Survey Closes Friday
I have a request. This week is survey week. I would absolutely LOVE to hear from you (yes, you) – it’s really important to get as many feedback elements as possible so we can see how we’re doing. I’ve split the survey into two parts – you can take the simple, 6 question intro survey and quit, or you can take both the intro and the more in-depth survey. I’d really love to hear what you think of features, what you use, what you don’t, where we should be going, and so much more. We’re giving away a SSWUG membership and a free pass to the fall Virtual Conference from a random drawing of people that fill out part 1.
[ It’s only 6 questions ] …and, if you take part two, we’re adding more SSWUG memberships, more passes to the conference AND the conference passes will include the DVD set from the conference.
[ Take the survey here ]
Featured Article(s)
Incorporating Silverlight application into SharePoint custom application pages
Hosting Silverlight applications within client web administration modules of many solutions has become more popular than ever. Mainly due to rich presentation and client execution benefits. Many are looking into utilizing already known SharePoint framework to host their Silverlight applications. There are quite few challenges that are involved in setting up your Silverlight application to run on MOSS/WSS and this article will outline all of them step by step so you can get started right away.
Webcast Tomorrow
DTS Conversion to SSIS * Conversion Best Practices
Join this webcast and Learn how and why to convert DTS to SSIS. See how you can save time and money and easily migrate your DTS packages to SSIS * Introduction to SSIS and its differences vs. DTS * Advantages of SSIS over DTS * Options for converting DTS packages to native SSIS * Adding value to packages during the conversion process * Assessing the scope of a DTS conversion project Presented by: Brian Knight
> Register Now
> 8/5/2009 at 12:00pm Noon Pacific
DBA School – 3 Days of Classes with Stephen Wynkoop, Chris Shaw
We’ll be teaching 3 days of down and dirty DBA-need-to-know information. We are taking a maximum of 15 people for the class and we’re hearing from a lot of people that are getting approvals. If you’re interested in attending, please do get registered right away. Find out more about the course here, including the outline of what’s covered. Be sure to check out the travel page on the site – we have killer hotel rates too.
When you’re ready, [ Click Here to Get Registered ] and we’ll save you a seat.
Do You Create Databases for Transaction Processing AND Reporting?
I was reading a very cool article (actually, it’s a letter from the editor) from MSDN Magazine talking about breaking schemas so they’re different between a transaction-oriented database and a reporting-support database. Yes! Finally.
I totally agree with this approach. You can make such a difference in how your server performs by optimizing for the use of the information you’re storing and going after in the applications. So many times we’ve seen people look to set up data warehouses simply by copying out information to a secondary server exactly as it appears in the primary system. This just doesn’t cut it so many times any more. You need to take a step back and figure out the best, fastest, easiest to understand way to pull the data out of the transactions and essentially pre-prepare it for reporting or querying.
This can lead to some really challenging steps that you need to put into the process. There are some great tools out there to help with the migration of data, and of course you can do this manually or using homemade tools as well. Not to overly plug, but I recently saw a demo and had a conference call with the folks from Attunity, talking about this type of thing with their change data capture tools. It was very cool and automates much of this. Clearly this is a heavy need in the marketplace; they won a readers-choice type award for "middleware."
The biggest challenge and frustration I’ve seen in pulling data to a secondary schema though is how you treat the information. I’ve seen people make the mistake of over-denormalizing information and ending up with information that serves the purpose of the expected reports, but doesn’t support ad-hoc queries and drill-down type activity because so much of the related detail has been lost in the reorganization of data.
The answer about whether you need to do this type of denormalization? "It depends," of course. You’ll have to look at the reports and data elements you need from the analysis system. Then you’ll have to look at tools to see how those tools dig into your data. From Reporting Services to pivot tables in Excel to true-blue Business Intelligence tools. Each of these will dig into your data different ways. You’ll also need to talk with users. You need to find out if they want information "as presented" or whether they’ll be looking to ad-hoc query it and be looking for detail behind numbers.
The key, we’ve found, is "ad-hoc." If you have to support ad-hoc queries, you’ll have to be very careful how you pre-summarize the data if you denormalize it. You may be limited (or at least "guided") in what you can summarize if people are needing ready-access to the detail behind things.
Have you abstracted transaction data to support query and reporting systems? How did you approach it?
SelectViews Show Now Available
Stephen Wynkoop and Chris Shaw talk about top SQL Server Performance Tips. Part 1 of 2 – things you can try, things you should know about, tips for your SQL Server.
[Watch the Show Here]
Previously:
[Watch Here] vConference Session Sample: Thomas LaRock SQL Server 2008 Maintenance Plans. Learn about the ins and outs of maintenance plans in SQL Server 2008 – what do you really need to know?
[Watch Here] The show today features RAID and Defrag tips, backup optimization with filegroups, baseline stats and industry news. Also, find out about virtual learning opportunities, the SQL tip, the developer/AJAX thoughts and much more.
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