skreebydba

I attended the SQL Server 2012 launch this past Thursday. Thanks to Dave Paulson, Ross LoForte, Ron Martin and the rest of the folks at Microsoft for putting on such a great event. Some of the highlights from the launch:

Ross's demo of AlwaysOn

It was the first time Id seen it in action and it is impressive. I received answers to some questions about the listener, and I hope to get it up and running in a lab environment this week.

A better understanding of the ColumnStore index

Data warehousing is one of things on my learning list for this year, so the information Dave Paulson provided should come in handy.

Tempdb on a local drive

We are testing a lot of new products and platforms in our environment this year: VMWare, Microsoft's Data Consolidation Appliance, and SQL Server 2012. This is another item to put on the list. I am looking forward to running performance comparisons of tempdb on our existing SAN versus a local drive.

Reminders of SQL Server 2008 features

Dave Paulson's presentation on Mission Critical features contained a section on SQL Server 2008 features, including Policy-Based Management and Resource Governor. I have done some initial research into these features, but this will work to implement them this year.

Infonomics

The highlight of the event was the keynote given by Doug Laney of Gartner. The topic was infonomics, or methods of treating information as an asset. Having worked in information technology for 13 years with the last five in database administration, I understand the value of the data I work with. But I'd never given thought to that data as an asset on a balance sheet.

Laney talked about four ways to determine the value of information:

1. Replacement value - How much would you have to pay to replace your data?
2. Revenue generation - How does your data contribute to the bottom line?
3. Market value - How much can you sell your data for on the open market?
4. Ransom - How much would you pay if your data was held hostage?

It was an extremely thought-provoking presentation, and I've started conversations with my leadership about bringing these ideas into our organization. Gartner is releasing two white papers in the coming weeks, and I am looking forward to reading them. I will post more on the topic after reading.