BI 'Appliances', reference configurations, and very large-scale Data Warehouses

As a BI consultant, one thing I find interesting in the BI industry is talk of a Data Warehouse 'Appliance'. Sounds like something you plug in, turn on, and --bam-- instant data warehouse! Would be nice, but while that's not likely to happen, what is becoming available from the hardware vendors are preconfigured systems (aka, an appliance) that are designed for the demands of a data warehouse.

Well, Microsoft has partnered with Dell and HP to pre-configure and pretest DW ‘reference’ configurations to compete with similar offerings from other big players. The thing I liked seeing was the ‘cost per terabyte’ - granted, these would be for very large implementations, but I thought this was an interesting reference to keep in the back of the mind for high-level scoping.

According to a news article on TDWI.org ...
“DW appliance pricing varies, but -- if Microsoft can come in at its $13,000-per-TB figure -- it can plausibly claim to field one of the cheaper DW appliance entries. On the other hand, "cheaper" in the DW appliance segment is something of a moving target. Prices have plummeted to such an extent that even DW powerhouse Teradata Corp. -- which appliance players Netezza Inc. and Dataupia Inc. like to position as a pricey proposition -- now markets a system (the Extreme Data 1550) that it says sells for about $16,500 per TB.” (Netezza sells a unit for $18,000 per TB) (you can read more at http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?ID=9325)

The other take away from this is that (for anyone still wondering) - yes - Microsoft SQL Server is truly an Enterprise-class BI platform or we wouldn't even be talking about them with the likes of Teradata and Netezza. Furthermore, the features that are planned for the next version of SQL Server as well as Project Madison mean that exciting things are still to come.

For more info, check out -
Project codename "Madison"
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/madison.aspx
and for a slide-show about Project Madison...
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/worldwide/us/southeast/Connections%20BUSINESS%20INTELLIGENCE/Connection%20SE%20Jan%202009%20-%20Madison%20Final.pptx

Include Column Headers in Query Result Export

Good, bad, or otherwise, I spend a lot of time with my client executing ad-hoc SQL queries against our databases to retrieve data from our databases in order to assist with analysis. Many times this data is queried using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), copied\exported to Excel, then sent to appropriate team members for review.

The problem I've been having with this is that the column names (headers) aren't copied with the query results. This means I've been manually typing the column names in for my results. Not that big a deal when there is only a few columns included in my resultset, but when I need to report on 20-30 or so fields. What a waste of time!

I've tried sending the query results to "Text", as opposed to the "Grid", but that doesn't seem to make it much easier on me. After some poking around, I found the "Include column headers when copying or saving the results" option. It's located here:

Tools > Options

Query Results > SQL Server > Results to Grid

With this option selected, I can now copy (or directly save) data from my query results (in Grid) and have the column headers included saving me the effort of typing the column names in for each resultset I need to provide.

As you might have picked up on from the screenshots, I experience this in SSMS 2005 with basically the default settings. I don't have a SQL Server 2008 box readily available to see if this option is still unselected by default, but I sure hope it isn't. I know, going forward, this will be one of the first defaults to be switched on any SSMS installations I own.