Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Transactionally Consistent

    What does this mean? I had someone ask me in a session recently, and I think I have a good explanation, but I thought this was worth a blog.

    Transactionally Consistent means that there is a snapshot of the database at a point in time that ensures committed transactions are actually reflected in the database and uncommitted transactions are not. I haven’t found a better concise definition, but Paul Randal has a great longer explanation.

    This is reflected in the ACID RDBMS model as the C for consistent.

    In a SQL Server backup process, this is accounted for by including some amount of the transaction log in the full database backup. The amount included depends on your workload and the amount of data you back up, and if you read Paul’s explanation, you’ll understand more.

    Make sure that your backups are transactionally consistent. Don’t export, don’t use open file managers, don’t use anything that doesn’t respect transactions. The native SQL Server backup process does this. If you want a few other features, my employer makes SQL Backup Pro, which also respects transactions.

  • One day in the office

    I got back from SQL Intersection on Wednesday afternoon. I did work a bit, but not too much after traveling and speaking this week. Today I’m in the office, but only today.

    Tomorrow I’m outside.

    I have more vacation scheduled tomorrow, along with Monday and Tuesday. Given the nature of my job, that means I need to ensure things are prepped and scheduled for the next few days until I return next Wednesday.

    It’s been a busy day. Some of my prep was done last week, but with three days in Las Vegas this week at SQL Intersection, I wasn’t completely prepared. I’ve been editing content, scheduling things, recording podcasts and more.

    I’m almost done, which means I should get a good vacation. I should have the chance to start work on another project tomorrow: building a horse shelter.

  • Time Off

    I’m booking vacation. I know I recommend balance, and tell people to take vacation, and that I’m bad at it. My wife is right there with me. I’m not sure who’s worse, but we both struggle to make time away from work. It’s good and bad. We enjoy our careers, but we do need time away.

    My boss told me a few months ago that I had 30 days on the books. I can carry 5 and sell 5, so I needed to take some time off this fall. I did manage to book 4 or 5 days, but I heard from her last week that I still needed to take at least 16 more.

    So….

    Today I went through the calendar, looked at commitments, and decided to take some time off. No full weeks, since my schedule makes that hard. Long periods away from work end up compressing my work into before/after days, which I don’t like. I also have DBW commitments that are hard to move since they impact others.

    However I have a list of 17 days to take off in 1 and 2 day increments.

  • It Still Happens – Full Transaction Log

    Probably the most often asked question on SSC is about full transaction logs, and often full disks. It happened again recently. I don’t have an exact count of threads, but rough searches show this to have 70,000+ results, when most other searches I run show many, many fewer results in the forums.

    I talked about this recently in my backup talk on the SQL in the City tour stops. Back up your logs.