Voice of the DBA

Tag: Microsoft

  • The Subtle Push to the Cloud

    With SQL Server 2014 released, there’s the temptation to upgrade for many DBAs. However the licensing costs and debatable improvements in the product will temper the DBA’s enthusiasm with the reality of the ROI seen by management. While reading about the licensing changes, I also saw this note from Tom LaRock, where he wrote about the features most of us aren’t using. It made me think about upgrades, and perhaps the strategy Microsoft is employing.

    As Tom mentioned, the features not being used are Enterprise Edition features. This prevents many of us from upgrading to use them because Enterprise Edition is so expensive. Actually, even Standard Edition is expansive these days, given the per-core licensing, and I suspect lots of companies with SQL Server 2008, 2005, even 2000 are debating whether or not the upgrade is really worth the cost.

    The piece also mentions that Azure is much less expensive in the short term, and you should consider it. Of course at some point the money you pay will be more than buying a license and a server, but that assumes you run them for the same length of time. You’ll likely upgrade at some point, and if you upgrade both hardware and software, the cloud starts to look more attractive.

    It’s not simple to move into the cloud, nor is it appropriate for some applications, but it does seem that Microsoft would prefer to have most companies running in Azure, on a single platform they run, they patch, and they support. Many companies might prefer the same thing, though I do worry that we might find the on-premises version of many products becoming second class citizens. Vendors will spend less on development and support if too many customers move to the cloud.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Lobbying for Change

    I ran across a note recently on Twitter from Adam Machanic. He wrote:  Just spent most of the day working through a subtle PK issue – 1 bad row out of 18M. Would have killed for this. The item in question was a Connect item, one with almost 500 votes. It’s a good one, and I’d encourage you to vote for it. I know that it seems many of these items are never worked on, but some changes make it into the product, so I’d ask you to continue to vote for change.

    When Connect was first introduced, Andy Warren and I debated the value of the platform. On one hand it made good sense to directly feed information back to developers, but on the other hand, it was likely that those items that got more notoriety or votes might get fixed, even if they weren’t necessarily good ideas. The popularity of an item doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one that should be fixed in the product first. We also worried about one of the big problems of the platform and that is that a tremendous amount of noise of entered and it becomes hard to triage the submissions.

    As I watch Connect evolve, I can’t help but think that it’s been mostly a failure from my perspective, with a few notable successes, like Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005. There’s too much noise and too many items ignored. However I also do think that those items that get lots of vots do get more consideration from Microsoft. More votes doesn’t mean that the feature will get fixed, but I do believe the item gets talked about. (As an aside, please vote for more, final Service Packs)

    Personally, I think that raising awareness of possible suggestions or problems is a good idea. I’d love to see a top 10 list of Connect items from MS for consideration every month. Having them highliht some items they’re considering from the list might help focus attention from customers. I don’t think that’s likely, but I wonder if highly debated suggestions might be worth highlighting at SQLServerCentral. Would you like to see a Connect item of the week? Something you could vote on or even debate as a good idea? I would, and I’d consider adding them as a way to help improve the platform that I enjoy working on the most.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • The Data Platform Vision

    Recently the Microsoft Data Platform blog published a piece on what drives Microsoft’s vision. It’s an interesting look at the ways in which data is being used in some businesses as well as the variety of types of situations that must be dealt with. There is this idea that the value derived from having lots of different data was once only used by specialized companies or applications. However today, it’s being more widely analyzed and accepted by more businesses. Of course, the vision is that Microsoft can help those businesses.

    In the cloud.

    I know this piece is more marketing than technical, but I have concerns that Microsoft is not driven by what customers want and need, but is instead seeking to drive customers to their own tooling and offerings in the Azure cloud. While I do like many things about the cloud and think it has a place in the future of many companies, I also think that there are still lots of opportunities, as well as demand from customers, for on-premises solutions.

    I worry that the focus of Microsoft, which can be tightly bound in one idea as they eye more sales revenue, is driven with the idea that everyone, and all applications, will some day be in the cloud. I can’t see that in the future for many businesses, and certainly hope that Microsoft recognizes this. Otherwise many of our hybrid solutions that push some data into the cloud might be backed by PostgreSQL or some other platforms as the on-premises database.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Regrets of the Last Decade

    Microsoft was never an exciting company to me as a kid. I grew up excited by Commodore with their GEOS, early Atari computers and consoles, and the original Macintosh computer. I was fascinated by Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations, running X Windows across multiple machines. The NeXT workstations made early Windows machines seem primitive. When I first worked with SQL Server, it felt like a half-finished product that wasn’t stable on OS/2. Microsoft felt like a pedestrian company that was good for my career, and was trying to grow, but they weren’t exciting.

    Some of that changed in the late 90s as Microsoft embraced the Internet and helped it grow with the ActiveX system. For better or worse, ActiveX seemed to bring life to web sites in a way that Java and other techniques couldn’t. We could argue about the damage that systems like ActiveX and Visual Basic 6 did in terms of application performance and maintainability, but without a doubt these tools caused an explosion of development and no end of work for those of us in technology.

    Developers, developers, developers was exciting and was a great mantra. I believed that Microsoft had really hit upon the key when I heard that. Woo developers, help them build applications, and let the excitement grow. I watched SQL Server mature with it’s expansion into BI areas. I saw Microsoft create the XBOX platform, and build a much better Office Suite than I’d had with Lotus, AmiPro, and others. Microsoft had a time during my career when I thought they were really going to dominate the world of computing.

    However I wasn’t thrilled when Steve Ballmer took over. He wasn’t a geek, and wasn’t one of us. Slowly I felt that the company lost its way. Mr. Ballmer talks about some of his regrets in a piece this week, one of which was Longhown. That project dragged on for years and become the debacle that was Windows Vista. During this same time, SQL Server dragged, taking 5 years to get SQL Server 2005 released. Office seemed to stagnate, offering little reason to upgrade, other than because others were upgrading. The company felt lost, and paled in comparison to the excitement generated by Google and then Apple during the last 12 years.

    As I read the quotes and thoughts in the piece, I have to admit that Microsoft really has quietly advanced. They have had successes and lots of growth, even if the stock price hasn’t skyrocketed. They’ve invested in platforms, research, and technology, internally and through acquisitions, that may help the company maintain its position as a technology leader for some time. For every misstep like aQuantive, Danger and Ray Ozzie, there are advances like Azure and Dynamics. Windows has continued to grow inside enterprises and I rarely see the complaints over scale and capabilities that I remember from early in my career.

    Were the Steve Ballmer years a success or failure for Microsoft? I think I’d call it a maintenance time. Like the manager he is, I think Mr. Ballmer managed the company, without ruining it, but without creating much excitement either.

    Steve Jones