Voice of the DBA

Tag: Microsoft

  • The Redmond Agenda

     

    TechEd 2012
    TechEd 2012 had a lot of cloud focus.

    TechEd was recently held in Orlando, and I watched a few highlights of the event remotely from the ranch in Colorado. One thing was quite apparent from the coverage is that the cloud is very important to Microsoft. They’ve backed off the “everything in Azure” message that we have been seeing for a few years, and I saw quite a few talks and demos about hybrid applications and the private cloud. One that’s located in your data center.

    However the cloud is still important, and I wonder if this piece is true. It talks about five things Redmond doesn’t want you to know, and the first item is that the cloud is first. New releases of products will likely come in the cloud first, and in a version you can buy second. The article mentions Sharepoint, but many other Microsoft products live in the cloud, including SQL Server.

    Is that a bad thing? Many of us complain about the quick release cycles of SQL Server, so having new releases take longer in the box may be preferable. It’s already a challenge supporting two or three versions of SQL Server. If releases continue to come every two years, I suspect many DBAs will be supporting five or six versions in their companies very soon. That will be challenging, especially as many of the monitoring and troubleshooting skills we will build or buy may not work with all those versions.

    I don’t know if the rest of the items listed in the article are true or even important us data professionals. However I do think that if SQL Server moves toward a cloud-first development model, I think it might be something that many DBAs appreciate.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • The Avalanche Upgrade

    Reprinted from Database Weekly.

    Microsoft logos
    The avalanche of products coming this year

    This year, 2012, is quite a year for Microsoft. We saw SQL Server 2012, Systems Operations Center 2012, and released earlier this year. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are due for release later this year. Office 15, Exchange 15, and Sharepoint 15 should enter beta this year, and IE 10 is certain to release at some point. We may even see a new version of Visual Studio in 2012. It is certainly a busy time for the developers up in Redmond.

    However that means that those of us that are working in IT are faced with a blizzard of upgrades. Even if you aren’t planing on performing the upgrades this year, I’m sure there will be requests and no shortage of stealth upgrades taking place in your company. There will certainly be Windows 8 installations coming on new PCs, which means wiping and reimaging.

    One one hand I like seeing Microsoft align the release dates of their products closely. This helps to ensure that the newest features are supported by the other platforms. It also means that we don’t have strange service pack/hotfix combinations of patches needed to get SQL Server to work with Windows or Visual Studio. That doesn’t help us with past products, and there’s already no shortage of compatibility issues between a few of the technologies.

    However this does mean that a lot of new learning and understanding is required in a short time by much of the IT staffs that must support these technologies. With many people dealing with multiple platforms, this means an even busier fall and winter as they try to understand all the changes that they will be tasked with supporting. My advice is that they start working with a product or two and reading about the changes now. That way you will have some background and context for the actual testing you’ll need to do next year.

    I don’t know how many people will upgrade this year, but even if you delay until late 2013, you’ll still have a lot of potential upgrades to plan, test, and schedule.

  • The Face of BI for SQL Server

    Donald Farmerannounced recently that he was leaving Microsoft for QlikView. For many people, Donald has been the face of BI for Microsoft. His many talks on all aspects of the platform have entertained and informed thousands of SQL Server professionals all around the world. However I am sure that many of us will continue to learn from Mr. Farmer in his new role at QlikView.

    Many people outside of Microsoft were sad to see Donald leave, including me. However I support and understand his decision, and I know that there is still an amazing team at Microsoft that will continue to work with the SQL Server BI pros everywhere.

    I felt the same way when others have left the SQL Server team in the past. Some have been good spokespersons or speakers. Donald Farmer leaves a hole that will be hard to fill, but we still have Amir Netz, among others.  Amir is someone that I would always recommend you go see speak, even if you’re not interested in the topic. Like Donald, Amir is entertaining and has an infectious enthusiasm that makes you enjoy the technology.

    There are plenty of other talented people working on SQL Server, and I am sure that we will find some other great speakers to help us learn more as SQL Server continues to evolve in the future.

    Steve Jones

    (originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72200/ )

    Podcasts

  • Community Direction

    When Microsoft implemented Connect, I thought it was a great idea. It was a way for real users to submit bugs, and others to see those bugs, voting on them if they thought they were important. It would help Microsoft determine what features and bugs are important and perhaps allocate resources accordingly. However there was a fundamental problem with the system. People would see individual items, and could vote for them, but wouldn’t have an idea of what other items might be listed.

    The work on SQL 11 is underway, and recently I got a note from Itzik Ben-Gan asking people to vote for windowing enhancements to the T-SQL language. I’m not sure exactly of all the places that these are useful, but Itzik is one of the smartest people I know and I tend to believe that if he finds these enhancements useful, they are likely going to make T-SQL easier to work with.

    But are these items a priority? I am sure they are valuable, but are they more valuable than CREATE or REPLACE? IS it more of a priority than allowing SSMS add-ins? There are any number of enhancements that are listed, but most of us don’t have the time to dig through them all, or even try to determine how important they might be when weighed against other items.

    Microsoft can do what they want, and they need to keep one eye on the sales generated from new features. However I wish that they’d reserve a slice of their development efforts for older features and get some community help in choosing which items to work on. I’d love to see a list of the items they are considering, maybe the top 20 features, and let us add votes to pick the 10 they can work on.

    We may not sign the purchase orders, but us DBAs really like SQL Server and would appreciate improvements that make our jobs easier.

    Steve Jones

    PS: Here are Itzik’s items: