Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Looking to 2014

    It’s amazing to think that 2014 is already here. We’re 13 years past the fictional 2001 and now 4 years after the 2010 movie sequel. I’d still guess that those movies should have been set another 100 years into the future, given where we are today with technology. We start a new year today and I wanted to look forward to guess where the data world might go in the next year.

    As I think about SQL Server in 2014, there’s one big item that will change; we’ll have a new version. SQL Server 2014 will be released, and while I don’t think there are a lot of changes coming, there are a few noteworthy items. The two biggest items that I see coming with SQL Server 2014 are the In-Memory-OLTP Tables and writeable columnstore indexes. There are many other improvements to Resource Governor, Azure integration, incremental statistics, Power View, and a few more. However overall, it seems as though this isn’t worthy of a full release to me. There are two big features, but most of the rest of the changes feel small and incremental.

    In the rest of the data world, I see 2014 as a ho-hum, continue along the path evolution. We will see lots of people realize the Hadoop is more of a solution in search of a problem than vice versa. Hadoop works well, but it isn’t necessary for most problem domains and might be more work and cost than is needed. I suspect we’ll find that many people are also trying to use the various NoSQL platforms as a magic bullet to solve some problem they have and will realize that they really haven’t attacked the problem properly. Most of the time it’s not the platform, it’s their approach and changing platforms won’t fix that.

    I do hope that people continue to experiment with, use, and write about NoSQL platforms. We need to learn more about where and when these platforms are useful. I saw 5 database predictions from Michael Stonebraker recently and overall I agree with them. We will see more options for solving data problems, and more often than we expect, we will find that multiple solutions can, and perhaps should be, used. However we shouldn’t use platforms to use platforms, and we certainly need more expertise.

    I do think we will start to see more interesting hardware being released in 2014 and beyond. Tablets are maturing and I suspect by the end of 2014 we’ll have many, many choices from manufacturers of different sizes, form factors, and types of convertability for laptop devices. I suspect we’ll the line between phone, tablet, and laptop will continue to blur, and while I’m not sure we’ll get more types of new devices than watches or eyeglasses, I am hoping that we see more creative attempts. Personally I’d like to see new monitors that can project onto glass or semi-transparent surfaces and still handle touch (ala Minority Report).

    Finally, I think that Microsoft will truly abandon the RT experiment and move to a dual desktop Windows and Windows Phone platforms. They’ve talked about a unifying platform, but I don’t see that working, and certainly not in 2014. However I am hopeful the restructuring at Microsoft will have Windows Phone moving to take over phones, some tablets, and perhaps even some laptop-style devices while Windows on the desktop and server will scale from hundred-core multi-terabytes of RAM servers to tablet style devices. Perhaps even with the option to turn off all touch-screen like items. At least, that’s what I’d do.

    I look forward to 2014 as the start of a new year and with the optimism that I’ll be surprised and amazed at some point by technology.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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  • 2013 in Review

    Last year I took a few guesses about 2013. I was right about smartphones, and encryption has slowly become more important late in 2013. BYOD has become a hot topic that continues to be a problem, but I think most companies are resigned to the fact that they’ll have to accept and co-exist with personal devices in the workplace.

    As far as SQL Server goes, it seems more and more companies are looking to implement SSD storage, but I’m not sure it’s the standard for new hardware. I see plenty of people still stuck with spinning disks as part of their SAN storage, or even in local disks. We didn’t move to dedicated SAN storage for SQL Servers, at least not in any large wave. However there has been trends for some companies moving away from SANs and back to local storage, especially for the people that are thinking about flash storage, like the FusionIO cards.

    It has felt like a quiet year for SQL Server in 2013. Microsoft is in between releases, with 2012 slowly maturing this part year as people adopt it, find issues, and publish guidance, solutions, or workarounds. Some of us have been following the upcoming SQL Server 2014 release, but that is still months away from RTM. There were two big changes with SQL Server this year: HDInsight (Hadoop) and the growth of SQL Server in the Azure cloud as Windows Azure SQL Database. While both of those were used by a small group of SQL Server pros, they have dramatically expanded the cases and situations in which SQL Server can be used.

    In the SQL Server community, I don’t think we had any radical changes occur. We had a lot of SQL Saturdays in 2013 ( 84 by my count), a new conference (SQL Interesction) along with ones we’ve had for years (SQL Bits, PASS Summit, SQL Connections). We continued to publish lots of information at SQLServerCentral and Database Weekly, and there was no shortage of new bloggers and writers sharing their knowledge with the community.

    In the database world, there was continued media attention given to a variety of RDBMSes and NoSQL platforms, but all the news has felt evolutionary, not revolutionary. The world at large continues to underestimate the importance of data and data professionals, but slowly more managers and companies are having more respect for the jobs that we do. However, despite the many people that were awarded MCMs before the termination of that program, I still find large numbers of SQL Server professionals learn the bare minimum they need to acceptably do their job. I keep hoping that the efforts of sites like SQLServerCentral and events like SQL Saturday will change that, but it feels like we’ve barely made a dent in our profession.

    However we’ll keep trying, and encouraging people, and I hope you continue to do the same.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Ultimate Tool List

    I’ve seen Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tool List a few times and adopted some of the tools in the past. He updated it for 2014 and has added quite a few new tools. I downloaded F.lux the other day and am giving it a test run right now. I’m not sure how well it works, but I like the idea of this little utility. I also used Chocolatey for my new machine after Troy Hunt blogged about the utility and thought it was amazing. AutoHotKey is the new items I’m testing.

    We are in the business of technology and using computers to work more efficiently. We manage, build, and deploy software that allows our organizations to get more work done with less resources than ever in the past. We have, or should have, utilities that automatically check our math, our spelling, that communicate quicker than in the past.

    Those of us working with computers should be using utilities, tools, and helpful software all the time. We should test it, share our thoughts and results, and help others to learn to let computers improve their lives. While there are places computers aren’t needed or aren’t appropriate, there are many more ways in which computers can help us save time and effort by tackling tasks, even simple ones, with automation.

    I’d encourage you to look at some of the tools on Scott’s list and see if they might help you work more efficiently in the new year. With the slower times that usually occur during the holidays, this is a good time to experiment with some utilities that might help you in the new year. There’s also a SQL Performance Tool collection from MSDN in this week’s newsletter.

  • Mining for Quitters

    This editorial was originally published on Jun 10, 2009. It is being re-published as Steve is on vacation.

    I thought this was pretty interesting, a story about a story about Google trying to figure out which people are likely to quit. Apparently Google is worried about losing talented workers, like  those they’ve taken from Microsoft, Yahoo, and other places. Actually they haven’t taken anyone. They built a company that excited people and anyone that wants to get a job there (and can), should be allowed to go work there.

    Some people have decided they don’t want to stay, and quite a few executives, and Google wants to try and see if they can keep them. So they are looking for signs that a person might think about leaving, and then hopefully doing something about it. And in typical Google fashion, they’ve built an application that crunches data to identify those people likely to leave.

    I think it’s great, especially in an age where it seems so many companies don’t care if you stay or go. While there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to convince people to stay, at least they can make an attempt to convince them. Sometimes that’s all takes. Show someone that you care, and that you want to keep them around, and many times they might decide to stay. And perhaps it’s in response to this note that the Justice Department in the US considers any agreement among tech firms illegal. Even if it’s an understanding not to poach each others’ executives.

    With any technology, there’s a flip side as well. Who knows if employees at Google will try to “game” the system, fake the data that shows the might leave, and then see if they can get a raise or some other benefit from the company. It might not work for all employees, but it might work for some.

    It will be a flawed system, but it’s a good idea. It’s a good use of business intelligence computing to try and protect the company’s most valuable assets: its people.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

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