Install on Linux SQL Server vNext CTP-1.4

Many CTP's have been released for SQL Server vNext and looking at the pace, the importance of this reflects the zeal of Microsoft's drive towards Open source and acceptance by a vastly larger audience.

The latest CTP, CTP 1.4 is supported on the following Linux platforms:

RHEL 7.3
https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/evaluation

SUSE Linux Enterprise 12:
https://www.suse.com/products/server/

Ubuntu 16.04:
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

Docker:
https://www.docker.com/get-docker (Community Edition is free)

Bottom line requirementss:
You need a minimum of 3.25GB and the file system must be XFS or EXT4

Installation details here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup

Finally the TOSHIBA DVD/CD-ROM drives problem is fixed

Quite a long time ago I reported in my post regarding the loss of DVD drive. I use the DVD very infrequently and it was on the back burner. Finally I decided to get to the bottom of it and succeeded. Here is the result.

In the Device Manager I could see that the DVD device was not working properly as reported in the previous link. The Toshiba, TSST Corp CDDVDW SU-208DB drive was not working and the DVD drive was not seen in the Windows Explorer. The properties of the problematic drive appeared as shown with the Code 19 error (image from the above post).

Finally I came across this Toshiba support site here.

Interestingly this page does not say anything about Windows 10 but describes the fix for Windows 8
My problem started when Windows 10 anniversary update was made and the DVD stopped working from that time.

The fix for this problem consisted of removing two of the programs from the Control Panel|...|Programs and Features shown here:

Toshiba Recovery Media Creator
Toshiba Disk Creator

and also uninstall the DVD\CD_ROM Drives element in the Device Manager.

I did not have the Toshiba Disk Creator, but I uninstalled the TOSHIBA Recovery Media Creator and the DVD/CD-ROM drives in the Device Manager.

These are as shown in the screen shots:

DVD-000

DVD-001

And now after restarting the computer I can see the DVD drive in the explorer.

/CD

Firefox 51.0.1(32Bit) on Windows 10 Pro build has this new problem.

Your browser is open and, you have couple of other windows (notepad, Microsoft Edge, Excel, etc) open and all of a sudden the window display is frozen. You click here and there but no reaction. How do you get out of this?

The only way I have found is by invoking the Task Manager. As soon as Task Manager comes up the problem goes away this time around, and you can bring to the top any window you want. It can happen again.

Who is the culprit?

I am not sure if it is the OS () or the Browser. I have seen this happen with Microsoft Edge as well. Probably it is OS build that is the culprit.

OS Version used here:

Version 1703

Build: 15063.0

Windows 10 Professional

Build web apps with R studio

 R language is open source with a huge number of developers. It has a great arsenal of great stuff already accomplished. It is a language that you should get exposed to yourself. You just install R Gui and you are ready.

Shiny is an enterprise-grade web application framework targeted for those who want to develop with R using the familiar HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Using R you can turn terrific analytic solutions you have developed/developing into interactive web applications.

Go to this site (https://shiny.rstudio.com/) directly and learn more.

 

Rshiny-00

If you have R Studio you have Shiny because Shiny is a package that you can download.

In this first part we only talk about the very basics.

I assume you have read my previous hands-on R examples in my blogs.

http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2015/09/what-is-good-way-to-learn-r-language.html
http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/search?q=R+language

Here I just show a very basic (aka Hello World) example of creating content for a web page using R GUI. More will come later in my blogs.

Launch R Gui as shown and provide reference to the shiny "library" as shown by typing in the three lines of code (The four lines of code in red).

 HelloWorld_00

When you hit Enter after the third line where you define the shiny app, a browser window will open as shown displaying the apps output as shown at a port of the local host.

HelloWorld_01

You also get a response (the last line) in the R GUI as shown.

HelloWorld_02
That is all there is to create a content.

The ui summarizes your user interface, the server is something like a web server and shinyApp is your web response. No fuss, very simple.

Take a look at some of the nice apps with SHINY here.

Install and use the new Report Builder 3 with SQL Server 2016

Download Report Builder 3 for SQL Server as described in my previous post .

You will have downloaded the ReportBuilder.msi file published on 3/9/3017. Note that there are other Report Builder.msi related to other versions (for example ReportBuilder.msi for SQL Server 2014 etc).

The installation is driven by a wizard and it installs without any problem. You need not indicate a Reporting Services Report Server during installation.



Here are screen shots of the installation:

Welcome Screen

License agreement window. Click I Accept...

 It will be installed on the local hard drive. Note that this product may also work with SQL Server vNext CTP1.3.

SQL Server 2016 reporting services has two modes and you need not have these installed and configured. You may keep this empty. Click Next.

Click Next and you are ready to install.

 Click Install. Begins installing with a progress screen.

 It is done installing.

 You should see these in All Programs on Windows 10.

Double click and you are ready to Author a report. If you want to put it out on the Report Server, you need a Report Server.

You are ready to go!

Arris dual-band router

A dual-band router is a router that has two bands.

For example, the Arris router used by subscribers to Time Warner Oceanic service provider uses the service provider provided router that two has bands, 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHz. This router has functioned well from the time it was installed. Before this I had a single band LinkSYS router.

A typical dual-band router has an administration panel shown here:

You can see that you can have separate settings (password, encryption, etc.) for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHZ bands that this router can provide.

You can have devices working with either of these two bands or both. For example one or two of desktop works on 2.4 GHZ and my Lumia 950 on 5 GHZ.
My Samsung TV works on the 2.4GHZ as well.

If want to utilize the full power of bandwidth, or have multiple devices that depend on Wi-Fi it may be better to go to dual-band router although they may cost higher.

Get a handle on financial portfolio analysis using R

I read a very illuminating article on R-Bloggers which was originally published on R-Curtiss Miller's Personal Website.

Ever since Microsoft SQL Server began supporting R in its 2016 version, I got interested in R language. It is extremely rich with wide applicability from Astronomy to Zoology and everything in between.

Financial information from Yahoo as the source, the package 'quantmod' brings with it most of the useful financial information related functions about stocks. quantmod gets data from Yahoo Finance and Google Finance plus data  from other sources.

In order to work with financial data you should download the package which can done as shown:
------------
> # Get quantmod
> if (!require("quantmod")) {
+     install.packages("quantmod")
+     library(quantmod)
+ }
Loading required package: quantmod
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/Jayaram/Documents/R/win-library/3.2’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
also installing the dependencies ‘xts’, ‘zoo’, ‘TTR’
[ I chose the CRAN site in California ]
trying URL 'https://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/xts_0.9-7.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 662188 bytes (646 KB)
downloaded 646 KB

trying URL 'https://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/zoo_1.7-14.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 905140 bytes (883 KB)
downloaded 883 KB

trying URL 'https://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/TTR_0.23-1.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 432456 bytes (422 KB)
downloaded 422 KB

trying URL 'https://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/bin/windows/contrib/3.2/quantmod_0.4-7.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 473601 bytes (462 KB)
downloaded 462 KB

package ‘xts’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘zoo’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘TTR’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
package ‘quantmod’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

The downloaded binary packages are in
        C:\Users\Jayaram\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpOIHqF6\downloaded_packages
Loading required package: xts
Loading required package: zoo

Attaching package: ‘zoo’

The following objects are masked from ‘package:base’:

    as.Date, as.Date.numeric

Loading required package: TTR
Version 0.4-0 included new data defaults. See ?getSymbols.
Warning messages:
1: In library(package, lib.loc = lib.loc, character.only = TRUE, logical.return = TRUE,  :
  there is no package called ‘quantmod’
2: package ‘quantmod’ was built under R version 3.2.5
3: package ‘xts’ was built under R version 3.2.5
4: package ‘zoo’ was built under R version 3.2.5
5: package ‘TTR’ was built under R version 3.2.5
---------------
Once it is installed. You can set up start and end dates variables for viewing your stocks like in:
>start<- as.Date("2016-1-1")
>end <- as.Date("2016-10-1")

With these defined, you can get the Apple's stock price using its ticker symbol AAPL using the functions in the package as shown obtaining data from the Yahoo source.
> getSymbols("AAPL", src="yahoo", from=start, to=end)
To view the data just run the statement
>head(AAPL)
The result comes out quick as shown.

Comprehensive survey of Developers by StackOverflow

StackOverflow has published its Developer Survey 2017 here. It has the most interesting statistics. It should be important to those of you who choose to work as a developer. It covers the whole globe and the global developer view shows how many in these countries are part of the global developer community.

Here are the various sub-categories of the survey breakdown.

The salary related data should be very interesting for those who want to pursue a career. Things could be different in 2018.

JavaScript appears to be the king.

Hyperloop One - Setting up the tracks

Since my first post in 2013 things have moved up a little bit. According to this news item, the start up company Hyperloop One (not an affiliation of Elon Musk's business) has begun constructing a full-scale test track called the DevLoop in the Nevada desert. According to their one liner, Hyperloop One has promised to deliver a means of transit that offers airplane speed at bus ticket prices.

You know what, this was unveiled appropriately in a Middle East Rail Conference in Dubai.  It appears the first implementation of Hyperloop may take place connecting Dubai with Abu Dhabi. Well this is a very hopeful choice with Dubai having a lot of cash and a wide open desert. There is lot more of this news at this NBC's news site.

Read at Hyperloop One here for the full story:

Here is a You Tube video :


Traffic congestion is a major, major problem and any thing to mitigate its effects such as lost time, pollution, stress at a reasonable cost is worth the effort & justifies support.

India  has teeming millions with cities congested with traffic beyond imagination and unbelievable pollution. No wonder India is looking at this technology although bringing Hyperloop India will not be easy.

20th anniversay Visual Studio Event - Congratulations

In a matter within the week, Visual Studio 2017 will be released (March 7). I cannot help but recollecting the journey, I had with Visual Studio.

I started using Visual since the day 1 it appeared. Actually I was attracted by the Visual IDE even earlier with Visual Basic, Visual InterDev (the precursor for Visual Studio) and all the other Visual programs from Microsoft.

I also used Visual InterDev for some projects at WorldCom. Neither Visual InterDev nor I had anything whatever to do with whatever happened to WorldCom (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-class-scandal-at-worldcom/).

I was teaching out of work folks during the bubble period who were eager to acquire Web related technology that can access back-end databases. They loved it all, although Visual InterDev had a long way to go.

Later on I had a lot to read up on Visual Studio for the five books I wrote from (2007 to 2012). They are all displayed on my blogs. They really helped me to write as the software was available free. In order to get a free copy, distributed in one of the Microsoft events in Long Island, NY I traveled from Princeton to Long Island and did an overnight stay.

Wish you a very happy birthday Visual Studio and many more birthdays to come.
I have blogged extensively on Visual Studio about all versions in four of my blogs. Review the following:

Hodentek (11 years):235 Posts
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/search?q=visual+Studio

HodentekHelp (10 years): 50 posts
http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/search?q=visual+Studio

HodentekMobile(9 Years):30 posts
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/search?q=visual+studio

HodentekMSSS (8 years): 49 posts
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/search?q=visual+studio

Bacpac file on GitHub can also be used to construct Wide World Database on SQL Server 2016

In my previous post I showed you how easy it is to bring the Wide World Importers (WWI) database into a named instance of SQL Server 2016 SP1 on your computer(desktop / laptop).

In this post I describe how you may construct the database on the named instance using a BacPac file.
If you have not used this kind of file please review the following link here.

In what follows I describe using the .bacpac file to construct the WWI database
Go here:
https://github.com/Microsoft/sql-server-samples/releases/tag/wide-world-importers-v1.0

Get this bacpac file:
Azure SQL Database Standard tier

    WideWorldImporters-Standard.bacpac - standard edition OLTP sample database in bacpac format. For Azure SQL Databases in the Standard tier.

Download the 58.4 MB file from the above site.


SQL Server 2016 SP1 like the other versions has a wizard to bring the database using a .bacpac file such the one you downloaded.

You invoke the wizard as shown in the next image and follow through.

bakpacWWI_01.png

Click Import Data-tier Applicaiton... to open the window shown in the next image.  Read the steps in this introductory page.

bakpacWWI_02.png

 Click Next. You click the Browse... button to locate the  indicated file. This is the location to which I saved the WideWorldImporters-Standard.bacpac file. 
It does not matter it is for Azure SQL Database.

bakpacWWI_03.png

After getting the file location from the location as shown in the next image proceed to next step.

bakpacWWI_04.png


After getting the file location in the wizard's interface (the image one above the previous) click Next.

bakpacWWI_05.png

 Just verify that the location for files are what you want. Herein defaults are accepted. You could browse and park elsewhere.

The database name was changed to WWI_Bacpac.

Click Next. The Summary of processing is presented as shown.

bakpacWWI_06.png


Click Next. The next four images shows the progress captured in images. Indexes are dropped and created, etc.

 bakpacWWI_07.png

 bakpacWWI_08.png

 bakpacWWI_09.png

bakpacWWI_10.png

Object explorer refreshed - last processing step.

The WWI database is imported successfully.

Here is the final verification of the import into the named instance.

 

bakpacWWI_10.png

This method of importing the database appears to be slower than the one in the previous post. as there is a lot of processing related to deconstructing and reconstructing the indexes.

Bharthi Airtel, Nokia Collaboration to bring 5G to India

Airtel and Nokia waded through 2,3,4G technologies together and now they are gearing up to bring 5G to India.

5G is expected to make dramatic improvements to:

• Peak Data speeds
• Improvements to Network Latency
• Agility
• Enable new network capability such as network slicing

Nokia's First end-to-end 5G solution (AirScale radio access portfolio and AirFrame data center platform) will be leveraged.

More importantly this technology will be crucial for IoT(smart city, connected vehicles, industrial automation, etc).

Read more here:
http://english.jagran.com/tech-auto-nokia-airtel-join-hands-on-5g-iot-applications-226054

Hang on to your Nokia stocks!

Get ready to using Wide World Importers Database from Microsoft

In order to get this database first go here ( https://github.com/Microsoft/sql-server-samples ).

There are three releases of which the first one Wide World Importers sample database v1.0 is the one you should get.

Before you begin to do this task, verify that you have done a dependent tass (upgrading to SP1). If not, go here and complete the task.

Click on that link. This should take you to this site here .

I will show you the easy way to get this task done. SQL Server has both Backup / Restore hookups that you can use.
Download WideWorldImporters-Standard.bak

From Databases choose Restore Database....

Restore Database screen gets displayed. Click on Device and click the ellipsis button to locate the backup file.

  

Go locate the backup file you downlaoded as shown (your location will be different).

Click OK. The file can now be accessed by the processor.

Click OK. After a short while of processing you should see this message.

 Wide World Importers is now in your named instance of SQL Server 2016 SP1 as shown.

It does come with data as shown.

 

Don't you think it was easy!