November 2005 - Posts
I wrote an editorial on the 64-bit decision by Exchange to not release
their next version in 32 bit. Only 64. Some friends and I had a
discussion at lunch today, with most of them thinking this was more a
marketing decision than a technical one, but I'm not sure.
I did get an interesting email from someone in the 64-bit hardware
business that mentioned they might be able to work out a deal for
hardware with SQLServerCentral.com. That would be interesting from the
standpoint of reporting on the product. There was also a potential
offer to do some 32 v 64 testing. I'm not sure I have anything from SSC
to test, but perhaps someone out there is interested and wants to get
some testing time in exchange for allowing us to report on it?
I took part of today off to attend the Denver Woodworking show north of
Denver. I left early because, well, I was excited and wanted to get
down here and allow for any traffic issues while driving through
Denver. It's also my son's birthday, so I need to be back early.
I grabbed the laptop to do some editing just in case I had no traffic
issues and I'm glad I did as I got up here quickly and had a few
minutes. So I park in the lot at the Denver Merchandise Mart, fire up
the laptop and start looking over some reviews that people had
submitted. My little taskbar wireless icon shows me there are some
networks, so I take a look and sure enough, 2 unsecured networks
outside the pavilion, along with a few secured ones.
I jump on one, send editorial comments to the authors and make this entry.
I saw Alex's post on installing a named instance of SS2K5 and having
issues with SS2K. I wanted to note that Dale Corey and I are working on
a SQL Server Management Studio book and I needed to check some things
using the RTM code. I need my desktop to work, it's the primary place
where SQLServerCentral.com runs from, so I took the laptop and
installed the RTM developer edition code. Now I already have SS2K on
there and wanted to keep it, so I added an SS2K5 named instance to it.
No issues. Both start fine for me. XP, SP2.
Not sure what happened with Alex, but it worked for me. I have had the
June and Sept CTPs on here prior to this, same named instance name.
First, apologies to the Database Daily readers. I'll include one in
next week's issue as well, but the links didn't work and it's my fault.
The reason it happened is quite simple. I made a change and didn't test
it. But the back story is a touch more complicated and involves the
real reasons why all of us humans cause technology to fail. It started
with an upgrade for the Lyris mail server that we use. I downloaded the
software on Monday, but didn't get around to the colocation center for
a console upgrade until Friday. So I start it Friday and it's running,
showing me the steps on the CMD prompt window and it gets to working on
reindexing a table. So I leave for lunch because I'm hungry and the
room is cold.
I come back to find that the upgrade has failed because the DB ran out
of space. Huh? Space? So I check and my 16GB database file is set to
stop growing at 16GB to prevent server issues. So I increase the space
allowed to 20GB, remove a backup and start again. I think the db was at
12GB when I started, so I'm thinking 20 is fine. It's running and
running and fails again. Same issue.
It's getting late and I'm in the middle of things here, but I have to
get my son from school, so I leave it. Sat morning I log on and look at
the db. I have two large tables, one with 44million rows and one
slightly smaller at 26million. These two tables are GBs in size and
contain lots of historical information. I'm not sure why the data
hasn't been trimmed by the server, but I setup a couple loops to start
cleaning data and go about my day.
Sun morning I get up early, tell my wife I need to work and drive to
the colo. My backup size has shrunk from 11GB on Fri to 5GB and I
figure I'm ok. I start the upgrade, get to the reindex and go get some
breakfast. Sure enough, that was enough space, so I 'm upgraded and
things are working. I generate the DD newsletter, load it and go to
rake leaves and watch football. Now I sent myself a test, but I usually
only test ads and the editorial, not the links. and of course ,they
didn't work.
But why not? Well, for starters, I was converting the newsletter to be
stored in the DB, so the generator went from lots of inline ASP code to
building a variable to store in the db. In one place, not the link, but
the internal href before the link, I forgot to add triple quotes around
the link. I had single ones, so the article href didn't close and the
link didn't work.
I didn't test it because the security patches that I applied on Wed, as
I was about done with the conversion, blew up Visual Interdev 6.0,
which was how I was coding. And I was nervous about moving to VS 2003,
so I fixed a few bugs in notepad, not realizing the links weren't fixed.
They are now and after testing my own site with VS 2003, I'm ready to load the SQLServerCentral.com site and get back to work.
If you haven't seen it, I started a poll in the editorial today. Check it out and give you answer:
Ten Most Influential People in the 20th Century.
Today's the day!!!
SQL Server is being released as I type this and I'm online listening to the keynote from Steve Ballmer.
I'm not thrilled with him as a speaker, I'd much prefer Bill Gates,
Paul Flessner, or Bill Baker, but Steve's the voice of the
company, so it makes sense he's there. Video isn't working across the
web, but you can see the slides, hear well, and check on the chat.
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/steveballmerlive/
In general I have been a Sony fan for most of my life, starting with the Walkmans they brought out in the eighties.
But no more. Not sure if I'll skip their movies, but I am done buying
Sony products for now after the rootkit incidents. There are two
entries from Mark Russinovich:
Part 1 and
Part 2.
I totally understand their desire to protect their content, but you
cannot go installing secret software and replace drivers on someone's
computer. It's effing ridiculous and I have written my Congressman and
Senators to complain.
I'm also writing Sony to let them know I'm boycotting. No more computer
parts, DVDs, CDs, audio components, car stereo, etc. Sony is off my
list.
If anyone is interested, we are looking for people that are interested
in doing some technical editing for our magazine, the SQL Server
Standard.
We're offering $25 and a free one year subscription or $50 for each
article and we have them in a variety of areas. If anyone is
interested, contact Sue Page (spage@sqlservercentral.com) and let her
know.