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September 2008 - Posts
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At the moment the world has been plunged into what a lot of financial analysts are calling the "global share market bloodbath." Overnight the Dow Jones lost 778 points, which is its largest point decline in history. Many people are directly affected by the decline in global share markets. The impact is far reaching, from loans being foreclosed to people losing significant amounts of their retirement funds.
I was listening to the podcast this WEEK in TECH on the drive home from a client site tonight and although the podcast was several day's old it provided an interesting analysis of what the economic downturn means for the technology industry. Although investment in the technology sector will be reduced as people do not have as much capital to spend, it also heralds opportunities for many other companies. Many companies that are founded in times of economic downturn manage to survive and prosper. Harsh economic climates force companies to be frugal with their spending. An example of this is Amazon.com, which despite the dot-com bubble burst was able to survive and prosper and actually delivered a profit in 2001. I think one of the important lessons is to look at what is being spent and determine whether this spending is helping to add a return to the business.
- Peter Ward
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When my wife and I travel we are big fans of going on a road trip. I think one of the things we enjoy is the adventure, as you are never quite sure what you will find along the way. It could be coming across a spectacular lookout just as the sun is setting or it may be something as simple as finding the best fish tacos in the world. I was talking to a colleague today who is heading to the US for PDC next month. He is using the opportunity of attending PDC as an excuse to take a few days off for the holiday while in the US.
After telling my wife about the holiday my colleague had planned, we decided that we should plan another US road trip. The last road trip we took in the US was for the last PASS Summit, which was held in Denver. We drove from LA to Denver and clocked up over 2,000 miles in the process. This would be one of the most memorable road trips we have been on, not because we were driving on the opposite side of the road but because of the spectacular scenery we came across whilst driving through the middle of Arizona. At this stage we are planning to drive from LA to Seattle in late February next year for the MVP summit. So if you have any ideas on where we should stop along the way I would love to hear your suggestions.
- Peter Ward
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James Luetkehoelter recently wrote an interesting blog post that was an open letter to vendors pleading them not to use the SQL Server sa account. I agree with James's sentiments that there is no reason for an application to use the sa account. However, I think that until more organisations start to include a clause in their development contracts that stipulates that the application must connect with an account other than sa, vendors will continue to develop applications that rely on the sa account. There are countless third-party applications that not only connect using the sa account but also have a blank password.
Although vendors continue to follow the practice of using the sa account I don't think they are 100% to blame. If you think of the Windows world, typically system administrators no longer use the administrator account and they ensure that their accounts are no longer a member of domain administrators. However, when I think of the SQL Server world, if I had a dollar for every time that I had heard someone ask what the as password was so they could login, I would be a very rich man. I think that database administrators should lead by example by not using the sa account, only then can we expect that vendors do not use the sa account.
- Peter Ward
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It is getting towards that time of the year when I normally start to think about buying a new laptop. This year I am thinking of doing something a little different. Rather than buying one laptop, I am seriously contemplating buying two. Dell has recently announced the specifications for their new monster laptop. This laptop not only contains a quad-core processor but also will support up to 16GB of RAM. This laptop is actually more powerful than many of the servers that SQL Server runs on.
Although the laptop has some fantastic specifications, the problem with a laptop this powerful is that the battery life is typically less then optimal, especially if it is optioned with dual 1TB hard drives. As someone who typically flies at least once a week, battery life is important. There is no point having a powerful laptop if the battery does not last for several hours, as this can mean the difference between a productive and an unproductive flight. With the prices of computer hardware continuing to fall, I am seriously considering purchasing an ultra mobile notebook such as an ASUS Eee PC. With a laptop this size, there will be no issue fitting it on a tray table in economy class. Which laptop have you currently got your eye on purchasing?
- Peter Ward
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As SQL Server 2008 has now been released for eight weeks, the first Cumulative Update (CU) has appeared. Cumulative Update 1 contains the hotfixes for issues that have been fixed since the release of SQL Server 2008. The details for downloading this CU can be found here.
Cumulative Updates are part of the Incremental Servicing Model that was introduced in SQL Server 2005. Under this model a CU is released every eight weeks. However, there still appears to be confusion as to whether a CU should be treated like a hotfix or a service pack. What I find interesting is the wording in the disclaimer for a CU: "If you are not severely affected by any of these problems, we recommend that you wait for the next SQL Server 2008 service pack that contains the hotfixes in this cumulative update package." A colleague of mine sarcastically said that this is because the cumulative updates are not regression tested, hence if installing the CU causes a problem it can be argued in court that the server was not "severely" affected by the issue and the CU should not have been applied. Now I am no legal expert, but perhaps he was on to something?
- Peter Ward
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Documentation is an important component in the governance of any project; however, I sometimes feel that more time is spent on documentation than the project itself. Large projects are full of all sorts of documents ranging from terms of reference and requirements through to technical solutions. One document that is often found in the collection of project documentation is a business case. A business case typically captures the reasoning for a project and includes resources such as the cost to deliver the project or the effort required.
I was talking to a colleague today who was writing a business case with a difference. In the business case he was comparing three different SAN solutions. Rather than recommending a solution this document contained a technical description of the three solutions that was being submitted to the board to decide on. Now this would potentially be OK if the board was technical, however, as the company was a textile manufacturer, apart from cost I doubt that the board knew what the difference between SATA and Fibre Channel storage was. This was one of those times when I think that documentation was being performed almost for documentation's sake. A technical evaluation of the options should have been performed and then a paper presented to the board to approve the expenditure listing the positives and negatives for each option and a recommendation. Do you have documentation that is part of your projects that is meaningless to the audience?
- Peter Ward
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I was reading an article today about a company that is providing a gigabyte of storage in the cloud for $0.15 per month. This equates to about $180 per year for 100GB of storage. This sounds cheap but when you compare this cost to a Seagate Barracuda, which retails for $300 for 1TB of storage, the cost is only $30 for 100GB of storage. I find it funny that many companies scrimp on storage when it is a relatively inexpensive commodity. I have lost count the number of times that I have needed to hunt around to make extra space on a server in order to restore a copy of a database. When you compare the economics of storage space to toilet paper, it is questionable as to why many organisations do not have sufficient storage capacity.
A recent survey released by the makers of Charmin-brand toilet paper estimates that the average person uses 67 sheets of toilet paper per day. A typical pack of toilet paper contains six rolls and retails for $6.00 and the average toilet roll has 240 sheets per roll. This means that a pack of toilet paper containing six rolls will last the average person about 21 days. If you amortize this cost out then toilet paper costs $104.00 per year. As 30% of your time is spent at work, it costs a company $31.20 a year per person to supply toilet paper. So next time your boss does not approve an extra 100GB of storage for the SAN mention that it will cost more for the company to supply you toilet paper for the next year then it will for the storage.
- Peter Ward
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In a lot of projects there is a formal handover process or acceptance procedure when a product is developed and then released into production. This process normally involves various teams verifying that the product is complete and potentially signing a formal handover document. The release procedure is often a combination of formability and relief that the work is finally over. A lot of ship events that I have been to are almost a party with a few drinks and a sigh of relief that the product has shipped (hopefully on time and on budget).
The following video of SQL Server 2008 being approved for shipping shows that there is very little difference between the release process for SQL Server and the release process adopted by many organisations. I am sure that hiding behind that whiteboard was an esky full of beer just waiting for the camera to stop rolling. I hope you have a great weekend especially if you are shipping a release.
- Peter Ward
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Over the last few days the financial markets around the world have gone from bad to worse. The "Credit Crunch" continues to affect many organisations and not just those that are in the financial sector. Many companies are starting to lay off staff as the banks all around the globe continue to struggle with their efforts to keep liquidity in the financial market. HP has announced that it will cut almost 25,000 jobs from their workforce, which equates to about 7.5% of the total workforce. The future looks even bleaker for those in the financial sector as it is expected that over 110,000 jobs will be axed from the financial sector in Britain by the end of this year.
It is an interesting time for those that are working in any part of the market, as there are very few industries that are not being affected by the current fragility of the worldwide economy. Although many people may fear for their jobs, I think that IT is actually one of the safer options. IT has the ability to streamline business processes in order to help reduce costs. In other words it does not need to be a cost centre as it can potentially generate significant savings for an organisation. So what are you doing to assist in reducing costs in the current economic climate?
- Peter Ward
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I consider myself to be a fairly fast typer, albeit it with two fingers. No matter how hard my teachers in technology classes at high school would try, I never got the whole concept of touch-typing with all my fingers. However, I am sure that using my two fingers that I could now out type most all of my teachers. Although being able to type is an important skill I am not sure how important the ability to type fast is to people who choose a career in IT and focus on the Microsoft platform.
I was working in a café today with a friend of mine that works in IT but in the Linux space as a systems administrator. While I was finalising an upcoming Reporting Services course that I am delivering he was making changes to DNS for one of his clients. What amazed me was not the number of commands that he was typing but the sheer speed at which he was typing. When I asked what he was doing after feverishly typing for several minutes, he responded that he was still making DNS changes. As someone that worked as a systems administrator back in the NT 4 days, I know how easy it is to make a DNS change. Simply open DNS manger and with a couple clicks and typing a few IP addresses the change is made. In some ways I think that not working in a command line environment has meant that typing speeds have dropped, as there is no longer a need to type reams of commands to achieve something simple. Do you think fast typing is still a skill that a DBA should have?
- Peter Ward
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I think that owning a home is very much like being a database administrator. When you first purchase a home everything is all shiny and new; however, once you move in and start to live in it you start to notice the details that you overlooked previously, such as a missing light bulb or a broken window hinge. Now these things don't need to be addressed straight away, but there is an impact if they are not looked at. For example, by not replacing a broken hinge additional wear occurs on the other hinges meaning that they will need to be replaced sooner and potentially the extra load could cause a split in the window frame to occur.
As database administrators often we will identify small imperfections in the environments that we manage such as a failed job or maybe a query that is taking a little longer than usual to run. Just like the window's hinge, if these issues are left unchecked then additional problems may arise. If the job that was failing was a job that performed the database backups and a recovery needed to be performed, you can imagine the impact that this potentially could have. Do you have a maintenance process that you use for the SQL Server instances that you mange to ensure that issues are identified and addressed before the whole house falls down around your ears?
- Peter Ward
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I read a comment on a blog today that very few people in IT that are classified as IT professionals subscribe to RSS feeds, whereas those that are classified as developers subscribe to RSS feeds. Personally, I would consider a DBA to be classified as both an IT professional and a developer. I think a good DBA is someone who not only understands how infrastructure impacts the database but also understands how applications access data. I have met plenty of DBAs that do not know the impact that different versions of RAID has on a transaction log and I have also met plenty of DBAs that do not know how to optimise ADO performance. So what type of DBA are you classified as, or do you sit in the middle between IT professional and developer?
- Peter Ward
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There is a saying that there are two things in life that are unavoidable, death and taxes. Well I think that there is a third thing that is unavoidable, and that is moving house. Today my wife and I finalised all of our packing and started to move things across to our new house in preparation for the removalists tomorrow. Thankfully, our new house is less than 500 meters away from where we are currently living. I think that a person only has a certain number of moves in them before they are unable to move anymore. As a child my wife moved almost every year whereas on the other hand I lived in the same house for 20 years. That being said this is our fifth house as a couple in the last eight years. The problem with moving is not the moving part put the packing and unpacking associated with moving. Once you have moved there is typically a sense of satisfaction with the new residence.
In life just as in work there are things that we do that we do not want to do; however, there is a certain sense of satisfaction once they have been completed. For example, as a database administrator one of the most mundane chores can be performing maintenance tasks. Although maintenance tasks are not the most exciting functions they are certainly the most important. The sense of achievement comes from these tasks when there is a need to recover data for one reason or another. As a DBA what are the tasks that you most dread?
- Peter Ward
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In the past it was expected that organisations would supply staff with stationary supplies such as notepads and pens. Times have changed and now very few companies supply stationary anymore. This could be because of cost saving measures, but I think it has more to do with the fact that computers have taken over from pens and pencils as the writing implement of choice.
As a consultant I always supply my own computer equipment and software when onsite with customers. While onsite with a customer today I started to think about how laptops have become so prevalent and that they are no longer a device restricted to the workplace. You can now purchase a laptop for less than $500 and it will perform all the tasks that the majority of users require such as e-mail and word processing. I always find that when I use my own computer I am much more productive as it has all the tools that I need and is configured just the way that I like it. So I wonder how long it will be until companies stop supplying staff with a laptop and they bring their own much the same way that staff today often supply their own stationary?
- Peter Ward
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The primary goal of a database management system (DBMS) is to store and retrieve data. However, there is no point storing the data unless consistency can be ensured. That is, the data is not corrupted by the DBMS, and when you store three widgets in the database and query the number of widgets, three is returned and not some other number. I came across an interesting feature in MySQL today. Apparently, when MySQL is run on Windows Server 2008 there is an issue with the query cache so that the data that is returned by a query is not guaranteed. That is, if your query returns three widgets, there is no guarantee that this is actually the number of widgets stored in the database.
The fix to this particular problem is to run the version of MySQL on Linux instead of Windows. To me, this is like saying that you can't watch a DVD on an LCD TV but must instead purchase a black-and-white TV. I am sure that there are many stories like this of software not running on a particular version of Windows but I have never come across a product that is designed to run on Windows but needs to be installed on a different operating system in order to ensure that the data is consistent. Have you ever come across an issue like this before?
- Peter Ward
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