03Dec 2015 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Changing Course On Learning

Azure, Database Lifecycle Management, DevOps, DocumentDB, Professional Development
With all the new stuff on the Microsoft Data Platform, it's really hard to keep up with it all. I had announced my plans to charge down the DocumentDB road to try to get the basics of that in my head along with learning some JSON so I could get what all the hoopla is about. However, after a lot of thought and some extensive meetings at Redgate, I'm looking to shift my learning in a new direction. First up. Arrrrrrrrr! No, it's not yet "Talk Like a Pirate Day." I'm going to start learning the R language. It's a language for statistical computing and is one of the many underpinnings for what's going to be happening with a lot of the Machine Learning capabilities in the Data Platform. With Azure…
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14Oct 2015 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Getting Started With DocumentDB

Azure, DocumentDB
I've put this off for too long. It's time to get my feet wet with some new tech. Step 1 is easy. Go to the Azure portal and start the process for creating a DocumentDB: While that's running, let's see what's on the interwebs about getting started in DocumentDB... Nice. I know I'm going to have write a little code to exercise this thing. Here's a great run-through on exactly how to do it. Actually, the first hit when I searched on "Getting Started With DocumentDB." Microsoft has a start page on DocumentDB, but it was clearly put together by someone from marketing. Scroll down to the bottom. There are a couple of interesting links including SQL Query Within DocumentDB. Now we're talking. Here's a Curah! or Docs.com (which is…
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04Mar 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices: Chapter 17

HDInsight
I jumped at the opportunity to write a chapter for this book, Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices, because of all the fantastic people writing and the topics that were covered. I reviewed Chapter 12 a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to get this chapter, Big Data for the SQL Server DBA, read & reviewed but I've just been sidetracked. I finally noticed it on my Trello board, weeks out of date, and decided to finally get the job done. Carlos Bossy (b|t) is a great guy and a part of my SQL Family. We run into each other all the time at SQL Saturday's and other events. I've never listened to him present before, and now, after reading his chapter in the book, I'm very sorry. I'll fix…
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03Dec 2012 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

HDInsight, Finally

Azure, HDInsight
See this: That's right. The install worked. All I had to do was get a completely clean server set up. No domain controller. Now to get my learn on. Microsoft has a web site with a number of introductory samples. I'll start there and work through them. The very first example gets me set up with some data that it builds by running a Powershell script, importdata.ps1. But I'm not going to just blindly follow along. I want to see what the heck is happening so I can start understanding this stuff. By the way, thank you Microsoft for making the samples in PowerShell and not forcing me to relearn Python or something else. That would have been frustrating. The script is really simple. It has two scenarios you can…
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16Nov 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

HDInsight and Buggy Whips

HDInsight
I sat the through the big announcements at the 2011 PASS Summit about the partnership between Microsoft and Hadoop. I recognized it as... interesting, but not necessarily earth shattering. I was aware of the NoSQL movement and understood that it answered a pain point that structured data couldn't really adequately answer, but that was really it. Then I sat through the sessions this year showing the stuff coming out with the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) and PolycBAse. Then I watched Dr. Dewitt promise me that I'd be seeing similar functionality within the main SQL Server tool and suddenly... I looked at my structured data knowledge, glanced back at the stuff going on in the keynotes and frankly, they really did look a lot like automobiles. Quick clarification, I've mentioned it…
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