Nikhil Khanna | Protagonist, on a journey like no other

Deploy Cube or SSAS solution to any Remote Server using PowerShell

2018-02-10T22:04:00.000+05:30

Use the following code by providing:

Server Name
Deployment File path
Cube Name
Analysis Services Database

This PowerShell script can also be used for configuring Release Management or Release Management Online (RMO)

Include more than one measure in Power BI stacked column chart

2018-01-20T23:06:00.003+05:30

Include more than one measure/column in ‘Column values’ of Power BI stacked column chart and slice each measure on its ‘Column series’.

Let’s consider an example:

We have multiple measures in different tables: Measure1, Measure2, Measure3
Each measure slices on a status of its own
1. Measure1: Active, Inactive
2. Measure2: Current, Default
3. Measure2: Blocked, In Progress

Now, we want to show Measure1, Measure2, Measure3 as stacked bar chart. And each measure should get sliced by its individual status.

In this scenario, we will have maximum 6 color stack and each color corresponds to an unique status.

Solution:

Union All different measures in a single column in database, and assign a unique key to each measure.
1. If a measure has its own series, then retain that key and make sure it is not conflicting with other measure series keys
2. If a measure does not have its own series, assign a key to it which is unique to the measure
Create a table which contains the key of each measure and its corresponding text values.
Create a relationship between the above two tables in Power BI or tabular model or MOLAP on the key.
Drag the measure created in step 1 in ‘Column values’ and drag the text column created in step 2 table in ‘Column series’

Note: This solution can be used for any clustered or stacked visual. E.g. Clustered bar chart, Stacked bar chart, Line and stacked column chart, etc.

Output:

In the above image, highlighted rectangular section depicts series for each measure combined in a single chart.

Advantages:

When need arises to compare more than one measures contribution in a single chart.
Reducing the number of charts in the report.

Implementing Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication with Node.js

2018-01-20T22:56:00.000+05:30

Problem Statement:

Implement AAD authentication in an application’s API built on Node.js:

Authenticate user through AAD using NodeJS service
Decrypt bearer token using Nodejs service to extract user alias

Solution:

Workflow:

Code Extract:

Extract the bearer token from headers
Decode the token to extract email of the user
Validate email for checking if it belongs to the organization
Check email validity and send alias to backend for further data authorization at backend

Application Insights REST API

2018-01-12T22:11:00.001+05:30

Problem Statement:

Create usage analytics reports in Power BI for data collected via Application Insights without any storage account or additional resources.
Overcome the existing Application Insights service limitations in Power BI online, which does not provide customizations and the dataset is limited to past 30 days

Solution:

Application Insights REST API lets you query the performance and usage data that Application Insights records about your application

Configuration Steps:

Application Insights:

To use the API you need to get an Application ID and access key from your Application Insights Node

Using these attributes, data can be queried using multiple languages which support AJAX calls.

Power BI:

Select Get Data and choose Web source where the URL should be your Endpoint you wish to query:

e.g:

https://api.applicationinsights.io/beta/apps/{YourAPP ID}/events/$all

In the authentication dialog provide, Select Basic and provide your APP KEY in the Username and click Connect

In the Query Editor window click Convert Into Table, then on the column heading labelled "Value", click the expand icon, and de-select all items except the ones required. Similarly expand all nested columns and apply your changes.
Cast the columns into appropriate types and save the dataset.
Now using the dataset you can create visualizations for Live reporting

Note:

The SDK is still in preview mode and more features and endpoints are being added continuously
The SDK can be used for creating custom reports also on a Web Pages or an Excel file

Service Documentation: https://dev.applicationinsights.io/

How to run SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) with different credentials on Windows 10

2018-01-12T22:02:00.000+05:30

After Windows 10 anniversary update and with SQL Server 2016 Management Studio (SSMS), you may receive below error if you try to run as a different user:

The below workaround may solve the issue and can run SSMS under different credentials (may not work for all service accounts which are part of logon enforcement)

Add the service account that you would like to open SSMS under different credentials into your local machine’s administrators group
Right click the shortcut and check Compatibility > Change settings for all users > Run this program as an administrator

Power BI custom visual development - 'Can't contact visual server' error

2018-01-12T21:57:00.001+05:30

Follow below steps to resolve 'Can't contact visual server' error while developing custom visuals:

Pre-requisites:

You should install certificates as per this link
"Enable developer visual for testing" option in Power BI service . Follow this link for detailed steps

After doing pre-requisites check, if you are still getting same error then follow below steps:

Run “pbiviz start”
Open https://localhost:8080/assets/status in Google Chrome
Open the Advanced
Click the Proceed to localhost (unsafe)
Go back to the report with your debug visual
Reload visual code

Let us know if you still face any other issues.

Agile Workflow States

2018-01-12T21:53:00.002+05:30

Agile Workflow States

User Story:

Bug:

Task:

A typical workflow progression for a user story follows:

The product owner creates a user story in the New state with the default reason, New user story
The team updates the status to Active when they decide to complete the work during the sprintA user story is moved to Resolved when the team has completed all its associated tasks and unit tests for the story pass
A user story is moved to the Closed state when the product owner agrees that the story has been implemented according to the Acceptance Criteria and acceptance tests pass.

Cover Image Source: Lynda

Microsoft Power BI free eBook by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo

2018-01-12T21:47:00.000+05:30

Renowned DAX experts Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo came up with their book ‘Introducing Microsoft Power BI’ which can help design data models for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

This book introduces the basic techniques for shaping data models in Excel and Power BI. It’s meant for readers who are new to data modeling as well as for experienced data modelers looking for tips from the experts. If you want to use Power BI or Excel to analyze data, the many real-world examples in this book will help you look at your reports in a different way—like experienced data modelers do. As you’ll soon see, with the right data model, the correct answer is always a simple one!

By reading this book, you will:

Gain an understanding of the basics of data modeling, including tables, relationships, and keys
Familiarize yourself with star schemas, snowflakes, and common modeling techniques
Learn the importance of granularity
Discover how to use multiple fact tables, like sales and purchases, in a complete data model
Manage calendar-related calculations by using date tables
Track historical attributes, like previous addresses of customers or manager assignments
Use snapshots to compute quantity on hand
Work with multiple currencies in the most efficient way
Analyze events that have durations, including overlapping durations
Learn what data model you need to answer your specific business questions

Go and download the book free using the link given above.

Important deprecated features of SQL server 2017

2018-01-12T21:36:00.003+05:30

I was going through list of deprecated features/syntax and I am sure in all projects we are using atleast some of the below features/syntax which might break after upgrade.

RESTORE and BACKUP database WITH PASSWORD
Ability to return result set from triggers
SET ROWCOUNT for INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE
SET ANSI NULLS OFF
Ability to insert null values into timestamp columns
TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE datatypes
CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE or CREATE INDEX syntax without parenthesis around the option
Lot of options of procedure sp_configure
Specifying the SQLOLEDB provider for linked servers
USER_ID function
Specifying NOLOCK or READUNCOMMITTED in the FROM clause of an UPDATE or DELETE statement.
Specifying table hints without using the WITH keyword.
Three-part and four-part column references.
A string enclosed in quotation marks used as a column alias for an expression in a SELECT list:
'string_alias' = expression

SQL Server Profiler for Trace Capture
Lot of system tables and system stored procedure like sysindexes

Source: Microsoft

Constrained Delegation in Azure

2018-01-12T21:31:00.003+05:30

Problem statement:
Impersonate on SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Service) without:

User's password
Sysadmin permission

What is Constrained delegation?

Kerberos constrained delegation was introduced in Windows Server 2003 to provide a safer form of delegation that could be used by services. When it is configured, constrained delegation restricts the services to which the specified server can act on the behalf of a user. This requires domain administrator privileges to configure a domain account for a service and is restricts the account to a single domain.

Basically, it is Kerberos based authentication system which allows usage of services as different user.

How to configure?

Refer to the links in references.

High level:

Create SPNs for servers for which we need to setup mutual trust
In Active Directory, set up constrained delegation

How I used it in a SharePoint based reporting system?

From Azure service passed User Principal Name (UPN) to On-Premise service
In On-Premise service implemented logic to impersonate based on user’s identity

How it internally works?

When UPN is received and impersonation request is made, On-Premise service requests Active Directory to provide Kerberos token for that user
Active Directory provides token to On-Premise service
On-Premise service passes token to server hosting SSAS and provides data only for that user

References:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720385(v=ws.10).aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc995228.aspx

One-click replication for Azure Virtual Machines with Azure Site Recovery

2018-01-12T21:24:00.000+05:30

Problem Statement

A typical enterprise application comprises of multiple virtual machines spanning different application tiers. A single tier will likely have two or more virtual machines for redundancy and load balancing. To recover your applications in the event of a disaster, you need a solution that facilitates the recovery of the application as a whole.

Using traditional backup solutions to achieve application disaster recovery is extremely cumbersome, error prone and not scalable. Even many replication based software only recover individual virtual machines and cannot handle the complexity of bringing up a functioning enterprise application. Also, there is no guarantee that the application running in the virtual machines will work because a crash-consistent recovery point does not ensure correctness of application data.

Solution

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) combines a unique cloud-first design with a simple user experience to offer a powerful solution that lets you recover entire applications in the event of a disaster. Azure Site Recovery not only supports application consistency for a single virtual machine, it also supports application consistency across multiple virtual machines that compose the application.

ASR is now built into the virtual machine experience so that you can setup replication in one click for your Azure virtual machines. Combined with ASR’s one-click failover capabilities, its simpler than ever before to setup replication and test a disaster recovery scenario. This new service allows you to take your existing Azure production workloads and configure them for replication and recovery into a separate Azure Region. Once configured, ASR will continuously replicate your virtual machines and allow you to orchestrate the recovery of these VMs into another region in the event of a disaster.

Why use Site Recovery?

A common myth around protecting your applications is the fact that many applications come with in-built replication technologies - hence the question, why do you need Azure Site Recovery?

The simple answer:

Replication != Disaster Recovery

Site Recovery provides a simple way to replicate Azure VMs between regions:

· Automatic deployment. Unlike an active-active replication model, there's no need for an expensive and complex infrastructure in the secondary region. When you enable replication, Site Recovery automatically creates the required resources in the target region, based on source region settings.

· Control regions. With Site Recovery, you can replicate from any region to any region within a continent. Compare this with read-access geo-redundant storage, which replicates asynchronously between standard paired regions only. Read-access geo-redundant storage provides read-only access to the data in the target region.

· Automated replication. Site Recovery provides automated continuous replication. Failover and failback can be triggered with a single click.

· Testing. You can run disaster-recovery drills with on-demand test failovers, as and when needed, without affecting your production workloads or ongoing replication.

· Recovery plans. You can use recovery plans to orchestrate failover and failback of the entire application running on multiple VMs. The recovery plan feature has rich first-class integration with Azure automation runbooks.

· Cost savings. If your DR VMs aren’t active, then you are only paying the ASR fee plus storage and network egress. You are not paying for any running VMs, which is the bulk of the cost in any DR environment.

How to set up Site Recovery?

Here's a summary of what you need to do to set up replication of VMs between Azure regions:

Create a Recovery Services vault. The vault contains configuration settings and orchestrates replication.
Enable replication for the Azure VMs.
Run a test failover to make sure that everything's working as expected.

View the detailed steps to set up Site Recovery here.

Limitations:

· No support for VMs with managed disks yet.

· Windows Server 2016 Nano Server is not supported.

· Linux support limited to certain distributions.

· Management is currently only through the Azure Portal — no support for command line, PowerShell, or REST yet.

· Virtual Machine Scale sets not supported.

· Azure Disk Encryption is not supported.

· Replication groups (the ability to group VMs so they can be replicated and recover to the same recovery point) is not yet available.

References:

SQL Operations Studio

2018-01-12T21:16:00.005+05:30

SQL Operations Studio (preview) is a free, light-weight tool, that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, for managing SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Features:

Code snippet by typing ‘SQL’ in query editor
Search widget: Quickly find any object
Export result in CSV, Excel, and JSON

Peek definition
Create group for Dev, Test, PROD
Customized database dashboard

SQL Server 2017: New DAX Functions – GENERATESERIES/SELECTEDVALUE

2018-01-12T21:08:00.003+05:30

SQL Server Analysis Service 2017 includes support for new DAX functions. In order to take advantage, you need to use the latest version of SSDT.

GENERATESERIES and SELECTEDVALUE are the functions covered here.
Even the What If feature of PowerBI generates table based on the above two functions.

GENERATESERIES:

This function is useful to create a series of number between two digits. It is one of the few functions in DAX that generates new data.

What If parameter in PowerBI uses the GENERATESERIES() function to generate a table that can be useful as slicer values.

Previously, one need to create table manually using the ‘New Table’ option in PowerBI

Syntax: GENERATESERIES(<startValue>, <endValue>[, <incrementValue>])

‘What If’ Parameter in PowerBI

GENERATESERIES()

Also, one can join/append as many tables as one likes using UNION to create non-sequential number range.
UNION in DAX is similar to UNION ALL in SQL.

SELECTEDVALUE:

This function returns the selected value in table. If multiple values are selected, it would return ‘Blank’.

If no value is selected, it would return ‘Alternate Result’ stated by the user.

Netflix India trolls Aadhaar in Black Mirror promo

2018-01-08T19:49:00.005+05:30

Online streaming service Netflix appeared to take a jibe at India’s biometric identification system Aadhaar on Thursday in a promotional clip for its TV series Black Mirror.

The 19-second video clip is based on the plot of the Black Mirror episode Hang the DJ, in which characters use a device to find romantic partners. The device can tell romantic hopefuls how long they will continue dating a particular person – called the "expiry date".

In the clip posted by Netflix India’s Twitter account, a character asks the device the expiry date of his relationship with the woman he is currently dating, but the device shows the message: “Link Aadhaar card to find out”.

Black Mirror, a popular science fiction series, explores how new and future technologies may impact daily life. Its fourth season is currently running on Netflix.

Please provide #Aadhaar details for more information. pic.twitter.com/siuuLr1I06
— Netflix India (@NetflixIndia) January 4, 2018

Jio revises all 1GB per day tariff plans

2018-01-07T15:04:00.001+05:30

Reliance Jio seems to be on a roll. The telecom operator recently launched two new prepaid plans worth Rs 199 and Rs 299. The company now has some more surprises in stock -- and this is a part of its Happy New Year plans for 2018. Jio aims to bring "2018 will bring unprecedented value to all Jio customers" and on account of that, the telco has now revised all its prepaid plans that currently offer 1GB data per day. Jio has updated the plans in a way to offer either 50 per cent more data or cut down the tariff price by Rs 50. The newly updated plans will be available to the customers from Tuesday, i.e January 9, 2018, onwards.

Reliance Jio has updated all its existing 1GB/day packs with either of the 2 additional options -- 50 per cent more data or Rs 50 discount on the price plans. After the update -- which will be applicable only post Jan 9 - that is Tuesday, the Rs 149 plan -- according to Jio -- will be the lowest ever tariff in the industry, on the other hand, Rs 399 plan will provide 20 per cent additional data with enhanced validity of 2 additional weeks, increasing the current validity from 70 to 84 days.

Let's take a detailed look at the newly updated plans, on what it offered and what it provides now, after the revision. Note: It is important to note that all these plans will be only available to Jio Prime members.

Below are the plans, which sees a tariff price cut by Rs 50.

--Rs 199 changes to Rs 149: The Rs 199 prepaid plan gets a price cut by Rs 50 and will be available at Rs 149. This means the services that Jio offered at under Rs 199 will now be available at a cheaper price of Rs 149. Under the plan, customers will get 28GB data with 28 days validity.

--Rs 399 changes to Rs 349: The services that Jio offered under Rs 399 will now be available at Rs 349. Under the plan, Jio offers 70GB data with 70 days validity.

--Rs 459 changes to Rs 399: The existing Rs 459 gets a price cut of Rs 50 and the services that Jio offered under the plan will now be available at Rs 399. Under the plan, Jio will offer 84GB of data for 84 days.

--Rs 499 changes to Rs 449: Currently, under the Rs 499 plan, Jio users get 91GB of 4G data for 91 days. The same service will now - after the plans get updated - post-Jan 9 -- be available at Rs 50 cheaper price of Rs 449.

Note: After the update, the most popular Rs 399 Jio plan which earlier offered 70GB data with 70 days validity, will offer 84GB of data for 84 days.

Additionally, Jio has also introduced a couple of 1.5 GB/day packs. What Jio has basically done is - it has revamped its existing Rs 198, Rs 398, Rs 448 and Rs 498 plans to offer 50 per cent more data at the same price. These plans currently offer 1GB of data per day, but after the revision, it will offer 1.5GB of data daily at the same price.

Let's take a detailed look at the plans:

--Rs 198: Under this plan, Jio currently offers 28GB of 4G data for 28days, but post-Jan 9 - after Jio updates the plans - the plan will offer 42GB of data for the same duration - 28 days. Earlier Jio offered 1GB daily FUP under the plan, but after the revision, it will offer 1.5GB data.

--Rs 398: The Rs 398 plan now offers 70GB of data for 70 days, but after the update, it will offer 105GB data for 70 days validity with a daily data limit of 1.5GB.

--Rs 448: Jio under the Rs 448 plan currently offers 84GB of data for 84 days with a daily limit of 1GB. After the revision, consumers will get 126GB data with a daily FUP limit of 1.5GB of data for the same duration of 84 days.

--Rs 498: Under this plan, Jio now offers 91GB of data for 91 days with a daily data limit of 1GB. But, after the update, under the Rs 498 plan, Jio will offer 136GB of data with a daily limit of 1.5GB for 91 days.

Apart from the change in the data part, other benefits will remain the same. It will offer unlimited incoming and outgoing calls through over VoLTE, unlimited messages and free roaming in India.

Source: India Today

Microsoft adds Reddit data to Bing search results, Power BI analytics tool

2018-01-06T21:56:00.000+05:30

Reddit posts will appear in Bing's search results, and its data will be piped into Power BI for marketers to track brand-related comments.

Microsoft is bringing the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” to the pages of its search results.

Microsoft has struck a deal with Reddit to pipe data from the social network into Bing’s search results, as well as Power BI’s analytics dashboard, the companies announced on Wednesday.

Now, when people search on Bing, posts published to Reddit may be included in the search results. For example, if a person’s query asks something like “what were the best video games released in 2017,” answers may be sourced from comments left in Reddit’s “gaming” subreddit, or topic-specific forum.

People will also be able to use Bing to specifically search for content from Reddit. Typing “reddit [subreddit name]” will return a link to that subreddit and a selection of top comments that have been posted to it. And typing “reddit AMAs” will return a collection of popular AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) sessions, which are live question-and-answer forums that people can host on Reddit. Additionally, if people search for the name of a person who has a hosted an AMA on Reddit, a selection of responses from the Q&A session will appear among the non-Reddit results.

In addition to bringing Reddit’s data to Bing users, Microsoft is also opening that data up to brands. Brands will be able to access Reddit data through Microsoft’s Power BI analytics tool, with options to specify the keywords to track and toggle the time frames to examine. As a result, marketers will be able to monitor what people are saying about their brand or competing brands on Reddit and have that information processed using Power BI’s sentiment analysis feature and plotted into data visualizations.

The deal with Microsoft’s Power BI is similar to one that Reddit announced with social marketing platform Sprinklr last week in terms of accessing Reddit data. Brands will be able to see which subreddits they are mentioned on and then go buy ads targeted to those audiences.

Source: Search Engine Land

Azure Service Health: Get notified when Azure service incidents impact your resources

2018-01-06T20:12:00.004+05:30

Why Azure Service Health?

Azure Service Health provides timely and personalized information when problems in Azure services impact your services. It also helps you prepare for upcoming planned maintenance.

Service Health tracks three types of health events that may impact your resources:

Service issues - Problems in the Azure services that affect you right now.
Planned maintenance - Upcoming maintenance that can affect the availability of your services in the future.
Health advisories - Changes in Azure services that require your attention. Examples include when Azure features are deprecated or if you exceed a usage quota.

How to Create an alert on a service health notification using Azure portal?

In the Azure portal, select Service Health
In the Alerts section, select Health alerts
Select Create service health alert and fill in the fields
Once you click “OK”, you will be brought back to the health dashboard with a confirmation that your new alert was successfully created.
Once the alert fires, your respective incident management system will automatically ingest and parse the data to make it simple for you to understand.

More Features:

Azure Service Health integrates with Azure Monitor to alert you via emails, text messages, and webhook notifications when your business-critical resources are impacted. Set up an activity log alert for the appropriate Service Health event. Route that alert to the appropriate people in your organization using Action Groups.

SQL Server 2017 Graph Database an Overview

2018-01-06T20:03:00.000+05:30

A graph database is a collection of nodes (or vertices) and edges (or relationships).

A node represents an entity (for example, a person or an organization) and an edge represents a relationship between the two nodes that it connects (for example, likes or friends).

Both nodes and edges may have properties associated with them.

Main features:

A single edge can flexibly connect multiple nodes in a Graph Database
We can express pattern matching and multi-hop navigation queries easily

When to use a graph database?:

When we have Hierarchical data
When we have Complex many to many relationships

We can achieve similar behavior using Relational database also.

Other vendors providing graph database functionality:

Neo4j
mongoDB
Oracle etc.

Where is it used?

Recommendations on online shopping sites
Social networking sites to find your first or second connection
Portfolio analysis

What are the components of graph database?

Node - Consists of properties
It creates $node_Id columns to uniquely identify each row
Edge - Connects two or more edge, it may or may not have properties
It creates following columns:

$edge_Id - to uniquely identify edge
$from_Id - Unique Id of node
$to_Id - Unique Id of node

Example:

Problem scenario: Find organization hierarchy of a person

Using recursive CTE:

And perform pivot operation to get data on columns

Using graph database:

Power Bi visualization of graph using Force-Directed Graph:

Convert PBIX file into Azure Analysis Services model

2018-01-06T19:44:00.000+05:30

Using Azure Analysis Service, you can now convert a PBIX file into an Azure Analysis Services model.

PBIX file internally hosts an Analysis Service, which (model) can now be exported to Azure Analysis Services along with the underlying data set enabling the user to leverage all the cloud capabilities such as scale up/down.

This model can also be imported into Visual Studio where we can redesign the model, thus saving time from building the model from ground up.

Steps:

Go to Azure portal, Open the Azure Analysis Service Server
Go to Overview blade -> Web Designer, click Open
Click on add new model, choose import from Power BI desktop file.
You now have successfully converted your PBIX into an Azure Analysis Services model

Limitations: PBIX files with direct query connection or live connection are not supported currently.

Note: If your file size is large and the request times out during the conversion, try adding default filters to you file. Once your model is ready, open SSMS and process your model by connecting to the underlying database.

Microsoft launches Azure Location Based Services

2018-01-06T18:46:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Azure has launched preview for Azure Location Based Services.

They will offer enterprise customers location capabilities integrated in the cloud to help any industry improve traffic flow.

Azure Location Based Services Preview is a portfolio of geospatial services that will enable developers, enterprises, and partners to create location aware apps and IoT, mobility, logistics, and asset tracking solutions.

The portfolio is comprised of services for mapping, search and geocoding, routing, traffic data, and time zones. Together, these services will provide critical geospatial context and insights to Azure cloud solutions.

Location Based API Service reference:

API modules	Purpose
Render Service	Used for fetching maps High fidelity geographic information for over 200 regions around the world and is available in 35 languages and two versions of neutral ground truth
Routing Service	Get directions on a given route to know where traffic exists and the best ways to avoid it.
Search Service	Find real world objects and their respective location: Geocoding: Finding addresses, places and landmarks POI Search: Finding businesses based on a location Reverse Geocoding: Finding addresses or cross streets based on a location
Time Zone Service	Get Time zones and time for locations around the world
Traffic Service	Ability to overlay and query traffic flow and incident information

Below are the sample snippets to try out Azure LBS:

JavaScript implementation:

POSTMAN Query:

https://atlas.microsoft.com/search/address/json?api-version=1&query=Redmond

Implementation suggestions:

Azure LBS authenticated service into Power BI custom reporting (other than ArcGIS visual)
Search using locations, business listings as an alternative to Bing Search for location based reporting

References:

Quick Demo Link
Azure evolved search Link

SQL Server 2017: Read-Scale Availability Group

2018-01-06T18:42:00.002+05:30

Till SQL Server 2016, it was required to create Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) to set up Availability groups irrespective need of project i.e. whether it is required for High Availability or resource conservation on primary server (i.e. to use secondary for read requests).
With SQL Server 2017, we can create availability group without Windows Server Failover Cluster. Of course, it will not act as high availability or disaster recovery set up but it can be used for balancing the read-only load between many servers.
So overhead of maintaining Windows Failover cluster can be avoided if the requirement is just to reduce the read-only load on the primary.

How to enable this?

Windows Server Failover Clustering is not needed
The Availability Group manager does not have or need a cluster context
A new cluster_type option is present

To use this, we want the cluster_type of "NONE"

We can set up read-only routing same as SQL Server 2016 (refer to the links in references for more details).

References:

China Is Building a $2.1 Billion Industrial Park for AI Research

2018-01-06T16:41:00.002+05:30

Artificial intelligence is becoming a driving force behind economic development. As tech companies put AI at the heart of what they do, China plans to invest in a dedicated AI business district, which would advance the country's AI research programs.

BUILDING AN AI INDUSTRY

Over the past year, more nations have come to realize the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the economics of the future. With Russia, the United States, and the United Emirates all funding serious efforts to advance AI tech, China has established a three-year program to secure AI as a major economic driver by 2020. This is part of the nation’s overarching plan to become an industry leader in AI by 2030. As a first step towards this goal, the Chinese government is preparing to build a technology park in Beijing dedicated to AI development research.

The government is investing some $2.12 billion (13.8 billion yuan) to build the industrial park, located in west Beijing, according to state press agency Xinhua and as first reported by Reuters.

This “national AI research center” of sorts is also expected to produce $7.7 billion (50 billion yuan) a year from the 400 enterprises that would be housed in the AI research park.

Already, China is working on a number of AI projects — which include these human-looking robots, this AI police station, and that AI that passed a medical licensing exam. China also plans to dominate the AI chip race. Meanwhile, companies are increasingly investing in the technology, following Google, Amazon, and other tech heavyweights that have centered their businesses in AI.

At any rate, with plans for an AI-focused industrial park and its AI research center in the works, it might not be impossible for China to deliver on their promised AI breakthrough by 2025 — what its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology calls “Made in China 2025.”

As China’s AI development plan puts it,

The rapid development of artificial intelligence will profoundly change the social life of mankind and change the world

Microsoft Announces the General Availability of Azure Bot Service and Language Understanding

2018-01-06T03:29:00.001+05:30

Microsoft recently announced that the Azure Bot Service and Language Understanding has become generally available. Both had previously been in public preview for months, and the release increases availability in nine more regions including Ireland, Hong Kong and Sao Paulo, Brazil, and new capabilities to aid developers in achieving more.

Language Understanding (LUIS), a part of Cognitive Services, is a collection of APIs that enables systems to hear, see, speak, understand and interpret the needs of humans using natural methods of communication. LUIS can be a part of bot created through the Azure Bot Service, a service that enables developers to develop conversational interfaces on many channels. Lili Cheng, corporate vice president, Artificial Intelligence and Research Group at Microsoft, noted in the announcement on the Azure blog:

Making these two services generally available on Azure simultaneously extends the capabilities of developers to build custom models that can naturally interpret the intentions of people conversing with bots.

A typical Azure Bot Service provisioning process includes choosing the type of bot, subscription, location, language SDK (C# or Node.js), pricing tier, and bot template, which can be language understanding. Once the provisioning is complete, the bot can be tested immediately in the Azure Portal. A language understanding bot can be further customized in the LUIS AI by adding more intents besides the basic ones. Furthermore, through the build tab in the Azure Bot Service blade developers can choose how to work with the code either by using the code editor, download the zip file and open in Visual Studio, or establish continuous integration control. The channels tab offers options to connect to various channels such as Skype, Twilio, and Slack. Finally, a few other tabs provide analytics, speech priming, and bot service pricing.

Image Source Channel9

In the channel 9 Microsoft AI show on general availability release of Azure Bot Service and Language Understanding service, Elaine Chang, senior program manager, Microsoft Cloud AI, introduced some of the new capabilities, where Microsoft:

Increased investments in Service Level Agreement, higher service reliability, global access, and understanding of 18 languages
Added Premium Channels tier with 99.9% SLA for Web Chat and DirectLine
Integrated the Azure Service Bot into Azure with 24x7 Azure support, and combined billing and reporting
Made improvements to the documentation, SDKs, samples, and the bot service templates
Made updates to enable a business to control and own conversation state storage
Provided integration with the Microsoft Knowledge Graph Exchange for the Cortana channel
Evolved LUIS from 80 intents and 30 entities to 500 intents and 100 entities

The improvements are further detailed in-depth in the bot framework documentation.

In general, more than 760,000 developers from 60 countries are using the Cognitive Services, which is a part of the Microsoft AI platform. Moreover, the Azure Bot service too is part of this platform, and the adoption among developers of the Azure Bot Service is substantial with 240,000 developers signing up for using the service so far including companies like UPS, Molson Coors, and many more.

Microsoft is not alone in providing AI services and bots. In November 2016 Google launched an enterprise version of its DialogFlow Chatbot API, which enables developers to build voice and text-based conversational interfaces powered by AI, some startups to have platforms to create chatbots, like Dexter, who released a do-it-yourself chatbot creator in March 2017.

For the pricing of the Azure Bot Service, valid from the 1st of February 2018, visit the pricing page, and the capability is available in 28 regions. The full documentation on the Azure Bot Service is accessible through the bot service documentation. Furthermore, the pricing for LUIS start with a free tier; see the pricing details at Cognitive Services pricing—Language Understanding (LUIS)valid from the 1st of February, 2018. This capability is available in 13 regions, and the full documentation is available on the LUIS documentation site.

Source: INFOQ

Google’s new AI system can articulate like humans

2018-01-03T00:48:00.001+05:30

In a major step towards its “AI first” dream, Google has developed a text-to-speech artificial intelligence (AI) system that will confuse you with its human-like articulation.

The tech giant’s text-to-speech system called “Tacotron 2” delivers an AI-generated computer speech that almost matches with the voice of humans, technology news website Inc.com reported.

At Google I/O 2017 developers conference, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the internet giant was shifting its focus from mobile-first to “AI first” and launched several products and features, including Google Lens, Smart Reply for Gmail and Google Assistant for iPhone.

According to a paper published in arXiv.org, the system first creates a spectrogram of the text, a visual representation of how the speech should sound.

That image is put through Google’s WaveNet algorithm, which uses the image and brings AI closer than ever to mimicking human speech. It can easily learn different voices and even generates artificial breaths. “Our model achieves a mean opinion score (MOS) of 4.53 comparable to a MOS of 4.58 for professionally recorded speech,” the researchers were quoted as saying.

Source: The Hindu

Microsoft allows SMS Organizer for Android to monitor Bank Accounts and Virtual Wallets

2018-01-02T13:44:00.003+05:30

Microsoft's free app, SMS Organizer, filters out all of the crap that you don't need on your SMS app. Spam is removed, reminder cards are sent with quick action links, and your incoming messages are classified into different categories like Personal, Transactions and Promotional. Doing this organizes your SMS inbox. Clicking on the unread filter quickly shows you which messages you have yet to read. We first told you about this app, which is still only available in India, back in August, and there are many Android users hoping that SMS Organizer heads to their area. Microsoft, are you reading this?

The app has just been updated again, this time adding support for virtual E-Wallets and Bank Accounts. Transaction amounts are noted with a list of deposits and withdrawals. The app now features support for additional security to protect your Accounts view from being accessed by strangers. The complete change-list includes:

Support for Accounts and Transactions.
Option to enable security to Accounts view.
Added support for more patterns for Reminders.
Improved SMS classification.
Bug fixes.

The update takes the app to version 1.1.50. And yes, it is still in beta, which means that some features might not run smoothly.

Source: SMSOrganizer

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