Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the next generation of Microsoft’s information platform, with new features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights. In this book, we explain how SQL Server 2014 incorporates in-memory technology to boost performance in online transactional processing (OLTP) and data-warehouse solutions. We also describe how it eases the transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud with added support for hybrid environments. SQL Server 2014 continues to include components that support analysis, although no major new features for business intelligence were included in this release. However, several advances of note have been made in related technologies such as Microsoft Excel 2013, Power BI for Office 365, HDInsight, and PolyBase, and we describe these advances in this book as well.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 SQL Server 2014 editions and engine enhancements
- SQL Server 2014 enhancements for database administrators
- Availability enhancements
- Backup and restore enhancements
- Scalability and performance enhancements
- Security enhancements
- Platform for hybrid cloud
- SQL Server 2014 editions
- Enterprise edition
- Standard edition
- Business Intelligence edition
- Specialized editions
- SQL Server 2014 licensing overview
- Hardware and software requirements
- Installation, upgrade, and migration strategies
- In-place upgrade
- Side-by-side migration
Chapter 2 In-Memory OLTP investments
- In-Memory OLTP overview
- In-Memory OLTP fundamentals and architecture
- Four In-Memory OLTP architecture pillars
- In-Memory OLTP concepts and terminology
- Hardware and software requirements for memory-optimized tables
- In-Memory OLTP use cases
- Myths about In-Memory OLTP
- In-Memory OLTP integration and application migration
- Will In-Memory OLTP improve performance?
- Using the Memory Optimization Advisor to migrate disk-based tables
- Analyzing In-Memory OLTP behavior after memory-optimized table migration
- Using In-Memory OLTP
- Enabling In-Memory OLTP in a database
- Create memory-optimized tables and natively compile stored procedures
- Execute queries to demonstrate performance when using memory-optimized tables
- Appendix
- Memory-optimized table
- Natively compiled stored procedure
Chapter 3 High-availability, hybrid-cloud, and backup enhancements
- SQL Server high-availability and disaster-recovery enhancements
- AlwaysOn Availability Groups enhancements
- AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances enhancements
- Platform for hybrid cloud
- Cloud disaster recovery
- Deploy a database to a Windows Azure Virtual Machine
- Storing SQL Server data files in Windows Azure
- Extending on-premises apps to the cloud
- Backup and restore enhancements
- SQL Server backup to a URL
- Encryption for backups
- SQL Server Managed Backup to Windows Azure
Chapter 4 Exploring self-service BI in Microsoft Excel 2013
- Excel Data Model and Power Pivot
- Working with the Data Model
- Managing data as a Power Pivot model
- Power Query
- Searching for data
- Importing data
- Loading the worksheet or Data Model
- Shaping data
- Combining data
- Power View
- Creating a Power View report
- Working with visualizations
- Sharing a Power View report
- Power Map
- Creating a Power Map
- Visualizing geographic data
- Exploring the 3-D map
- Displaying values over time
- Enhancing a map
- Working with tours, scenes, and layers
- Sharing Power Map
Chapter 5 Introducing Power BI for Office 365
- Power BI sites
- Configuring featured workbooks
- Opening Power View in HTML5
- Adding favorite reports to My Power BI
- Shared queries
- Creating a shared query
- Using a shared query
- Managing query metadata
- Reviewing usage analytics
- Power BI Q&A
- Power BI for Mobile
- Preparing a workbook for mobile viewing
- Using Power BI for Mobile
- Sharing a report from Power BI for Mobile
- Power BI administration
Chapter 6 Big data solutions
- Big data
- Describing big data
- Exploring the history of Hadoop
- HDInsight
- Creating a storage account for HDInsight
- Provisioning an HDInsight cluster
- Loading data into a storage account
- Working with Hive
- Analyzing data from Hive
- PolyBase
- Exploring the benefits of PolyBase
- Accessing HDFS data from PDW