Monthly Archives: November 2010

Windows Azure learning resources

Posted on November 24, 2010 by

Want to learn about Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform? You could do worse than to head on over to Buck’s place for his Windows Azure Learning Plan series of posts.

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Microsoft white paper on Columnstore Indexes in SQL Server Denali

Posted on November 16, 2010 by

Here is a white paper by Microsoft describing how the new columnstore indexes in SQL Server 11 (codenamed Denali) can massively improve Data Warehouse query performance. Microsoft mentions the main business benefit is to allow you to encourage your users … Continue reading →

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BISM and the SSAS Roadmap- the Microsoft response

Posted on November 13, 2010 by

At PASS Microsoft unveiled details of their big new addition to the Microsoft BI stack: BISM. It has caused quite a stir in the community, primarily because of concerns about where this leaves OLAP cubes and MDX. Here is the … Continue reading →

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Cubes/MDX on their way out… BISM to replace them?

Posted on November 12, 2010 by

The latest news from the PASS summit is that Microsoft are starting to prepare SSAS for the retirement home, in favour of a young gun by the name of BISM. BISM (BI Semantic Model) is an attempt to unify the … Continue reading →

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SQL Server Denali CTP and Parallel Data Warehouse RTM

Posted on November 10, 2010 by

I was very excited yesterday about the announcements at SQLPASS re: the next version of SQL Server, codenamed Denali, newly released as a CTP. For more details check out SQLPASS 2010 Keynote. Now the dust has settled, the important bits … Continue reading →

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Optimising a complex query in MySQL: avoid derived tables!

Posted on November 5, 2010 by

Recently I had to optimise a query that was part of some slow-running ETL: it was taking longer than its allocated load window, and when run it would bring the source systems to their knees. Here’s how I solved it- … Continue reading →

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