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| | | Data Has a Dollar Value It seems that every year we see new ways of analyzing information that companies are adopting. In this era of Big Data, with the challenges of real time BI analysis of (often) streaming sets of data, companies search for ways to handle the load. We had map-reduce methods to process bits a few years back and lately there has been a growing popularity of machine learning (and deep learning) used to gain insights from the massive data sets we have. The problem is that in trying to analyze data, we find that we often don't have enough data in many cases. While some parts of our organizations face a surplus of data, others trying to provide an analysis might face a shortage, at least for some types of data. This might be especially true when business people want to engage in a new type of business or a new way of working with customers. The last couple years have given rise to a number of companies that actually are gathering and selling labeled data, or even generating synthetic data that can be used to build and train models for analysis. As we look to let machines learn to solve some problems on their own, we need to provide them lots of data, which has become big business. I have heard of companies paying six or seven figures a year to get data sets for their data scientists. In some sense, as noted in this keynote, data is the more valuable part of these systems. Staff matters, and certainly the software and models are important, but the data is key. Good data, with lots of features, can produce a better trained system than poor data. Many of us that work in traditional software know this as well. If we use poor data sets in development, with limited values, and not in the skew and selectivity that we'll see in the live system, we often build lower quality software with more bugs. In some sense, I think that our data is more valuable than we realize, and far too many developers don't take advantage of using the data our organizaition does have to build features and properly test them. Actually, too few of us actually test things well, but certainly we often can't without a good set of data. I've been disappointed with random generators, though they are useful in that they can find unexpected issues from the random values, including NULLs, that will creep into systems. I really wish we had better subsetting tools that would help us use a portion of our production data. Redgate is working on tooling, but I'd think this was a problem we'd have gotten better at solving, between software people and database staff. I've had a nice career working with data, and I'm glad that the recognition of the value of data has continued to grow through the years. Now I'd like to see us actually start to emphasize the importance of producing and using more useful data sets when we build software, whether in traditional means or using machine learning techniques. My guess is we'll get more useful and better quality software if we do. Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
| | The Voice of the DBA Podcast Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn. The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. |
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| | | | How to track every change to your SQL Server database See who’s changing your database, alongside affected objects, date, time, and reason for the change with SQL Source Control. Get a full change history in your source control system. Learn more |
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| | | | | Nikolai Basov from SQLServerCentral.com In this article, 1st of 2-part series, we will look at 2 approaches to import JSON in SSIS using 2 methods: the new functionality of SQL Server 2016 and the Json.NET library. More » |
| | Sometimes developer teams need access to a copy of the database containing live data. However, if that database contains sensitive or personal data, then it cannot be used for testing and development work, unless all appropriate security measures are in place. The data protection regulations make no distinction between development and production databases, in the event of a data breach. Chris Unwin discusses a way to tackle this problem using SQL Provision More » |
| | Additional Articles from SimpleTalk In this article of the Power BI series, Robert Sheldon demonstrates how to work with the Power Query M language to import and transform data. More » |
| | Andy Galbraith from SQLServerCentral Blogs There were a stack of errors overnight in the DB123 database on SQL01, including one horror show error: -- Log Name: ApplicationSource: MSSQLSERVERDate: 5/24/2018... More » |
| | Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral Blogs Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as... More » |
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| | | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): I have some input strings that I want to use to create SQL Server columns. I want to be sure these are valid identifier strings, so I decide to use the QUOTENAME() function. With this function. By default, when I run this as shown below, what are the changes to my input string? SELECT QUOTENAME(@SomeVar) |
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| Yesterday's Question of the Day |
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| Database Pros Who Need Your Help |
| | Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums. GDPR Requirements and Encryption - So long story short, I have to encrypt all our databases in my system to satisfy GDPR requirements. I had a... ??????|???|???????????Newcastle????qV?857767150???????????? - ???QQ|WeChat:857767150?????????????????????diploma??degree????,Newcastle???????????????????,??????HND?????????????,???????????Diploma??Certificate?????????,Newcastle????????????????????? ???????,????????? ??????,??????,???1-2???????,?????????????(?)????????? ?????????????,???????,???“ ?????”?????,?????????????? ????????????????????;?????? ?????????? ???????? ?: ??MQ????Q?857767150?MQ???,MQ???,???????? - ??????????,MQ???Q\V?857767150(????)?????????????????????????????????????,???????????????????! ??????????(????1:1?????) ??????(????????,???????,?????) ?????????(?????????????,?????) ???????,??,??,??,???,??????? ???????????,????!??????,?????? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ????????: 1???????; 2?????,??????? lucky - Macquarie???|??????????,????/??????|Q?857767150|Macquarie???|?????????|?????????|????????????|??????????/??????/?????|?????????|?????????|?????????? Macquarie University ?????????????????????????????: ???????????????(????1:1?????) ??????(????????,???????,?????) ?????????(?????????????,?????) ???????,??,??,??,???,??????? ???????????,????!??????,?????? -------------- ????????????Q?857767150???ANU???????,???????/???? - ANU??|?????????????,????/??????|Q?857767150|ANU???|?????????|?????????|????????????|??????????/??????/?????|?????????|?????????|?????????? Australian National University ?????????????????????????????: ??????????(????1:1?????) ??????(????????,???????,?????) ?????????(?????????????,?????) ???????,??,??,??,???,??????? ???????????,????!??????,?????? ------------------- AlwaysOn Listener registering 2 DNS records - Hello We have a situation where we need to setup AlwaysOn configuration on 2 data centers When I create a Listener providing... SQL Server 2016 - Catching Up Since SQL Server 2008R2 - We are moving from SQL 2008R2 to 2016 and needless to say I'm not up to date with the changes... How much RAM required to server - How much RAM required to server having 15-20 Million records, on which insert and update operations are executed. How to calculate... New AG environment - Looking a new 2016 build, all enterprise Edition licensed at VM host. Was going to have AG with readable secondary... Remove TDE - Hi, is the resinstalling sqlserver removes the TDE? Thank you!! Index rebuilding on a AWS RDS SQL server instance - Hi, Is there a need for Index rebuilding for the AWS RDS SQL server -2016 version, considering RDS SQL server... What does your backup process look like? - Hi, I'd be interested to hear how most of you have your backups set up. I know a lot of it... Running Totals - DELETED SQL Like ( not beginning with ) - Hi , I am trying to do a pattern search and my query is generic and it uses LIKE . The requirement... Rollup with Group by - The table I'm query against is such: ID Dateworked   Need Help -- Views - SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition 64 bit Windows Server 2012 R2 Enterprise Edition 64 bit There are two databases A and B.... Split values and compare with another table using Join - I have two tables called Components and PDF_MSDS. This Component table contains f_chem_name,f_component_id and f_chem_name columns and it contains below... Non Clustered Index on Phone column - Dear All, I have a Lead table with below fields. LeadId int (Not a primary key) Telephone ... ...Table have 4 millions records Client always search the... conditional update query syntax - I have a question about the syntax of an update query. Here is my layout and what I need to... Annoying error message 'Cannot drop table because table does not exist' in ExecuteSQL Task BIDS 2008. - It happens even though I include IF EXISTS statement before before Drop Table. IF EXISTS (SELECT Name from sys.objects WHERE object_id... |
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