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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
If you lost the SQLBI Methodology session (or any other one) at 24 Hours of PASS in September, now you can watch the recordings on-line!
I just looked at the presentation and unfortunately there are 6 minutes missing from our presentation. Thus, if you are going to watch it, this is the missing initial slide that introduces the one-hour long discussion about how to build your Data Warehouse, Data Mart and OLAP Cubes using the SQLBI Methodology, which draft papers are available here.
Topics in SQLBI Methodology session
A methodology is far too complex for a simple session, nevertheless, we will make a simple introduction.
Draft papers can be found on www.sqlbi.com/sqlbimethodology.aspx

subset: commoncrawl


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August 06, 2020, 03:26:07 am
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Avatars do not show completely (i.e. Yuzihax's DiscoBrock) on forum posts, although they do in profile.
Quote from: GARY 'M 9 on August 07, 2011, 10:08:51 pmAvatars do not show completely (i.e. Yuzihax's DiscoBrock) on forum posts, although they do in profile.Update, even though Yuzihax's avatar now shows on forum posts, to clarify other profiles are still affected by the problem, some in their profile page as well e.g. Tombstoner's (I'm assuming you didn't remove your avatar, so if you're reading this please correct me if I'm wrong!).
Something's wrong with your browser, that text is actually dark grey. Try forcing a cache refresh (shift+refresh) or updating.
The forum names are extremely hard to read before registration, white on mottled light gray/white is not the best choice. http://i.imgur.com/VLmgC.png
The number of questions that need answered has been reduced 2 and the questions given will randomize.
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I am looking for resources that will help me to model telecommunications infrastructure of a small town/campus in GIS. Can anyone suggest where to look for:
- A telecommunications GIS data model (I know ESRI created one)
- Place on the web (e.g. forum, group) that this is being discussed or could be a helpful resource.


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So, you've fallen in love with our Soufflé Love Seat Chaise but have no idea whether our delivery chaps will be able to get it into your home or not. That's where our handy guide comes in.
Do remember that this is just a guide and that our sofas can vary by approximately 3cm. Any questions, give our Chatterboxes a call on 02031418300


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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A Word To The Wise
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?
This surprisingly stately clip from Jess Franco's 1972 monster rally DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN features Alberto Dalbes as Dr. Seward and Geneviève Robert as Almira, the gypsy woman who comes to his rescue. This scene brings to mind something I've always admired about Franco's, and also Mario Bava's, horror films: unlike American movies, where ugly vestiges of our country's puritan foundation lingers, their films never demonize witches, instead presenting them as serious women of intuition and arcane knowledge, who are often called upon to explain to characters who have chosen a more narrow way of living what is out of balance in their half-understood world, and just as often pointing their way to survival. Geneviève Robert is wonderful in this scene, and one regrets that she didn't make more films. Today, Robert is married to producer-director Ivan Reitman and a Reuters photo of the couple attending the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month can be found here.
Incidentally, Jess Franco and Lina Romay are currently in Austin, Texas, where they are being fêted at FantasticFest with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Here is a schedule of related events and I congratulate Jess and Lina on yet another long overdue recognition of their vast contribution to fantastic cinema.
Friday, September 25, 2009
THE HOWL reviewed
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Miracle Girl
Irene has recently directed her first short film, DAWNLAND, the poetic 18th century story of a young white girl's adoption by and assimilation into the Native American Abenaki tribe of Vermont, which was chosen to be featured at the recent Selento International Film Festival in Selento, Italy. It's a lovely film with obviously personal associations for its maker, who dedicated the film to her mother and grandmother. She intends DAWNLAND to be the first film in a trilogy of related shorts to be collected under the umbrella title "Champlain Suite," referring to the Lake Champlain setting which all three projected stories share in common.
The website is offering copies of DAWNLAND for sale; there's also a clip there for viewing, as well as a "director's statement" about the project. Irene's fans will also be excited to learn that her website is also making available, for the first time, autographed photos -- including choice shots from INFERNO, some of them in color. (She confessed to me that she had a hard time coming to grips with celebrity, and for many years refused autograph requests because she couldn't understand why her signature should be considered more desirable than anyone else's -- so there aren't many signed pictures of her in circulation... yet.) There's also a fully annotated photo gallery to make a visit well worth your clicks, a stunning assortment of film, stage and rare modelling shots.


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Photo courtesy Tracy Johnson
Donna Johnson, left, and Tracy Johnson at their home in Raeford, N.C., in 2012.
When her spouse was killed in Afghanistan, Tracy Johnson drove across town to her mother-in-law's house — clutching her marriage certificate — so she could hear the Army's formal notification. No one from the military came to her door.
She later watched as the American flag that cloaked the coffin of her spouse, Donna Johnson, was offered, not to her, but to Donna Johnson's mother – the next of kin, as U.S. law stipulates. She was denied death benefits, she said, that are standard issue to heterosexual spouses of service members who die in action: free health care, tuition assistance, and monthly indemnity compensation of about $1,200.
And then there was the ring. On Valentine's Day 2012, Tracy Johnson placed that band on her wife's finger during their marriage ceremony in Washington, D.C. Last October, as Johnson escorted her wife's body home from Dover Air Force Base, the Army asked Johnson to carry the wedding ring, designated as a "personal effect." After arriving in Fayetteville, N.C., Johnson was obliged, by a federal statute, to deliver the ring to an Army officer who then provided it to Donna Johnson's mother who, in turn, gave it back to Tracy Johnson. She wears it on her finger today.
"I'm not considered 'family' (by the military). I'm not considered a spouse and I'm damn sure not considered a widow, by definition," said Johnson, an Army National Guard staff sergeant who served in Iraq. "We didn't marry for any of those benefits. We married out of love.
"And I'm not standing up here, whining: 'Woe is me.' We were adults, big girls, and we knew what we were getting ourselves into. But it doesn't mean I have to stand idly by and see all this happen to somebody else who's in a same-sex marriage (in the military)."
Johnson's experiences were mandated by the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. The 1996 law — followed by the Department of Defense and all federal agencies — bars same-sex military spouses from benefits made available to the heterosexual spouses of service members: dental and medical insurance, discounted military housing, and military ID cards, which allow spouses to visit on-base commissaries, child-care facilities and movie theaters.
Under DOMA, military leaders were not allowed to officially acknowledge Johnson, who believes she may be the first same-sex spouse to lose a partner to combat following the 2011 repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) — the policy that kept gays from openly serving in the armed forces. (Donna Johnson's mother specifically asked Tracy Johnson to accompany the body home, allowing her a seat on the plane.) The only federal employee who openly referred to the dead soldier as Johnson's "wife," was President Barack Obama, who sent Johnson a letter of condolence, she said.
On Thursday, Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, told congressional members during a confirmation hearing that he is "fully committed ... to doing everything possible under current law to provide equal benefits to the families of all our service members."
Furthermore, during his inauguration address on Jan. 21, Obama spoke broadly of gay rights, saying: "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law."
Battle for equality
For now, current law stipulates that, following the military death of a same-sex spouse, the branches first must notify the "primary next-of-kin" — in Donna Johnson's case, her parents. If U.S. troops list a same-sex spouse on their emergency-contact forms, that spouse eventually will receive word from the military — after the blood family is told.
"It is not like, though, it's a day or 'x' number of weeks later. It would be almost immediately," said Nathan Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman. "They (branch officers) would talk to primary next-of-kin first and relay the information. And then, whoever the (other designated person is), they would call them very soon thereafter. So we're talking minutes or hours as opposed to days, weeks or months.
"DOMA is still the law we uphold. Even though that (DADT) repeal has been taken care of, there are certain benefits that are not applicable across the force," Christensen added.
But pressure is mounting on the Pentagon and the White House to change that notification policy — and the other gaps in same-sex spousal benefits — by writing an executive order or a DOD-wide regulation.
Same-sex advocacy groups described the Jan. 25 electionof same-sex wife Ashley Broadway as Fort Bragg's 2013 "spouse of the year" as a mandate to the military to figure out a way to override DOMA. That same day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama is contemplating how benefits could be administratively extended to the spouses of gay service members, the Washington Blade reported.
'Just like all the other Army wives'
"No military spouse should have to hear second-hand that something has happened to their service member," said Stephen Peters, president of the American Military Partner Association (AMPA), a Washington, D.C.-based support network for lesbian and gay military families.
"No military spouse should have to watch the flag that is draped over the coffin of his or her service member folded and handed to anyone else," added Peters, whose husband, Marine Corps Maj. Alasdair Mackay, returned safely in January from a one-year deployment to Afghanistan. "Our families live through the daily fear of worrying about having something happen to their service member while they're deployed. But we do it without access to the same supports and benefits that other military families get. Our service members, they go to war for our country for equality, yet their families are treated as if they aren't important, as if they are somehow second class."
Courtesy of Stephen Peters
Marine Corps Maj. Alasdair Mackay and Stephen Peters were married in New York City during Christmas 2011 before Mackay deployed to Afghanistan.
The AMPA asserts that Tracy Johnson was the first — and only, to date — same-sex spouse to lose a military wife or husband in combat. It's possible, however, that another same-sex spouse suffered that type of tragedy before DADT was rescinded and when members were not open about their sexual orientation — even if they were legally married.
Tracy Johnson was not listed on the emergency notification form that service members fill out, she said. Because DADT had been revoked, Donna Johnson assumed that Tracy would receive the same benefits that are granted to all military spouses — for example, being the first person to be notified by the military should a wife or husband die in combat, Johnson said.
"Donna didn't even realize she had to put me down. She thought I was automatically extended that benefit as her wife — just like all the other Army wives who are the first ones to notified," she said.
'What's right is right'
The point is moot — even if Tracy Johnson was listed, due to DOMA she still would not have been the first person that military officials would have visited in the hours after Donna Johnson was killed.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of DOMA.
Near Fort Bragg, N.C., Johnson holds tight to a fine philosophical line — honoring her wife and the Army while questioning the law. She describes how individual Army members privately treated her "with respect and compassion", giving her an American flag — though not the same flag atop the coffin — during a private ceremony before Donna Johnson's funeral. She lauds Donna Johnson's family for supporting her, insisting that she sit with them in the front row during the memorial service.
But Donna Johnson's mother, Sandra, is not so charitable with her summary of the events.
"Tracy's unit supports her, her family supports her, and she was given support by the community itself. Why can't the federal family be supportive?" Sandra Johnson asked. "I know: It's the law. But what's fair is fair. What's right is right.
"The family is already going through grief. You don't keep putting a knife in the wound and make it deeper. She's dead, she's gone, she can't be brought back. So why are you treating this family, and treating Tracy, with this indignation?"
Related: Spouses club relents, says lesbian Army wife can be 'full member'


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24 March 2012
When the Ferry Is a Time Machine
Have you ever been to Ellis Island? It's a short ferry ride from the Battery, at the tip of Manhattan, through New York Harbor to Ellis Island, a trip that costs only $13 ($10 if you're 62 or over) and allows the visitor to travel more than a hundred years into the past.
My visit, with a French friend in New York on vacation, was no mere museum trip or history lesson for me. Both my parents came to America through Ellis Island: my father from Ekaterinaslav in the Ukraine in 1905 at the age of six, and my mother from Papa in Hungary in 1906 at the age of four. I've always regretted that I never visited Ellis Island with them. They went with a cousin shortly after the restoration in the 1980s, and both said that they remembered the Registry Room with its vaulted ceilings and high arched windows.
My mother's most vivid memory was of her own mother, my grandmother, crying as she said goodbye to her mother, whom she knew she would never see again. My father remembered being given a banana as he waited to board the ship, and how, puzzled by this strange fruit, he bit into it skin and all.
Before you go, prepare for your visit by going online. The site www.ellisisland.com offers information about the Immigration Museum, while www.ellisisland.org allows users to search for passengers on the ships that brought the immigrants past the Statue of Liberty to Ellis Island. At the click of a mouse, I found both my father, on the ship's manifest of the Caronia out of Liverpool and my mother, listed as a passenger on the Deutschland, departing from Hamburg. I discovered that my Aunt Anna and my Aunt Sophie, younger than my father, were actually named Chane and Schifre. I already knew that my mother, named Judith (and called Judy her whole life, till she died at 96), got an inadvertent name change at Ellis Island, when an immigration official heard the Hungarian pronunciation Yoo-deet and wrote down "Edith"—which is how she was listed on the records I found. (Her official signature was always "Edith Judith" or "Edith J."—though the only people who called her Edith were telemarketers.)
The cousin who visited the museum with my parents enrolled my mother's mother, our beloved Gran, on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor outside the Great Hall, overlooking the harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline. When I emailed him, he reminded me that at the time, none of the cousins wanted to pay the hundred bucks to list our grandfather, who died long before we were born. I was moved to find my grandmother's name among the 700,000 remembered in this beautiful and historic spot. Since then, I've put both my parents' names and countries of origin on the Wall and am eagerly waiting for my granddaughters to be old enough to enjoy seeing them there.
8 comments:
I've been wanting to see Ellis Island, though my folks came thought the port of Boston and in from Canada.
- 24 March, 2012 08:37
- John Floyd said...
Interesting, Liz! I've always been fascinated by Ellis Island.
By the way, one of Nevada Barr's mysteries, Liberty Falling, puts Ellis Island and Liberty Island at center stage, and features some great maps. (I like novels that include maps of the setting.)
- 24 March, 2012 09:39
Liz, what a thrill it must be to see those names. If the walls could only talk. When I think about how those folks left their homeland to come to a place they had never been to before to start a new life, I marvel at their courage. I'm not sure I could have done that.
(Aside to Dale: I saw your comment on Deborah's post. I was relating an old joke. Your are absolutely right. Sorry for the misunderstanding.)
- 24 March, 2012 12:42
- Robert Lopresti said...
I went about 30 years ago and it was GREAT. We were on the first tour of the day and there were very few people. This gave the guide a chance to essentially divide his talk into two parts: the official stuff and the stories he had been told by other visitors about their and their relatives experiences at Ellis Island. Guess which was more interestin!
- 24 March, 2012 13:03
- Anita Page said...
Liz, years before the restoration, my husband and I called our congressman and asked if there was any way we could get to Ellis Island to shoot pictures. Congressman Ben Rosenthal arranged for a Park Service boat to pick us up at the Battery, drop us at the island for a couple of hours, then take us back to Manhattan. We've visited Ellis Island twice since the restoration. It is, as you say, a very moving experience, especially for those of us whose families came through there.
- 24 March, 2012 13:54
- Elizabeth Zelvin said...
I don't think your relatives have to have entered the country via Ellis Island to be entitled to have their names on the Wall of Honor. New Orleans, for example, was a big port of entry during the 19th century.
- 24 March, 2012 17:21
- R.T. Lawton said...
Liz, thanks for another interesting piece of history.
- 24 March, 2012 18:13
- Dixon Hill said...
This was just wonderful, Liz. REALLY enjoyed it!
- 25 March, 2012 01:04


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Funky array startup Violin Memory is apparently adding deduplication to its memory array, and it could be licensing Permabit's Albireo technology to do it.
Deduplication software technology supplier Permabit has developed its Albireo software to work on flash arrays: enterprise flash arrays to be precise. The "Albireo Software Development Kit (SDK) and Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO) products [now] support enterprise flash technologies utilised in flash arrays, caching solutions (both hardware and software), and Solid State Devices (SSDs) including both drives and PCIe solutions," the firm announced last week.
The benefits are said to include lowering the effective cost of flash storage by three to five times on a $/GB basis, by storing less data, and reducing the umber of writes needed - which is a big plus with write-limited flash storage. Permabit says its flash dedupe technology "delivers effective cost for performance and capacity well below that of traditional hard disk-based storage arrays."
This is a major change in the cost structure for flash storage, if it is true.
Permabit says that Albireo for flash has:
- scalability to millions of dedupe operations per second;
- greater than 250,000 IOPS inline performance using a single commodity CPU core;
- sub-millisecond latency; and
- <512 MB minimum memory footprint.
Up until now none of the major or mainstream storage vendors have used Permabit's technology. Known licensees include BlueArc, since bought by HDS, and LSI. We don't know if that LSI licence is active. Overland Storage and StoneFly are other known licensees.
Permabit says Albireo manages to deduplicate primary data in a storage array without impacting read or write access performance. Last August ESG co-founder and senior analyst Steve Duplessie said: "I don't see any other real alternatives for OEMs to be able to quickly get to market with lightning fast dedupe capabilities for primary, secondary, or really any-dary storage. Albireo rocks."
At the Solid State Storage Symposium in San Jose on 25 April, Violin Technology's software CTO, Jonathan Goldick, was on a panel discussing future flash matters. If you check out the video of the panel, and watch the inline dedupe section of the session (which starts at the 17.35 mark), Violin's turn comes at 24.37, when Goldick says: "The Permabit guys really do deliver what they say they do." He mentions this in the context of asynchronous deduplication so as to keep the processing out of the I/O path and, figuratively, "make 80 per cent of the writes disappear".
The second piece of the puzzle
Looking at the Permabit website we find a case study about how an unnamed "leading provider of high performance SSDs began to look at entering the Enterprise Flash Appliance space." We now think we know who that is: more than likely it's Violin Memory.
The case study text says:
Albireo VDO provides complete deduplication and thin-provisioning capabilities within a ready-to-run Linux device-mapper module. Once installed, they simply exported Albireo VDO as a normal block device to be used directly as deduplicating block storage. As an added benefit, Albireo VDO provided thin provisioning, an additional enterprise storage capability that the vendor had not even planned to deliver until much further down the product roadmap.
I think this could be a straight description of how Violin Memory is adding deduplication to its memory array. ®