Virtual Eduction in SSIS and SSRS
A while back Steve provided some great insight on how to grow your skills as an SQL Professional. Take one new topic at a time, and expand on what you already know. The reality we face every day is that SQL Server consists of a number of technologies that are quite extensive; it is a big challenge to remain on the top of all the different tools. So, here is an opportunity for you to bite off a piece of the BIG Elephant a small piece at a time.
SQL Server MVP Eric Johnson has put together a virtual training series on SQL Server Integration Services (data import, export and transformation tool) and SQL Server Replication. Both of these are BIG topics. Eric provides you with access to these tools for the entire month of December, and you also have an option to purchase a DVD of the course.
Find out more about the SQL Server Integrations Services Virtual Training Course or the SQL Server Replication Virtual Training Course. Don’t wait for someone else to help you extend your knowledge. Dig in now and be ready for those opportunities when they come.
SSWUG Holiday Gift Guide
Companies and organizations! Include your products and tools in our 2010 SSWUG.org Holiday Gift Guide!
As our membership is made up of more than 525,000 database and information technology (IT) professionals with diverse interests in the high-tech industry, the Online gift guide will consist of a variety of items, ranging from the hottest electronics to the coolest tech-toys.
Our gift guide is a great way to showcase the best products of the season. With our reputation and reach to an affluent, educated and tech-savvy group of members, your products and tools will be seen and promoted with the highest standards.
Please submit all publicity requests before Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010, as no late submissions will be considered. Our gift guide will be published on SSWUG.org on Friday, Dec. 10, 2010, which should give shoppers sufficient time to review and purchase your contributions.
Click Here for details and to enter your products to be included in our Holiday Gift Guide.
Small Companies with Large Data Requirements
Not all companies using SQL Server are going to benefit from the massive scale of Denali. The Enterprise licensing alone is bigger than their entire IT budget for a year. But those companies continue to have the same problems of scale and failover. There are a few things that make SQL Server continue to be the product to beat in this arena.
Hardware costs have dropped dramatically. You can now purchase a small SAN for $20K-$30K. SAN capable servers are available with single CPU and 4-8 cores for under $5K.
A configuration like this would allow a business to have a system we could only dream about with a single Standard SQL license for under $K. That’s an incredible amount of power for the TCO.
In this configuration you can still do Failover clustering, mirroring or replication. There are lots of features that won’t be available requiring a work around or something you don’t use. For example, SQL Server Enterprise will allow you to rebuild indexes without taking the index offline (and bringing your server to it’s knees). There is no workaround for this using a single database.
Partitioned tables and indexes are another big loss. You can still use the old Federated views for partitioning, but you have a lot more work to maintain them.
What about compression? The Enterprise version of SQL Server includes compression, but not Standard. You can write your own compression routines in the CLR as user defined functions and compress data yourself. Not as slick as just enabling it…but quite effective. Implementation is more work as well.Of course, you could compress outside of the database and simply store the contents in SQL Server as VARBINARY (my preference anyway).
For those of you where $40K will break the bank the Cloud hosting costs are becoming competitive. You can pay as you go. The ultimate cost may be much more than owning your own systems in the long run, but you get a lot more for a lot less money when your company is growing.
So, what is the breaking point where it makes more sense to move to SQL Server Enterprise? Does SQL Standard really meet your business needs? Send your feedback to btaylor@sswug.org. I’d be interested in your input regarding how you use SQL Standard effectively regardless of the restrictions.
Cheers,
Ben