Visual Studio and SQL Server Data Tools for SQL Server 2016 CTP3

SQL Server Data Tools can be installed standalone or integrated into an existing Visual studio installation. If you have Professional or higher version of Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 and did not opt out off installing SSDT during setup the computer used must have an existing version of SSDT.

Here is your master reference for SSDT.

If you are using Community editions then standalone is your only option. You can download the SSDT Preview from these links:

• SSDT Preview for Visual Studio 2013
  SQL Platform Support:
  SQL Server 2005 – 2016 CTP 3.0
  Azure SQL Database
  Azure SQL Data Warehouse


• SSDT Preview for Visual Studio 2015
  SQL Platform support:
  SQL Server 2005 – 2016 CTP 3.0
  Analysis Services for SQL Server 2008 - 2016 CTP 3.0
  Integration Services for SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.0
  Reporting Services for SQL Server 2008 - 2016 CTP 3.0
  Azure SQL Database
  Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Getting the SSDT Preview for Visual Studio 2015 should cover most of the ground. In preparing for SQL Server 2016 CTP3, the SSDT Preview was installed. It installs and appear to be integrated into the VS 2015 Community.

SSDT08.png
If you would like to review installation screen shots and features go http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2015/10/download-sql-server-data-tools-preview.html.

Really, should you go for just electric cars?

You may not be seeing hydrogen powered vehicles on the roads yet, but they are sure to be here starting this year. I am an electric engineer and I have no quarrel with battery driven vehicles but I think hydrogen is the way to go. It is way, way cleaner. Did anyone speak of chemicals used in batteries; disposal of used batteries; cost of building facilities, etc. Hydrogen fueled cars are much better and you will see a lot of traction in the coming years.

Toyota started the ball rolling and already there is quite a bit of traction in Japan and soon it will be everywhere with most manufacturers joining the bandwagon (well who wants to be left out). Now quite a few have come up with their own concepts, models, whatever.

Watch this video of Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell car at the Tokyo Motor Show 2015.

This one from Honda:



If you need to know how much better car will be with hydrogen power read the following:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096639_2016-toyota-mirai-hydrogen-fuel-cell-car-a-few-things-we-noticed

SQL Server 2016 CTP3 is ready to download.

SQL Server Team blog on 10/18/2015 announced the availability of SQL Server 2016 CTP3 besides quite a few others. This post is related to CTP2 only.

Microsoft has been very active in working on its database product SQL Server 2016 this year as seen in the number of posts. It is still in CTP but then it is not 2016 yet. These are the quoted kye words for this version,'faster transactions and queries, deeper insights on any device, advanced analytics, new security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios'.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/05/sql-serverr-2016-early-bird-special.html -5/13
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/05/start-evaluating-sql-server-2016-ctp2.html -5/28
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/07/sql-server-2016-ctp-21-is-ready-for.html -7/11
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/07/upgrading-sql-server-2016-ctp-2-to-sql.html -7/11
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/07/notes-2-sql-server-management-studio.html -7/13
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/08/regarding-sql-server-2016-ctp-22.html -8/06
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/09/download-sql-server-ctp-23-and-check.html -9/11

You can download from here after the sign in ritual.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-sql-server-2016.
From the other links on the above site you can download the previous versions of SQL Servers(2014 SP1 and 2012 SP1; both evaluation versions valid for 180 days)

The stated benefits of the CTP3 are the following:

•     Enhanced in-memory performance provide up to 30x faster transactions, more than 100x faster queries than disk based relational databases and real-time operational analytics

•     New Always Encrypted technology helps protect your data at rest and in motion, on-premises and in the cloud, with master keys sitting with the application, without application changes

•     Built-in advanced analytics– provide the scalability and performance benefits of building and running your advanced analytics algorithms directly in the core SQL Server transactional database

•     Business insights through rich visualizations on mobile devices with native apps for Windows, iOS and Android

•     Simplify management of relational and non-relational data with ability to query both through standard T-SQL using PolyBase technology

•     Stretch Database technology keeps more of your customer’s historical data at your fingertips by transparently stretching your warm and cold OLTP data to Microsoft Azure in a secure manner  without application changes

•     Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Microsoft Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure

File formats are 64bit ISO or CAB. The installation is as usual except if you are using Microsoft Edge, you cannot save, you just run. However you do get an option to name a directory (with a default) to save extracted files.

Keep coming back to Hodentek and HodentekMSSS for more posts on SQL Server related information.

For developing apps for Windows 10 you need to do some setup

You have installed or upgraded to Windows 10 and now you want to develop apps for Windows 10 using a JavaScript template. With Windows 10 you can develop it once and then you can deploy to various devices. However to do this you need to get ready with 'developer mode'. This post shows how (this assumes you are using Visual Studio 2015 Community).

Launch Visual Studio 2015 Community. Create a blank Universal Windows app using Javascript template in VS Community 2015.

DojoUW00.png

You may get this message if it is not in developer mode. In which case follow intructions on the message.

 Developermode.png

This is the folder structure of my Universal Windows project using the blank JavaScript template which I named it as DojoApp (I was planning to bring in Dojo Toolkit here but there are some problems).

DojoUW-01.png

Here is the default.html code:

--------------
Click F5 to start debugging, the developer mode window comes up again. Now click on   Settings for Developers link. The Update and Security window appears and in 'For Developers'

DojoUW_02.png

Choose the Developer mode button. The following window is displayed.

DojoUW_03.png

Click Yes.
Click F5 again the DojoApp gets displayed and you will see this after the splash screen display.

DojoUW_04.png

Try out Idera's PowerShell Plus

This is a useful tool as it can make your life easy as a DBA.

Download IderaPowerShellPlusSetup-x64.zip (25 MB) from Idera's website after registering and get the free tool.

You get this toll from here:
https://www.idera.com/productssolutions/freetools/powershellplus

This tool helps to:

• Create Usefull Tools

• Automate Repetitive Tasks and save time

• Supports multi-server automation

• Monitoring, exporting/importing files

• Create PowerShell SMO Scripts

• Carry out compliance tasks

What's more, it is free!

Here is a screen shot of my PowerShell Plus UI.

Do you want to install on your computer, follow the steps here:
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2015/10/ideras-powershell-plus-is-good-tool-for.html

Microsoft Store debuts in New York City

Microsoft opened its 3-floor store for business in New York today. It's on 5th Avenue not far from Apple Store. This is the largest Microsoft Store. All the new stuff from Microsoft is being sold starting today.

New York is a great city with people from all over the world and Microsoft knows this and the shop associates speak and understand some 19 languages.

Video from Windows Central



More story here:

 http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/25/microsoft-nyc-flagship-store/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/10/25/nyc-microsoft-store-launch/74579014/

New York Store:

Azure PowerShell 1.0 is in preview now

You can find Preview of Azure PowerShell in PowerShell gallery now. Later on an MSI or WebPI installer version of the preview will be added. The present 0.9.8 version will become 1.0 in due course and the preview is only for testing, not really for production.

The stated goals of this preview are:

• Enable better support for Resource Manager in Azure Automation
• Separate Azure Service Management and Resource Manager functionality to provide clarity regarding features of Azure the cmdlets target
• Enforce semantic versioning and ensure cmdlets authored against a given major version of Azure PowerShell will not encounter breaking changes from updates to Azure PowerShell
• Distribute Azure PowerShell through WebPI and PowerShell Gallery to enable quicker delivery of new features and defect resolutions
• Automation of Azure PowerShell MSDN reference documentation

You have satisfied minimum requirements of WMI if you are in Windows 10 and you can get the modules from PowerShell on your computer. Review the following screenshots:

Launch PowerShell and run the Install-Module script as shown.

Click the appropriate button and click Next (herein Yes was clicked).

Follow the screen instructions;
You are ready to go.

Read more here:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azps-1-0-pre/

Should you exchange your General Electric (GE) stocks to Synchrony Financial(SYF)?

GE received approval  to spin-off its consumer financial operations by exiting from its store credit card business, Synchrony Financial.

What it means is that you can exchange (General Electric) GE stocks to (Synchrony Financial) SYF stocks. As it stands presently you can buy with $100 worth of GE stocks something like $107.53 worth of SYF.

The offer is set to expire on November 16.

Details of this exchange can be viewed here on a daily basis till the conclusion.

I have a small number of GE stocks and probably it does not make much difference one way or the other.

However,

• GE is a much larger company with a long history.
• GE also pays dividends while Synchrony Financial presently does not. Of course dividend is only one part of the equation.
• After the conclusion of Exchange GE may soar.

Presently I am thinking of keeping my GE stocks, but it may change before November 16. What do you think?

Whose property is data in the Cloud?

The recent gains by the cloud vendors may soon evaporate into unimaginable losses if this question is not properly tackled. Going forward investors may want to take a wait and see attitude.

I am a citizen of country X, can country Y ask to look into my data for whatever reason? just because it is on a physical server in country Y. Data on the cloud is geographically dispersed in several countries and I could have my data on several data centers around the world.

This question is easy enough to answer. If I placed the data on the cloud it belongs to me.  This should absolve the cloud services answering requests from national entities. The best place is to go to the client who owns the data. What if they cannot ask the question to the owner of the data forever reason?

The central question is:

"Is privacy a fundamental human right?"

Much of the gains in cloud business would depend on how this question is going to be handled.

Read some recent posts on this:

http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2015/10/20/the-collapse-of-the-us-eu-safe-harbor-solving-the-new-privacy-rubiks-cube/

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-privacy-rights-safe-harbor,30379.html

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all smiling today

Here is an after hours status of the three companies stocks. Important to note that cloud business as well as search related business is prospering. What the Street calls, 'Big Techs, Big beats'

Amazon all time high today.

After hour links:

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft/after-hours

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/googl/after-hours

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/after-hours

Vizable (app) from Tableau is FREE

This is a free app from Tableau meant for you, the iPad user to "see, touch and understand your data"
Simply put this is a data visualization app.

If you can touch, you can also pinch, swipe and drag to visualize your data. Sharing is no problem and take your curiosity to the next step.

Download this App from Tableau site here.
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1039023889#

When you are getting Vizable app also get Tableau's Tableau Mobile version 9.1.2

Riak TS and Internet of Things

Riak TS is focused to handle time series application needs. It can do fast read/write to IOT devices, there in is its strength. It also targets financial and economics data as well as in scientific research applications.

This is straight from Riak TS:
"Riak TS automatically co-locates, replicates, and distributes data across the cluster to achieve fast performance and high availability. The unique master-less architecture enables near-linear scale using commodity hardware so you can easily add capacity as your time series data grows.
"
Here is a claimed benefits of using Riak_TS from their PDF datasheet here.

This is again from Riak TS's PDF documents regarding their NoSQL database and the Basho platform.  "Basho Riak® TS is a distributed NoSQL database. Its key/ value architecture is optimized for fast reads and writes of time series data. Riak TS provides high availability, massive scalability, and can be operationalized at lower costs than traditional relational databases while being easy to manage at scale. Riak TS is integrated with Basho Data Platform (BDP), which includes support for Apache™ Spark (in-memory analytics), Redis (caching), and Apache™ Solr (distributed search queries"

Working with Oracle SQL Developer 4.1.1 in Windows 10 - Part 1

In the previous post the details of downloading the free Oracle SQL Developer 4.1.1 and the Java SDK8 were described for a Windows 10 on a x32bit machine. As to requirements please refer to
this link. Although Windows 10 is not in the list of OSs, it seems to work without a problem, at least so far.

You do not need to install the Oracle SQL Developer tool as the executable (sqldeveloper.exe) is in the download.  Java8 SDK was downloaded and installed with the x64 bit SQL Developer on Window 10 on x32 bit laptop. However Oracle SQL Developer Tool 4.1.1  already had JDK8 and there was no need to install JDK8 separately.

Launch the SQL Developer by double clicking the executable. It starts off with the following:

 
SQL Developer411.png

There may be a message to restore previous connections and this was ignored.
The Oracle SQL Developer start page is displayed as shown.

SQLDevGui.png

At the top is the main menu and the toolbar is below the main menu. In the pane on the right you have a number of useful links including videos, featured tutorials and featured online demonstrations. You should make it a point to visit these links.

In the pane on the left at the top is the Connections pane where you establish connections. There are three links as shown.

Connections.png

Right click Connections to open the following:

Connections2.png

From here click New Connection... to open the following:

SelectDBConnection.png

It likes like as it stands you can only connect to an Oracle database. You may have bring in connection information for third part databases. Click Cancel.

Right click Oracle NoSQL Connection to open the following:

ConnectNoSQL.png

Click Cancel.

Right click Cloud Connections and click New Cloud Connection... to open the following interface:

ConnectionCloud.png

This is obviously to the Oracle Cloud. You must have some kind of authentication to get to the service.

The Reports pane at the bottom of the Connections pane has all diffrent reports that you can generate.

ReportsDetails.png
Video: Some major features

Telnet and Windows 10

Presently Telnet Server is not implemented on Windows 10. Telnet Client is installed but not enabled. Most probably it is deprecated as was done for the latest server.
---------
Telnet server deprecated use remote desktop
---------------
TELecommunication NETwork protocol is an unsecured (username/password is in text, not encrypted) network protocol and its use will be prejudicial to security on local networks as well as Internet.
It was still available in Windows 7. Follow these threads (1, 2) for Installing
Telnet Client and Telent Server on Windows 7.

Telnet client is installed but not enabled on Windows 10 and you need to
enable it. You can go this directory to access telnet.exe on Windows 10.
C:\Windows\System32\telnet.exe. Presently it is used to connect to remote servers
at.

Enabling the client on Windows 10:

Here are screen shot(s) to enable Telnet Client on Windows 10 and test it.

This is how your Windows Features accessible from Control Panel |
Programs | Programs and Features | Turn Windows Features On or Off
appears when telnet client is enabled. When not its not enabled there is no check mark:

telnet1.png

Place check-mark for Telnet Client (if not checked) and click OK.

You can now test the client as shown using command line:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>telnet
You get the following response:
Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Client
Escape Character is 'CTRL+]'
Microsoft Telnet>

You get the help now using the following command:
Microsoft Telnet>help /?
The response will be:
Commands may be abbreviated. Supported commands are:
c    - close                    close current connection
d    - display                  display operating parameters
o    - open hostname [port]     connect to hostname (default port 23).
q    - quit                     exit telnet
set  - set                      set options (type 'set ?' for a list)
sen  - send                     send strings to server
st   - status                   print status information
u    - unset                    unset options (type 'unset ?' for a
list)
?/h  - help                     print help information

Get the free Oracle SQL Developer 4.1.1 and develop

This is a great tool and has evolved a lot. The last time I wrote about this was in May 2014 when the version was 4.0.2. If you have not worked with this tool, please access Oracle.com and search. If you need information on previous versions you can access my previous posts here;
----
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2007/08/do-you-know-how-to-use-oracle-sql.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2008/12/oracle-sql-developer-tool-15-with-sql.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2009/05/articles-on-earlier-versions-of-oracle.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/01/migrating-mysql-table-using-oracle-sql.html
http://www.packtpub.com/article/oracle-sql-developer-tool-1.5-sql-server-2005

You may download this free tool from here:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/overview/index.html
sqldeveloper-4.1.1.19.59-no-jre.zip (383.6MB)

This free tool will allow you a complete end-to-end development of PL/SQL applications. It has worksheet to run queries and SQL scripts. A DBA console with reports; data modelling and data migration tools.

In order to run SQL Developer Tool you need Java SDK8.

You can get it from here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html
You choose the OS version, herein Windows 7 Ultimate  x32bit
jdk-8u60-windows-i586.exe is the download for this Windows x32

Double click to install.

In this edition of Oracle SQL Developer you can not only connect to relational database management systems but can also connect to Oracle NoSQL and the Cloud.

Upgrading to Windows 10 on a Windows 7(x32) Ultimate

I tried upgrading to Windows 10 directly from Microsoft site on an ACERs Aspire 4810TZ-4100 laptop/Notebook with modest resources and did not succeed. Earlier on I had successfully upgraded a Toshiba Tablet and a Toshiba Laptop.

This was actually an upgrading of  Win7 (x32)Ultimate to Windows 10

Downloaded MediaCreationControl from here;
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

The downloading took about 15 minutes. Verifying downloads; creating Windows 10 Media; setup is cleaning up activities took another 30 minutes. The checking for updates took a long time and did not finish. There were a number of sites asking for cookies; custora.com; admr.net;gstatic.com and several others I did not care to write down. I allowed all of them and the 'Checking for Updates' went on and on. After another 6 hours I just left the computer on to check next day.

In the morning when I logged-in it was still Windows 7. There were no error messages.

First of its kind, Microsoft Surface Book is awesome

 First for Microsoft, first of its kind laptop, Surface Book will beat it competitors to a pulp.

• Three input modes, touch (10 point multi-touch), pen,mouse

• Full-sized back-lit keyboard.

• 13.5" PixelSense (tm) display is detachable to morph into a tablet that works with Surface Pen and OneNote, resolution: 3000 x 2000 (267 PPI), aspect ratio: 3:2. Bend over the lid can be used as a creative canvas  
• 6th Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processor with upto 16GB memory + optional discrete graphics chip (NVIDIA GenForce) needed for creative photo and video editing tasks
• 12-hour battery life for video playback.
• Solid state drive (SSD) options: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB.
• Wireless:  802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking; IEEE; 802.11a/b/g/n compatible; Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology.
• Ports:  Two full-size USB 3.0; Full-size SD™ card reader; SurfaceConnect^TM; Headset jack
  Mini DisplayPort
• Cameras, Audio and Video: 5.0MP front-facing camera; 8.0MP rear-facing camera with auto-focus, with 1080p HD video recording; Dual microphones, front and rear-facing

  Front-facing stereo speakers with Dolby® audio.

Run full Office version; markup web pages on Microsoft Edge and share it easily.  With the splendid screen and pen you can make the most of Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator. It is a mobile studio.






















I may buy one but its specifications look great.

One easy way to get started with Internet of Things

Internet of Things is all the hype and the field is getting crowded each day.

LittleBits Electronics offers the CloudBit Module which is a easy and quick option to create Internet connected devices. You can tag on Internet to many things without you needing to program anything. There are many, many projects that you can do with this module. Using IFTTT (read about it in an earlier post) you can connect to any web service or whatever that IFTTT supports. Together with Arduino you could even do custom coding.  The module comes with a USB power module and a wall adapter. It looks like a toy but packs great power.

CloudBit Module

CloudBit Module is an embedded Linux computer with a WiFi and automatically communicates with littleBit Cloud. When used for the first time, the module functions like a WiFi router allowing you to connect to the Internet. The core of the module is the iMX233 SOC which includes CPU Core; the power supply, and peripherals like USB, ADC, DAC etc. The device boots of the SD card via an SSP Port.

Here is a video:

IoT is not just for IT Professionals it is also for any age.

Amazon Aurora: Amazon MySQL 5.6 compatible database service

For high-end commercial databases that deliver cost-effective speed and reliability
is now on AWS. Amazon claims that Aurora can deliver 5X the throughput of standard
MySQL with four 9s running on same hardware. 

The secret of this improved performance it appears lies in the tight integration of database engine and the SSD-backed, virtualized, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system. Crash recovery is automatic with capability to fail-over to as many a s15 read replicas. Aurora can exapnd from 1oGB
to 64TB.

Read personal experience [Review: Amazon Aurora rocks MySQL] testing Aurora here.

Can it really pose threat to the likes of Oracle and SQL Server?

 

SQL evolves to U-SQL, language under development at Microsoft

While SQL covered the RDBMS landscape U-SQL covers a much larger data landscape.

At the same time as the announcement of Azure Data Lake Services, a new language under development at Microsoft, the U-SQL language was also announced. For the Azure Data Lake Service and what it means to business read here.

With the advent of Big Data and the task of mining all kinds of data, RDBMS suddenly found itself at a disadvantage. Structured Query Language (SQL) could only address what is in a relational data store. U-SQL was born to address this challenge posed by Big Data defined by volume, velocity and variety.

What is U-SQL
U-SQL deep dives into Big Data to extract the most relevant information. It is a powerful language (in the words of Microsoft):

• Process any type of data. From analyzing BotNet attack patterns from security logs to extracting features from images and videos for machine learning, the language needs to enable you to work on any data.
• Use custom code easily to express your complex, often proprietary business algorithms. The example scenarios above may all require custom processing that is often not easily expressed in standard query languages, ranging from user defined functions, to custom input and output formats.
• Scale efficiently to any size of data without you focusing on scale-out topologies, plumbing code, or limitations of a specific distributed infrastructure.

Compared to HIVE, a SQL-Based language U-SQL is flexible and does not have the limited capability to address the 'variety' in non-structured data requiring schema generation prior to running queries. U-SQL should prove more easy to use than Hive for complex scenarios.

U-SQL has been designed as declarative SQL based language with native extensibility through user code in C#. This approach:

• Unifies SQL and C#
• Unifies structured and Unstructured
• Unifies declarative and custom code

U-SQL is based on SCOPE which is based on  existing prior languages, ANSI-SQL, T-SQL and HIVE. U-SQL should present a less steeper curve for those who are using SQL already.

U-SQL is an important development that developer need to jump on.

Massive Parallel Procssing of Data with SCOPE

SCOPE is an acronym for Structured Computations Optimized for Parallel Execution, a declarative language for working with large-scale data. It is still under development at Microsoft. If you know SQL then working with SCOPE will be quite easy as SCOPE builds on SQL.
The execution environment is different from that RDBMS oriented data.
Data is still modeled as rows. Every row has typed columns and eveyr rowset has a well-defined schema. There is a SCOPe compiler that comes up with optimized execution plan and a runtime execution plan.

Look at this QCount query in SCOPE:

SELECT query, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM "search.log" USING LogExtractor
GROUP BY query
HAVING count > 1000
ORDER BY count DESC;
OUTPUT TO "qcount.result";

You probably know most and the rest you are able to guess.

In the above there is a built-in LogExtractor. You can get it step-by-step going line by line; each step output being the input of next step.

SCOPE requires a software platform for storing and analyzing massive amounts of data and Microsoft has one called 'Cosmos'. Here is graphic of SCOPE processing is carried out.

This post is based on the PDF document you will find here and the image is taken from the same PDF.

Must see video for Azure Watchers

Scott Guthrie's keynote presentation "Journey to the intelligent cloud" is a must view video. This is from AzureCon 2015, September 29, 2015

I have reproduced some screen shots in case you are unable to view this long  video for one reason or another. One of the highlights is 3 datacenters coming on line in India.

Looks like you may be able to get some training free:

 

Three data centers in India

 

 Everything here.

 

 

 

 Part of the picture

More developed one here

Momentum is there to see.

 

 SQL Data Warehouse:  All of data, structured and unstructured

Internet of Things and Azure

 Azure IOT Suite

 Security, Security!

New deal.

Now the video:



Looks like well set to challenge Amazon very effectively including cost.

Azure Data Lake Store in private preview

Recently announced Azure Data Lake addresses the big data  3V challenges; volume, velocity and variety. It is one more storage feature in addition to blobs and SQL Azure database. Azure Data Lake (should have been Azure Data Ocean IMHO) is really omnipotent. Just look at the key capabilities of Azure Data Lake:

Any Data
Native format, distributed data store. No need to pre-define schema information. From unstructured to structured data handling.

Any Size
Kilo bytes to Exa bytes OK. Ready for read/write.

At any scale
Scale to match your needs; high volume data handling of small writes and low latency. Can Aaddress near real-time web analytics scenarios.

HDFS Compatible
Works out-of-the box with Hadoop including services such as HD Insight

Full integration with Azure Active Directory
Supporting identity and access management over all of the data.

Azure Data Lake Store  is therefore a hyper-scale HDFS repositiory designed specifically for big data analytics in the cloud. It is order made for IoT and thorughput-intensive analytics for high volume data.

Read more here.
The graphic is from a  Microsoft Technet site
I checked out the preview portal (https://portal.azure.com/), I do not see it. Possible by the end of the year.

Azure IOT Suite Goes GA

Azure IoT Suite became Generally Available starting September 29.  This suite consist of technologies to monitor and manage devices that come under Internet of Things. Microsoft according to Scott Guthrie provides advanced capabilites like stream processing and predictive analytics. Enterprises/Organizations use prebuilt solutions.

Read more here:
https://rcpmag.com/articles/2015/09/30/microsoft-launches-azure-iot.aspx

The following customers chowcased the Azure IOT Suite:

• ThyssenKrupp Elevators
• Rockwell Automation

Microsoft also has a IoT certification program called 'Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT".

Well, this is just the beginning of a Tsunami that is sure to hit any time soon.

Here is  a Thyssen Krupp related video:

IoT development with PIC controller-based Codebug

"CodeBug is a cute, programmable and wearable device designed to introduce simple programming and electronic concepts to anyone, at any age. It is easy to program CodeBug using the online interface, which features colourful drag and drop blocks, an in-browser emulator and engaging community features. Create your own games, clothes, robots or whatever other wacky inventions you have in mind! "

For hobbyists looking for low-cost IOT hardware Codebug (from a kickstarter project) offers something very affordable and interesting. Codebug is built around PIC18F microcontroller.

In addition to the microcontroller (8-bit SOC) all the following are also included:

• USB Developer board
• 5x5 Led Matrix board
• Pair of buttons
• +Battery Option (which allows you to build simple wearable device)

Details are here.

You want more and more resources, well  you can get an expansion board to connect to RaspberryPI.

The designing and programming appears simple using (drag and drop) building blocks and here is the demo of Codebug simulating the rotation of a propeller. You can see the design and the code as well as an active demo.

You can try this (propeller) one out online. Just click on start button on the bug and see propeller turning.

Here is video of Codebug riding a rover:
 

 

If you rather start of with PIC18F and Windows then you may try this out:

http://www.waitingforfriday.com/index.php/Building_a_PIC18F_USB_device