Chapter 1 – Introduction to the Azure SQL Data Warehouse
“The man who has no imagination has no wings.”
– Muhammad Ali
Introduction to the Family of SQL Server Products
Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0
Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a compact database that is embedded inside Nexus and other desktops around the world. It is ideal for also embedding in web applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 provides developers a common programming model with other SQL Server editions. This is important for developing both native and managed applications. SQL Server Compact provides outstanding flexibility, but in a small footprint.
SQL Server 2014 Express Edition
Microsoft provides this for free! This powerful database engine is perfect for embedded applications or for redistribution with other solutions. Independent software vendors (ISV's) use it to build desktop applications. If you need support for greater than 10 GB databases, SQL Server Express is compatible with other editions of SQL Server.
SQL Server Standard Edition
Microsoft's robust data management and business intelligence database is ideal for departments and small workgroups. It supports common development tools for both on premise and cloud applications. This edition enables effective database management with minimal IT resources and it is compatible with other editions.
Above, are the first three offerings from Microsoft on SQL Server.
Introduction to the Family Continued
Microsoft SQL Server Web Edition
Microsoft's Web edition is a low total-cost-of-ownership option to host Web applications that provides scalability, affordability, and manageability capabilities for small to large scale Web initiatives.
SQL Server 2014 Business Intelligence Edition
Microsoft's Business Intelligence edition is for the BI intelligence community and delivers a comprehensive platform. This empowers organizations to build and deploy secure, scalable and manageable BI solutions. It has browser based data exploration and visualization, plus includes powerful integration capabilities.
SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition
Microsoft's SQL Server 2014 Enterprise edition delivers high-end datacenter capabilities with performance that has been enhanced for virtualization, business intelligence and integration capabilities. This enables high service levels for mission-critical workloads and end user access to data insights.
Above, are the next three offerings from Microsoft on SQL Server.
Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Microsoft's Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a massively parallel processing (MPP) data warehousing appliance built for any volume of relational data and provides integration to Hadoop. Azure SQL Data Warehouse can provide up to 100x performance gains over other SQL Server platforms. This is the MPP platform that provides linear scalability for when data volumes grow and the number of users increases.
Azure SQL Data Warehouse is designed to parallelize and distribute the processing across multiple Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) compute nodes. Azure SQL Data Warehouse is only available as part of Microsoft's Analytics Platform System (APS) appliance.
Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a shared-nothing architecture, which means each processor has its own operating system, memory and set of disks. Nothing is shared! Data is “horizontally partitioned” across nodes. This means that each node has a subset of the rows from each table in the database. Each node is then responsible for processing only the rows on its own disks.
Above is the information about Microsoft's Azure SQL Data Warehouse, which is Microsoft's MPP system
Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP)
A Symmetric Multi-Processing system has multiple processors for extra power, but these processors share a single operating system, memory pool and they share access to the disks. This is a great architecture for speed, similar to a restaurant that is quick and organized, but it lack the ability for unlimited expansion. When there are too many cooks in the kitchen you need an MPP system that scales many SMP systems together as one parallel processing data warehouse.
A Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) system is what Microsoft is known for in their SQL Server suite of products. The only product that does not use SMP design is the new Azure SQL Data Warehouse. It uses a Massively Parallel Design (MPP).
What is Parallel Processing?
“After enlightenment, the laundry”
- Zen Proverb
“After parallel processing the laundry, enlightenment!”
- Azure SQL Data Warehouse Zen Proverb
Two guys were having fun on a Saturday night when one said, “ I’ve got to go and do my laundry.” The other said, “What?!” The man explained that if he went to the laundromat the next morning, he would be lucky to get one machine and then would be there all day. But, if he went on Saturday night he could get all the machines and he could do all his wash and dry in two hours. Now that’s parallel processing mixed in with a little dry humor!
The Basics of a Single Computer
“When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”
– Albert Einstein
Data on disk does absolutely nothing. When data is requested, the computer moves the data one block at a time from disk into memory. Once the data is in memory, it is processed by the CPU at lightning speed. All computers work this way. The "Achilles Heel" of every computer is the slow process of moving data from disk to memory. The real theory of relativity is to find out how to get blocks of data from the disk into memory faster!
Data in Memory is Fast as Lightning
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
– Yogi Berra
Once the data block is ...