Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Versions of Disaster

    Today’s editorial was originally released on Jan 13, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.

    I wrote about versioning of old software recently and how I had to restore an old version of SQL Server in response to a lawsuit. We had some challenges because the backup file that we had was from years before and we weren’t sure which version of SQL Server we needed. I forget how we finally determined which service pack was needed, perhaps we read master somehow to get a build.

    In any case, when you apply patches or change how SQL Server functions, you can change the way that code is executed or even the results that might be returned to an application. You would hope that code would break and error out rather than return different results than you expect.

    Since many of us patch servers when Service Packs come out, or when we find a hot fix we need, and we are constantly deploying and changing code, do we pay enough attention to the server version as we make these deployments? I started thinking about this after the last editorial and I think that we often take it for granted that we can easily recreate our environments.

    Consider what would happen in the event of a disaster. Suppose that one of your server instances, any particular instance, died and you had to go back to a backup of the database, would you know what version of SQL Server is needed? Do you know what version each of your instances is using right now?

    In some ways this makes me think that only installing RTM and Service Pack versions in your production environment is a good idea. It’s easier to track things if you keep all your instances within a very narrow band of versions, and the worst case would be attempting a restore on RTM, then SP1, then SP2, etc. until you hit the correct version. Imagine now if you had to work through the various builds on my build list.

    I used to think that I’d want to keep current on my patches. In one large environment, we were actually pretty good about deploying patches to hundreds of instances inside a month, so we always had a large percentage of our servers, and usually all the critical servers, at the same patch level. However if a disaster had occurred within the month, we wouldn’t necessarily have been sure of what versions were installed.

    I really don’t have a great recommendation on how to handle this other than build some automated system that tracks the current build number on a daily basis, perhaps even putting it in each database. At least then you’ll have it handy in the event of a disaster.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Future of Knowledge Measurement

    This is part 3 of a 3 part series of thoughts on certification and Microsoft technologies.

    We’ll never be able to completely and accurately measure a person’s skills in technology. At least not in any cost- and time-effective way. Ultimately we want to come up with some way to weed through candidates and ensure they have a minimum aptitude for technology and some level of skill in the areas that are important to us. We want a way, with some level of confidence, to say that a person who has xx certification knows yy skills.

    In the Microsoft world we can be sure that our platforms and technologies will change at least every 2-3 years, with major or minor revisions to all parts of the product we use. We might see minor tool changes, but fundamental feature enhancements or vice versa.  However even when there are major changes, the revisions to the effective way we accomplish tasks doesn’t change much. It evolves, and I think that a core set of skills can be measured, and more importantly, scored.

    How we do that, I’m not sure. As Brent Ozar said, however, the experiment must go on. We, as an industry and group, should be finding ways to assess our community, and drive forward our profession. I’d like to think that we could build an open source framework that allows for the presentation of a situation, and the evaluation of a result. It could be a framework like tsqlt, which allows us to write tests that can be evaluated by a scoring system. By taking a script of some sort, and comparing it to a “question”, some automated measurement would be able to determine if the question was answered (or partially answered).

    Our community could easily build a bank of hundreds, if not thousands, of questions. Want to evaluate someone? Download 50 questions, drop someone in a room for an hour and see how much they get done. They might not finish, which would be a good test in and of itself. Run their answers through a scoring engine and get a report back. With tags, we could easily separate questions into a variety of packs that employers could use to test certain areas. Testing core skills, without too much worry about version specific items would allow questions to live for years. Heck, with the age of some SQL Server instances out here, I bet some companies still need SQL Server 2000 based tests.

    Ultimately I don’t think Microsoft will properly build and maintain a framework to evaluate candidates. They have too much incentive to cheat. They can fool lots of employers with easy to pass, paper diplomas and turn a profit with lots of easy certifications that sound good, but don’t really test skills. The future of measurement in technology will be like it is in many other fields, with independent bodies that provide a minimal level of educational skill for most individuals. It will consist of granular tests that measure skills, in real situations, not question and answer trivia. Some people will slip through, some will cheat, but it will work well enough when it falls out of the hands of vendors.

    Until that time, all you can do is prove your own skills, in person, through your publications, or with lots of good, valuable answers given to others.

    Steve Jones

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  • What does certification achieve?

    This is part 2 of a 3 part series of thoughts on certification and Microsoft technologies.

    The idea of certifying someone as having a skill is almost as old as the idea of teaching someone a skill. I’m sure as soon as a person had the idea of teaching someone for compensation, others wanted some assurance that the person had learned the skill. That was probably the first time that a test was developed, graded, and scores passed out.

    We all know that a certificate or a test score doesn’t imply any level of competence at a skill. If I had to weld two pieces of metal together as a test, successfully completeing this wouldn’t imply that I could weld any two other pieces of the same metal together (size, scale, etc. matter). It wouldn’t even imply that I’d do as good a job welding the 99th and 100th pieces together in a week as I’d done during the test. The same would hold true in almost any endeavor, but we still have tests, grades, certifications, diplomas, and awards in many different fields.

    Is IT that different? In one sense it is. The technology field seems to change so often, and the bars for entry (and thus hiring) are so low that it’s difficult to set up standardized tests, often because it’s not cost effective. Medicine and law change constantly, but their tests slowly evolve, and they certainly don’t change at the rate of SQL Server versions and tests. It’s also more cost effective to create new revisions of tests in these other fields when the candidates have made a large investment in their education and regulatory agencies require licenses to practice in these other fields.

    However I might argue that technology doesn’t change that much. The idea of backing up a SQL Server database, rebuilding a clustered index, adding a login, querying for duplicates, and more haven’t changed much in the two decades I’ve worked with the product. The actual syntax might be different, but are we hiring people that remember syntax or accomplish tasks?

    I think that’s the point of certification. It should be a method that gives others confidence that an individual can accomplish a task, or has some basic skill. I’d argue the current set of tests, questions, and even structure of the MCSE/MCITPro/MCSA whatever doesn’t remotely do that. It doesn’t test skills, tests knowledge at the base level of memorization, and fails to provide a basic bar that we can be sure everyone has met.

    Perhaps those aren’t Microsoft’s goals. Perhaps they value their profits higher than the certification that individuals hold skills, perhaps they view these designations as a part of their marketing effort to sell software. Perhaps they have other goals. All I know is that as long as employers ask for these certifications in job postings, as long as employers pay for tests and candidates take them, why should Microsoft change?

    If we all believe the emperor has clothes, does it matter if he really wears any?

    Steve Jones

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  • No More MCM

    This is part 1 of a 3 part series of thoughts on certification and Microsoft technologies.

    I’ve heard that Friday afternoon is the best time to fire someone. People are leaving early, the office is quiet, and you can let people go quickly and get yourself away. It also gives the remaining employees some time to grieve, and hopefully, come back to work Monday without some of the shock they initially experienced. At least, that’s what they say. Personally I think there’s no good day, and productivity always suffers somewhat whenever there’s surprising, upsetting news.

    Recently, just before the US Labor Day holiday, late on a Friday, I saw a number of announcements on Twitter that the MCM program had been discontinued. Since I was on holiday, I thought I’d missed something, but apparently not. It was late on a Friday that the an email was sent to all MCMs and MCAs notifying them of the change. It was a brief email, noted here, and didn’t include some of the reasons of that were given as a comment in a Connect item filed to save the program (the comment was from Tim Sneath at 1:32pm). There’s been a variety of coverage and blogs around the Internet as well.

    We aren’t being told the whole truth, nor do I expect to be told the whole truth. This is Microsoft’s program, and as such, we follow along and adjust, or choose to ignore it. In this case, I can’t believe that this was anything other than a cost based issue, designed to reduce expenses and raise profits. In all likelihood, someone(s) bonus depended on internal Microsoft Learning metrics being met (probably revenue or profit numbers), which the MCM/MCA program were reducing. In an effort to look better, the program was chopped, without a lot of input, communication, or discussion with the people actually working to better the program. I expect Tim Sneath and others were caught off guard with the decision and told to deal with it. They did so poorly, extremely poorly. In hindsight, I’m sure someone wishes they’d composed a better message and delayed sending it for a couple days.

    I attempted the first part of the MCM early on, with a voucher. I didn’t pass, but I learned how hard the exam was, realized it was within my capabilities, but that it would require some serious study. I didn’t proceed further because of other commitments, but I’ve watched more and more people work through the MCM process, usually over months or years as they learn, struggle, research, and drive themselves forward.

    Ultimately the achievement isn’t the certification, but the journey. The efforts candidates go through, the knowledge they acquire from study and hard work, and perhaps more importantly, the skills they build to teach themselves new techniques. I wouldn’t hire an MCM because I was sure they necessarily knew everything about my environment. I’d hire them because I would be 100% confident they could find the problem and fix it, no matter whether they used old knowledge or acquired new proficiency on the spot.

    That was the real value of someone who completed, or even seriously worked towards, an MCM.

    Steve Jones

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