Welcome to the September newsletter from Australia's leading SQL Server Consultants, Trainers and Business Intelligence specialists

• A BI solution developed for one of our customer’s solutions was showcased in iTWire
• The Twitter BI Solution we developed for TechEd will be showcased at the PASS Summit 2010, the world’s largest SQL Server conference
• Peter Ward was awarded the recipient of the 2010 Pearcey Queensland Award. This award recognises and celebrates the achievements of Australia's ICT and Digital Media entrepreneurs.

Happy Reading

Peter Ward

PS. If you are in Brisbane don't miss out on our SQL Server Consolidation breakfast where you will learn how to use SQL Server as a Service.

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SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 BPA is a diagnostic tool gathers information about a Server and a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 instances and determines if the configurations are set according to the recommended best practices. The SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer can be downloaded from here.

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Big Data

Ten years ago, a single gigabyte of data seemed like a vast amount of information. Now, we commonly hear of data stored in terabytes or petabytes. The recent Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology looked at how to analyse this data explosion. A whitepaper on this analysis of "Big Data" can be found here.

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SQL Server Consolidation Breakfast

WARDY IT Solutions is running a Free SQL Server breakfast in Brisbane on Wednesday the 20th of October. In this session you will see how multiple SQL Server instances can be consolidated utilising SQL Server as a Service. You can register for this event here.

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Migrating to Reporting Services

If you are looking to migrate from other reporting platforms to SQL Server Reporting services a new portal has been created to provide resources to assist with the migration. The Reporting Services Migration portal can be found here.

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SQL Server 2008 R2 Training

If you are looking for SQL Server 2008 R2 training from real world specialists then look no further the WARDY IT Solutions. All of our SQL Server trainers are consultants that assist to manage some of the largest SQL Server sites in the Asia-Pacific region. We have just release our training schedule for the remainder of 2010 including our Report Builder 3.0 course which is the only course of it's type being offered in Australia. To download the course schedule refer to here.

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Houston

Microsoft Project Code-Named “Houston” is a light weight database management tool for SQL Azure. Houston can be used for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data. You can start using CTP1 of Houston here.

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SQL Server Healthcheck

Does your SQL Server environment need a Healthcheck? The WARDY IT Solutions SQL Server Healthcheck is designed to review and verify the implementation of common SQL Server Best Practices. Our Database Healthcheck includes all the usage and administration aspects of a SQL Server database, ensuring that your SQL Servers are managed and operated well. Our approach is to analyse the total health of your SQL Server environment and highlight areas of concern, providing recommendations to improve the health and performance of your database environment. For more details on our SQL Server Healthcheck refer here.

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SQL Server Most Secure Database

In a recent ITIC study it was shown that SQL Server is the most secure database server since 2002 and Oracle has recorded the most number of security vulnerabilities of any of the major database platforms over the last eight years. Full details of this study can be found here.

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ROLAP for SQL Server Data Warehouses

The SQLCAT have released a new whitepaper that shows the advantages and disadvantages of ROLAP in comparison with Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP), and evaluates various ROLAP-related data warehouse optimization techniques regarding their effectiveness and limitations. This whitepaper can be found here.

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SQL Server Virtual DBA

For the second year running our Virtual DBA was a finalist in the QLD Australian Computer Society Awards QLD ICT Awards for Service Delivery and Training. Virtual DBA was also nominated as a finalist for the QLD AIIA iAwards.

Something you may not know is that our Virtual DBA can be utilised for phone and email support. So, if your organisation just needs someone that they can call on for advice then why not use a Virtual DBA?

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