Microsoft Ignite interview with Kevin Farlee on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

Azure SQL Database is introducing two new features to cost-effectively migrate workloads to the cloud. SQL Database Hyperscale for single databases, available in preview, is a highly scalable service tier that adapts on demand to workload needs. It auto-scales up to 100 TB per database to significantly expand potential for app growth. What does this mean? … Continue reading Microsoft Ignite interview with Kevin Farlee on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

Want to learn how to light up Big Data Analytics using Apache Spark in Azure?

Businesses struggle with many different aspects of data and technology. It can be difficult to know what technology to choose. Also, it can be hard to know where to turn, when there are so many buzzwords in the mix: analytics, big data and open source. My session at PASS Summit is essentially talking about these … Continue reading Want to learn how to light up Big Data Analytics using Apache Spark in Azure?

5 Factors to Consider before Pouring Data in your Data Lake

As organizations move into a Big Data world, many projects will include a Data Lake component. What is a data lake, and how do we get our data into the Data Lake? There are many different interpretations of a Data Lake, but the interpretation given by Attunity and Hortonworks' jointly produced Data Lake Adoption and Maturity Survey Findings Report … Continue reading 5 Factors to Consider before Pouring Data in your Data Lake

Jen’s Diary: Why are PASS doing Business Analytics at all?

As always, I don't speak for PASS. This is a braindump from the heart. I realise that we haven't communicated about BA as much as some members might like. It's a hard balance - I don't want to spam people, and I don't want to get it too light, either. If you want to sign … Continue reading Jen’s Diary: Why are PASS doing Business Analytics at all?

AzureCon round up: Intelligent Cloud, Applications, Data, Infrastructure, Business Agility and Cloud Ability

I organised an AzureCon viewing party tonight in Hertfordshire, with great team support from Team Awesome over at Cloudamour. We watched a total of four keynotes, running back to back for almost four hours. The keynotes were all awesome and I've blogged some learnings here. First up, was Scott Guthrie (t), igniting the keynotes and kicking … Continue reading AzureCon round up: Intelligent Cloud, Applications, Data, Infrastructure, Business Agility and Cloud Ability

The Data Analysts Toolkit Day 5: How do R and Power BI fit together?

How do R and Power BI fit together?Technically, it is about munging data around between R and Excel and the Power BI components. You can use RODBC to connect to data between R and SQL Server, or R and Excel. Alternatively you can import data in.Why else might you use R?Pivot Tables are not always enoughScaling … Continue reading The Data Analysts Toolkit Day 5: How do R and Power BI fit together?

The Data Analysts Toolkit Day 4: Getting to know R a bit better

So what actually is R? Let's take a look at running some commands, and we can talk about it as we go along.R is a powerful environment for statistical computingIt is like a calculator and its power is: … it lets you save results in variables. Let's take a look:> x > y > z = … Continue reading The Data Analysts Toolkit Day 4: Getting to know R a bit better