After the misery that was 2009, most of the SQL Server users I talk to are happy that 2010 started in languid fashion. Not that there isn’t a lot of work to do; on the contrary, there’s more work than ever. However, the long hours and multiple projects of 2009, compounded by freezes in all levels of spending, raised the general stress level to unhealthy heights. With the new year, stress levels dropped significantly, and many IT leaders see signs of improving prospects. What does that bode for 2010? I have a couple of predictions, though I doubt they’ll surprise many people. [READ MORE]
One fall semester many years ago, I was a university freshman. Actually, I was anything but “fresh.” I was dumb enough to think that 8 a.m. was a wonderful time to attend Economics 101. After staying up until the wee hours most every night, the “dismal science” took on more than one meaning as I set my clock just early enough to get to class on time. Along with 30 other very naïve classmates, I staggered into class and did my bleary-eyed best to focus on the lessons at hand. There were lots of Greek compound words and lots of graphs.
Graphs Don't Always Help Explain The Situation
I learned, for example, that the word economics derives from the Greek “oikonomikos,” which means, approximately, “death by slidedecks” and, specifically, “house” (oikos) and “management” (mikos). I barely survived the experience and never took an 8 a.m. class again. Imagine my surprise, then, when a lesson I’d learned (and promptly forgotten) all those years ago jumped back into my consciousness late last year. [READ MORE]
I was once asked what I thought Microsoft’s overall product trajectory for SQL Server was, in light of Oracle’s rather obvious trajectory of acquiring multiple application vendors who will, in turn, deploy more and more of their applications to the Oracle database platform. To be honest, I had a little difficulty perceiving a clear and concise strategy statement for the sort of work going on in Redmond. I could see a lot of great features being developed. And I knew the SQL Server development team had developed a lot of new “plumbing” with each new release – features like Service Broker and Extended Events and exponentially more robust capabilities in the Analysis Services product lines. But the strategy itself was veiled and, since Microsoft wasn’t explicitly telling us what the grand strategy was, I had difficulty putting my finger on it. [READ MORE]
Listen to a group of database professionals talk for awhile and someone will eventually bring up the topic of data deduplication. Data deduplication is a means to eliminate redundant data, either through hardware or software technologies. To illustrate, imagine you’ve drafted a new project plan and sent it to five teammates asking for input. That single file has now been reproduced, in identical bits and bytes, on a total of six computers. If everyone’s email inbox is backed up every night, that’s another six copies backed up on the email backup server. Through data deduplication technology, only a single instance of your project plan would be backed up, and all other instances of the identical file would simply be tiny on-disk pointers to the original.
Database Security Shouldn't Be "Somebody Else's Job"
If you’ve read the IT press at all these days, you know that SQL Injection (SI) attacks are very common and can be devastatingly effective. In fact, SI attacks-equally easy to execute against Oracle, MySQL, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server-are among the most common hacks on the Internet today. If a web application runs a relational database on the backend, it can be subject to an SI attack, which ironically, is among the easiest web hacks to prevent.
In this season of recession and financial meltdowns, a common question seems to be, “How big is ‘too big to fail’?” Titans of the financial industry made big bets with lots of risk and, when they didn’t pan out, American society overall has to pay the price. But, that aside, the very scale of our financial system, by just about every metric, has reached amazing heights, be that number of financial transactions per second, number of traders, number of funds traded, amount of money changing hands—you name it. [READ MORE]
If you haven’t paid attention to the new social media, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Just as email was a game-changer in the 1980s and the internet revolutionized society in the 1990s, social media is making a huge impact on the way people work and interact today. Personally, I was skeptical about social networking until some good friends persuaded me to give it a trial run. It seemed like a great way to dither away some valuable time, but I didn’t see the business value in the whole proposition until I tried it. [READ MORE]
Microsoft SQL Server’s relational engine has offered new instrumentation that improves by light years with each new release. The introduction of Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) in SQL Server 2005 provided a much-needed equivalent to Oracle’s long-standing and capable V$ and X$ system views. SQL Server 2008 has provided another dramatic improvement to its instrumentation with Extended Events (also known as XEvents) that promises to offer even greater opportunities to tune, trace and troubleshoot the inner workings of a SQL Server application. All of this stands in stark contrast with the anemic instrumentation offered in SQL Server Analysis Services, Microsoft’s wonderful multi-dimensional data repository that is a free feature-set within the SQL Server product. [READ MORE]
In my many years on the board of directors of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), I frequently exhorted our members to strive for individual achievement and personal excellence. One of the best paths for many SQL Server professionals is through certification, especially if they lack years of demonstrated on-the-job experience. However, certification only paints half the picture. While it might demonstrate, at a minimum, that you passed a test (or several tests) about the database technology, it tells nothing about your standards for good conduct. [READ MORE]
