I’m starting a new series called Sequels for SQL Server. In this series, I point you to sites where you can go beyond the nose-to-the-grindstone resources that we see every day as SQL Server professionals. These are the story that comes after and outside (the sequels) of our daily working lives (the other SQL). Let’s broaden our horizons together. If you hit on an interesting but overlooked topic, I’d like to hear from you.
Professional Development: Because there are two words in “database professional”.
Peter Drucker, one of the greats in management thought-leadership, would’ve turned 100 last week were he alive today. Check out these top 20 quotes from the man who revolutionized management theory.
Society: Important issues to discuss with your friends and family.
Quoting the Motley Fool, “We spent the latter half of 2008 feeling the wrath of “too big to fail.” Today, banks are bigger than ever. We need to end that. Now.” It’s Time to End “Too Big to Fail”. Read this thought-provoking article soon.
WorldView: If James Bond knows that the world is not enough, then so should I.
The smartest analyst on international issues out there, Fareed Zakari, discusses US and Indian relations in this insightful article from Newsweek.
I was happy to hear that the magazine Database Trends and Applications had recently relaunched their website. While I’d been a columnist there for a quite a while, I’d never been able to easily find my own articles nor check to see if they’d generated any interest. DBTA has changed all of that with their relaunch. I was also surprised, upon closer examination, that I’d been writing there for more than a year. Check to see if any of these articles are of interest to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
The November article just went live this week. The site traffic is 79% North America, with India and the UK as the next largets readership markets. It was heartening to see a relatively high level of interest in the “Code of Ethics for DBA’s” among other topics.
If you are perceiving a trend or overarching issue in the SQL Server world, I’d love to hear your input. Drop me a note here or use one of the methods available on http://KevinEKline.com/Contact/ to get in touch with me directly.
I’ve opined in the past about how strongly I think the health care industry in the USA needs a does of information technology. One profession making impressive strides in this area is America’s nurses.
On the one hand, we have NDNQI, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI®). NDNQI is a repository for nursing-sensitive indicators collected at the nursing unit level. Since it began in the late 1990’s, the program has added many hospitals as well as additional data points (that is, the quality indicators). Lots of useful resources and good reading can be found here.
In addition to NDNQI, we have some excellent work being done by the Veteran’s Administration in their VANOD (VA Nursing Outcomes Database) project, which you can read about here. VANOD is also discussed in a nice presentation by the program manager here. You can download the PPT file directly here.
By tracking health care practices in aggregate and monitoring their outcomes, we can find direct correlation or, even better causation, for better health of patients when multiple practices can be used. For example, let’s say there are a few competing standard practices around the routine for taking the temperature of patients in a hospital – some take temperatures manually in the morning, some take temperatures manually in the evening, and a luck few who can afford the equipment take temperatures automatically through a sensor on the patient. If the data in aggregate is able to show that the automated method yields a measurable improvement in outcomes, then that approach can justified against the expense because we know patients are doing better. The American Nurses Association (ANA) reports on such progress here.
Additional technologies of interest are being reported, such as this article at www.SmarterTechnology.com and this article at www.InformationWeek.com. In fact, in indication of the importance health care information technology, InformationWeek has a really good portal dedicated just to that at http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/index.jhtml.
Congratulations to the ANA and to the VA for transforming data into actionable knowledge!
Here are a couple of nifty resources that you should bookmark.
Microsoft Answers
Join the conversation as a community leader through a new, fast-growing Microsoft site called Microsoft Answers. The site currently focuses on Microsoft’s consumer products starting with Windows Vista. Throughout the fall (actually, starting on September 28th), Microsoft began to add forums for Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows Live Services (in English, with other languages to follow starting back in October). Forums for Office will also be added later, with more consumer products to be added as the Microsoft Answers community grows.
Microsoft Answers is already live in the English language– go to http://answers.microsoft.com to view the existing forums. On September 28 (PST), Microsoft Answers will also offer community forums around Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Live Services.
You’ll need to register, but if you are currently registered with MSDN and/or TechNet, your credentials and user profile will automatically be recognized by the Microsoft Answers site via your Windows Live ID). If you want to tweet about this, use the #MSAnswers hashtag.
WebSite Spark and Web Application Tool Kits
Microsoft has also announced WebsiteSpark featuring a number of Web Application Toolkits to the Web. Web Application Toolkits are designed to enable Web Developers to extend their web application capabilities simply and easily by providing them with a packaged set of running samples, templates and documentation – all in a consistent packaged format that is easy to download and run in a very short period of time.
One of the key criteria that I really like about the Web Application Toolkits is that they’re designed to enable Web Developers to get to an F5 (Run) experience very quickly and ensure that this is the right solution for their problem. I’ve always felt that coders are much more like artists than they are like engineers. And every good artists knows that they key to a great piece of art is the initial sketch. Unfortunately, our application development tools frequently constrain us from making a sketch in code, running it, and then refining it. After all, how many times have you heard about or been the developer who spent hours getting a sample to work, only to find it does not do the expected?
Microsoft WebsiteSpark includes 7 Web Application Toolkits (at the time of launch, maybe there are more now?), together with an introduction to the Web Application Toolkits on Channel9 by James Senior and Jonathan Carter. Me likey the Channel9. The example scenarios were selected based on feedback from community developers with the first 7 being detailed below:
You can find the complete list of Web Application Toolkits here. Microsoft plans for several more and are exploring additional ways to make it easier for Web Developers to find and reuse this content.
The Economist, my favorite news and analysis magazine, published an outstanding briefing and analysis on the coming wars of ascendancy between the major vendors of cloud computing technology and services. When a technological shift bubbles up into the mainstream news media, the technology has gone through a significant, society-altering right of passage. As technologists, we all know that the “outside world” doesn’t really get what we do. It doesn’t click for grandma that you’re doing difficult and important work because it’s hard to wrap your head around low-level technological work. And, unfortunately, most technologists can’t explain what they do on a daily basis without a lot of jargon and techie-speak. So when a major news magazine that speaks to a large number of CEOs and gray-haired types whose closest contact to email is having their admin send a message for them, it’s important to the world at large. Really important.
You can read the briefing here. (Be sure to read the comments. You’ll get some great insight into why cloud computing is a society-altering technology.)
You can read the full multi-page story, for subscribers only, here.
I’ve been rather publicly skeptical about the uptake of cloud computing (though not its significance), compared to some very optimistic prognostications, such as that by my friend and fellow MVP Paul Nielsen. (For a good generalized discussion about SQL Server in the cloud, take a look at Brent Ozar’s posts here.) The important thing I think that is being widely overlooked by we in the trenches is that the biggest issues around who will dominate cloud computing and how those specifications will bubble to the top. We all know and love and work with SQL on a daily basis, yet we forget that databases went through a decades long period in which SQL had no standard. Similarly, I think many of us are beginning to map our minds around cloud computing in the “this is the ways things are” sort of mind frame, instead of the “this is the new Wild West where anything goes” sort of mind frame. The closest analogy that comes to mind is that of the serial bus on my venerable Intel 286 PC. Any time I wanted to connect a product from a new vendor to that serial bus, I had a lot of work ahead. The USB adapter made everyone’s life better, but it was painful getting there.
Something similar is now being played out in the cloud between Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. We can begin to study what sort of applications to deploy in the cloud and how to support them, but if we choose the wrong “serial adapter” we’ll have even more work to do in the future. One or more of these vendors (and their preferred standards and specifications) will rise to the top. But until a leader emerges, you can be that I’ll be hedging my bets by building and deploying applications on internal infrastructures and database platforms.
Quest Software Pain of the Week Webcast: The 5-Minute SQL Server Healthcheck
Join me and Christian Bolton, UK SQL Server MVP and blogger,as we discuss how to quickly evaluate the basic health of your SQL Server environment. You’ll learn about several quick checks you can perform in minutes to determine if critical thresholds are being met—and where you need to resolve issues.
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 8 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. United Kingdom / 5 p.m. Central Europe
Duration: 45-60 minutes
Cost: FREE
Presenters: Christian Bolton, SQL Server MVP & Kevin Kline, SQL Server Expert, Quest Software
One lucky attendee will win SQL Server expert Kevin Kline’s new essential reference book, SQL in a Nutshell. The drawing will be held at the end of the webcast, and the winner will be notified by e-mail.
In previous years, I hardly had time to sit down and catch a breather at a PASS Summit. Between my duties as an officer of PASS, exhibit hall time with Quest Software (my employer), speaking in my own sessions, and meeting with PASS volunteers and community organizers, I was busy from the crack of dawn until midnight all week long.
Fortunately, those grueling marathons are fading into the past. I still have a busy slate ahead of me for next week. But it looks like I’ll even have time to attend some sessions. Yeah! Here’s what I’ve currently got planned:
Monday, Nov 2
Depart for Seattle, 5:10 am. O.M.G. – that means I have to get up before I go to bed.
Book Signing at the Quest Software booth, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, giving away signed copies of Database Benchmarking
Microsoft MVP Insider Event, until 10:00 pm
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Wednesday, Nov 4
Quest Breakfast seminar and live webcast, Simplify Management with DMVs, 7:00 – 8:30 am, along with other SQL Server luminaries BrentO, Buck Woody, Louis Davidson, and Tim Ford.
I’ll also be popping out for meetings with various Microsoft PMs, a dinner with my Quest colleagues, and plenty of time in the exhibit hall at the Quest Software booth.
Chapter Luncheon, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, Expo Hall 4b. Come and join me, especially if you’re anywhere near the local PASS chapter in Music City – Nashville, TN.
Friday, Nov 6
Early departure back to Nashville. In years past, I always had to stay until Saturday morning because of all of the important PASS work going on. The important PASS work still goes on, but it’s in the able hands of a new generation of leaders. As for me, I get to head home to be with my family one day early. Yippee!
I hope to see you there. Don’t forget the really awesome and cool SQL Twitter Bingo, if you’re in to Twitter. The rules are HERE and the bingo cards are HERE.
