Well here we are September 1st, the close of the RSSUG Codeplex
Survey (number 2). We have the following results from our survey:
64.5% (20 Votes) - A set of SQL Server Utilities
16.1% (5 Votes) - A data-hub to collect and serve data sets gathered from the web
6.5% (2 Votes) - A better version of Exchange using SQL Server as the back end
3.2% (1 Vote) - An ERP System
9.7% (3 Votes) - Other
Well
it looks like a set of SQL Server Utilities is the winner. So what does
this mean? We'll I'm not to sure I have my vision of what we mean a
set of SQL Server Utilities but I'm not to sure what the RSSUG means when
they voted on this. So I'll take a little time to explain my vision of
what choice "A set of SQL Server Utilities" could me.
My thought
is one of two things either a set of independent scripts that can be
executed on any SQL Server (as long as its of say SQL Server 2008
forward) that would provide help to a DBA or Developer. Thing of this
as something similar to a bunch of utility scripts like sp_whoIsActive, sp_Blitz, a defraging script, a backup script that you could count on because you knew who developed it...YOU!
Or
"A set of SQL Server Utilities"could mean a deployed tool set similar
to
what you get from a 3rd party vendor like Idera, Quest, or Redgate.
This would be set of T-SQL centric objects, procs, views, tables,
stored procedures, jobs that are deployed to database and help you with
management or development tasks on that server. You could deploy this to
your entire enterprise to help manage each server. On top of this we
could write Reporting Services reports, possibly some SSIS packages to
consolidate the data to a main reporting enterprise database and use
Analysis Services to help find resource usage trends across an
enterprise. I think it may be obvious this is where I would like to
take the project and I believe it would give us the best opportunity to
make use of the entire SQL Server tool set. In fact I liked the idea so
much I actually started a codeplex project
months ago for this vary task.If this is the direction we want to go
then we could easly take the existing codeplex project and add
additional people to the project and change it to meet the groups needs.
Finally
I want to take a minute to mention the Data Hub idea, because I don't
think it was very well explained. The basic idea would be to create a
SQL Server database either on a hosted server in or SQL Azure (I'm
leaning to SQL Azure) that would we would then populate with public
data sets and other data sets shared with us. This would allow us to do
two things, one we create our own set of SQL Azure Reporting Services
Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services and Analysis Services reports
and cubes over top of this data so we could mine it. More importantly
and most likely more beneficial to us is that we could source from this
data in our own data warehouse and software development needs. This
could house a set of standards and data sets anything from ISO Country
Codes to Census Bureau information. This project would also has the
potential to use a wide breath of the SQL Server tool set and it lends
itself to SQL Azure for those who want to dive into that pool.
On that note I have created
one more survey, this is the last one I swear then we will have a project.(The survey will close on the 12th)
I have also created a discussion thread on our Linked in RSSUG Group site to further this discussion.
Thanks Everyone!