SQL Server 2012 has a nice feature that enables to poll any shared directory using FileTables.
Here are the steps :

Enable filestream as shown below

Restart SQL Server service from the configuration manager

Enable filestream access level using sp_configure in TSQL

Create a filegroup that contains filestream

Add a filetable file to the above filegroup

Enable non-transactional access to the sharedfolder

Finally put all the .txt, .csv files to be automatically discovered by SQL Server

Below are the SQL commands:

[cc lang=”sql”]

— enable filestream access
EXEC sp_configure filestream_access_level, 2
RECONFIGURE
GO

— create a filegroup
ALTER DATABASE TestDB ADD FILEGROUP TestFG CONTAINS FILESTREAM;

— add the filetable file to the above FG
ALTER DATABASE TestDB
ADD FILE
(
NAME= ‘TestFile’,
FILENAME = ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\TestFile’
)
TO FILEGROUP TestFG;
GO

— enable above directory for non-transactional access
ALTER DATABASE TestDB
SET FILESTREAM ( NON_TRANSACTED_ACCESS = FULL, DIRECTORY_NAME = N’TestFile’ )

— create a filetable that polls above directory
CREATE TABLE TestFileTable AS FILETABLE
WITH
(
FILETABLE_DIRECTORY = ‘TestFile’,
FILETABLE_COLLATE_FILENAME = database_default
);
GO

[/cc]

Below is the directory that is polled by SQL Server. It has 4 files as shown.

The same files can be queried in SSMS using the query as :

[cc lang=”sql”]
SELECT convert(varchar(max), [file_stream]) as readcontent
,[name]
,[file_type]
,[creation_time]
,[last_write_time]
,[last_access_time]
FROM [TestDB].[dbo].[TestFileTable]
[/cc]

After the installation of SQL Server, one of the major decisions to make is which authentication to be enabled for the connections to be served from SQL Server (Windows authentication or SQL authentication). Windows authentication is best in terms of security as login/passwords can be captured by network sniffers and tend to be less secure. Some prefer to go with mixed mode to avoid the pitfalls of either and make it convenient for the application developers.

However broadly categorized reasons for either usage are mentioned below.

SQL Authentication

connections coming from external domains

Need web applications to access like Entity frameworks, ASP.NET application etc.,

Windows Authentication

connections mostly from users belonging to a domain controller attached by Active Directory

App server and DB server are connected to the same domain

SQL Server permissions are granulated at server and database levels. This is done by the implementation of server and database roles.

In addition to the various data modelling techniques that need to be employed for creation of new datawarehousing solution, a lot of thought needs to be put on underlying storage model needed.

DW requirements mostly are different from OLTP/POS systems as most of the data can be ETL’ed from source systems.

Microsoft has a tool called as “Fast Track Core Calculator” that can be used as a reference before choosing the SAN vendor as it suggests number of cores needed, number of arrays, disk size & throughput (MB/sec).

Please download the same:

Fast Track Core Calculator v1.2

MS Reference Guide

In SSIS 2012, after a catalog is created, there are only few properties which can be modified from the GUI as shown below.
Some properties are greyed out.

Please note that Encryption algorithm name is greyed out.

Here are the steps to be followed to modify the property:

Make the SSISDB to be in single user mode

Then change the encryption type using TSQL command (using GUI wouldnt work as the database in single user mode and get this message)

Make the SSISDB to be in multi user mode

[cc lang=”sql”]
— single user
ALTER DATABASE SSISDB set single_user with rollback immediate

— change the property
USE SSISDB
EXEC catalog.configure_catalog @property_name=’Encryption_Algorithm’, @property_value=’TRIPLE_DES_3KEY’;

— multi user
ALTER DATABASE SSISDB SET MULTI_USER
[/cc]

Then verify that the catalog properties got modified for the SSISDB catalog as shown: