SQL PASS happened out in Seattle a couple weeks ago and Microsoft announced some new features they are bringing to the SQL Server platform. I will briefly discuss some of the more interesting items below.
SSAS in Azure
Microsoft is all-in on Azure. And rightly so. I still see more and more applications moving to cloud solutions, and there are many benefits for doing so.
This year they announced SSAS is being added to Azure. It is interesting that they prioritized SSAS. Most of the requests I have heard at the SQL user groups ask for SSRS in azure. Perhaps they are not adding SSRS right now because they have a different long term play, at least when you consider how they are pushing Power BI.
- Power BI Service (SaaS)
- Power BI Embedded (PaaS)
- Reporting Services (On Premise) which is going to support Power BI soon.
For SSAS they are going to be adding SSAS Tabular and not Multi-Dimensional to Azure. I still like multi-dimensional better primarily due to role-playing dimension support, even with the “make multiple measures” work-around in tabular. Tabular does offer the whole power-user prototype to production pathway which is the biggest positive in my eyes.
Devin Knight and Adam Jorgenson had a quick video about Getting Started with Azure in their This Week in Data video. They discuss some reasons to consider it
- Azure Fast Start
- DR / Business continuity
- Dev / Test. Power down when not in use. ALM
- Power BI
Data Migration Assistant (DMA) and Data Experimentation Assistant (DEA)
The Data Migration Assistant tool will basically help assess and resolve compatibility issues taking a legacy version of SQL Server to 2016 or Azure VM. For more information about Data Migration Assistant.
The Data Experimentation Assistant is another tool to assist with upgrades. The DEA allows you to compare the same workload across two different versions of SQL server. For more information about Data Experimentation Assistant
James Serra discusses more about each of these tools in this blog post.
Cognitive Toolkit
Joseph Sirosh, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Data group describes Cognitive Toolkit in his Top 5 PASS Announcements post as
“a free, easy-to-use, open-source, commercial-grade toolkit that trains deep learning algorithms to learn like the human brain. The Cognitive Toolkit enables developers and data scientists to reliably train faster than other available toolkits on massive datasets across several processors, including CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs, as well as multiple machines.
For more information about the Cognitive Toolkit
Additional Announcements
Microsoft also announced Azure SQL Data Warehouse Expanded Free Trial and SQL Server 2016 DW Fast Track Reference Architecture. For more information and related links check out Top 5 PASS Announcements.
Do you find any of these announcements interesting? Which ones and why?
Let’s discuss in the comments below.
