Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Making a Donation to PASS

    This year the PASS Summit will be virtual, though not free. Until June 19, the conference will cost $500 for the 3 day conference, $900 with precons, and $349 for a single pre-con. SQL Bits is still scheduled for September, and I wonder if they will move to virtual. Microsoft has moved all events to virtual for the next year, which puts pressure on others. The flip side is Microsoft events are mostly marketing and many other events are fundraisers for their organizations.

    PASS reopened their call for speakers, which is interesting. I wouldn’t expect any speakers to pull out from the event, but perhaps I’m wrong. Or maybe they’re expanding the schedule, since I know time zones will be an issue and I suspect we’ll see some broadcasting across the 24 hour clock. To do this isn’t free, as the infrastructure and coordination of staff to make an event happen cost money. Microsoft can just lose money on staff, but for PASS, SQL Bits, and other events, they need help. Even with volunteers helping, you need some staff. Staff requires money.

    This means the request from PASS this year is for every speaker to essentially donate their time to create a presentation and deliver it for little to no compensation. They can watch other talks for free, there will likely be some speaker gift, and there is some marketing and exposure from speaking at the Summit, but this is different than getting an admission to the live event. I don’t know how employers, clients, etc. view anyone’s speaking experience at the Summit, but it’s on my speaking CV multiple times and I’m proud that I’ve been able to speak there.

    I didn’t submit earlier this year when the call for speakers opened. The timing was bad for me, personally, and I decided to forego attending. When the call re-opened, I decided to submit. I am happy to support the community, and a virtual event means that travel and timing is less of a factor.

    I have seen some speakers question whether being asked to deliver a talk for free that will be behind a paywall is a good idea. They question if this is a fair trade for their time and effort. I think each speaker can make their own decision. I don’t mind if you speak, or if you decide this isn’t for you. It is a fair question, and there are plenty others we can debate: the financial structure of PASS, the decisions about the Summit, and the future direction of the organization.

    PASS already had a deficit in their budget this year. The Summit will likely generate less money and potentially the deficit will be larger. If I can donate a few tens of hours to build a session and deliver it, and help with the financials of PASS, I am happy to do so. I plan to support a few other events later this year as well, helping organizers where I can to weather this difficult time.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Are You a Gatekeeper?

    One of the problems that I’ve seen in many parts of life is the belief that things must proceed a certain way. I caught an article on ways teachers have made school less fun for kids because they adhered to some rule or belief too tightly. I think many of those stories are true because I’ve seen some strange teacher behavior with my kids over the years.

    In the tech world we’ve gotten our share of gatekeepers who think that a developer or sysadmin or some other person doing a job should do it a certain way or use particular tools. I caught a tweet that embodies the frustration some people have with those gatekeepers. Jez Humble quoted this and built a thread on this, including admitting he’s contributed to the problem. I know I have as well.

    If you think back in how you’ve worked with others, interviewed people, onboarded a new hire, or even disagreed with another person, are you a gatekeeper? Do you have strong, core beliefs that you think everyone should follow? Or are you adaptable and flexible, willing to consider slightly different thoughts, protocols, or ways of viewing problems?

    I think that many of the advances and incredible achievements in the world have some from someone thinking differently. Someone, or a group of people that grow, change, or alter something in the world make the biggest differences. We have best practices, we have standards, and we have good, solid ways of working in many cases. We also learn to become better over time in many cases, changing the way we work because of the growth in our knowledge.

    I think teams ought to come to some consensus and agreement. We have to make decisions and move forward in our efforts to build software and systems. However, we also need to allow debate, discussion, and civil disagreement. I argue for many points at work, winning people over on some, and losing other debates. I don’t always like it, but I can live with it if more people disagree with me. I think that most of us can do the same, as long as there are rational reasons for the final decision.

    Being a gatekeeper often involves having power and abusing it because you can, rather than building and generating some sort of group agreement. Real leaders find ways to work with their people, not force them to fit a mold.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Missing Data

    I gather some data regularly about my life. I examine and look for trends and anomalies every week, and use the data in data analysis to help me make decisions. I get this data from my watch, a Garmin Forerunner 645, which tracks a number of data points for me. Some data points are recorded automatically, some I set, but I have come to appreciate that information.

    Recently I had to get a replacement watch after a bit of a hardware failure. Huge props to Garmin for replacing my out-warranty, 3 year old watch at no cost. During this time, I was without a watch for almost two weeks, and I really noticed the lack of data.

    My watch gathers data on sleep, which I often check to see when I’ve struggled at night and wake up tired. Where was my time spent during the night, with lots of movement and wakefulness or more deep sleep? I don’t need a high level of accuracy here, but just something that helps me to think about what I might have done differently the previous day with diet, with stress, with exercise (or lack) or even emotional coping. During my week, I often check the step count, just to see if I’ve taken breaks and gotten moving, or am I sitting too much. I look at my heart rate regularly, both for the long term trends and the specific exercise to see if I’m trying hard enough.

    Losing some of this data isn’t really a big deal, but it is something I need to account for, since this is a pretty big hole in my system. As I look for trends and compute averages, I need to account for the missing data points. If I were building a report for myself, I might want to ensure the missing dates are still shown, albeit with no data. I can’t enter zeros here, because imagine 2 weeks worth of zeros in a month or resting heart rate data. I might think I’m much more fit than I am!

    There are plenty of solutions and ways to handle both aggregations and visualizations, but as data professionals, we need to ensure we know how to, and make sure we do, account for missing data points. This becomes especially important with sensor data, but even sales data can be affected. We can, and do, lose data for a variety of reasons, and we should also be prepared for those situations.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • What’s a Normal SQL Server?

    Many of us have worked in environments that have a number of SQL Server instances. Different versions, editions, and mostly different hardware profiles. We deal with different applications and software that places different demands and requirements on our database systems. Some of us are even dealing with multiple datastores, trying to integrate SQL Server with Oracle, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Redis and more.

    Keeping an inventory of instances and patches can be a challenge. I hadn’t thought this was a big problem, but I’ve been surprised how many people like the Estate Management Versions page in SQL Monitor. This gets a lot of use, as people work to keep track of their systems. With that in mind, I wonder how many people have to support the “average” SQL Server that Brent Ozar supports. He runs the SQL ConstantCare® service for his customers, and regularly reports on average data every quarter.

    In his latest report, which contains data from over 3000 servers, we get a picture of what various organizations run for their instances. The version breakdown is what I expect, and I’m not surprised that 2016 is the most popular. This was a major release, with lots of changes. I think 2008 R2, 2014, 2017 were relatively minor releases. Few changes, and not good timing relative to other releases.

    The data shows most people have supported versions, and I think some of the licensing rules and breaks to lead many people to think about getting Software Assurance to upgrade once in awhile. I also think it makes sense that many people manage relatively small databases, well under 125GB. If you do the math, 47% of these instances are these relatively small sizes. However, it is interesting to see nearly 15% of his clients are > 1TB. That’s quite a spread.

    With data sizes like this, you see lots of smaller hardware sizes. I don’t know how this might compare with your organization, but it’s interesting to think about how you might fit into these averages. Is your organization doing a better or worse job of giving you resources for your data size? Keep in mind, there isn’t correlation here, so you don’t know if the 30GB database has 4 cores or 24 cores.

    I think having data like this is interesting. I do wish Microsoft would release more specific stats, like the version counts and database sizes, with hardware averages for those data sizes. I know why this doesn’t make sense for them to release the data, but I still wish they would let us know more. As Brent says, they tend to present on really recent technology, which many of us might not use. I’m sure many of you have a variety of instances, but you’ll easily be able to see if your spread of instances looks like Brent’s client base.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.