Author: way0utwest

I have been awarded the MVP award from Microsoft a few years in a row and it’s an honor, but it’s also a responsibility. One of the benefits from the award is that I get information about what is coming up in products, often under an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). That means that I can’t release this information publically, and every quarter it seems that one or more MVPs lose their award for disclosing information they shouldn’t.

The same thing ought to apply to the posts you make, blogs you write, etc., when it might apply to your company. I wrote an editorial at SQLServerCentral on this recently, and it is something that you ought to keep in mind for not only posts, but also discussions you have with friends.

Be responsible in your career, and don’t disclose information that you shouldn’t.

(cross posted to The Modern Resume)

I’m off tomorrow to the UK for a week of work at the Red Gate offices, and then a couple days of vacation. My oldest is graduating from high school this year, and as a present, we’re taking him and the rest of the family to the UK for a week. My family actually leaves Mon and will arrive Tues, and they are there for a week, coming back the following Tuesday.

It’s not a trip I’m looking forward to. Going to Red Gate is fine, but the 10+ hour flights and being out of my routine for a week bugs me. I don’t like traveling this much. I prefer the short, two day SQL Saturday trips.

With cutbacks on all airlines, it becomes harder to travel these days. Even going to the East Coast from Denver requires 2-3 days for work. I used to be able to catch an early flight from Denver to somewhere like NY in time for a lunch meeting on the East Coast, working half a day, and coming home late at night. These days it seems like you always have to leave the night before, and possibly stay another night if you want to work until 5pm.

The UK is worse. I leave Sat morning, arriving early Sun morning. I would leave Sunday, but I have had issues with delays, and I have work to do Monday. Plus I hate being exhausted that first day at work more than I hate traveling. That’s a day of travel plus a slightly lost day of my weekend on Sun. I’ll probably work on Sun to get things done and get a little ahead.

Coming back we leave on Tuesday morning, arriving late afternoon in Denver that day. However another day lost to travel, and even though it isn’t a vacation day, it’s a lost day of work. In the world I live in, which is a grinding daily list of things to keep the site running, it puts me behind. Even with someone helping out, I usually take a few days to get caught back up.

I’m dreading this next long week, and will likely be a little out of touch on the site. Hopefully everything still runs smoothly.

We make mistakes when we publish things. It happens, and I am as guilty as some people of mistakenly putting something down on paper that isn’t correct.

Or worse in SQL Server, put something down that applies to one version, and it gets superseded. I don’t usually go back and rewrite things later. I don’t realize I’ve left something out there, or that I’ve forgotten the version. When someone reads it, they might assume it’s correct with my name on it.

However I would like to think that while we have lots of controversial things published, we don’t often put something out there that’s flatly incorrect. I saw this blog post on performance optimization recently and I’ve grabbed a couple images in case it disappears.

The advice given here, while sometimes correct, isn’t necessarily what I’d actually give to developers, or what I think others would give to developers. Some of it appears to be more relevant to SQL 7/2000 and not necessarily something I’d apply to current versions.

Some things are wrong, like “However, if you create a table variable, it only resides in the memory”. This is a common misconception that quite a few people have about SQL Server table variables.

There’s also the “Each time you get a row from the cursor it requires in a network roundtrip, where the normal query makes only one roundtrip. “ That’s not necessarily true. It depends on how you have coded around the cursor. My guess is that this person is either using ODBC cursors, or has seen developers SELECT data from each loop through the cursor. However it seems to display a mis-understanding of how a cursor works.

I point out a couple of items since I think there is some bad advice here, and some very vague advice, that SQL Server people might not want to follow.

To me this is actually good and bad. Perhaps someone out there looking to hire SQL Programmers of Chicago will find my, and other, commentary on this post and decide not to hire them. Or perhaps SQL Programmers will read the interesting Twitter thread on their post (from 3/17/10, about 3:00MST) and decide they should beef up their skills.

Be wary of advice you find on the Internet, whether mine or others. Double check, and above all, test, test, test.

Amazon v Apple, both pressuring publishers on ebook concessions. It’s big business, and it could easily be good or bad for consumers.

Should we have some regulation here? Is the public better served in any way if books are limited to some retailers and not others? Deals have been cut like this for all time, and these “exclusives” sometimes result in better deals for consumers and sometimes not.

Personally I hate to get government involved, but I almost feel like this is a place where business does not serve the world. Making a deal with another business that cuts out other businesses feels like monopoly. And setting pricing limits, like no one can sell lower, almost starts to feel like collusion in pricing.

Amazon has moved e-reading forward. And I think without some serious pressure, book publishers would be like music publishers, they’d resist putting out digital products and try to retain tremendous control.

Both sides need to give. Amazon needs to recognize that not only are they not the only retailer, but that forcing suppliers or customers to them for certain products doesn’t breed customer loyalty. It breeds resentment.

Publishers need to realize that not every customer is a pirate and that ebooks truly do cost less. They cost less in inventory, less in risk ( no investment in books), and less to a distributor. They ought to cost less, and less than just the difference of the paper.

It’s annoying to me and I think that ultimately here this is delaying to progress of e-books, and potentially hurting the reading industry. You’re not just fighting other books, publishers, you’re fighting other entertainment as well. Raising prices on books can easily move the casual reader to get more movies or TV shows instead of books.