Steve Horsfield

Why Big Data Analytics is harder than you think: numerical precision matters!

Steve Horsfield — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:39:02 +0000

How big is your Big Data data set? If it is not measured in petabytes then perhaps it doesn’t qualify. In any case, as the amount of data grows the challenges grow disproportionately and in areas that perhaps you don’t expect. In this post, I am raising a number of challenges and concerns that you [...]

Vote for high precision numerics in SQL Server Analysis Services

Steve Horsfield — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:02:15 +0000

The title says it all. See this Microsoft Connect suggestion and vote to make it happen: SSAS needs larger datatypes to store currency (128-bit currency and/or decimal). Filed under: Software Development Tagged: columnstore, sql server, ssas

Performance in SQL Server 2012 degrades non-linearly as SELECT clauses are added when using ColumnStore

Steve Horsfield — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:39:24 +0000

When adding additional SELECT clauses to an aggregating query over a large fact table and using ColumnStore, the performance degrades in a step-wise linear fashion with large steps. It may be quicker to execute several less-complex queries rather than a single complex query. I’ve submitted a Microsoft Connect bug report here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/761895/. Continue reading for [...]

Performance in SQL Server 2012 degrades when using ColumnStore and no GROUP BY clause

Steve Horsfield — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:22:02 +0000

Essentially, the performance of a non-grouping SQL SELECT query degrades when applied to a ColumnStore index. This has been tested with SQL Server 2012 RTM CU1. Performing partial aggregation can result in a 15x performance improvement in some of the cases I observed. See the full details in my Microsoft Connect submission here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/761469/. Or [...]

Why software developers need to look beyond frameworks and languages

Steve Horsfield — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:57:03 +0000

My career as a software developer has been fairly unusual as I spent about six years as an IT manager for two companies. It was not an intentional change of focus but happened unexpectedly after taking a job as an Oracle database developer. That job changed shape immediately, in the form of a job offer for [...]

Chrome almost supports SSO in Windows Kerberos environments

Steve Horsfield — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:37:59 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Google Chrome has support for SSO and the Negotiate algorithm. Indeed it also has support for NTLM. So why the need for this post? I think the implementation could do with a little refinement. Here’s my assumption. Credential delegation in a Kerberos environment is managed by the Kerberos [...]

Ten tips for using and configuring Kerberos authentication on Windows

Steve Horsfield — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 18:29:46 +0000

Lately, I’ve been having some fun with Kerberos in Windows/Active Directory. Fun might not be the best way to describe it, but I thought I’d spend a few moments capturing some of what I’ve learnt in the past few days. Tip 1. Debugging Kerberos issues is very hard. I recommend that you don’t change anything [...]

A continuous thread of execution it isn’t!

Steve Horsfield — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:05:19 +0000

I have to admit it, I was really surprised this week. While investigating a mysterious issue I discovered that I knew less about the hosting platform of ASP.NET and IIS than I thought I did. What I found makes sense, but it was surprising nonetheless. What I found has made me believe more strongly what [...]

Now on Twitter: s_horsfield

Steve Horsfield — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:56:16 +0000

So, I’m now on Twitter: s_horsfield. Looking forward to your tweets… Filed under: Uncategorized

Developers can be good communicators

Steve Horsfield — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:31:57 +0000

As developers, we can often find it difficult to express compelling arguments to managers, colleagues in other departments and business leaders. This challenge is not insurmountable. To communicate effectively, we developers (like everyone else) must address the needs of our audience. Firstly, we need to identify our audience. Who are they? What do they already [...]