Moore’s Law tells us that CPU’s get a LOT faster over time. Unfortunately for the database professional, all of the secondary elements of our databases DO NOT get a lot faster over time. Overall, the main methods of storing data since the 1960′s, magnetic tape and hard disks, have improved only in the single percentiles year over year. Even those of us who were never good at math can tell that the CPU is outpacing the other system components.
An Osborne Executive portable computer, from 1982, and an iPhone, released 2007. The Executive weighs 100 times as much, has nearly 500 times the volume, cost 10 times as much, and has a 100th the processing power of the iPhone.
Two recent developments are helping to change that equation. First, solid state drives (SSDs) are having a dramatic impact many IT scenarios. My friends, Brent Ozar and Paul Randall, have each written about SSDs here and here, respectively.
Second, database vendors are supporting relational database systems that run entirely in system RAM. If you’d like to learn more about in-memory databases (IMDB), read more in my new article in Data Management Magazine. As we look to the future, I expect to see a lot more of both technologies in the data center.
In the Sequels for SQL 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. (My favorite resource for pan-SQL Server pointers is Steve Jone’s Database Weekly email newsletter.) 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.
SQL Server: We live it. We love it.
When Jimmy May talks, I listen. Not just because he’s a personal friend, but also because he knows what’s what, if you’ll pardon the expression. So when Jimmy says “I believe xPerf will fundamentally change the way I do my job”, then I want to know what the heck this free xPerf management tool is and how I can best leverage it. Check out Jimmy’s blog entry on xPerf here.
Devices & Gadgets: Usually making our lives better, sometimes not so much.
Ever wonder what’s inside one of those tiny USB hard drives? No? Not even a little bit?!? When I started in IT, hard drives where as big as washing machines and cost $60,000 running at speeds in the 100′s of RPMs. My how times have changed. Here’s a fun hack of a USB hard drive – http://www.dansworkshop.com/electricity-and-electronics/usb-hard-drive-hack.htm.
Futurewatch: Important issues just over the horizon.
There are a lot of standard elements of society being rebranded as the “2.0″ version of itself. The 2.0 moniker was first put forward by visionary Tim O’Reilly (blog | twitter), of the eponymous media company. Whenever you see the 2.0 moniker added to the end of something, most famously Web 2.0, then you know that it will include the characteristics of collaboration, interoperability, and user-centered designs. So, whereas the first go at the web in the mid- to late-1990′s was about enabling information retrieval such as transforming printed catalogs into on-line catalogs, Web 2.0 enables all of its participants to comment on, review, rate, and otherwise participating with each other in the use of such a catalog. In the last FutureWatch blurb, I pointed out work on Grid 2.0, centered on efforts to update the USA’s electricity grid. I’m going to do a much more detailed post in the near future about emerging 2.0 efforts, but one to point out now is Gov 2.0. Under this broad set of initiatives, governments from the lowest to highest levels of responsibility are opening up their public databases for consumption by the public. An example of Gov 2.0 in action comes with the President’s SAVE Award, in which the public is invited to vote on their pick for the best money saving tip put forward by federal government workers. Read all about this year’s SAVE Award here.
Humor: I haz da funny.
Weird products in Japan have their own name – chindogu. Most of these are crackpot inventions that everyone knows will never see the light of day, such as these these featured here. However, some of these products DO get marketed and, more amazingly, purchased. Check out the product reviews of this totally bizarro chindogu here at Overstock.com.
Professional Development: Because there are two words in “database professional”.
There are mountains of great websites with tips on how to be a better speaker. Some day, I’ll write a long blog post about my favorite sites for learning how to improve your oration. But if you’re in a hurry, and who isn’t these days, then this blog post at TechRepublic succinctly sums up the advice you’ll find from many other web sites, articles, and blogs.
Society: Important issues to discuss with your friends and family.
One of the most remarkable things about the USA, as a rather biased citizen, is our ability to suck up our pride, admit a mistake, and try to prevent it from happening again. One way that the USA tries to prevent future occurrences is to convene a commission of some kind. I found this analysis by David Leinweber, a Haas Fellow in Finance and Founding Director of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at UC Berkeley, on the commission studying banking market reform in the USA to be quite intriguing and, frankly, upsetting.
WorldView: If James Bond knows that the world is not enough, then so should I.
I’m always on the lookout for issues related to safe and clean water. If you think people can be grumpy when oil is in short supply, imagine what it’s like when there’s not enough drinking water for everyone. See how India is dealing with enormous water issues in this revealing article from the Economist. And I’d be interested to hear what our Indian blogger friends thoughts are on this topic, folks like Rushabh Mehta, Jacob Sebastian, and Pinal Dave. (Water issues have remained one of my passions ever since my years working for NASA developing the water recycling systems for the International Space Station, in which we made water of the H20 that passes through the human body re-drinkable. And it tastes good. Incidentally, all of the technology we developed for this project, as with all non-classified government projects, became public domain. ECLSS technology is now used in hundreds of commercial products ranging from household detergents to commercial solvents to filtration systems.)
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.
Start here to see this revolutionary new technology! I’m not kidding – this is a huge game changer!
Whether you like it or not, our energy landscape is changing. Our children’s energy needs will incorporate all the energy resources we’re currently used to – electricity generated by coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants with automobiles powered by gasoline and diesel. But their energy needs will also be met by a plethora of other sources, such as wind, wave, and solar methods of collecting energy along with cars power by electricity, fuel cells, and possibly alternative fuels like hydrogen and LNG. Today, those energy sources contribute less than 5% of our total energy needs. But, for the next generation, they may contribute 10-25% of the total energy needs in America. Every percentile less hydrocarbon-based fuel that we use represents billions of gallons of oil that we don’t have to import.
One of the biggest obstacles to widespread implementation of any of the alternative energy technologies is the cost of implementation, usually measured as dollars per watt. For example, older solar panels are very costly (usually around $2/w) as are parabolic mirror systems, which also have a large number of moving parts and, thus, high maintenance costs. And big wind turbines, while efficient, are also monumental structures built at great expense with big time maintenance costs. Personally, I really like the promise of wave power because of its constancy. We will always have waves and tides as long as we have the moon. Solar and wind, though, are vexed by inconstancy – the sun sets every night on solar power plants and wind speeds must exceed 12 mph to power a turbine on a typical wind farm. Unfortunately, wave technology is probably about 20 years behind solar in terms of development and has a lot of obstacles to overcome due to the high amount of wear and tear inflicted by the elements.
Wide implementation of any alternative energy can becomes dramatically more effective through tinkering with the equation in one of two ways. The first way is to improve the efficiency of the technology such that it creates many more watts at the same cost. The current record for a solar film is about 20% conversion of sunlight into energy, though commercially available solar cells are only in the low teens of efficiency. On the other side of the equation, we can produce the same or somewhat lower watts (i.e. efficiency), but at a dramatically lower cost. Thus, our $/w ratio is greatly improved on either the dollars-in side of the equation or the energy-out side of the equation. Alter either one and the equation behind the technology starts to look promising.
Here’s an example – it currently costs about $20,000 to $38,000 to place enough solar panels on your home to provide 4 kilowatts of power, about what a standard middle-class American home consumes. A German company just developed a new thin-film solar technology earlier this year which can probably produce nearly as much energy, but for only half the cost. While it doesn’t enable a typical American family to live entirely off the grid, it is more affordable and has a payback period that’s not measured in decades. This technology is still in the lab, so it’ll probably be a few more years before we see it commercially available. (An irony of this scenario is that relatively sunless Germany is one of the foremost leaders in solar technology due to the generous government subsidies in the wider context of energy consumption. IMO, that’s reason enough to consider our own subsidies so that we don’t get left behind on one of the 21st-century’s important industries.)
Now, there’s an even more exciting new breakthrough in the area of wind energy. It’s called the windbelt, invented by Shawn Frayne. I seriously hope that Shawn makes a mint on this idea. But he seems to be taking the even more laudable path of Dr. Jonas Salk, who never exploited his polio vaccine for personal gain. A windbelt is essentially an aeolian harp string covered in the proper energy producing magnetic compounds which, when buffeted by the wind, wavers near conducting elements on the sides of the windbelt. Voila! It produces 10- to 30- times more energy than a turbine. Plus, it’s extremely cheap and easy to make and maintain while requiring only slight winds, rather than the gusty 10+ mph required by turbines.
With proper configuration, you can build them into windfarms. But you could also use this technology for really interesting applications. For example, smart sensors in the HVAC ducts of many of today’s “green buildings” require you to change the batteries every couple of years. Factoring the cost of the batteries and the cost of the maintenance staff, it’s a couple thousand bucks over the life of the sensor. Now, with a tiny windbelt attached to the sensor, you could create recharging sensors that don’t need any light at all, using just a breath of wind from standard HVAC ventilation systems.
