Maria's journey in the data fields

Have you ever wondered how MySQL and PostgreSQL are different? Take a look at the mapping that I have made for myself:  https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/5745/compare-sql-server-mysql-and-postgresql-features/ I would be happy to see comments posted for this blog and add more things to the mapping. Yours Maria  P.S. The ranking screenshot was taken from db-engines site:  https://db-engines.com/en/ranking/relational+dbms  

Many companies these days keep their data assets in multiple data stores.  Many companies that I have worked at have used other database systems alongside SQL Server, such as PostgreSQL instances, Redis, Elasticsearch or Couchbase. There are situations when the application, that uses SQL Server as their main database, needs to access data from another database system. Some datastores have ODBC/JDBC drivers so you can easily add a linked server. Some datastores do not have ODBC/JDBC drivers. Want to learn how to to access noSQL platforms with SQL Server and Python? Read my article here:  https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/5738/discover-how-sql-server-can-use-python-to-access-any-nosql-engine/ Happy NoSQLing Maria 

The company I work for,  Perion , chose Amazon Web Services as the main cloud provider for managing and operating our applications. These days I am learning how to manage databases and data related flows in the AWS cloud. Which is the reason I have attended the AWS summit in Tel Aviv today. Today’s AWS summit was the first from the series of AWS summits held in major cities around the world. There were ~ 5000 attendees today, 25 technical sessions and it was sponsored by 33 AWS partners. Most sessions which I have attended today had a lot of sponsor content mixed with technical not-too-deep dive into various AWS services.  Sessions were divided into 5 tracks, led by AWS Solution Architects and Sponsors representatives: Big data & Analytics sessions on data ingestion, data transformation and data analysis using AWS services AI and Deep Learning – sessions on AWS offerings for data enrichment and learning models Innovate – Rapid Application Development services C...

Several days ago I have spent a few hours of my life figuring out how to do dynamic pivot in Amazon Redshift. To tell you the truth, I have expected much more from this DBMS SQL language. Redshift is based on Postgre SQL 8.0.2 ( which was released in 2005 !!!! ) Anything you would want for this, not too difficult task,  does not exits.  No stored procedures. No JSON datatype. No variables outside of UDF, no queries inside UDFs. “UDF can be used to calculate values but cannot be used to call SQL functions”. Python UDFs also cannot query the data, only perform calculations. Finally I have found one useful function LISTAGG that helped me to get distinct values of all pivoted columns. For each group in a query, the LISTAGG aggregate function orders the rows for that group according to the ORDER BY expression, then concatenates the values into a single string. LISTAGG( [DISTINCT] aggregate_expression [, 'delimiter' ] )  [ WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY order_list) ] ...

I wonder if I had started my career as a PostgreSQL DBA or MongoDB DBA, would it be easier for me to accept the rapid growth and the variety of data storage solutions and our new reality of the Polyglot persistence?   Polyglot is the term that came from the Ancient Greek meaning speaking many languages.  Polyglot persistence is about storing your data not only inside SQL Server but in multiple data storage technologies. Whatever suits better your application needs or sometimes even single application component. Be prepared that tomorrow or next month one of developers will come up with some "other database" which (they will be 100% confident) will serve their application needs better. In  some situations they might be right. My own first natural reaction to those situations is to immediately start searching for "why not" arguments. To keep them in SQL Server. These days I try my best to hold this reaction and allow them to try. If it will work out - everyo...

The idea to organize SQL Saturday is so exiting and scary at the same time. For me - this is my first SQL Saturday. For SQL Saturday - this is a first time in Israel. All my religious and not so religious friends are energetically making it clear to me that no one will show up on Saturday. Ok, no problem. We are focused and determined. We settle for the only day that has yet to host an SQL Saturday - Monday. From here "SQL Saturday on Monday" is starting to take shape. My two friends, Geri Reshef and Itai Binyamin, are allowing themselves to get involved into this risky adventure. We are enthusiastically brainstorming and discussing the details. We are discussing a possible venue. We are discussing the potential speakers. We are discussing how to get some sponsorship. We are meeting someone, who is temporarily filling the product marketing position at Microsoft. He tells us that he will help us with everything he can. He looks reliable and trustworthy. He books 2 c...

Cloud technologies burst into our lives without asking our permission. At the beginning many of us thought the only thing that it brings would be the thunder and the rain.  Time shows that, instead, it might even bring some color to our skies. Today, on a first day Keynote of the 16th PASS Summit, Microsoft representatives   -Corporate VP Data Platform, Cloud & Enterprize T.K. "Ranga" Rengarajan,  - General Manager of Power BI James Phillips  - Corporate VP Information Management &Machine Learning Joseph Sirosh  took stage one after another talking about the Microsoft Data Platform and what it can offer in the cloud space. They have talked about the explosion of all kinds of data devices.  Those devices produce enormous amounts of data. Many also consume enormous amounts of data. This data is changing the way we work, the way we do business, and the way we live. We all depend on data to make decisions. Microsoft Data ...