tool. Make sure it can store and retrieve information, be recovered, etc. Essentially the management of the tool.
Data uses – how information is used, pulled together, etc. – appears to lay well outside this world and much more with the data architect roles. The DBA is the delivery mechanism, but not the validation or rationalization responsibility. (This is in line with the notes yesterday about equating the responsibilities to a librarian.)
Back to how you trust data, how you use it and how you make sure users are getting valid data, can come to valid conclusions and and such with the information, perhaps the most helpful thing I’ve been hearing from many of you is that the key thing is to start with the end. Start with what users are looking for – what questions are they looking to answer, what problems are they looking to solve? You can use this information to figure out the best slices of data you need to consider to get them the answers they need.
I do still think this leaves information twisting in the wind a bit when it comes to more "point and click" type access – where you’re opening the doors in a more unstructured way so people can query, drill down into and otherwise draw their own conclusions from the information. In these cases, I do think you have a responsibility to have a data architect (or someone working in that role) that creates validated "silos" of information – views, cubes, etc. – from which you know the foundational data is correct and summarized correctly.
Lots of work to do, and some fascinating discoveries to be made from all of that data out there.
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