It Depends

The DBA Routine Posted on SSC

This was fun to write, though it's hard to boil everything down to 10 big steps. I thnk as an industry we tend to forget that there are a LOT of us wearing multiple hats, working solo, just trying to get things done - and while we want to do things the right way, there isn't always clear guidance to help is figure it all out. This is a very short attempt at starting to map that out.

Article is at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Career/61535/, and there are nice comments in the attached thread if you have time to read that as well. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Career/61535/

MS, kill Begin/End!

It's funny - sorta - how you become used to the quirks of the tools you. I try not to rant too often here on the blog, but seriously, it's time for TSQL to lose the BEGIN/END syntax. It's clunky syntax that I think adds more bugs than it prevents. Think changing it would break too much code? Just leave the current behavior as the default and build in a SET option, perhaps SET BEGINEND OFF, that we can just add at the beginning of a procedure.

Maybe if we can get that one fixed we can also get ELSEIF?

Why Don't People Go to Free Training?

I was having this discussion recently with Shawn Weisfeld, President of ONETUG and it's definitely a frustrating topic. As a former IT manager my team was always pushing to go to a class or a conference to "maintain their skills" but surprisingly few would make time to attend a Code Camp, MSDN Event, or just read a book on their own time. Why is that?

I know that MSDN & TechEd events tend towards 'look at our latest new features' and sometimes add in some sales pitch, but for the cost - free - I've seen some awfully good demos. Code Camps though, or my own SQLSaturday! don't suffer from the same market spin. You can totally ignore the few sponsors present, and there are enough sessions that you can skip the 'New Features in Product vX' if you want. So why does the Orlando Code Camp average 400 attendees when I'd easily bet there are 4000 .Net developers in Orlando? Why does the Orlando .Net User group average 30 attendees, and the SQL Group about 20?

Some of it is marketing I think, trying to get the word out to a bigger segment of the available audience. Some of it just seems to be a negative attitude towards anything free, that somehow if its free it must be of lower quality. User groups in particular seem to suffer from a perception that there is nothing of value for the advanced user, that the groups cater to beginners.

In fairness, I'm really only complaining about those that don't take advantage of free training that do nothing on their own. If you read SSC or SQLTeam or blogs or whatever, or buy the occasional book, good!

If it was up to me everyone would attend paid training all the time, mostly because Im in the training business and would benefit! In practice that's just not affordable or sustainable. So what about you blog reader? Are you looking at alll the training options available to you and making good choices, or just waiting on the boss to approve the next training trip?

Google CIO and IT Strategy

CIO Magazine has a interesting article about Douglas Merrill, the CIO of Google. One of the things he dicusses in the article is that if someone can be 10% more efficient by using a Mac, he let's them use the Mac. He goes on to talk about rather than trying to provide security based on a standard platform, he has taken a more holistic and defense in depth approach that recognizes that many of their workers will be using wireless and probably working remotely as well.

I like the idea, not sure I'd enjoy the implementation, unless maybe I was at Google and had the bucks to spend to do it. Most companies like to run at least all Windows, and it's not uncommon for them to try to run the exact same models of desktops & laptops to make imaging new machines dirt simple. Most network guys - as a stereotype which may or may not be fair - believe in giving users as a little access to their machine, information, etc, as possible - no access, no problems! I think the open environment is he building at Google is great for knowledge workers, and maybe even great for the support staff, but is it affordable and doable for the average company? I see some companies that are in lock down mode, others that just put up wireless and hope for the best, few that seem to have the vision and resources of Google. Of course, I'm assuming it takes resources when maybe it just takes having the idea, and from there you just allocate resources differently. I'd like to think it would work that way!

But the real point for me is that as IT professionals we just have to provide a more open environment without sacrificing security. That means letting users build their own reports, post their own web content, and yes, maybe even write their own queries sometimes. Part of our job is to mitigate risk, not remove it by just not letting users do the work that needs to be done. It means letting go of the fear that 'something might go wrong'. Yes, something might go wrong, and when it does we'll fix it and learn from it, but we can't react out of fear ('that user written query killed performance, so no more user written queries'). Think about it the next time something goes wrong!

Community Search vs Brute Force Algorithms

I was reading an interview with Jimmy Wales (the Wikipedia guy) in Selling Power magazine (I have ecletic reading preferences I know) and aside from the stuff about Wikipedia he talked a little about moving into search and how he hoped that by leveraging the lessons learned so far he might be able to produce better search results. That's an interesting idea if he can get it to work. I think Google is probably still the leader at search, but not by as much as they used to be. Search is almost a commodity. Almost! But there is still a lot of luck involved. Can a community approach remove the need for some of the luck? The wild card is the advertising. Advertising drives most of the gaming of search results, remove the advertising and people (and companies) would spend a lot less time on trying to increase their PageRank or equivalent score.

Wikipedia may not be perfect, but I find it helpful probably 95% of the time. Given the choice of working there or Google, I'd go with Wikipedia because I love the community aspect.

Buying a New Cell Phone

For the page 10 months or so I've been using a Samsung Blackjack, before that I used various Blackberries for perhaps 5 years. I changed phones because the BB I had didn't offer the ability to tether and working mostly solo it's pretty handy to be be able to connect anytime. The tethering on the Blackjack worked fine, but the battery life wasn't great. In fact, it was so bad ATT gave owners a free extended life battery this past July.

My business partner Brian upgraded to an IPhone from a Win based smart phone, and my friend Chris also dropped his vanilla cell phone to move to an Iphone and both seemed happy. I decided to try a little harder to buy something I'd be happy with, so over the course of 45 days I tried to note how I used the phone, what I wished it could do, and what frustrated me about the current phone. I also started reading all the cell phone blogs to see what was coming up for release (as an aside, cell phones are an amazing market, there is always something new coming).

Top of the list it had to be a good phone with great battery life, had to have Bluetooth, and should make it very easy to manage three way calls when needed. It had to have the ability to sync contacts with Outlook, a feature I truly depend on. It has to offer a tethering option preferably at 3G rather than EDGE. Email is right below phone capabilities, it's definitely nice not to be tied to my laptop and still be responsive to the customer requests I get during the day. Web browsing on a phone is something I've always found barely usable and the 'real' browser in the IPhone had me interested, I could see where I would probably get a lot of adhoc reading down if I had a real browser. I also considered a smart phone with a touch display so that I could run SQL tools (Idera Mobile, or similar) but in practice I just don't need that functionality as much now that Im primarily a trainer. Having a camera was also something I preferred, using it to document white board discussions comes in handy.

I was sorely tempted to try the IPhone, based on the cool factor and the real browser, but the lack of a physical keyboard was a deal breaker for me after trying it - the virtual keyboard just didn't seem like a good fit for the way I work (and type!). That left me looking at the BB Curve and the upcoming Moto Q (I use ATT). The Curve only supports EDGE, the release date on the Moto Q was uncertain but would support 3G. Ultimately in a decision that was probably based as much on past experience as it was logic I with with the latest Curve, the 8310. Very very pleased with it so far, the only feature I miss from the Blackjack is the way it handled callerid. The Blackjack could be set to send your phone number if the number you were calling was in your address book, otherwise it suppressed it - nice for staying off calling lists. I wish the BB had a better browser and 3G, and that they'd unlock the GPS rather than charging another $10/month to use the TeleNav service!

I surprised by the number of IT pros that don't have a phone that does true email. My friend Steve finally saw the light and bought a Dash. Having email on your phone doesn't mean you have to answer every email right then, but it often is a way to keep things moving faster than they would otherwise. Finally, I'll say that as much as phones have gotten better and the IPhone is driving some innovation, they still have a ways to go.

Logging Server Reboots - What the Heck MS?

Maybe someone at MS can explain this; they have that nice dialog that comes up after a reboot where you select planned/unplanned, enter a code and a reason. Why don't they auto populate that when a Windows update triggers the reboot without user intervention? A list of the changes applied would sure be sweet to have in the event log.

SQLSaturday Article Posted on SSC

I wrote up some more notes (in addition to what's available here on the blog) to try to raise the awareness level of what might be possible for a SQL Server event. Article is at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/User+Groups/61534/.

SQLSaturday #2 aka SQLSaturday Tampa 2007

I had dinner with Wes Dumey and Pam Shaw from Tampa last night to share some lessons learned and hear what they had in mind for their implementation. They made the decision to rent space at a hotel, partly out of lack of free venues and partly because the hotel can really help with logistics. Costs a little more, but removes a lot of the variables and decreases the number of volunteers needed. Overall I think they are going for the same type event we did in Orlando. Sessions will be 75 minutes instead of the shorter 50 minute sessions in Orlando. Another advantage to the hotel is that there is a bar/restaurant on site so they can have the "after" party right there.

Event will be Jan 12, 2008 in Tampa. Call for speakers is now open for the event, and they tell me they plan to host 3 one day $99 seminars on Fri, one of which will be Celko doing a presentation similar to the one he did in Orlando. Limited info available at www.sqlsaturday.com, I expect more updates to be published by Mon.

It's a lot of fun to see someone try a slightly different way of hosting the event and see what they consider important vs not. No right answers, just a chance to learn!

Giving PASS Chapters Access to Summit Content

I've got a request in to PASS asking them to release 2 of the many sessions that were presented at the most recent Summit to the chapters to be made available for download to their members. Chapters are always looking for content and PASS always needs to market the event, this seems like an easy way to do it. Pick a popular session and one routine session, or maybe pick two sessions that scored well. The reply was that they are investigating how to best use the content and would get back to me when that complete.

I get that that they don't want to hurt their attendance by giving away all the sessions, and that they hope to sell some $99 DVD's of all the recordings. But it's not like this is the first year they held the conference, or I suspect the first time a chapter has asked for a portion of the content. How many options can there be and how long can it take?

Pics of SQLSaturday

Visit the blog of Joe Healy, my favorite MS Developer Evangelist to see some pics from SQLSaturday. Joe is amazingly good at fostering interactions between groups all over Florida and he actually managed to take a few decent photos too!

Dr Dobbs & Databases

You may not think of DDJ for database info and I'll admit that what they do cover is often a bit off the path most of us SQL Server people follow, but they do have some interesting content that I like because it does take me past my normal SQL Server stuff. They also occasionaly feature database articles/discussions and that prompts todays note. They have a Databases section but in includes articles on non database topics. For example, today they have a article about Real Basic - huh?

I don't know if Steve includes their stuff in Database Weekly or not, but if you want to take a look visit http://www.drdobbs.com/database/?cid=vnav or pick up their feed at http://www.drdobbs.com/rss/database_news.xml.

Trigger Trivia Posted on SSC

A short article but interesting I think, with some good comments already. I think in general triggers are under used, except in the cases where they are abused of course. Here's the article: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/61483/

A Couple Days With Joe Celko

We were lucky enough to have Joe come to Orlando to speak at SQLSaturday and we also talked him into doing a one day seminar about all things SQL. If you've read his books you know he sat on the SQL ANSI committee for a while and that he is one damned smart guy. If you've read his forum posts (on SSC or elsewhere) you're probably thinking that he's a curmudgeon, or worse!

So what's he really like? He readily admits to being a curmudgeon on the forums, but also says it's a persona he's adopted to try to blast people into learning about SQL in an effort to prove him wrong, and hopefully learning quite a bit in the process. I believe him about the persona, in person he's a great old guy to sit and talk with, polite, thoughtful, and somewhat stubborn! I told him I'm not sure I agree with him on how effective this online "Evil Celko" persona is, but we agreed to disagree and I couldn't help but laugh about it as we talked.

Brian & I had dinner with him on Thursday evening and that was quite a time. Joe's a wine drinker (but not to excess), always wears a black three piece suit (from JC Penny no less), and on this trip had on Mensa cuff links. Joe is pretty adamantly anti-identity column, where Brian & I are realistic enough to see that they are entirely useful tools in the SQL Server world. It proved to be an interesting conversation and while we didn't get Joe to change his views, I think I now understand his better. It's not the identity he's railing about, it's the fact that there can be gaps in the keys (failed insert, etc) and based on his background working in areas that require serious auditing its just a poor implementation. He prefers the use of a sequence table to guarantee no numbers are missed. I think it's splitting hairs and in a lot of cases the separate table isn't worth the effort. Maybe I'm wrong! But the highlight of the evening was when Brian misunderstoond (or Joe misspoke) Joe to say his wife was half his age. Joe is 60, give or take, and Brian just had to follow up on that! Turns out it's his niece that is half his age, but it still made for quite the amusing cap to a nice evening.

Joe's a theory guy if not quite an academic. I - like most of you I suspect - are product centric pragmatists that are trying to get work done. I don't always agree with him, or heck, even understand him, but I think we need him just like we need artists and musicians, people that help us see what might be possible. Just when you think you've got him pegged he'll launch into some funny story, or as at the seminar on Fri, was explaining that he likes the GROUP BY ALL syntax in TSQL even though it's not ANSI compliant.

He's going to be doing some more seminars for us and probably consulting on some curriculm, but what I'd really like to see is MS or Sun or Google or Yahoo (maybe not Oracle!) hire him and see if he can push some of that theory into making the database world a better place. One of you 17 readers of my blog must know someone way up there!

SQLSaturday Orlando 2007 Wrap Up

I'm just finishing up sending out thank you emails to the volunteers, speakers, and sponsors that helped make our first SQLSaturday a great success. We ended up with 217 attendees. The event really went well, we had no major problems and surprisingly few minor problems. We did overestimate on soda and water, we ended up with about 40 cases extra - that will support our regular group meetings for a while! I'm probably biased, but it seemed like the attendees were nicer and more good natured than is usually the case at these events. Everyone I talked to - and that was a lot of people - seemed to be really enjoying themselves. Even the sponsors had a good time!

I'm headed to Tampa sometime next week to share some lessons learned with the SQL group down there as they start prepping for a Jan event, and my business partner Brian is working on venue for a SQLSaturday in Jacksonville sometime in March. If you're thinking to try doing a similar event drop me an email, we'll help where we can.

I posted some notes about the event at http://opass.org/content/showcontent.aspx?contentid=384, and in the next week or two I'll write up some operational notes to forward to Steve to post on SSC.