Microsoft Ignite Book of News

The Microsoft Ignite Book of News is a guide to key news items that announced at Microsoft Ignite. Read more →

How to use Database Compatibility to increase your migration success

Understanding SQL Server database compatibility levels helps in understanding risk in upgrades Read more →

Database compatibility changing to 100 when restoring SQL 2005 to SQL 2017

Question: Don't ask , but I'm restoring some SQL Server 2005 databases onto a SQL Server 2017 - and there is some database compatibility behaviour I was not expecting. When the database is attached to SQL Server 2005 - the database compatibility is 90. But when restored to SQL Server 2017 - the database compatibility is set at 100. Why is this happening? Answer: This is expected behaviour. i.e when changing from a lower version to a higher version - if the database compatibility of the source db is lower than the lowest compatibility of the target SQL Server version... Read more →

2014 for Database Servers

Random thoughts on wider ideas for the DBA 1) The database server market offers an increasing amount of different options. Some examples a) NOSQL for key-value stores, document databases, column stores, and graph databases . Example : Obamacare b) PostgreSQL offers a cheap option for developers c) Cloud based database servers .Example: Microsoft Azure platform . Although the success of virtualization at an Enterprise level will stem the flow of migration to the Cloud. Migrating to the Cloud requires coding changes and this adds risk and cost which many IT budgets cannot absorb 2) RDBMS remains the core. An RDBMS... Read more →

Database Cost Savings

I watched a video recently by Forester Research , discussing Database Cost Savings. The video was intended for IT decision makers, Senior DBAs and systems managers. There were some interesting points but all require careful analysis before implementation The main message was : the current economic environment requires rethinking of database costs. The traditional methods of consolidations, migration and upgrades are not keeping costs down . The main trends in database management are : 1) Data Volumes are growing . In some environments data is doubling every few months. 2) Large databases – analyse the impact on : performance ,... Read more →