Throughout the week, I read a lot of blog-posts, articles, and so forth, that has to do with things that interest me:
- data science
- data in general
- distributed computing
- SQL Server
- transactions (both db as well as non db)
- and other “stuff”
This blog-post is the “roundup” of the things that have been most interesting to me, for the week just ending.
SQL Server
- SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd Edition. The third edition of Grant Fritchey’s excellent book about SQL Server Query Plans. If you are a developer or a DBA, you need to get this book (and read it).
Distributed Computing
- Complex Event Flows in Distributed Systems. This is an InfoQ presentation how lightweight and highly-scalable state machines ease the handling of complex logic and flows in distributed systems.
Azure
- Real-time data analytics and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Microsoft recently announced Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2 (ADLS2), and this blog post looks at how ADLS2 can be used for real-time analytics. ADLS2 is at the moment in preview. I certainly hope that MS releases it soon.
Streaming
- Keystone Real-time Stream Processing Platform. This is a blog post about Keystone; Netflix’s data backbone. It is an essential piece of infrastructure focusing on data analytics. I found this post very interesting, and if you are interested in stream processing, you should really read this post.
- Streams and Tables: Two Sides of the Same Coin. This blog post announces the availability of the white-paper Streams and Tables: Two Sides of the Same Coin. The paper introduces the Dual Streaming Model, which is used to reason about physical and logical order in data stream processing. This is a MUST read!
- Hands on: Building a Streaming Application with KSQL. In this blog post, we see how we can build a demo streaming application with KSQL, the streaming SQL engine for Apache Kafka. The application continuously computes, in real time, top music charts based on a stream of song play events.
SQL Saturday
So the SQL Saturday “season” is over for me for this year. I did one talk in Johannesburg, two in Cape Town (this and this), and one in Durban.
In addition to the conference talks I also did a full-day workshop in Cape Town and Durban about SQL Server Machine Learning Services: A Day of SQL Server Machine Learning Services with Niels Berglund.
When we talk about SQL Saturdays I want to thank the organisers in the various cities:
- Michael Johnson and team in Johannesburg.
- Jody Roberts and Jeanne Combrink and their team in Cape Town.
- Jodi Craig and team in Durban.
They are doing a fantastic work, entirely voluntarily. A HUGE, HUGE THANK YOU to all of you!
SQL Server Machine Learning Services
Now when SQL Saturday is over, I plan to get back to write about SQL Server Machine Learning Services. I am working right now on the third post in the Install R Packages in SQL Server ML Services series. I hope to be able to publish it in a week or two.
~ Finally
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoy what I did put together. If you have ideas for what to cover, please comment on this post or ping me.