Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • SQL in the City 2016

    It’s time for SQL in the City 2016 to start today. Actually, by the time some of you read this, we may already be underway. This year the event is being broadcast from the Redgate Software offices in Cambridge, UK. Along with Grant Fritchey and a number of other Redgaters, we’re holding our annual conference live for the world to watch. In fact, to ensure everyone can watch, we’re going to broadcast both today and tomorrow (Dec 15) at different times to reach the entire world. If you can’t tune in today, come back tomorrow as the content is the same, just about 4 hours later. That means an early day in the office for me today, and then a late one tomorrow, but it’s worth it to give you a fun show.

    I’ve enjoyed being a part of SQL in the City for many years, in quite a few cities around the US as well as London. Each year we spend time trying to showcase new products and features from Redgate that can better help you develop software. That’s the mission at Redgate. We want to make you more productive as you build applications on top of SQL Server. Part of doing that is showing you examples and providing education in addition to selling software.

    As an evangelist, I’ve been proud that Redgate continues to give back to the community and invests heavily in SQLServerCentral, Simple Talk, and many other conferences and events around the world. We truly do want to be a part of the #sqlfamily and try to ensure that every one of us gets better at our job over time. To me this is one of the great things about the SQL Server community in that we all support, inspire, assist, and share with each other. I’m happy to help contribute what I can to educate SQL Server professionals every day.

    This should be a fun couple of days, and I hope you enjoy the sessions we’ve been developing this fall. We’ve got some great new products that have been under development in 2016 and should be releasing soon. I think you’ll like what we’ve been working on.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • SQL in the City Prep

    I’m at the Redgate Software offices this week. I come over to visit the company, my boss and our department, and talk to product development groups a few times a year.

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    This time I’ve been mostly focused on the SQL in the City 2016, which is being streamed this year from the office. A room has been set up with a variety of equipment to broadcast our presentations.

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    We’ve been shooting some pre-recorded fillers this week as well as practicing our live sessions. I’ve got two tomorrow, one with a co-presenter. Today was practice time, working on timing, delivery, and remembering there’s a camera.

    rehearse

    I’m excited for tomorrow, and things seem to be coming together. Now it’s time to call it a day at the office, get some dinner, and then rehearse a bit more.

    See you tomorrow or Thursday. The content is the same, so you can tune in either day.

  • DBAs Need to Learn to Develop

    This editorial was originally published on Jan 7, 2014. It is being re-run as Steve is at SQL in the City today.

    My first exposure to computers was as a child, learning to program in BASIC, Assembler, and Pascal. From there I moved into other areas, such as networking and system administration. I learned about a variety of technologies before focusing on databases, but I found that my knowledge from other areas of computing helped me be a more successful DBA at quite a few jobs.

    Last year we put on a number of SQL in the City Seminars where Grant Fritchey and I talked about development practices. We give a variety of advice and practices that you can use, but one of the best things that we say in our half day event comes from Grant. He says that DBAs need to “Follow the local development paradigm as much as possible.”

    I completely agree with this. I think that many of the practices of building software, as flawed as they might be, are good ideas that many developers use on a regular basis. They know how to work in a flexible manner, tracking their code and keeping it under control, and fixing problems in a rapid manner. As immature as the software development process can be, there are things that we, as DBAs, can learn.

    As SQL Server continues to grow as a platform, there are more and more enhancements, many of which involve programmatic capabilities expanding. I highly recommend that DBAs think about learning more about programming, and specifically a .NET language, if you’ve never used one. If you have, consider brushing up those skills.

    Steve Jones

     

  • T-SQL Tuesday #85–Cross Version Restores

    tsqltuesdayIt’s T-SQL Tuesday time, and this month Ken Fisher hosts. His topic is backups, and while I’m sure there will be plenty of views on backups, I wanted to touch base on a relatively simple item.

    This is the monthly blog party started by Adam Machanic. Whether you want to write today or at some point in the future, this is a good chance to showcase your knowledge and test yourself on a topic.

    Cross Version Restores

    I would hope that most people know that a SQL Server database backup has a version. This version corresponds to a version of SQL Server, and for the most part, we can’t restore a database backup to an earlier version of SQL Server. Some exceptions might be a similar CU version there the database format hasn’t changed, but certainly not to any prior Service Pack.

    However, can you restore to a later version? Can I take a SQL Server 2012 database backup and restore it to a SQL Server 2016 instance? Sure I can. In fact, lots of people upgrade their systems this way. Install a new SQL Server instance, take a backup on the old version and bring it forward. In fact, you can restore (or attach) a SQL Server 2005 database backup on SQL Server 2016.

    There is a caveat, however. You cannot restore a backup of master, model, or msdb on a newer version. This is called out in the RESTORE command ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186858.aspx).

    That’s interesting, and it means a few things. First, if you really need to upgrade msdb, then you need to upgrade the instance. Does this mean you can’t do a side by side upgrade? No, because you could do this (for 2012 to 2016):

    • Install a new SQL Server 2012 instance.
    • Restore master and msdb.
    • Upgrade to SQL Server 2016.
    • Now attach or restore your SQL Server 2012 databases.

    I wasn’t aware of this fact until browsing BOL. I had assumed I would be able to move msdb and model, though perhaps not master, to a new version.

    That’s a handy piece of information to keep around, and it means that you should always be aware of those objects outside of user databases when you upgrade. Keep scripts handy in a VCS in case you need to create them on a newer version.