Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • SQL Rally Pre-Cons

    The SQL Rally pre-conference sessions were announced today, and congratulations to the winners. They are:

    • Business Intelligence Workshop – Patrick LeBlanc, Devin Knight, Mike Davis, & Adam Jorgensen
    • Query Performance Tuning, Start to Finish – Grant Fritchey
    • Maximize Your SQL Server 2008 Coding Skills – Plamen Ratchev
    • Leadership and Team Management Skills for the Database Professional – Kevin Kline

    You can read more about each session here.

    These are all great sessions, and no matter who was selected, there wasn’t a chance you’d see a bad session. Of these, I’d be likely to attend Grant’s session or the BI ones since I think those have the best chance for me to learn something that I could start to use quickly.

    The voting was sent to all applicants and I was a little surprised by the results. I don’t know if I can disclose anything, so I won’t, but there was quite a disparity from first to second place in each category. I’m not sure if that’s due to much better marketing from the winners or if it reflects interest. I’d love to know more.

    I’m slightly disappointed that I wasn’t selected, but I wasn’t sure how many people would really want to invest in a half day seminar for about $100 that would  help them find a new job. I’m sure their bosses wouldn’t. However the PD session from Kevin Kline is a good one, and I think it’s a better topic for many companies, who desperately need some leadership in the IT space.

  • Check the .NET Framework Version Installed

    I haven’t ever worried about this, but I had the need recently to check. I was looking a SQL Sentry’s Plan Explorer and the instructions mentioned that you need the .NET Framework v4.0 installed.

    So I decided to check my machine. First I hit Control Panel

    NetFramework1

    However that doesn’t say .NET 4.0 install. Instead it has a “client profile” listed. What does that mean?

    I wasn’t confident of this, so I Google’d for the question. I found this blog on How to Check. It lists a Javascript call that you can paste into IE or Firefox.

    javascript:alert(navigator.userAgent)

    I get this from Firefox:

    NetFramework3

    and this from IE:

    NetFramework4

    Again, .NET4 is listed, but not with a CLR component. So I’m not sure what I have.

    Then I went over to Stack Overflow to check. I would this answer, and it lists registry keys. I checked mine and I see this:

     NetFramework2

    So do I have .NET 4.0 or not? At this point I’m still not since it’s hard to determine if I really have the CLR needed. So I decide to just install Plan Explorer and look for error messages.

    NetFramework5

    Pow! Apparently the client profile isn’t enough. So I downloaded the .NET 4 Framework from the link at SQLSentry and then saw this:

    NetFramework7

    .NET Framework extended, which matches the result from IE:

    NetFramework6

    Now I can go play with SQL Sentry’s Plan Explorer. It certainly look cool!

  • Android Tablet

    I was in Best Buy, actually returning a couple iPads the other day. I had gotten a few for a Red Gate giveaway and left them at home. I purchased two on the road, and when I got back, I took these back to Best Buy.

    I’m still debating if an iPad is worth it for me. I like to read electronically, and I think that I could use some of the features on the iPad to better understand how people are publishing content, as well as do presentations. However it still feels like an electronic toy more than a tool, and I’m not sure if it’s worth the cost.

    While I was at Best Buy, I noticed that there was an Android based tablet there, and decided to check it out.

    It’s the Huawei Ideos 7″ tablet and it runs Android v2.1. That’s what most Android phones run, though a few have v2.2. I had enjoyed my Android phone in the past, and at $299, this seemed like this might be a good buy.

    So I tried to do a few things. It was rather annoying that the Internet wasn’t connected. To me that’s a major failing on the part of Best Buy. You’d think they’d enable a wi-fi link so that you could test a few things.

    However it really didn’t matter. I opened the dictionary and tried to look up a few words, and I was amazed by how slow it was to respond, especially with touch on the screen. I don’t remember my phone being that slow to catch a touch, but this took a good half second to pick up a touch, so after the iPhone, it felt like I……..was………typing……..really………slowly…….

    Just to check, I popped open the calculator and tried two problems. 9*8 and then 96/12. It took me easily 8-9 seconds each to enter those problems. For comparison, I walked over to the iPad and entered the same problems, both of them, in about 3 sec. For comparison, it was about 8 sec on my Win 7 tablet using the stylus.

    That was enough for me. I was hoping that an Android tablet might be a nice alternative, and stack up well at a reduced price, but this isn’t even close. I wouldn’t pay $100 for this one as it’s so slow and annoying to use. The iPad is pricey, but it’s smooth, refined, and it works well. I was looking forward to seeing the Galaxy from Samsung, but after this review from some Red Gate folks, it doesn’t look like it deserves to cost the same as an iPad.

  • Back Home

    And glad to be there. I was gone almost 7 days, home only for 24:15:00 before back out on another trip. Between SQL Connections, and a little setup for the PASS Summit, I was beat.

    And behind. I had scheduled out newsletters and editorials, but I came back to over 20 articles submitted in the last week along with a dearth of editorials and blog posts. I had hoped to write some while I was gone, but the days get so long and busy that I really didn’t. An attempt on the planes didn’t really work either, and I was actually too burned out from the travel to even get coherent thoughts out.

    I’ll be back with more tomorrow, talking about my impressions of Connections, and a few notes from the pre-PASS Summit as well.