Wednesday, November 28, 2012

SQL vs NoSQL-Discussion...

These days there is a lot of implementations which have started in the Big Data Space/Not Only SQL Space. There is a lot of debate about which is better and how one would replace the other. One of the more interesting discussions that I have been hearing is that both SQL/Not only SQL (NoSQL) have their space. A system that combines the advantages of both the paradigms stand to gain the most I think. Not only SQL can be used a medium to get sense of the vast amounts of unstructured data, once it is in a consumable form it could be integrated with other SQL Systems. There is a interesting blog post about cons of NoSQL (Not Only SQL), of course what is also interesting is the comments made by NoSQL users below the blog post. It is a very interesting discussion.
http://www.odbms.org/blog/2012/11/two-cons-against-nosql-part-ii/
One tends to benefit from understanding what is each systems strengths and weakness and how both can complement each other.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Data Integration & Virtualization...

In today's BI world there is data pulled from variety of Data sources. Once the data is pulled from the source they need to housed is what is called a Operational Data Store. Once data is housed here , then data is transformed/modelled for different reporting and analytical purposes. One of the key points to be considered is the cost of storage and the support personnel needed to maintain these data stores. The ETL's to perform such pulls can also be very complicated in certain cases. In the recent times the concept of Data Integration and federation has evolved and is being experimented in Master data management. One of the frequent requirement today in the business world today is that there is a need for a unified view of disparate data sources. Currently this requirement is being handled by an ETL Based approach and building data warehouses on top of them, at the same time tying disparate data sources together can be a challenging process. This is where the concept of data integration architecture kicks in, one can look at the following link to get an overview of data integration and data reingetration methodology:
http://www.strins.com/integrated-data-warehouse.html
This is an area to watch out for in the coming years as more and more disparate data sources are being used for data analysis.

Monday, November 5, 2012

SSIS 2012-Deployment of Packages...

In SSIS 2012 there are two types of deployment Project based deployment and Package based Deployment. The package based deployment follows the procedure/process in SSIS 2008. The more preferred approach in SSIS 2012 would be the project based deployment. Let us say for example we have a package we need to deploy in SSIS 2012, In SQL Server Data Tools, open the SSIS project/solution and then right click on the Solution Name and choose Deploy. A Integration Services Deployment wizard opens with the list of steps that need to be completed for a successful deployment of the package. At first select the Integration Services Project that need to be deployed. In the next screen, the user is prompted for 2 pieces of information. The first one is the Server name, this would be SQL Server 2012  where the package is to be deployed. The second one is the path for the SSISDB which is the Integration Services Catalog on the SQL Server 2012.



Here if the SSISDB is not present on the server, one needs to created the SSISDB manually. This can be done in SQL Server Management Studio by right clicking on the Integration Services Catalog. Choose the New Catlog Option, the Create Catalog Window opens. In this window one needs to check the Enable CLR Integration so that the catalog can be used. By default the name of the Catalog database is set to SSISDB. There needs to be password entered for the SSISDB catalog database, the reason being the catalog protects data using encryption. Once this complete the Catalog database is complete.



Now going back to the Deployment wizard, the path to the catalog database needs to be entered, it would be something like:
/SSISDB/FirstDeployment/SSIS2012.
Once the information is completed on this screen, the choices can be reviewed in the next screen, then once we proceed to the next screen, the project is ready to deployed and one can see the progress. On successful completion of deployment one can see the package being deployed in the SSISDB catalog.