Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Opportunities Abound

    There are so many opportunities for many of you to learn more about SQL Server.  It’s amazing to think how many more choices we have today than I did early in my career. When I moved to Denver, we had a user group that met somewhat sporadically, an MSDN lunch hour every month, the PASS Summit, and training classes from various vendors like New Horizons.

    That’s changed today and when I look at my schedule, it’s incredible to think how many of them I’m going to be a part of this fall. I’ve got a busy travel schedule the rest of the year, and I’ll only touch a small portion of the events that you could use to increase your SQL Server knowledge.

    There are quite a few conferences this year. DevConnections in a few weeks, the PASS Summit mid month, and SQL Intersection at the end of October. I’ll be speaking at the former and latter, skipping the middle one this year. There are two SQL Rallys, Nordic and Amsterdam in Europe. There are also lots of pre– and post-cons and other workshops sessions around the events. There are even amazing training classes from vendors like SQLskills and Brent Ozar Unlimited that will teach you a tremendous amount about SQL Server. I’m hoping to attend one of these sessions in the next year.

    If your boss won’t pay for a conference or class, there are plenty of free events as well. SQL Saturdays are everywhere, almost every weekend. I’ll be at San Diego, Denver, Charleston, Portland, and Washington DC this year, but there are plenty more. Many of them offer pre-cons, at low costs. You might consider covering the cost yourself and asking your boss to pay for the time off.

    My employer, Red Gate Software, is putting on some of their own events. We are doing seminars before some of the SQL Saturdays and I have SQL in the City events in Pasadena, Atlanta, and Charlotte this year.  These are free events, just register and come.

    If you aren’t close to any events, there are more and more online resources. SQLServerCentral should be your first stop, but there are videos, webinars, virtual chapter meetings, and great subscriptions from vendors. If you want to self-study, there are great books you can buy as well as online challenges to help you learn.

    There are all levels of costs, online, local, worldwide, etc. resources that you can use to learn more about SQL Server. I’d highly encourage you to make a plan and improve your SQL Server skills over the next year. I guarentee there’s something for every budget and situation.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Dangers of Detach

    I ran across a twitter conversation about a post recently. The post talks about detaching or attaching databases in bulk.

    I agree that detaching databases in some cases is bad, but it’s not necessarily something I’d avoid. Detach is a good way to prep for upgrades, movement, etc. It may or may not be faster than backup/restore, depending on your environment, but it’s something to consider.

    However.

    If you are going to detach, there are a couple things I’d recommend. First, make sure you have a good backup. A backup is just that, a backup plan, a backup file, a way to recover when things go wrong. It isn’t your data, it’s a copy. A detached mdf is your data. Make sure you have a backup before detaching and messing with files.

    Second, never move files. Never, ever, ever, ever, move database files. Detach/attach is a valid way to move databases, but always copy the files.

  • Job Worries over Automation

    There was a report recently where the NSA noted that they are reducing the number of system administrators by 90%. If the report is true, that would certainly worry many of the people in the technology industry. However I’m not sure that the quote given in the article means what it looks like at first.
    Much of the technology reports that we see aren’t completely true since many of the reporters aren’t that familiar with the details of how computer technology works. In this case, however, we have a quote: “What we’re in the process of doing – not fast enough – is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent,” It might be hard to interpret this remark in any way other than the NSA is looking to reduce the number of people, but if you read further, the piece notes that the NSA is concerned about contractors, not necessarily FTEs. I suspect that any reduction in contractors employed by other companies will be made up by increased internal headcount.
    However even if the NSA can reduce the number of people needed to administer their systems, I’d suspect that means that they had too many people to begin with. The various reports of this story all talk about automation being used increasingly to handle the load of system work, but the idea that automation replaces people is a myth. Automation usually results in less growth of people, but rarely a reduction in staff.
    I’ve heard the concerns over automation replacing technology workers for decades (literally) and I’ve yet to see it happen. We have more technology workers than ever before, and no sign of there being less in the future. Your department might change, you might hire less, but there will be lots of jobs in technology for the foreseeable future. In other departments that might not be the case, but I bet you we’ll have system administrators, DBAs, and developers for a long, long time in most companies that have them today.
    Steve Jones

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    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.

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  • Sensors and Data

    The programmable world. It’s an interesting concept, but not one in which we have extremely detailed specifications and strongly bound software systems that must be built to interact with each other. I think many of us have assumed that’s how we would enable the further computerization of our physical world. As an example, we’d have cars that communicated with the road, with other cars, with semi-central authority(ies) that might be managing our interactions, all of the infrastructure pre-built.

    However that isn’t necessarily what will happen. In this O’Reilly piece, the author notes cheap sensors can read the color of lights in the same way that humans or my Lego Mindstorm can detect color. Traffic sensors need not communicate with cars; these sensors could instead just identify cars and count them, measuring their speed and adjusting traffic lights based on actual conditions. Imagine the future when more and more sensors gather their own data and make decisions.

    In a sense, this is how the Google self-driving car works. Rather than depend on infrastructure and external programming, the car gathers its own data and adjusts its behavior depending on the interpretation of the data. Whether or not you like the idea of self-driving cars (I do), the idea of an autonomous device acting based on programming and a large amount of data is a fascinating move forward in computing.

    I think this shows that data gathering, processing, and analysis will become a more important part of our future computing worlds. Some of this data will be transient and discarded, but lots will be stored. We’ll use data to ineract with the real world immediately, but we will also perform analysis later and reprogram our devices to operate better in the future. That means there will be new, and more, opportunities for those of us working with data.

    Steve Jones

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    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.
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