Google – Android Instant Apps

Just finished watching a video on Android Instant Apps which Google is currently experimenting. Instant apps just launch by tapping the link without the need for the full app to be installed. e.g. if you have been sent a link for a recipe you can instantly access the video of the recipe without the need for installing the app.
The other cool thing is once you close the instant app, it just lives in the cache only for a few hours and the app is gone and you need to click the link again if you need to access it. Basically it allows to reclaim the space once you finish with what you wanted to do with the Instant App.
Also if you need to retain the app then Instant App allows you to download the app using the Install button from the top right corner of the Instant App.
This is really cool as you can direct your users straight to the required link of the app.
https://youtu.be/cosqlfqrpFA
You can upgrade your existing Android apps to Instant App. It works on Android Jelly Bean devices and up.
Currently the SDK is open for early adopters so watch this space.

Technorati Tags: Android,Instant Apps,Google

Google BigQuery – Analytics Data Warehouse

Google handles Big Data every second of every day to provide services like Search, YouTube, Gmail and Google Docs. Google created a Query Service named “Dremel” which was used just internally within Google.
Dremel is a query service that allows you to run SQL-like queries against very, very large data sets and get accurate results in mere seconds. You just need a basic knowledge of SQL to query extremely large datasets in an ad hoc manner.
BigQuery is the public implementation of Dremel. BigQuery provides the core set of features available in Dremel to third party developers. It does so via a REST API, a command line interface, a Web UI, access control and more, while maintaining the unprecedented query performance of Dremel.
BigQuery can scan billions of rows in a highly performant manner for ad hoc query analysis. It does achieve high performance through Columnar Storage and Tree Architecture. BigQuery Client Libraries - https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/client-libraries
Currently Microsoft is planning to provide Google BigQuery connector for Power BI. In the interim, you can import data from Google BigQuery using an ODBC driver, which is fully supported for Import scenarios in Power BI Desktop, and Personal/Enterprise Gateway for Refresh purposes.

BigQuery vs MapReduce

MapReduce is a distributed computing technology that allows to implement custom “mapper” and “reducer” functions programmatically and run batch processes with them on hundreds or thousands of servers concurrently. MapReduce is designed as a batch processing framework, so it’s not suitable for ad hoc and trial-and-error data analysis.
BigQuery is designed to handle structured data using SQL.MapReduce is a better choice when you want to process unstructured data programmatically. The mappers and reducers can take any kind of data and apply complex logic to it.
Use BigQuery

• Finding particular records with specified conditions. For example, to find request logs with specified account ID.
• Quick aggregation of statistics with dynamically-changing conditions. For example, getting a summary of request traffic volume from the previous night for a web application and draw a graph from it.
• Trial-and-error data analysis. For example, identifying the cause of trouble and aggregating values by various conditions, including by hour, day and etc...

Use MapReduce

• Executing a complex data mining on Big Data which requires multiple iterations and paths of data processing with programmed algorithms.
• Executing large join operations across huge datasets.
• Exporting large amount of data after processing.

Technorati Tags: Google,BigQuery,MapReduce,Power BI Desktop,Power BI

SSRS - Parameter Date format in Google Chrome is mm/dd/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yyyy

• To fix the issue, you need to change the accept-languages property in the preferences file for Google Chrome. To do that, type “about:version” in the address path and copy the profile path value.
• Close down the Chrome Browser.
• Open the preferences file from the profile path copied from step 1 and look for the “accept-languages” property
• Change the property from “en-US”,en to “en-NZ”,en and the parameter dates in SSRS will now display in dd/mm/yyyy format in Google Chrome.

Reference: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/psPDoulWfzc/7CrsYYO576wJ

Technorati Tags: Google,Chrome,SSRS