Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Low End

    Are products like Access and VB bad? A long time ago it seemed that if you could spell VB, you could get a job. That was good in some ways as it helped the explosion of growth in technology employment. It was bad because we had many people building applications without understanding software development and we ended up with many buggy, crash-prone applications.

    Someone posted recently  that these “low-end” products had helped them get a job and get started in this business. This person thought my comment was a complaint against these software products, but that’s not the case. I know quite a few people have built or supported applications on Access, VB, or Excel and then gone on to a career with SQL Server. In fact, the first business application I built was on Lotus 1-2-3, using a large combination of macros to help someone with estimating.

    Are “easy-to-use” products like Access or Excel good for business? Should they be used to build applications? Like most things in technology, the answer is “it depends.” Often these are not the basis for a robust system on which you run your business, but they can be. Often there is a need  or desire for something to be built quickly, and cheaply, in order to accommodate some aspect of business. These tools are a way for some type of automation to be assembled quickly and used by business people.

    However you can outgrow these applications and find that something stronger is needed. That’s the time when an IT project makes sense, and arguably, that’s the appropriate time to spend the money.

    I like prototyping useful tools, and Microsoft provides ways to easily accomplish this.  To me, software like Powerpivot seems likely to spur on more projects, not fewer.

    Steve Jones

  • iPads for Christmas

    Recently I mentioned that having a smartphone has made me much more productive. I’m on the move fairly often, and the ability to respond to emails and keep in touch with people, take notes, and check on SQLServerCentral from almost anywhere in the world has become very valuable to me. It certainly is a double edged sword as it is also hard to get away from work. Setting those boundaries is important, and smartphone or not, I would encourage you to make sure you have some boundaries with your employer.

    The iPad is a new device that changes the game in terms of what we can do with mobile devices. It handles remote connectivity in a way unlike smartphones, but is less cumbersome than a laptop and works in many situations where you might not want to carry, or power up, a laptop.

    Back in October, I got an email from my employer, Red Gate Software. Wibke, in the Marketing department, asked for people with iPads to take pictures of themselves using the new SQL Monitor software to remotely monitor servers. It seemed fun to my wife, who got me on a horse for the picture you see here.

    It was contrived, after all, I couldn’t really check on the SQLServerCentral servers from a horse. The ranch is too large, and my wireless signal won’t reach out to the far side of the barn. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t monitor my servers from outside if I had wireless connectivity. You, however, can see how the SQLServerCentral database cluster is running by connecting to the remote demo instance of SQL Monitor and see in real-time how our servers are performing.

    The idea of using an iPad to monitor your servers, and even get work done, however, isn’t contrived. I used my iPad to show off SQL Monitor at SQL Saturday #59in New York City, and I have a friend that manages many of his Windows servers using iTap, a remote RDP program for the iPad. At SQL Connections this year, I was surprised to see quite a few people checking their email in Outlook using RDP technology from an iPad. I asked a few people what they thought and while it was more limited than using a laptop, most of these geeks thought the iPad was more convenient in a remote environment.

    But I Don’t Have an iPad?

    Not many people have iPads, and most of my geek friends find them to be an expensive toy. I mostly agree, but I have found you can definitely use these devices for work. So I’m going to give you a chance to have your own iPad and let me know if you agree.

    Red Gate has decided to sponsor three contests, all of them related to SQL Monitor, and all designed to get you an iPad in time for Christmas. I have 10 iPads to give away, along with 10 licenses of SQL Monitor to install on a server and let you begin using your iPad for work right away. That’s decimal ten, not binary 10, so there will be quite a few winners.

    Actually there will be 30 winners, since Brent Ozar and Grant Fritchey are running their own SQL Monitor/iPad contests and each giving away ten bundles of their own. You can read about Brent’s contest on BrentOzar.com, and Grant’s contest at ScaryDBA.com. Brent is asking where you might go and use an iPad for monitoring while Grant is asking about how this might help you find a better work/life balance.

    My contest is asking a little different question. I’d like you to think a little bit about how you could create new synergies with the iPad. How could you do your job better, a little quicker, or in a new way if you had a small, lightweight tablet with a large screen that gives you the connectivity to reach other computing resources. I’m looking for some creativity and a thoughtful way of freeing yourself from a desk and at the same time bringing some additional value to your employer.

    Think about it a bit and write me an interesting paragraph in the discussion for this editorial. I’ll judge the entries submitted before Friday , Dec 17, 2010 and ship off some iPads to the ten best over the weekend.

    Good luck and send me an interesting note. You can only enter one of the three contests, so think about which one make the most sense for you:

    The fine print rules:

    1. The contest is open to professionals with SQL Server monitoring responsibility. Entrants must be 18 years old or over.
    2. Entries must be received by Friday, December 17, 2010. The contest organizers accept no responsibility for corrupted or delayed entries.
    3. Employees of Red Gate, the contest organizers and their family members are not eligible to participate in the contest.
    4. Entries are limited to one per person across the three simultaneous contests hosted on www.sqlservercentral.com,www.brentozar.com, and www.scarydba.com.
    5. The organizers reserve the right, within their sole discretion, to disqualify nominations.
    6. The organizers’ decisions are final.
    7. Red Gate Software and those involved in the organization, promotion, and operation of the contest and in the awarding of prizes explicitly make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the quality, suitability, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose of the prizes awarded and they hereby disclaim all liability for any loss or damage of any kind, including personal injury, suffered while participating in the contest or utilizing any prizes awarded.

    Important dates

    1. Deadline for entries: Friday, December 17, 2010.
    2. Winner announced in week commencing Monday, December 20, 2010.

    Good Luck to you all and leave me a comment in the discussion for your chance to win. (hint, I talk a touch more in the podcast for what I’m looking for)

    Steve Jones

  • Shrinking Databases

    Every time you shrink a database, an angel gets its wings torn off. Or Paul Randal feels a disturbance in The Force. In other words, don’t do it.

    But people continually do shrink databases. Despite the constant advice and guidance from Microsoft, MVPs, and more, the fact that shrink is available easily in maintenance plans and with a DBCC command, people do it. I understand it since it’s natural to not waste space and so many other tools, like Access and Outlook, have files that only use the spaced needed.  Why not SQL Server?

    It’s Friday, and I thought I might see if there might be a oslution tht makes sense. For this poll, I want to ask you about shrink:

    Should shrink be removed or fixed?

    By removed, I don’t mean completely take it out of SQL Server, but make it harder. Maybe require a trace flag, maybe something else that might reduce the regularity with which it’s run. I’d certainly recommend it be completely removed from maintenance plans, both the wizard and the designer.

    Is there a better solution, however? Should perhaps shrink be fixed to be a more intelligent operation that doesn’t cause lots of fragmentation? Even if it’s slower, or maybe an operation that requires more resources to complete, would it be better to actually “fix” shrink?

    Put your answers in the discussion and let us know what you think

    Steve Jones

  • Certified Private Clouds

    Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, or at least, more and more talked about in the tech press. Like many of you, I am not sure that I want to run my database servers from the cloud, but that might change. I ran across a note that said Microsoft is looking to certify private cloud stacks with a number of vendors, similar to the Fast Track program that they implemented for data warehousing.

    For some time now I’ve felt that to really get large scale adoption of the Azure cloud framework, Microsoft really needed to have a way for corporate IT departments to build and deploy to private, internal “cloud services.” Clouds they could build, expand, and most importantly, secure, according to their own requirements, on their own premises. The idea of trusting a central provider seems foreign to many companies, especially when governments could subpoena your information or the cloud provider could shut down your business. To what extent you are more protected on premises is unclear, but many companies do no want to trust a third party to safeguard their rights.

    The idea of a service that you can deploy to, connect to, and use to abstract your applications away from specific machines is one that makes sense. We constantly build abstraction layers to simplify the interconnections of our systems. The “cloud”, whether public or private, is another extension of this. I know I’d like to be able to manage one large SQL Server cloud, rather than individual machines.

    Actually, it seems like  a lot of the work I’ve done over the years is to try and make all my instances appear as one single group that I can manage together. Kind of my own type of “cloud.”

    Steve Jones