Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Measurements

    Measurements are important to growth.

    “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin.

    That’s a quote that comes from this blog post, talking about ways in which you might measure your performance. Numbers are not the only important thing to measure, and you certainly don’t want to just pick one measure. The blog post talks about performance of employees, looking at different ways to not only measure the performance of one job, but also using different measures for different jobs.

    The idea of measurement is applicable to both people and systems. Having a constant way to measure performance, track those measurements, and perform analysis of the data is an important way to know if you are actually making strides toward building better performance and more efficient systems.

    However it seems that even though many people know these things, they don’t actually capture the measurements regularly. As I talk to people, asking them if they know things like the backup growth for their critical databases, they don’t. I’ve asked people if they know how much time they spend on blogging, or if they are reaching more people, or really for any metrics, and they often don’t have any idea.

    Numbers aren’t everything, but they ought to be a thumb-in-the-air measurement that guides you to find ways to improve over time. You can be on the schedule that works in your environment, and on the pace to improve things that fits the situation, but if you don’t measure yourself or your systems regularly, it’s hard to know if you’re actually moving forward or backward.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Recovering a Database

    So you’re restored a database, restored a few logs, all with NORECOVERY as expected and realize there are no more logs. You see this in Management Studio and wonder what do to:

    restoringdb

    I’ve run a bunch of code, restoring lots of files, but I’m done.

    RESTORE DATABASE db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_base.bak' WITH norecovery
RESTORE LOG db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_log1.trn' WITH norecovery
RESTORE LOG db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_log2.trn' WITH norecovery
RESTORE LOG db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_log3.trn' WITH norecovery
RESTORE LOG db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_log4.trn' WITH norecovery
....
RESTORE LOG db4 FROM DISK = 'db4_log42.trn' WITH norecovery

    You don’t need another log to bring things online. This simple command will fix things:

    RESTORE DATABASE db4 WITH recovery

    That will return:

    RESTORE DATABASE successfully processed 0 pages in 2.629 seconds (0.000 MB/sec).

    and your database will be ready to go:

    retoreddb

  • How Much Is It Worth?

    Ethics are important, in our personal lives and in business.

    This editorial was originally published on Nov 21, 2005. It is being re-run today as Steve is on holiday.

    How much money is it worth to work with someone that kills and tortures people? Twenty five investment groups are working with Reporters Without Borders and looking to partner with, invest in, and help companies pursue a profit, but not at the cost of dealing with some governments.

    Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and many non-tech companies have made investments in and done tremendous business with various governments around the world, often ignoring the social policies and issues of those governments. This is nothing new, however. When I was in college, there were many companies that did business with South Africa, regardless of apartheid, simply to turn a bigger profit.

    Profit is not the only goal of a corporation. Or at least it should not be. Being a good citizen of the world should also be something that a corporation deals with. Most companies have theses noble and strong vision statements, but when profits are down or the “number” is threatened in a quarter, the leaders ignore the strong moral and ethical message to gather a few more pennies per share.

    It’s amazing. Read some of the statements: Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Wal-Mart). They all mention ethical conduct and corporate standards. But they have all done business with suspect governments. Google is especially interesting in their 10 things list: You can make money without doing evil. The description of this seems to be something written at Slashdot by engineers. Not analog citizens in the physical world.

    Perhaps the problem is that we don’t know what “ethics” are. Maybe everyone’s ethics are sufficiently different that we don’t agree on what is unethical and when a rule is bent v broken. You can justify almost everything that you do in some way. But that doesn’t make it ethical, moral, or the right thing to do.

    Maybe the first step is a global definition of ethics to follow.

  • Wild West Day

    One of the things I’m missing today is Wild West Day at Red Gate. It’s not just because I don’t live anywhere near the office (they’re in Cambridge, UK, I’m in Denver, CO), but also because I have a vacation scheduled. Camping up near Fort Collins with family is on the agenda, and today should be a fun day of horseback riding for the girls and some biking for the boys.

    redgatewildwestday

    That’s what I expect for our trip, but this was the reminder picture that came from Red Gate, for the company outing next week. They are having a day out event for employees, which sounds fun. I worked in a few companies that had outside events for employees, and those were also the days that really helped people bond together and enjoy their jobs a little more.

    I miss those, and wish I had the chance to do one once in awhile. I might as my wife’s company has about 10 or 12 telecommuters in the Denver area and is looking to funding a day out somewhere.