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Day: December 30, 2015

Data Compression

Andy Mallon looks at the costs and benefits of data compression:

The obvious benefit is that compressed data takes up less space on disk. Since you probably keep multiple copies of your database (multiple environments, DR, backups, etc), this space savings can really add up. High-performance enterprise-class storage is expensive. Compressing your data to reduce footprint can have a very real benefit to your budget. I once worked on an SAP ERP database that was 12TB uncompressed, and was reduced to just under 4TB after we implemented compression.

My experience with compression is that the benefit vastly outweighs the cost.  Do your own testing, of course.

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Installing SSRS On An Existing Clutered Instance

Corey Beck shows how to install SQL Server Reporting Services on an instance which sits on a Windows Failover Cluster:

You will also notice this is the end of your road for this installation without getting a success on this rule since the ‘Next’ button is grayed out.

Sure, you could go back and just create a new instance in the process to install SSRS on this node, but there has to be another way, right?  If only we could skip this rule in the installation….

We can using command prompt!

Knowing how to install SQL Server from the command line (or Powershell) is important; this is just one reason why.

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Type 6 Dimensions With BIML

Meagan Longoria shows us type 6 dimensions with BIML:

In my previous post, I provided the design pattern and BIML for a pure Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD). When I say “pure Type 2 SCD”, I mean an ETL process that adds a new row for a change in any field in the dimension and never updates a dimension attribute without creating a new row.  In practice, I tend to create more hybrid Type 2 SCDs where updates to some attributes require a new row and others update the value on the existing rows. A similar pattern that I find I implement more often than a pure Type 2 is a Type 6 SCD. A Type 6 SCD builds on the Type 2 technique by adding current attributes alongside the historical attributes so related measures can be grouped by the historical or current dimension attribute values. The only difference between what I call a hybrid Type 2 and a Type 6 is that in the Type 6, there are no Type 1 attributes in the dimension that do not also have a Type 2 version in the dimension to capture the historical values.

Dear Mr. President:  there are too many types these days.  Please eliminate three.  I am NOT a crackpot.

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Fill Factor And Fragmentation

Erik Darling wants to know if fill factor affects index fragmentation:

It’s not just queries that reading extra pages can slow down. DBCC CHECKDB, backups, and index and statistics maintenance all have to deal with all those pages. Lowering fill factor without good reason puts you in the same boat as index fragmentation does, except regular maintenance won’t “fix” the problem.

Like everything else, the appropriate fill factor depends upon your context.

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Why Data Lakes?

James Serra explains why you might want to use a data lake:

To refresh, a data lake is a landing zone, usually in Hadoop, for disparate sources of data in their native format.  Data is not structured or governed on its way into the data lake.  This eliminates the upfront costs of data ingestion, especially transformation.  Once data is in the lake, the data is available to everyone.  You don’t need a priority understanding of how data is related when it is ingested, rather, it relies on the end-user to define those relationships as they consume it.  Data governorship happens on the way out instead of on the way in.  This makes a data lake very efficient in processing huge volumes of data.  Another benefit is the data lake allows for data exploration and discovery, to find out if data is useful or to create a one-time report.

I’m still working on a “data swamp” metaphor, in which people toss their used mattresses and we expect to get something valuable if only we dredge a little more.  Nevertheless, read James’s article; data lakes are going to move from novel to normal over the next few years.

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