Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Less QA?

    This editorial was originally published on Jul 31, 2013. It is being re-run as Steve is out of the office.

    Throughout most of my career, people have complained that software is never tested enough, not tested well, and certainly not enough time is allocated in project plans. I’d also argue that all too often we don’t have people building software with experience in how to perform extensive testing. Most developers only have a rudimentary knowledge of software testing and that part of their skill set doesn’t receive constant training. However I’ve found plenty of QA people that were in the same situation. Some educate themselves and learn how to test better, but many go through the motions. They don’t take pride in their role as a software tester.

    There have been lots of advances in automated testing and TDD methodologies over the years, which means that developers have been taking more of the responsibility, and effort, for testing code. It’s hard to know if this has resulted in higher quality code, lower quality, or a mix. Overall I think that the latter is likely. Code quality is all over the board, probably based more on the skill and talent of the individual developer than on any process.

    That’s good for the companies that have hired strong developers, but not so great for our industry as a whole. We still produce lots of software that takes too long to develope, costs too much, and often has too many bugs. Overall we are sloppy and inconsistent in how we build software. Some of that is the nature of our business, one with such a low bar of entry that anyone can give software development a try.

    I don’t know how we improve the quality of software, though I do think continuing to educate and train people on what works well is a good start. However I also think that we still need QA groups. We need people that will use software in ways that automated tests won’t. People that will press buttons, enter values, and push software in ways that developers would never consider using it. Most of all, we need QA and testing to be treated as a valuable part of our industry. We need QA people that view testing as a valid career path, not a stepping stone for junior developers that look to move on as soon as possible.

    Steve Jones

  • Balloons and Data

    This editorial was originally published on Aug 8. 2013. It is being re-run as Steve is out of the office.

    We see a lot of questions at SQLServerCentral repeated over the years as workers new to the platform encounter some of the issues that many of us have dealt with repeatedly over the years. One of the more common questions that I see in the SQLServerCentral forums has to do with tempdb growth.

    Many people coming to the SQL Server platform realize tempdb is a workspace, but they don’t always understand how it works. Many times I see questions where people don’t understand why tempdb will grow from it’s default size. Even more surprising is that they don’t understand why it doesn’t shrink back to the default size. After all, it contains temporary information, and when it’s not being used, the size should shrink, right?

    If only that were true, it would make administration simpler, though performance might be worse. Many people view the files in a computer like balloons. We add data and they grow. We remove data, and they shrink. However that’s not the model for SQL Server files. Our mdf/ldf/ndf files are allocations, and once we allocate space, we don’t remove it if no data is present. The allocations are available for the next time we need them, minus the time we spent requesting and receiving the allocation from the Operating System.

    The space you need for tempdb is the peak space you need for the largest set of temporary operations in your workload. Even if all your data sets are small, say 100kb, if you have 1000 of them occurring at once, you’ll need 100MB of space. With sorts, intermediate worktables, and more, you could easily have an average data set above 10kb, which is why your tempdb size might need to grow.

    Just like with any other database, you need to monitor the size and load for tempdb. Adjust it as needed, based on your requirements, so that it will be properly sized each time to start the instance. The administration level isn’t high for tempdb, as long as you have monitoring in place and you periodically perform the administration to appropriately size your system.

    Steve Jones

  • Three Days and a Notebook

    This is a short week of work for me, really just today before heading off to attend Microsoft Build 2017. I’ll spend the rest of the week watching Microsoft show off their latest tools, ideas, technology, and more at the developer’s conference. I’m not speaking (I think) and am looking forward to three days of learning, watching, and getting excited about building software that for the most part depends on data in some way. I’m not sure what will be presented, as the schedule hadn’t been posted as of the time I wrote this, but I’m sure there will be plenty of Azure and SQL to go with all the Windows and .NET sessions. I’m especially interested in ways that DevOps is making its way into the Microsoft stack and looking forward to seeing the creative solutions out there.

    I haven’t attended Build since it was the PDC many years ago. It’s been since the early 2000’s when I went to a few of these events as a software developer. I first saw Microsoft showcase XML tools in the late 90s and tablets a few years later.  I always enjoyed these shows and after a few years off was looking forward to going back. Then they cancelled the event before it was reborn as Build. I’ve been trying to schedule a trip for the last 4 years, but scheduling keeps getting in the way. I know, it’s a hard life, and I’m not complaining. It’s been disappointing for me.

    Last year I was actually offered the chance to go speak on behalf of Redgate at a session, and I did go, but with volleyball trips planned with my daughter, I was in San Francisco about 24 hours, saw 1/2 of the keynote and part of one session (besides my own) and then left. Not much of a Build event for me. I didn’t even have time to go through the HoloLens line and give it a try. However, I had a few days with my daughter, so I can’t complain at all.

    This year I didn’t have anything scheduled for May and got the chance to register early. I plan to try and leave my computer in the hotel room and work little. Instead, I’ll walk around with my notebook, jot down ideas, and just think a bit about software, my career, and where Microsoft is going. This will be my thinking time for the week. Actually, I haven’t had much thinking time this year, so I’m looking forward to the break.

    I rarely attend any events or training without having some sort of commitment or responsibility these days. I try to fit in a few sessions or a pre-con here and there, but training time and focused time on something other than work is rare. For the first time in many years, I’ll actually going as an attendee and doing the things many of you do at SQL Saturdays, SQL Bits, the Pass Summit, and other events. I’ll be learning, focusing, racing from session to session, networking, and hopefully overdosing on new technology.

    I’ll try to summarize notes in a few blogs, and maybe even give a short recap as an editorial one day, but this should be a fun technology week for me.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Power BI Pivot

    This week we had quite a bit of Power BI content appear on various blogs and sites. Some of this was normal traffic, with Power BI gaining popularity and more data professionals writing about the topic. There are always quite a few blogs from The Guy in a Cube, including a look at how to better use colors, but I also see more and more posts from others. We had others about R in Power BI and custom visuals.

    The big news this week was the announcement of the Power BI Report Server from Microsoft. This is coming late in the second quarter of 2017, according to the SSRS blog, which I assume means in the next month. The second quarter is almost over, and with Microsoft ending their fiscal year in June, I’d expect this to release sooner than later. There is also a Power BI Premium, which apparently allows an enterprise to purchase capacity in the cloud and then concurrently deploy Power BI reports on-premises.

    Many people have been looking forward to this. I’ve been hearing from some reporting authors that we were going to get Power BI rolled into SSRS as an option for SQL reporting. Apparently we are, but there are some new costs here. This may change your calculation of whether this is a good move for your organization, but certainly I think that Power BI is one of the better reporting engines I’ve seen.

    The licensing is confusing, and I liked in a few other thoughts on the announcement from others, such as Dan English and James Serra. Both note that the free tier gets to connect to the same data sources as the Pro previously could (including on premises data), which is good. The storage quota increases to 10GB, up to 8 refreshes a day and a bit more. Pro is still $10/month, and apparently is still needed for those that spend the money on Premium if they author reports or export to Excel, even if you have Enterprise Edition. At least, that’s what Mr. English notes in the license terms. Alternatively you can spend a few thousand dollars a month for the cloud version and let all your employees access reports in the cloud or from a local report server.

    Power BI has been one of those amazing products that I’ve been very impressed with in the technical sense. I can build amazing reports, and get great interactivity, allowing me to analyze data in a way that hasn’t always been possible in a visual tool. Almost every time I see a new type of report or some demo, I’m impressed with what’s possible. I love the desktop tool for my own use, since it’s a nice, responsive and easy to understand interface. However the deployment method (originally just with PowerBI.com) and the licensing have always struck me as a bit strange, and perhaps somewhat crippled. It certainly felt that many features didn’t cost me money directly, but there was a cost. With this latest change, it feels like another pivot to try and increase revenue, but not in a way that’s attractive to me.

    Microsoft wants to make money, and they’ve certainly invested money in the Power BI platform, so they get to make the rules. I do like Power BI, and if the costs make sense to you, and there’s enough value, this is certainly a very powerful visualization and reporting tool that I can only imagine will become more and more useful over time.

    Steve Jones