What’s up with the random pictures?

While I enjoy the “hunt” for cute or pithy pictures that complement a catchy blog title, they really don’t add any value to the post, do they?  Nor does “themed” stock photography or artwork, at least for me.  Yeah, you feel “clever” for having paired the post and the image, and it probably looks a bit slicker, ok.

Instead, I thought I’d highlight photos I like — including those I’ve taken of things or places I love, or those that have been taken by others willing to have me show and reference their work.  And I don’t have to worry about copyright infringement or royalties.

Click through the photos for full resolution (new window).

Schema Matters: Data Distribution and Ordering

I continue my side trip from my 5-part series through a second short stop. Here, I test a schema-optimized TPC-DS run on a 30-node dc2.8xlarge configuration -- the same configuration GigaOm specified in their original study.
This DC2 configuration shows the same 5.5x performance improvement when compared with the original GigaOm results, demonstrating the importance of schema and data ordering optimizations for query performance, and shedding at least a little light on the tradeoffs and use cases that could drive selection of one configuration over the other.

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words REDUX

Cross of the Martyrs Park, Santa Fe, NM

I'm taking a slight side trip from the original outline of my 5-part series on Performance Benchmarking and its use in DW Analytics Engineering and Maintenance activities.

Here I recreate the analysis of part 2 of my series, A Picture is Worth 1000 Words, but with updated information for Redshift using the RA3 instances with managed storage that were first announced in late 2019.  The difference is eye-opening.

 

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