Author: way0utwest

T-SQL Tuesday #48–Cloud Atlas
I never saw the movie, though it’s on my list to watch sometime. I love the Wachowski’s as directors.

This month Jorge Segarra is hosting. He is better known as the SQLChicken, and his theme this month is Cloud Atlas. He’s asking us to write about the cloud and what we think of it. What’s our take on the cloud. He wants to know if we’ve used it, what we think, probably how we even define it. It’s a great question with all the media and hype about the cloud, especially for data professionals.

This is a monthly blog party, where bloggers write on a specific topic every month, on the second Tuesday. I’ve got a complete list of topics on this blog, and to participate, do this:
- write a blog
- publish it on the Tuesday, November 12, 2013 (for this month)
- be sure a trackback or comment is on Jorge’s blog invitation
- include the T-SQL Tuesday logo, linked to the invitation.
That’s it. Write, and enjoy.

The Cloud Atlas

What is the cloud? It’s been hyped in commercials and numerous articles, and to some extent I think we don’t have a good definition. We have PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS, all of which are legitimately the “cloud” for different people.

As far as I’m concerned, the cloud really is any computing service that is provided by a vendor. This means you don’t own the hardware and rent out either a machine (physical or virtual), a service, a set of APIs, etc. This exclude co-location, but anything else from renting a VM to using IFTTT, is cloud computing.

With that in mind, what do I think? There are certainly problems with the cloud in terms of security and recovery of data. However I think the promise of renting out computing resources (machines/platform/software/services) in a scalable fashion is amazing to me.

Do I use the cloud? Sure. I have Evernote, Skydrive and Dropbox to keep my data in sync. My family uses OurGroceries to manage a shopping list. We daughter is hooked on Spotify, which alleviates the need to keep much music on her device. I even have backups of data on Glacier.

On the career side, we (SQLServerCentral and Red Gate) offer AdventureWorks on Azure for users to play with. I’ve done minor work in Azure, and spun up a SQL instance on AWS. I haven’t actually done anything more than test, personally, but certainly the cloud is useful for SQLServerCentral. We host our database server and web server on virtual machines we rent from Rackspace. We use a Content Delivery Network for some videos and YouTube for others. We’ve dramatically lowered costs and increased scale with the cloud.

The cloud works.

Sometimes.

For some applications.
November 12, 2013
How SQL Server Full Backups Work
I’m writing this in support of a few talks I give that talk about backups. This is how I see things and it’s based on things I’ve learned over time. Some of this comes from a great explanation on Technet from Paul Randal, but there are misc other sources that I can’t be sure of which ones I’ve used. Long story short: I learned most of this from others and docs. It’s not all me.

There are two parts to a full backup in SQL Server:
- data reading
- log writing
Technically both sections read and write, but this is how I think of things. I’ll describe there:

Data reading – The backup process goes through all extents allocated and reads a page, sends it to a buffer and that gets written to the backup file. This happens as fast as SQL can do it, just going through the pages, but it takes most of the backup time.

Log writing – all of the log records that are written while the data reading portion of the backup is running are appended to the backup file, after the data pages.

Let’s say that the entire time of the backup, from the File Created to the File Last Modified timestamps on the backup file is represented by t. The data reading portion of the backup takes time d. The log writing portion of the backup takes time l.

This gives us:

t = d + l

My database is transactionally consistent at backup start time + d, not + t. When is that? I’m not sure, but usually it’s fairly close to the timestamp at the and of t.

Make sure that your backups are transactionally consistent. Don’t export, don’t use open file managers, don’t use anything that doesn’t respect transactions. The native SQL Server backup process does this. If you want a few other features, my employer makes SQL Backup Pro, which also respects transactions.
November 11, 2013

Cyberwar

There are no shortage of books about cyberattacks and hackers. Some of these fictional stories even postulate that countries will build armies and engage in digital war with other countries. Some of this has come true, with the US and Israel attacking Iranian targets, suspected Chinese hackers targeting the US, and the announcement that Britain is building their own cyber army.

While there are certainly no shortage of attacks made on corporations every day, how long before countries make determined efforts to disrupt their enemies’ economies with digital war? It’s a scary thought, and given the poor security habits of so many developers, it’s possible that many companies might find themselves struggling to conduct businesses while under attack. It might not be any different than if conventional weapons were being used near our facilities.

The state of coding by so many “developers” today is somewhat scary. It’s not even old applications that are vulnerable to SQL Injection, but even new systems that have poor security practices being used that are vulnerable.

I think that secure coding practices like these should be implemented by anyone writing software. I think examples, frameworks, and presentations about coding shouldn’t use simple passwords and bypass checks. Yes, it’s a pain for those that teach, but it also means that shoddy coding practices aren’t proliferated as people borrow your code and alter your examples.

Security is a problem, but I think a lot of the issues would be minimized if we, as an industry and professionals, learned to write more secure code as a matter of habit, not as an additional feature to be added later.

Steve Jones

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 17.0MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 19.9MB)

MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 11, 2013

What Do You Want to Learn?

This is a busy time of year for me. Between September and October, I’ve attended 11 events in 7 cities and given 23 talks on 8 topics. It’s been a hectic time and I’m looking forward to snow falling in the Colorado mountains and taking some time off to relax and enjoy life away from work.

It seems that every year I’m working on and delivering 3 or 4 new sessions on a variety of topics. I find the challenge of learning more about a technology or feature of SQL Server to be exciting, and it seems there’s no shortage of new things I’d like to learn. As I watch different presentations, I find myself itching to work with the topic and learn how it might be useful for me. I often end up taking some area of SQL Server that interests me, and I think will interest other, and building a talk.

However I rarely hear from the rest of the community about the topics they’d like to learn about. This week I’d like you to think about the topics that you wish someone would present at your next user group, SQL Saturday, or conference:

What do you want to learn?

Let me know this week. I don’t know that I’ll tackle many of the ideas, but I’m sure there are speakers out there that will examine your opinions and consider building a presentation that might be in demand.

Steve Jones

Video and Audio versions

Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.

Windows Media Video ( 13.4MB)

MP4 iPod Video ( 15.7MB)

MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB)

Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

To submit an article, rant or editorial,
log in to the Contribution Center

November 8, 2013