Before I went on vacation, I mentioned I was downloading some of the MCM videos from Technet.I had grabbed 4 or 5 before I left, dropping the MP3s on my iPhone, and I listened to a few of them on the drive to Steamboat Springs.
That worked out so well, while I was on vacation, I tweeted that I was downloading more MP3s for the ride home, but Aaron Nelson (blog | @sqlvariant) sent me a script he was working on to automatically download them. I finally got around to trying it when I returned to get the video formats of the videos (some are demos) and after a little mucking around with paths, I got it to work.
It’s a great script that runs from Windows Powershell, and you can get it from Aaron’s blog. Even if you don’t want to take the MCM test, watch the videos. Lots to learn in there.
The last 5 or 6 years, on this day, my family has gotten together with friends for an evening of games and fun at Dave and Busters before returning home for some movies or Rock Band until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight I expect to do the same, with some relatives in from out of town, making this one of our biggest parties ever.
This is the last day of 2010, and most of us are starting to look forward to the new year. Next week will have us back to our jobs, and back to the proverbial “grind” as we are working with SQL Server. Hopefully this isn’t a busy weekend for you, and the last chance for a bit of a holiday before the new year.
As such, I decided to make this a fun Friday poll, and ask for recommendations from you:
What movies from 2010 would you recommend for the technologist this weekend?
I haven’t seen a lot of movies in 2010, between a busy family life and travel for work, but I would like to relax and enjoy a couple this weekend. I just watched Sherlock Holmes over the Christmas break for the first time and enjoyed it. I think that one of the more enjoyable technological films of 2010 for me was Inception, which I saw a couple times while my wife paid to see it 5 times in the theater.
As we close out this year, hopefully with a quiet day for most of you, share with us a suggestion for how we might enjoy ourselves away from work this weekend.
The issue seems to be that if you allocate too much transaction log at once, you could end up with a few, very, very large (GB in size) VLFs, and despite regular log backups, you could not be clearing any VLFs inside the log until there are no active transactions in that VLF. And that could cause a performance slowdown as it clears that large VLF.
So if you need 50GB of log space, do as Kim recommends and get 512MB chunks by allocating 8GB at a time. You can do this contiguously, as in all the same day, but allocate 8GB, let it finish, then ALTER to add 8GB more, repeat until you reach the correct size.
Usually at the end of each year I try to look back at the previous year in the database world. This past year seems to have been an amazing year for the SQL Community and for me it has been the opportunity to meet new people, and also reconnect with so many of the amazing professionals that work with SQL Server.
The year started early with the decision for PASS to take over the management of the SQL Saturday franchise. Andy Warren and I symbolically passed a key (thanks to Peter Shire of SQL Sentry) to PASS at SQL Saturday #33 in Charlotte, and from there the number of events exploded. When Andy talked with me about this idea almost 4 years ago, we wondered if we would ever get to 50 events, or even if we’d have more than 20 in a year. Right now SQL Saturday #71 is scheduled for Boston in April 2011, and there were 32 events last year. It looks like 2011 might be an even better year, with 14 events scheduled so far. If you are even thinking of having one in your area, contact PASS, or even me for a little help.
We also had quite a bit of change in the SQL Server world. SQL Server 2008 R2, the Parallel Data Warehouse edition, and a few service packs, including SP4 for SQL Server 2005, were released. The growth, and support, of the platform from Microsoft continues to give us data professionals more tools, and opportunities, to build amazing applications for our companies. When I look back at where I started, with SQL Server 4.2, the platform is almost unrecognizable. Next year we may get another new version, with some nicely matured subsystems like PBM and Extended Events, that will greatly help DBAs better manage their systems.
Checking servers from a horse
Beyond the laptop was a change that amazed me. After having an iPhone, and seeing Surface, I was truly stunned at the success of the iPad, and the rush to build other tablets, like the Galaxy Tab. It’s amazing how versatile and useful these devices can be for consuming information. I expect some amazing new applications, especially in the BI area to be coming in the future. Even my employer has found them useful, giving away dozen’s of iPads in our SQL Monitor launch, which can be used to watch the SQLServerCentral servers in real time.
There were many more events, from the release of Windows Phone 7 and 4G networks to the growth of the Cloud and NoSQL databases. We had Arnie Rowland’s Project Phoenix, which looks to help unemployed tech professionals, another Exceptional DBA in Tracy Hamlin, and perhaps the beginning of a recovery in the global economy. It seems more people are taking an interest in their career, and poised to take advantage of the hiring that is starting to pick up.
From my perspective, 2010 was a great year for the SQL community. I don’t know if this community is closer, stronger, or more helpful that those of other technologies, but I do know that it’s an amazing group, and I am better for being a part of it.
Voice of the DBA 