I’m curious if you agree with my assertions.  You also have the added advantage of hindsight, since I wrote these a while ago.

[READ MORE]

Toad's Gone All Sci-Fi on us. Engage, Number 1!

Quest Software is proud to announce the launch of the Toad for Cloud Databases community site.  You can also get the free Toad for Cloud product here.  It’s in beta, but definitely worth a try.

If you’ve wondered what’s over the horizon, I encourage you to take a look at this interview with Billy Bosworth, the head of Quest’s database tools group.  (Yes, he’s the guy who signs my checks).  We are now experiencing more disruptive technologies in the world of data than we have seen in nearly two decades. Perhaps your database is better suited for the cloud or maybe you want to investigate using a data store as part of your application architecture that isn’t even relational.  Imagine if you were empowered to take advantage of these new database technologies, when and where it makes sense.

Believe me, cloud databases and the NoSQL movement is not a passing fad.  It will have an impact on the way you do business – maybe not today, but not as far in the future as you might think.

Check it out.  And as always, I welcome your feedback.

Enjoy,

-Kev

Twitter @kekline

I Never Could Hang 10 (Minutes) on Google Wave

While enduring an endless series of flight delays and disgruntled passengers in the Baltimore airport that was my own personal travel hell on the evening of Thursday, August 5th, I came across this interesting and important article:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/google-kills-wave-its-collaboration-tool/?ref=technology

Even if you don’t read the article, you can see from the URL that Google has decided to put an end to the collaboration experiment known as Wave.  Wave will be available through the end of the year and most of its major components are now available as open source, should any devotees choose to continue developing the code base.  However, Wave didn’t reach the critical mass that Google was looking for and, without that critical mass of users, it wasn’t seeing a lot of innovation or updates to the features or UI. I view Google’s reach of 1M users as a “failure” with a bit of grin.  How  many other vendors out there would consider 1M users too few?  Otoh, if they wanted really wide adoption, why in the world did they require a private invitation?  Superior products are frequently hampered by inferior marketing and market delivery, this being a really good example.

Slide to the Rescue?

More Fun than Google Slide?

I also feel the need to point out that I have a lot of respect for Google giving the old heave-ho to a product that needs to go.  Many companies cling to a great idea, funneling huge amounts of resources into what everyone else can see as a black hole.  Failure, under vibrant and forward thinking leadership, is only success delayed.  Read Google’s take on the situation here.  Certainly, this means we’ll see Google pushing their new social media acquisition, Slide, much more as well. And, since many of the technological bits of Wave will live on, I’m sure we’ll see Slide advance in interesting ways.

Frankly, I found the general idea of Wave to be fascinating and powerful.  But after spending quite a bit of time, like at least 20 minutes, tinkering around with it, I still had no idea how to do anything with it.  I was so motivated to use it that I almost watched one of the videos that they’d posted to train you.  But honestly, am I just ridiculously jaded or has the overall market for cloud-based apps moved the bar for ease-of-use that anything that takes more than 15 minutes to figure out is drama?  I hate to say it, but I think the answer is a resounding “YES”.  By extension, I think that this is the main reason that email still trumps all other methods of collaboration. (Yes, that includes Microsoft SharePoint too for all you fanboys.)  That is, email does not disrupt any existing workflows, it has a clean UI, it doesn’t make you learn new ways of working, and it’s so widespread that you’re not hampered by a product that has a very limited user base.

Great Idea Leads To Great Product Success, Right?

The Graveyard of Ideas

I also feel that Google Wave is a good example of a technological solution looking for a problem, as well as a product looking for a marketing message.  When launching a product, it’s crucial to have a crystal clear message to a well-defined audience.  Any ambiguity in the message or muddling of the audience can spell doom.  And, IMO, Google clearly missed the boat on both counts.  Many of their demos were all about sharing photos.  Uh, ever heard of Facebook, n’est pas?  Then again, many later PR was about collaboration.  Then how come we didn’t get smokin’ hot project management demos?  A book that I recommend called The Innovator’s Prescription (website is here) says it very well:

“The graveyard of failed products and services is populated by things that people *should* have wanted–if only they could have been convinced those things were good for them. The home-run products in the marketing hall of fame, in contrast, are concepts that helped people more affordably, effortlessly, swiftly, and effectively do what they already had been trying to get done.” (Christensen, The Innovator’s Prescription, p. 16)

I really like Christensen’s point.  So many people who build products focus on the “should” of a product, as in “this should make a lot of people happy”, over and above providing an effortless aid to people’s daily tasks.   This leads me to a topic for another day, user-interface design.  But enough writing for now.  It’s bed time.

So what are your thoughts?  Do you think other factors contributed to Wave’s decline?

Thanks!

-Kevin

Twitter @kekline

If you’re wondering whether to hedge your long-term bets on cloud computing, this should help you solidify your thinking.

Microsoft has been building a dream team for Azure, including the patriarch of Windows (and father of Windows NT) Dave Cutler.  Tweets from several Microsofties reveal that another revered technologist, Mark Russinovich of SysInternals fame has also joined the team.  When almost all of the heavy hitters in a company like Microsoft go to work on a single exciting new technology, you can easily tell which direction the wind is blowing.  I encourage you to get on board soon with cloud computing, at least in experimentation mode.  Read more about Russinovich joining the Azure team here.

Protect Your @$#% Content, or, Lots of New Content on KEK.com

I’ve been enjoying two new features of WordPress over on my professional website which is missing here on SQLblog.com – scheduled blog posts and auto-tweets. What got me thinking about using scheduled blog posts and auto-tweets, you ask?  For starters, my friend and former colleague, Brent Ozar, put a lot of thought and time into the question “Who Owns Your Content?”.  Then, to add fuel to the fire, two of Quest’s best marketing minds, Christian Hasker and Andy Grant, took a survey of all the places I was posting my thoughts and IP, which led to some great advice from Andy.  I’d initially thought that by writing in multiple places and on many other websites, it would promote my content.  But a quick analysis showed that I was giving without getting anything in return, not even recognition.  I was easily writing three or four magazine style articles per month with very little to show for it, not even ping-backs to my website.

Protect Your What!?! (Audio is Not Quite SFW).

The schedule blog posts have come in very handy.  First, I’d decided a while back to start talking more about what I do at Quest Software and the products that I’m a part of.  Since I don’t want to come across sounding like a schill, I decided that I’d put those posts on my own website and not torture you with those posts where I’m syndicated.  If you’re interested in posts about products like LiteSpeed or Toad for SQL Server, you can check for my regularly scheduled posts to appear on Wednesday morning.  I’ve now got a nice little queue of Quest-related posts for many Wednesdays to come.

Second, I’ve also decided to attempt to bring in more of the content I’d written for other websites and channels into KEK.com.  So I’ve scheduled a series of posts that bring in other content I’ve written and/or recorded elsewhere.  For example, Thursdays mornings are the time where I’ll post my YouTube video clips.  Since I already had a ton on YouTube, I’m putting those up via scheduled posts for the next several weeks.  Of course, I’ll also be posting new videos.  But it’ll be good to have all of my old videos up there too in a single place.

Finally, as I mentioned before, I’d written a couple long-term columns without ever getting even one extra website hit from all that work, such as my professional development articles for SQLPass.org.  I’m pulling those back onto KEK.com and will continue those columns, but as elements of my own blog.  You’ll see more about them here when they’re posted.

The Week In Review

Timeliness has never been a strong point for me.  I’m such a procrastinator, in fact, that I’m still trying to decide if I’ll go to my 20th high school reunion in 2005.

Having said that, here are some recent blog posts on KEK.com that you might enjoy:

• Video: Disk IO Tuning and Optimization for SQL Server 2005: This video contains a lot of IO-related tips that are still applicable to SQL Server 2008 and R2, especially if you’re not on a SAN.
• The All-new LiteSpeed: The newest release of the LiteSpeed backup and recovery tool has tons of new features and capabilities.  Read about it here.
• Fast Features Video: Toad for SQL Server:
• Windows Azure Bootcamp: There’s still time to take advantage of these free Windows Azure training classes.

I hope these are of some value and hope to hear your feedback.  Thanks and enjoy!

-Kevin

Twitter @kekline

More content at http://KevinEKline.com

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.

And give me your feedback here! Thanks,

-Kev

Jack Handy, famous from Saturday Night Live

Just wanted to let you know that a TechNet Radio episode and interview I did about cloud computing is now live on TechNet Edge. It was the featured spot on Thursday, June 3^rd and is also featured on the TechNet homepage.

I’ve been trying to wear more of an analyst’s hat these days, so this webcast has a lot of my “deep thinking” on issues related to cloud computing – hopefully at a higher level of quality that Jack Handy.

A salient point that I think many analysts are overlooking is the changing nature of data as it exists in the cloud.  For decades, data has primarily been about people (and their activities) for consumption by other people.  The cloud is enabling a major shift in data generation and consumption where data is produced by machines for consumption by other machines.  We’ll soon be looking at situations, now rather rare, in which sensors are extremely commonplace.  These sensors, whether they be in traffic signals or high-end medical devices, will create enormous amounts of data far more frequently than ever before, loading that data directly into cloud databases.  The cloud databases will consume and process the data and, when automated analysis (made all the easier through features like StreamInsight in SQL Server 2008 R2) will flag important findings for review by a real-live human being.  Check out the interview for several real-world examples being played out even as we speak.

Here is a direct link:

http://edge.technet.com/Media/TechNet-Radio-Microsoft-SQL-Azure-Growing-Opportunities-for-Data-in-the-Cloud/

Or  if brevity is your thing and you prefer a surrogate key over a natural key:

http://bit.ly/cdLTeP

Perhaps I can persuade you to blog, tweet, or place a link to it in your Facebook or team newsletter?  Maybe with a few deep thoughts? Please?  Pretty please?

And I welcome your deep thoughts and responses here.

Enjoy,

-Kev

Notice the bluetooth ear piece fashion faux pas? Yes, she's truly a geek.

I’m happy to report that Barbie is now a cognizeti, a digerati, … yes even an IT Professional! This year’s new Barbie is Computer Engineer Barbie.

Several months back, I encouraged all my friends and followers on Twitter to vote for the IT job for Barbie in Mattel’s recent public job selection for the eponymous doll.  That encouragement was founded in an experience I’d had years earlier – becoming a dad to a very beautiful baby girl.  When I was growing up as a kid, I clearly recall how odd it was for a woman to have a career outside of a handful of “traditional feminine jobs” like teacher, nurse, telephone operator or secretary.  It wasn’t until years later, as a new dad, that I realized how asinine this preconceived notion really was (and, in fact, still is in many cultures around the world). I even wrote about this a few years ago in my personal blog, where I mentioned how I’d love to see my daughters grow up and take on an IT career.

Sadly, many IT professional societies report dramatic imbalances in gender demographics.  For example, the IEEE Computer Society reports that their membership is only 7% female. Similarly, universities in the USA shows about a 10% representation of female faculty and 14% of their students in computer-related majors.

One of the things I’d always found to be rather amazing about PASS was it’s strong emphasis on Women in Technology (WIT).  In fact, as far as database professional societies go, PASS was the first to work hard to make WIT prominent within its culture (although I believe that the International Sybase User Group had a WIT group before PASS).  I’d like to also give credit to the women within PASS who made this happen.  I can’t even begin to list them all here, but without them, WIT at PASS would not have been possible.  A few women who immediately come to mind include Rebecca Laszlo, , Kalen Delaney, Denise McInerny, Kathi Kellenberger, Stefanie Higgins, Lynda Rabb, Kimberly Tripp, and many many more.

All of these outstanding women deserve accolades for making PASS a welcoming place for women.  Don’t think that it’s a big deal?  You should attend an IT conference without a strong WIT community – you’ll see the difference in 30 seconds flat.  (I’m not going to name any names here.  But attend the top conferences for certain IT companies headquartered in Redwood City, California or Armonk, NY and you’ll see what I mean).

So, thank you ladies, for making PASS in particular and the overall Microsoft SQL Server community much better for everyone by making it better for women.  I hope to see this trend continue and for your contributions to continue to improve our community.

-Kevin