To gear up for the PASS Business Analytics Conference, the newly launched PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter asked me to do a presentation last week, “A Big Data Primer”. Many of us in the SQL Server community have been hearing the use of this term increase, and Microsoft has released HDInsight, both as an Azure service and as a Windows service. HDInsight is built on top of Hadoop, a technology often (but not always) encountered in Big Data projects. I thought I’d take this opportunity to add to the Big Data discussion in the community by starting with the basics.

The goal of this presentation was to provide an introduction to terms and technologies. The term “Big Data” dominates the headlines in technology news these days, but what is the fuss really all about? I’ve seen hype come and I’ve seen hype go in my career, and waited to see what would come of it. In my presentation, I try to paint a picture for you that gives you a better idea of the many ways that the Big Data movement is impacting the use of data. Then I spend some time discussing some of the technologies that you could use to manage Big Data. And last I delve into approaches you can take to manage a Big Data project. Along the way, I compare and contrast Big Data with traditional data warehousing and BI.

You can find a copy of my presentation here.