Implementing Message Queues in Relational Databases
At the last SQL Bits X I held the FusionIO fireside chat during the launch party. During this presentation, I demonstrated how it is possible to build a table structure inside a relational engine that will act is a message queue and deliver nearly 100K messages/second.
What Structure does your Data Have?
I am currently thinking about measuring compression rates for different column store indexing strategies. In order for me to get some realistic data, I am looking for people who can share a very small anonymised data sample with me.
Moving on from Microsoft
Not too long ago, I handed in my notice to Microsoft, terminating my employment mid-June 2012. I suspect this is slowly leaking out on the Twitter and Facebook these hours – as is tradition in the connected world.
The Hollywood Business Model is Broken
Last week, I watched “The Avengers”. Very nice movie, recommended. Why then, do I feel the need to rant today and tell the movie industry where to stick their business model?
Reading Material: Abstractions, Virtualisation and Cloud
When speaking at conferences, I often get asked questions about virtualization and how fast databases will run on it (and even if they are “supported” on virtualised systems). This is complex question to answer. Because it requires a very deep understanding of CPU caches, memory and I/O systems to fully describe the tradeoffs.
Why You Need to Stop Worrying about UPDATE Statements
There seems to be a myth perpetuated out there in the database community that UPDATE statements are somehow “bad” and should be avoided in data warehouses.
Let us have a look at the facts for a moment and weigh up if this myth has any merit.
Conference Updates
A few weeks ago, I presented at SQL Bits X. The slides from my co-presentation with Conor are available here:
Last week, I spoke at Microsoft Open World 2012 doing quite a lot of presentations. I have created a new and extended “Grade of the Steel” deck that I hope to blog more about my findings (these things tend to start as PowerPoint slides and evolve into blog entries).
If you want a copy of any of my presentations, please just mail me. Speaking of presentations, I have found this really cool tool that will compress slides: NXPowerLite. This neat tool has taken off around 60-80% of my slide sizes.
Lately, I have been practicing zen style presentations: max four sentences on each slide and heavy use of visualisations instead. I highly recommend putting yourself under such constraints. After I removed the text from my slides I feel much better improvising on stage.
