Last year, some of my friends from Quest Software attended Hadoop World in New York. In 2009, I never would’ve guessed that Quest would be there with products, community initiatives, as a major sponsor and with presenters?
There were just under 1,000 attendees who weren’t the typical devheads and geekasaurs you’d normally see at very techie events like Code Camps, SQL Saturdays, Cloud Camps and or even other NoSQL events such as the Cassandra Summit. We’re talkin’ enterprise customers with active Hadoop projects underway.
Some observations from the show that may be of interest to you:
- Hadoop World was a trending topic on Twitter during its duration.
- Hadoop has “arrived” with an average cluster of 66 nodes weighing in at 114TB. (For the philosophers among us, how much does a terabyte weigh?) The most famous Hadoop cluster is FaceBook with a trifling 30PB in storage – that’s petabytes. That’s more written information than has ever been written by man, cumulatively, including the Advice on Men column from Cosmo Magazine. Unfortunately, that’s only a few hundred thousand pictures of teenagers pursing their lips at themselves and holding a digital camera while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. They’re expecting about 60PB by the end of 2011.
- HP was there, creating a lot of buzz, from a hardware perspective. Quest was there as the leading independent tool maker for cloud apps.
- Oracle OraOop got attendees pulse’s racing, since many want a high speed, scalable connector between Oracle and Hadoop to fill a necessary gap. I’m not sure if there’s something in place for SQL Server and I’m not currently aware of any high-speed connectors built in to SQL Server Integration Services.
Some other good coverage to check out about the show as well:
All of this is very important because NoSQL in general and Hadoop in particular are picking up speed and momentum. Even if your organization isn’t using NoSQL technology today, chances are very good that your CIO will be asking you for details on how and when it should be deployed. And if you don’t think it should be deployed, the natural response of the CIO is “Why not?”. So you’d better get your ducks in a row, Mr SQL Server DBA.
There are lots of great sites to get Hadoop information, but I invite you to take a gander at Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog | twitter) blog for much NoSQL goodness. Start with Jeremiah’s blog post here, and ignore all indications that you might be in a biker bar or a San Francisco tattoo parlor. That’s just Jeremiah’s style.
His Hadoop writings are here, though lately he’s been writing a lot about RIAK - which sounds like a euphemism for vomiting, as in “Jeremiah spent a lot of time riaking after chugging that bottle of cough syrup.”
If you spend any time at all reading IT trade journals and websites, you’ve no doubt heard about the NoSQL movement. In a nutshell, NoSQL databases (also called post-relational databases) are a variety of loosely grouped means of storing data without requiring the SQL language. Of course, we’ve had non-relational databases far longer than we’ve had actual relational databases. Anyone who’s used products like IBM’s Lotus Notes can point to a popular non-relational database. However, part and parcel of the NoSQL movement is the idea that the data repositories can horizontally scale with ease, since they’re used as the underpinnings of a website. For that reason, NoSQL is strongly associated with web applications, since websites have a history of starting small and going “viral,” exhibiting explosive growth after word gets out. [READ MORE]
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]
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]
At a rather muted Microsoft TechEd in Los Angeles in May, the crowds were diminished and the educational content was slimmed down. In the past, SQL Server sessions were so abundant that you’d have trouble choosing which of several you might want to attend. This year, the state of the economy was reflected in many ways, including the one, or, in just a few cases, two sessions per time slot allotted SQL Server professionals. Despite the low ebb, the Microsoft SQL Server team made an exciting announcement about the upcoming availability of the SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP (Community Technology Preview). [READ MORE]
Do I have a dog in this Fight? If I did, it'd be the Warner Brothers Barnyard Dog.
After my term of service on the PASS board of directors ended in December of 2009, I fully intended to stay far, far out of the way. It’s an intention that I’ve largely been able to fulfill,excluding the odd conversation with an occasional board member or committee chair looking for a little impartial advice when weighing some consideration or other.
If you keep up with going’s on within PASS, then you’ll know that there’s been some hullabaloo lately. Please reference paragraph 1 again at this point to understand that I don’t really know much about all this hullabaloo. (I read one blog post by Stuart Ainsworth and decided to henceforth avoid all other mention of the situation). I mentioned that I’ve been trying to stay out of PASS’ way, correct? But sometimes you just can’t dodge a bullet, even when you’re bustin’ out some Matrix-like moves and goin’ all Neo/Keanu Reeves on it.
To wit, I was happy to volunteer in hosting our first Music City SQL Saturday, which also happened to occur the day after the PASS board of directors wrapped up their quarterly meeting here in beautiful (and hot) Nashville, TN. The two events were destined by the stars to overlap. Which also meant I was going to be hearing about said hullabaloo (reference paragraph 2, above), despite my better efforts to get out of its (the hullabaloo’s) way.
(I’m being a bit disingenuous about being surprised that these events having some overlap. I hosted a party at my house the Friday before our SQL Saturday for our event speakers and also invited all of the PASS directors and staff who were still in town as well. So they were all coming together, like neutrons hurtling towards a chunk of uranium 236. You DO KNOW what happens when neutrons are hurtled at uranium 236, right?).
Yeah, and then what?
Foghorn's idea of a dog fight
So despite trying to steer clear any PASS-related controversies, I’m compelled to speak up, albeit in as limited a fashion as I can manage. Most of the people involved, from candidates to committee members, are friends. I wrote endorsement letters for almost half of the candidates who made it to the Nomination Committee (NomCom) interview stage. So I’m far from being a totally impartial judge of how individual persons were treated. But, for what it’s worth, I’m trying to make my post less about personalities and more about the overall direction of the process. In other words, I’m trying to be constructive, not destructive.
A lot of people have put out opinions about the PASS Election process and you can read more yourself here:
Since the call to vote is now open, I hope you’ll take some time to get informed about the overall process as well as the candidates standing for election.
So what’s your point?
Lots of people have complained about lots of things in this round of elections (so far), but what’s anyone going to do about it? Well, my point in this and subsequent blog posts is to produce recommendations about the election process that will better it for PASS and the wider community.
I’ve asked several friends in the SQL Server community, as well as individuals unrelated to PASS or SQL Server but who have experience on corporate boards of directors, to join a group discussion focusing on the question:
Tit-for-Tat, eh Foghorn?
“Many in the community seem to think that the PASS election process is badly broken. Do you think that PASS needs to implement fundamental and far-reaching changes to its election process, or does it only need some fine tuning? Please explain your thoughts?”
So now that some of the personal aspects of the discussions have calmed down, the main point I want to make is that we can make this better. But this will take a concerted and focused discussion to decide on the consensus.
Guest posters are waiting in the wings. Let the discussions begin!
To forward this discussions, I’ve asked guest posters to make open with their initial thoughts on their own blogs or here, for those who don’t have their own blogs. Some have already posted their opening thoughts, which I will repost here. Once the opening statements are all posted, we’ll begin to work through the various points and topics (refer to the PASS discussion forums above) to see if we can drive consensus for concrete methods and steps for the nominations and election processes.
With that, you’re also invited to participate. If you have thoughts around process (not personalities), I invite you to participate either through posting comments here and on our future posts and, if you’re interested, to participate as a guest poster yourself.
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:
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 almostwatched 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?
And, since many of the technological bits of Wave will live on, I’m sure we’ll see Slide advance in interesting ways.
