Ballard Chalmers principals have been leading the way with SQL Server development and the Microsoft Data Platform for over 30 years. As a Microsoft Partner, you can trust our team for both off-site and on-site consulting services. We can help with all your SQL database needs from planning and development to performance tuning, integration and ongoing DBA support, thereby helping organisations save money.
SOME OF OUR SQL Server ENGAGEMENTS
Microsoft Data Platform
Ballard Chalmers is well placed to develop or modernise custom software using the Microsoft Data Platform with years of .NET and SQL experience under our belts.
A keystone of digital transformation is a modern data platform – the bedrock for storing, using and harnessing your data for analytics. The Microsoft Data Platform is based on the core technology of SQL Server.
The platform is fast and flexible with built-in security allowing applications to be built and deployed faster than ever.
Whether you want to migrate your SQL workloads to Azure, support SQL Server databases, modernise your existing SQL Server applications or support modern Azure SQL databases, the Microsoft Data Platform is right for you.
As a Microsoft Partner, we are well-equipped to help you with all your SQL development needs cost-efficiently.
Transact-SQL Development
Every engineer in the Ballard Chalmers development team is experienced in Transact-SQL development.
We can help develop:
- Stored Procedures, Triggers and Functions
- Complex SQL Queries
- Transactions and lock management
- Logical and physical database design
- Indexes design and management
- Managing and storing complex data using XML and JSON
- Accessing SQL Server through Entity Framework, ADO and other middleware.
SQL SERVER APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Ballard Chalmers develops, re-engineers, deploys and manages enterprise applications in the cloud, hybrid or on-premises. As a Microsoft Partner and leading professionals, our suite of comprehensive services enables speed to market, scalability and futureproofing for business-critical applications. We’d like you to consider us your outsourced IT department.
SQL SERVER APPLICATION CONSULTING
As a Microsoft Partner, our consultants are industry veterans and experts in the features and technology of SQL Server. Bring in our consultants for small engagements such as advice, recommendations, risk management review or licencing assessments; or larger engagements such as proof of concept or application failure resolution.
SQL SERVER APPLICATION SUPPORT
We can provide custom software support for the systems that we develop and for your existing or legacy systems. Our support staff are fully qualified software engineers, not helpdesk staff. That means your SQL support team will be very familiar with the technology used and be able to provide the expertise you need, when you need it.
SQL SERVER RESOURCING
Increase the capacity of your in-house team for SQL development or administration with our expert team augmentation. Take our Microsoft Partner expertise and give your team the boost required to get your development completed. If you are tight for deadlines or taking on a larger project than normal in-house, this is a simple and fast solution.
SQL Server Case Studies
Featured SQL Server case study
Imagination’s London office had been using on-premises SQL Server Virtual Machines (VMs) for their Global Finance System. Ballard Chalmers was brought in to design and deploy the system and migrate the data to Azure. Post-migration, we confirmed server configuration, ran tests and provided ongoing support.
SQL Server and Azure SQL Database
Traditionally SQL Server was deployed on-premises, but cloud-based deployments have become much more cost-efficient and popular, with Microsoft now adding new features to the cloud versions in advance of the on-premises versions.
Our CTO, Geoff Ballard has been a SQL Server consultant since the very first beta release by Microsoft and is a trainer and author in Microsoft technology, including the course ‘Transact-SQL Programming’.
Our expertise covers all aspects of Microsoft SQL Server: Development and DBA for On-Premises and Cloud, OLTP (online transaction processing) and Data Warehouse.
We provide expert help in:
- Transact-SQL
- Performance Tuning
- SQL Server Health Checks
- Data Security and Encryption
- SQL Server Database Administration
- SQL Server Reporting Services and Mobile Report Publisher
- Migrating SQL Servers to the cloud
- Developing applications using SQL & .NET
- Modernising existing SQL Server applications
- Support of modern Azure SQL databases
Deciding where best to host data depends on a number of factors such as the location of the systems that use the data and security, but the advantages of hosting in the cloud are becoming more and more compelling and include:
- Reduced DBA effort, as Microsoft automatically manage deployment, backup and recovery, failover and monitoring
- The ability to scale up to a more powerful database server at any time, with minimal effort and downtime
- Elastic pools to share capacity and costs across a number of databases.
As well as Azure SQL Database, the cloud version of a SQL Server database, there are two other major offerings:
- Azure SQL Database Managed Instance: A cloud-based SQL Server, that can be used in exactly the same way as on-premises SQL Server.
- Azure SQL Data Warehouse/Synapse Analytics: A cloud version of the on-premises SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, a massive capacity data warehouse machine capable of managing 10s or 100s of Terabytes of data.
TUNING AND OPTIMISATION
With all database servers, performance can become an issue as data volumes and the rate of data change increases.
The larger the system the more attention needs to be paid to performance. Performance tuning can be carried out at any time and involves:
- Monitoring and analysing servers to locate the source of performance issues
- Clustered, non-clustered and column store index design and analysis
- Transaction-SQL query and stored procedure redesign and refactoring
- Physical database table, storage design and managing I/O throughput
- Analysing and minimising issues due to transactions, blocking locks, dead lock and live lock
- Improving procedure and buffer cache utilisation
- Monitoring and managing wait states, particularly for memory, CPU and the transaction log
- Taking advantage of In-Memory Database Tables and Native Compiled Stored Procedures to maximise transaction rates.
Database Administration
We know SQL Server inside out.
Ballard Chalmers’ certified database administrators can provide services on all aspects of SQL Server Database Administration including managing and configuring:
- Clusters, AlwaysOn, Log Shipping and Replication
- Security, encryption, auditing and policy management
- Database storage
- Backup, recovery, and Disaster Recovery
- Monitoring
- Upgrading SQL Server versions.
An experienced engineer can carry out a performance review on any system to proactively reduce the risk of performance issues in the future.
We can provide our clients with a fully outsourced DBA service or smaller consulting engagements as required.
