Cortana Analytics Suite is important and significant, but it is difficult to work out why or how from the existing 'information'. After more setbacks than Dr Livingstone, Bob Sheldon emerged from the jungle of marketing hyperbole triumphantly with a small diagram which explained it. Here he reveals the individual components, and finds them, in combination, to be a curiously interesting attempt to bring Big Data under contro… Read more
Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a fully-managed and scalable cloud service. It is still in preview, but solid. Not only is it compatible with several other Azure offerings, such as Machine Learning and Data Factory, but also with various existing SQL Server tools and Microsoft products. It talks Power BI. Are we now seeing the final piece of the Azure jigsaw fall into place?… Read more
DocumentDB only uses SQL for querying data. To create procedures and functions, you have to flex your JavaScript skills to create JavaScript functions that are saved to a DocumentDB collection. Robert Sheldon shows how it is done. … Read more
DocumentDB is a late-entrant in the Document-oriented database field. However, it benefits from being designed from the start as a cloud service with a SQL-like language. It is intended for mobile and web applications. Its JSON document-notation is compatible with the integrated JavaScript language that drives its multi-document transaction processing via stored procedures, triggers and UDFs.… Read more
The Data Lake is basically a large repository of data for 'big data' analytic workloads, held in its original format. The Azure Data Lake adds Data Lake Analytics, and Azure HDInsight. Although the tools are there for Big Data Analysis, it will require new skills to use, and a heightened attention to Data Governance if it is to appeal to the average enterprise.… Read more
What is wrong with the Enterprise Data Warehouse? Quite a lot, it seems. By taking the narrow view that the struggle is that of accommodating and interrogating huge quantities of data, then initiatives such as the Virtual Data Warehouse and Logical Data Warehouse could make sense. But what about data quality, security, access control, archiving, retention, privacy and regulatory compliance?… Read more
Azure Stream Analytics aims to extract knowledge structures from continuous ordered streams of data by real-time analysis. These streams might include computer network traffic, social network data, phone conversations, sensor readings, ATM transactions or web searches. It provides a ready-made solution to the business requirement to react very quickly to changes in data and handle large volumes of information. Robert Sheldon explains its significance. … Read more
If you are familiar with MongoDB you may be wondering how Azure's DocumentDB service compares. In this article David Green gives us a look. Note that Azure DocumentDB is evolving very quickly, so some of the limitations mentioned in this article may have already been removed.… Read more
Was the marketing hook 'The Internet of Things' conjured up before the technical definition? Are we being persuaded to spend money on fending off yet another fantasy tsunami of data? Already, we have televisions that listen to, and report, your conversations; so are we facing the Science Fiction future of gadgets that report where you go, who you visit and what medications you take? As Robert Sheldon says; "It's big, almost too big to get your arms around"… Read more
The options that you need to select when setting up an Azure Storage service account allow you to specify the durability and high-availability of your data, but they don't provide for data recovery to a point-in-time. In fact, it means that some of the bad things that can happen to data are more efficiently replicated to all copies. Backup is quite a separate issue.… Read more
There is a growing assumption that Cloud file-storage services represent an ideal way of backing up files. It seems a compelling idea because it is so easy and seems secure. The truth is, as always, more complicated. There is more to any backup strategy than just cloud storag… Read more
The public perception is that, when something is deleted, it no longer exists. IT in general prefers the fuzzier idea of the trashcan, where the deleted compromising documents can blow around a digital landfill site for years. The Cloud takes this further, and so the data you serve up to the cloud can be stored out there indefinitely, no matter how hard to try to delete it. Rob Sheldon investigates, and finds the cloud a worryingly public place.… Read more
In the first in a series on the practicalities of using the Microsoft Azure Platform for the SQL Server professional, Buck Woody shows that, whatever your version of SQL Server, there is a way of storing offsite backups in the cloud.… Read more
If your database server is in Azure, then it makes sense to do backups into Azure too. SQL Server 2014
supports backups to the cloud, and particularly well with Managed Backup. Once your backups are safely in an Azure BLOB, then what? Mike Wood takes up the story.… Read more
As applications grow, a message queue system soon becomes the best way of achieving scalability. It is an obvious candidate for a cloud-based service, and Azure's Service Bus Brokered Messaging service is a robust and well-tried product. Mike Wood provides enough in this article to get you started.… Read more
Windows Azure Tables are intended for the storage of large amounts of schemaless data. Tables are just containers of rows of data. Mike Wood describes the practicalities of getting started with using the system.… Read more
Offsite backups are vital to data integrity, allowing for preservation and backup of data in catastrophic circumstances. Cloud backups have been around for a while, but are now really coming into their own. Tony Davis looks at how to get set up with cloud backups for restores and disaster recovery.… Read more
Azure BLOB storage is persistent Cloud data storage that serves a variety of purposes. Mike Wood shows the basics of how to use it, from start through to snapshots and metadata; both from .NET, and by using the free tool, Cerebrata Azure Explorer. … Read more
For once, business people are excited about the importance of data and are interested in the business benefits of extracting insights from the data. Perhaps this is more of a cultural rather a technical initiative, and so we in the data industry should participate by redefining the concept of the three Vs to reflect business values rather than technical challenges.… Read more
