Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Face of BI for SQL Server

    Donald Farmerannounced recently that he was leaving Microsoft for QlikView. For many people, Donald has been the face of BI for Microsoft. His many talks on all aspects of the platform have entertained and informed thousands of SQL Server professionals all around the world. However I am sure that many of us will continue to learn from Mr. Farmer in his new role at QlikView.

    Many people outside of Microsoft were sad to see Donald leave, including me. However I support and understand his decision, and I know that there is still an amazing team at Microsoft that will continue to work with the SQL Server BI pros everywhere.

    I felt the same way when others have left the SQL Server team in the past. Some have been good spokespersons or speakers. Donald Farmer leaves a hole that will be hard to fill, but we still have Amir Netz, among others.  Amir is someone that I would always recommend you go see speak, even if you’re not interested in the topic. Like Donald, Amir is entertaining and has an infectious enthusiasm that makes you enjoy the technology.

    There are plenty of other talented people working on SQL Server, and I am sure that we will find some other great speakers to help us learn more as SQL Server continues to evolve in the future.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72200/ )

    Podcasts

  • Skunk Works

    The SR-71 Blackbird cockpit

    The abstract at the top of this article is great: “Using SQL Server, you can build a BI platform without getting your organization’s top brass involved.” Not that I condone you going off on your own to do work without any communication with others, but funding and starting a BI project can often get shot down when too many resources are involved. It might be just as likely is the approval to tackle a long project often gets bogged down because too many people and too many objectives are involved.

    The release of SQL Server 2008 R2 didn’t excite me very much because I have always been a core database engine person and this version mostly had BI improvements. I like the database engine, T-SQL, and working with OLTP systems. However I do see the value in building BI systems, and the enhancements made to the SQL Server platform, mostly in SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS with Powerpivot, mean that you can build an incredibly powerful application to work with business data without stepping outside of BIDS and SSMS.

    A skunk works project is a great way to try out BI ideas, and make some useful prototypes that end-users can take advantage of. If you find that you have built something useful, then you can approach upper management with a request for more resources to build a better system. I would not go this alone, however, without at least getting some approval from your manager to spend time and resources to build something. I’d also be sure that you implement good security practices; after all, if you use production data, you need to be sure it is protected at the same level as the production systems.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72180/)

    Podcasts

    * Video Podcast – 17.1MB WMV
    * Video Podcast – 13.7MB MP4
    * Audio Podcast – 3.2MB MP3

  • You Need Two SLAs for Disaster Recovery

    Continuing on with my MCM prep, I was listening to the High Availability/DR prep module today and I was once again surprised by something. Typically I have heard all kinds of talk for SLAs, usually in terms of network traffic. For databases, I have had SLA conversations that were for downtime that usually go like this.

    Me: How much uptime do we need?

    Manager: 100%

    Me: We can’t really do that in a cost effective manner.

    Manager: Why not, the telephone companies are always up?

    Me: Well, even the telcos measure their uptime in terms of 9s?

    Manager: (blank look)

    Me: They talk about 99% reliability, 99.9%, 99.2%, each of those being a “9” of availability. The high water mark seems to be companies aiming for five nines or 99.999%.

    Usually at this point I need to write this down so they can understand why five nines are 99.999 and not 99.99999

    Manager: Let’s go for five nines.

    Me: That’s only 5 minutes of downtime a year. We can’t apply patches in 5 minutes. A better number is usually 99.9 for us, which means across the entire year we get a 8 hours of downtime. That’s a good number to aim for across a year.

    Manager: We can’t be down for 8 hours!

    Me: (blank look)

    At this point I usually give up and go in search of someone that will better understand things.

    However an SLA for downtime/uptime isn’t enough for SQL Server. You also have to think in terms of data loss. If we lose a server, what about transactions in flight? What about things not transferred to the mirror server or log shipped server? What about losing disks and no tail of the log backup?

    An SLA for data loss is important as well. And like the conversation above, your business people will say zero data loss. Quiz them to find out what can be recovered and to what extent lost data costs the company. The compute the cost of your various HA solutions to decide how to handle things.

  • Data Scientists

    Would you like to be a data scientist? In some sense I think that many of us working with SQL Server are amateur data scientists. Whether it’s building a report, or just writing code to summarize data, we are working with data in a scientific way.

    What is data science? It’s not really a science, but instead it describes the field of analyzing data and the tools used. It’s primarily used with more traditional sciences to make sense of the vast quantities of data that are accumulated and used to support or debunk some hypothesis.

    Many of us as data professionals have some experience in managing data and manipulating it, but not a lot of formal knowledge in statistics or heavy math. Just reading the recommendations of what might be needed become a data scientist reminds me of a graduate level curriculum, but I’m not sure most of us need that much schooling.

    However I do think that as a data professional that is looking to add strategic value to your company’s applications and trying to stand out, it makes sense to beef up your analytics skills. Finding ways to spot trends and patterns can be very valuable to finding new opportunities in business, and those talents are based on sound statistical analysis techniques.

    Steve Jones

    (Originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72171/)

    Podcasts