Cool References to Check Out

I'm on my way to the PASS Summit, but thought you might enjoy reading some of these cool articles. If you're going to the PASS Summit, drop me an email and perhaps we can meet in person!-Kevin ETL Performance: Unisys and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Speed Up the ProcessUnisys and Microsoft prove SQL Server 2005 supports 64-bit parallel processing and delivers high levels of Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) performance on Unisys ES7000 servers. This white paper summarizes the results of collaborative testing between Microsoft and Unisys running ETL processes on Intel® Xeon® (32-bit) and Intel® Itanium® 2 (64-bit) based ES7000 servers.http://www.unisys.com/eprise/main/admin/corporate/doc/ELTSQL.pdf PREMIER Bankcard Inc: Credit Card Company Runs its Business with 10-Terabyte Mission Critical BI SolutionPREMIER Bankcard, LLC (PREMIER) one of the largest VISA and MasterCard credit providers in the United States, needed to enhance scalability and performance for its business intelligence (BI) data warehouse and online transaction processing (OLTP) databases. “BI began as an area of research for us, but has become absolutely mission critical,” says Dan Zerfas, Vice President of Software Development at PREMIER. The company enhanced its BI infrastructure by upgrading its 10-terabyte data warehouse to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), hosted on a server computer with 16 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. PREMIER also upgraded its OLTP database to the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005. The upgraded deployments provide a better view of the business, enterprise-grade scalability, maintenance without scheduled downtime, and easier database management.http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000475 Online Transaction Processing in SQL Server 2008Microsoft SQL Server 2008 provides a database platform that is optimized for today’s applications, and that can scale for any size of business. It drives cost-efficiencies by dramatically reducing downtime and enabling dynamic and proactive management that significantly reduces administrative overhead. Finally, SQL Server 2008 provides a highly secure platform that you can trust with your organization’s sensitive, business-critical data.http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_oltp.mspx Business Intelligence in SQL Server 2008Microsoft SQL Server 2008 makes business intelligence available to everyone through deep integration with Microsoft Office, providing the right tool, to the right user, at the right price. The result is that employees at all levels of an organization can see and help to influence the performance of the business by working with tools that are both easy to use and powerful. Integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office System enables users to view business performance in a way that they understand and which feels comfortable; and the introduction of PerformancePoint Server 2007, helps customers to gain actionable insight into the entire organization so they can monitor, analyze, and plan their businesses, as well as drive alignment, accountability, and actionable insight across the entire organization.http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_bi.mspx Server Consolidation with SQL Server 2008Microsoft SQL Server 2008 supports multiple options for server consolidation, which provides organizations with the flexibility to choose the consolidation approach that best meets their requirements to centralize data services management and reduce hardware and maintenance costs. By providing centralized management, auditing, and monitoring capabilities, SQL Server 2008 makes it easy to manage multiple databases and data services, which significantly reduces administrative overheads in large enterprises. Finally, SQL Server 2008 provides the reassurance of industry-leading performance and scalability, and unprecedented control over server resource to maximize the performance of consolidated data services.http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_srv_consol.msp