July 2007 - Posts
I actually started writing an article on this, but it's been sidetracked with travel and other stuff. However I do mean to get back to it at some point.
In the meantime, Jamie Thomson went ahead and wrote a nice entry on
Business Intelligence, what is it and what is it not?. Jamie does a good job of breaking up some myths and then giving a short explanation of what it means from the practical world of someone working on it daily. Highly recommended.
I've looked at the daily newsletter for a year now and I've wondered about the table of contents. It seems so small and plain that I've been wanting to change it, but I wasn't sure what made sense. Then earlier this week someone suggested reordering the "Users that need help" section and adding links to the sections at the top.
So I had a project.
I started yesterday looking through the newsletter code, which is an ASP page that generates the HMTL. I kind of wish we would have put it into a table somewhere with T-SQL for the work, but alas we didn't. So I started added a TOC to the top using a loop. At first I added all the groups and their subcategories, but that was too long a list, so I cut it down to the major categories (SQL Server 2005, 2008, Programming, etc). And then with hot links down to the first forum in that section.
I don't often have to touch code like this, but once in awhile I do and it's a nice break from the normal day of writing and doing other maintennace.
Quite a few complaints on the QOD section from last week, mostly justified. A couple I had to defend, which is always tough. I have a fairly thick skin on the editorials, but for some reason the QODs tend to annoy me more and I get defensive. So I need to take a deep breath and try to understand what people are posting before I answer.
I think part of the problem is writing a QOD usually means I'm focusing on the trees. I'm tightly digging into a particular topic, usually with the topic in BOL or a blog up on my screen. So I tend not to focus on how this looks in the real world, I'm just testing knowledge, often deep knowledge on one topic. And it's mostly geared towards helping you learn a new part of SQL Server.
So the hint for answering questions is: figure out what I'm working on. Then the answer start to make sense. Don't look at the question in terms of your environment, look at it in terms of a quiz on BOL on some particular topic. Like @@identity. If that's what the question (and answers) seem to be leading you towards, then think about what that topic means and pick the best answer.
I'm not big on beta testing, or at least haven't been for a number of
years because I can't afford the instability. VPC has helped and I
actually loaded up SS2K8 to do some early looking awhile back, but for
the most part I'm not into testing other people's unpolished software.
Usually the released versions are quite unpolished as it is.
So I've been spending time the last day looking at the next version of
the SSC website and I have to say that Steve D and Steve D at Red Gate
have done a fantastic job. Much of my workflow has changed, but the
site really looks great and it works better in a number of ways. We're
running an internal beta next week at Red Gate and hopefully the week
after sometime we'll have a public beta.
We're also changing the look and feel a bit. We went over some changes
today that should update the site and make things work really well.
It's interesting being at a software company, especially one that's
building on another platform. I've never done this before, having
worked for companies outside technology building their own platforms
and then JD Edwards, building software, but their own platform for
companies to use. Red Gate, of which I sort of work for on a
contract basis, is building tools to help you work better by
integrating with the SQL Server platform.
So I was in a marketing meeting (apparently I work for marketing now),
and they were talking about how to better interact with users and
customers and potential customers and help get the message out about
their tools. Since I'm not sure how much is NDA type stuff, I won't go
into details, but it is an interesting problem.
I need to write more, but off to another meeting.
Lots of debate and disagreement on my recommendation to wait for SQL
Server 2008 instead of upgrading to SQL Server 2005 now. What's funny
is that I wrote the recommendation a few weeks ago and the day before I
scheduled it to release, MS announced a Feb date for 2008.
I can agree that people are nervous about SS2K8, and Microsoft could
definitely mess it up at RTM. After all, they have issues with service
packs in quite a few of their products (SS2K SP3 became SP3a, Ss2K5 SP2
got rereleased), but I don't think they well. My thoughts were that
based on past history, SS2K8 is really a "R2" product, a point release,
but they've included enough features, like the policy stuff, that they
can sell it as a new version. While I don't agree with that as a
customer, I can see why they do it.
So while I think you should wait to upgrade if you haven't already done
so, I don't think you should ignore 2005 completely. It's a good
platform to do some testing on and get ready for 2008. I doubt 2008
functions much differently, so 2005 can help you prepare, test
DTS->SSIS upgrades, etc. and then I'd upgrade next spring, prob late
March, early April. That way you can wait until 2014 to upgrade again
instead of being pushed out of 2005 in 2011.
Also, if you want to upgrade every other release, because you want a
fairly stable platform, I'd get on the 2000/2008/2014 cycle, not the
7.0/2005/2011 cycle. The latter are the "1.0"s of each version of the
platform. If you go back to 6.0/6.5, you'd much rather have gone from
6.5 -> 2000 than 6.0->7.0
Just when I was about to start a pool for the release date, Microsoft announced today it will release on Feb 27, 2008.
With only one CTP out there, and numerous changes I heard about at
TechEd that haven't been included, they must be fairly close to getting
this thing done. And I'm advocating not upgrading to 2005 tomorrow in
the newsletter.
Despite my casual approach to the editorials and my job, this is still
something of a business and Red Gate wants to find ways to engage
people more. During a discussion today, everything was out there:
pidcasts, videocasts, RSS feeds, and more.
Not sure where this will go, but the next version of the site gets
demo'd tomorrow and should go into beta in a week with a final sometime
in August.
More coming next week in editorials and already a note on the site, but support for both SQL Server 2000 SP3a and SQL Server 2005 RTM ends on Tuesday.
What does this mean? Well when support ends, at least mainstream support, you can't make free calls on it. So if you install a new server (ss2k5) on Monday, have an issue Wed, even if you're under some plan or warranty, you won't get support from MS until you apply at least SP1. I'm not even sure you can pay for extended support anymore for this service pack level like you can for the products themselves when they pass out of the mainstream support lifecycle.
For many people, this isn't a big deal. Usually within 6 months or so people are applying the Service Packs to their machines. However for some people, especially those that use smaller vendors, they may be significantly behind in waiting for their applications to get certified. So put pressure on vendors to certify the latest service packs ASAP so you can upgrade.
The other thing I'd mention is that Microsoft needs to stop the enhancements in service packs. I know it's a cool way to slip in a few features, but changing behavior, other than bug fixing, makes it hard to ceritfy new applications and increases the risk of issues. Just patch bugs and give us a semi-annual or annual rollup of new features.
I wonder what you think of this:
video shorts. I've gottne the Lockergnome newsletters for years and they've proven interesting enough for me to skim them every few days. I noticed Chris had started videos when I was checking the podcast list on iTunes and these seem kind of interesting. I'm wondering if anyone else thinks they're interesting.
I've been tempted to read, or video, the editorials for awhile and see if there's any demand. I thought it might be kind of fun if I could get a good, smooth, easy production method down. Guess I might need to mess with the iMac a little and see if I can make that work.
One of the suggestions I saw today was to add blogs to the user profile on the site and not just email and IM. I think it's a great suggestion, but unfortunately I'm in a lockdown for the most part. The new site beta should come out next week and then it's just a matter of time before we release, hopefully in early August.
The other thing that was mentioned was to give everyone a blog. We offer blogs if you ask, but it's not an automatic, self-serice kind of thing. And honestly I'm not sure how many people really want it.
But if you want one, let me know (sjones at sqlservercentral.com)
I wrote an article recently on the
Journey To Katmai, looking at some of the new features that are coming in SQL Server 2008. I've actually got a second part almost done, so I'm trying to learn more about this next version of the platform to finish it. From what I've seen, things aren't feature complete and there are some blog references to changes that have already occurred since the June CTP was released.
So I was interested to see this
course on SQL Server 2008 and took the time today while kids are playing amongst themselves to check it out. As you might expect, it's a gross overview, but there is some sample code and there are some cool features explained a little. Some that caught my eye:
- Auditing - with a new AUDIT keyword.
- The ability to uninstall service packs as well as package the entire install as a transaction
- The Resource governer
- A separation in ADO.NET to allow developers to work with "entities" instead of tables. Kind of an Object-relational mapping.
At this point, given what I've seen with versions of SQL Server over the last decade and a half, I'm going to recommend you NOT upgrade your systems to SQL Server 2005. You'd be better off learning more about the platform, practicing skills and changing applications to take advantage of new features and upgrade to SQL Server 2008 next year.
Most people I know tend to work in one of two places consistently: work or home. So they've built a setup that allows them to comfortably get things done in either location.
I'm not so different in that I work at my desk downstairs most of the time during the day and in bed at night with my laptop. I do lots on the web and in text editors, so I can easily move work from one machine to another. For awhile I'd grab my stuff on a USB key and most it between machines easily. I've even done that on some writing days where I've headed out to work at Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, etc.
However this year I've traveled more than usual. Almost a week at the BI Conference, almost a week at TechEd and I'm getting ready to head to the UK to meet the Red Gate folks next week. So being synched up and working in a remote environment is more important to me now than it's been in the past.
I've wished I could easily synch my two Outlook instances, but I haven't come up with a good way. At this point my PSTs are so large that it's a pain to copy them over, though I might do this for next week. It's something I need to work on with my calendar and other stuff. Plus with a new T-Mobile Dash coming soon, I really need to get things squared away. And figure out how to easily synch things up.
After all, my Terminal Services connections to the desktop won't work too well from the UK.
This is pretty cool, a,
earthquake test for Project Black Box from Sun. They take one of their systems to a University in CA that has a platform that can simulate an earthquake. It fares pretty well, and I think this is an interesting model. I think lots of facilities in CA are buit to handle minor shaking, but it's the main collapse of buildings and other structures that causes more damage than having the racks tip over.
I'm looking to move the old Central Publishing hosting, which is now down to a 512Mb/s, 4 u load rather than the 12 u, multi-server, 6-7Mb/s we were using. Our current provider doesn't really have a good model for a small solution, so I'm looking to move.
I went back to two of the providers we'd talked to a few years ago and am trying to comapre the offerings with a quote we got in Florida. Since Andy pretty much runs the new company, Four Deuce and the training business, it does make some sense to get it down to him, but with the possibility of weather issues, and the pain of packing and sending things, I'd rather keep everything up here and just move it down the road. Now I just need to migrate a few user groups and then pick a provider.