Must see video for SQL Developers

SQL Server 2016 is advertised to be the most significant SQL Server in recent times and has a plethora of new ideas and concepts. This presentation (over an hour long) really provides a great background for SQL Server 2016 which is in RC3 presently but appears to be on Azure (preview?) already.

This is a video that you must see if you are a SQL Database Developer. The presentation (nearly an hour, March 30, 2016 Build event) by Lindsey Allen and Tony Petrossian is really informative, helpful and well made.

The stated overview of the presentation was:
"Microsoft offers SQL Server and Azure SQL Database to help you develop great relational database applications. In this session you will learn about the top developer features coming in SQL Server 2016 which are already in Azure SQL Database. Additionally, you will see the latest investments in Azure SQL Database that enable you to easily manage thousands of databases and get the performance and security insight needed to build robust and secure applications in the cloud.
"
You can hear the full presentation with all the demos here:
(Day 1 of the Microsoft Build meeting. Lindsey Allen and Tony Petrossian March 30, 2016)

The following demos were presented to deliver the 'wow' impact (it is possible that I might have omitted some).

• In-memory OLTP Demo nicely presented.
• Always encrypted demo(Security schema, security policy  etc)
• Dynamic data matching
• SQL Injection/Auditing
• Demo with Python script
• Demo with Ruby

The video presentation is copied over here as well:



However, if you are short on time and just would like to glance over the slides they used, you may review the following images captured from the video as screen shots.

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 Comparison

Download and evaluate SQL Server 2016 RC3

 It is supposed to be the most significant SQL Server besting both Oracle and SAP verify it for yourselves at no cost.

You can download the 120 day edition from here after registering.

Three types of download (only 64-bit):

ISO
CAB
Azure

Hardware and software requirements (abbreviated):

• .NET Framework 4.6, Installation setup installs.NET Framework
• Network Software: Shared memory, Named Pipes, TCP/IP and VIA
• Hard disk space: Minimum of 6GB
• Drive/Monitor/Internet required.
• Memory: 1GB
• Processor: x64 bit 1.4GHZ
• Processor type: x64 Processor: AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T Support and Intel Premium with EM64T support
• No support for WOW 64

Here are the benefits of SQL Server 2016:
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

There are several different types of SQL Server 2014 available and details are here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(v=sql.130).aspx#hwswr

Add these 5 IoT Starter kits to your IOT Arsenal

The following five kits are Microsoft Azure Certified and these includes sensors and actuators. There is excellent support in the form of user-friendly tutorials that connect your devices to Microsoft Azure IOT.

The following are the kits that are Microsoft Azure Certified (taken from Microsoft Site):

Adafruit Raspberry Pi Kit:
Powered by Windows 10, this credit-card sized computer is capable of many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing or even playing video games. This kit provides all the necessary sensors and components to get started using Raspberry Pi and Azure IoT.
More info here.(https://www.adafruit.com/azure)

Adafruit Feather M0 Kit:
Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin and light. Adafruit designed Feather to be a new standard for portable microcontroller cores. This is the Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi w/ATWINC1500 - our take on an 'all-in-one' Arduino-compatible + high speed, reliable WiFi with built in USB and battery charging.

Adafruit Huzzah Feather ESP8266 Kit:
Designed for those who want to use the new low-cost Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller and are comfortable with that platform to explore Azure IoT. An Arduino or other microcontroller is not required.

Seeed - Intel Edison Kit:
Designed for expert makers, entrepreneurs, and some industrial IoT applications, the Intel® Edison compute module provides ease-of-development for a range of prototyping projects or commercial ventures when performance matters.

SparkFun Thing Dev Kit: ($39.95)
Designed around the ESP8266 SOC, the Thing Dev board is a cost-effective, and very capable Wi-Fi-enabled microcontroller. This kit provides all the necessary sensors and components to get started using the ThingDev microcontroller and Azure IoT.

More detailss here

Get a Free Azure Trial account and check out Azure

This is a good offer which gives you a credit of $200 that you can use during the 30 day trial period. Microsoft will charge $1 to verify the credit card information which will be reversed 3 to 5 days after signing up. When you exhaust the $200 limit (for whcih you will not be charged) you may have to sign-up for a pay-per-use account, if you want to continue using it. After the 30 day period, the account becomes inactive.

This offer is available world wide.

Of course, you get an update of how much of the $200 dollars you will have used during your trial and the information will be availble on your application. I am sure you will be interested in knowing how much you are using for your application. You can use all services on Azure excpt those from third parties in the Azure Market place.

I think it is a fair offer if you interested in getting into the Azure Cloud.

Get ready with a credit card; a phone number and a Windows Account.

Dataiku Data Science Studio (DSS) now available as image on Microsoft Azure

Dataiku DSS allows data professionals to prototype, build and deploy specific services to transform raw data for Prediction or otherwise.

Once you have the data on Azure you can use DSS's web interface to load and prepare data in a visual interface; analyze and visualize data; and train machine algorithms to model your project. The resulting model can be finally automated to run entire workflow.

The pre-built image is now available on Azure, but you may need to go to the Azure's new portal here,

or get started from here.

Features that you may interested in:

• Connectivity: Connect to more than 25 data storage systems

• Data Wrangling: Interactive data cleaning and enrichment
• Machine Learning: Step-by-step guided machine learning
• Data Mining : Immediate visual insights
• Data Visualization: Histogram, maps, scatter plots, heat maps, boxplots, and so much more.
  Easily build visualisations and explore your data with drag and drop functionalities.
  -DSS automatically computes charts on your existing Big Data infrastructure (SQL or Impala) for optimal performance.
• Data Workflow: Visualize and re-run Workflows
• Real-time Scoring: Go from design to production, instantaneously

Other features of importance:

Collaboration: Integrated documentation and knowledge sharing
Deployment: Deploy workflows using staged deployment models
Enterprise readiness: Data governance and fine grained data access and integration with Hadoop

Watch this video from Dataiku here: