The Toad for SQL Server review that was recently conducted for SQL Server Magazine was published online – and we got 5 out of 5 diamonds!
This is an improvement from the 4.5/5 stars Michael Campbell gave the product in a 2009 review. The review is very positive, with Michael citing the product’s highly customizable management and development solution, and writes that it “one-ups SSMS by including server, schema, and data comparison tools, a log reader, and a wide assortment of other options, capabilities, and utilities.”
Another tool I really like is PowerWF. PowerWF is a really cool visual workflow builder that creates PowerShell scripts for you. Turns out that it integrates with PowerGUI!
This video shows 2 different ways that PowerWF Workflows can be run from within Quest Software’s PowerGUI tool.
I was just bragging about how Toad for SQL Server keeps getting better. In that post, I also pointed out a lot of great resources you can put to work immediately on improving your skills with this great tool. (Incidentally, there’s a freeware version without all of the features, but it’s still quite useful. And you can always use the beta product, if you want all of the features and many new features that are undergoing community testing.)
Ain't he handsome?
One of the reasons that Toad is so good is that it’s always been a community-driven product. Back when I used Oracle every day, TOAD was an acronym = Total Oracle Application Development. It didn’t take long for Toad to rise above the acronym transform into the eponymous term denoting “kick-butt database tool” just a few years before Toad began to go cross-platform. Now that Toad is solidly cross-platform with versions for DB2, MySQL, and Cloud to boot, it’s worth pointing out that Toad got to be what it is today entirely from community feedback. Back in the day, when I worked in Quest’s R&D team, the developers literally kept a checklist of cool suggestions from the community and worked against that to develop new features. My point isn’t to fully describe the inner workings of the Toad dev team, rather I wanted to highlight how incredibly important community feedback is to this tool and the developers behind it.
Product documentation and product training are two areas where our customers consistently press us to improve…and one we take if very seriously.
Bold Claims
One of my favorite tools in the Quest Software toolbox for SQL Server (and Oracle) DBAs is called Foglight Performance Analysis, or more commonly, PA. This product can do things that no other tool or amount of customized scripts can ever reproduce. I am dead serious about this claim.
Here you’ll find just about any and all documents you could possibly need, from initial evaluation, through the demo and proof-of-concept (POC) phase, and on through implementation and on-going management. Do we have more documentation? Sure, but this list contains the key documents you’ll most likely want to see.
Training?
I’ve also gotten a lot of questions about training on the Quest tools – Do we offer it? How much does it cost? When do the classes run?
The quick answer is YES! We offer very nice training for a mere $350. Head over to www.quest.com/foglight-performance-analysis-for-sql-server and you’ll see a link to “Find out about Technical Training” that links to http://www.quest.com/sql-training-leadthem/. Once you register, you’ll get to take part in two 2-hour fully remote offerings. The first class is focused on sizing, configuration, and setup of PA, while the second teaches you how to use the product.
I would like to make you aware of a recently written paper by Bert Scalzo. The paper focuses on how DBAs can rely on the Toad and Benchmark Factory to perform database workload replays, ensuring that changes to the databases do not degrade the user experience.
I encourage you to read the paper and make workload replay a part of your database change management practices. As I’ve been saying for years, if you don’t have quantitative evidence of what normal is for your database, how can you know what is abnormal?
Toad Data Analyst, the Reporting Tool for non-technical types
If you’ve attended any of my public sessions about SQL Server technology, then you might remember that I extend a standing offer to provide a free, long-term license to any of several products from Quest Software, such as Toad for SQL Server (including the SQL Optimizer), Toad Data Analyst, Toad Data Modeler, and the awesome performance and scalability testing tool Benchmark Factory.
If you’ve ever wondered about these tools and why I tout them, why don’t you take a couple minutes to look at the on-line demos available at each of the preceding links? If you like what you see, drop me a note and I’ll get you that license I was blabbing about. I thank you and my children thank you! <grin>
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.”
Quest Software’s latest community initiative, Windows Azure-based Project Lucy, has debuted! Project Lucy is part infrastructure analytics, part social media experiment, and part performance data warehouse.
The best things about Project Lucy include:
It’s Free – just like our SQLServerPedia website, Project Lucy is free to anyone who wants to upload a trace file
It’s 1oo% web-based – you don’t have to download or maintain anything and updates roll out seamlessly, all the time
It really helps – just generate a SQL Trace on a SQL Server 2000, 2005 or 2008 instance, upload it on www.projectlucy.com, and see for yourself
This initiative empowers DBAs and IT professionals to gain a better understanding of their database performance through automated analyses and collaboration with their peers. Our goal is to allow users to go beyond the benefits of installing and using a commercial product, and tap into an online community to share and compare experiences and results.
Our goal is to test the best ways we can help users learn and understand what their performance data really means, and how they should act upon that data – if at all – in a collaborative, meaningful way. For this debut, Project Lucy will accept SQL Trace files, or zip files containing multiple traces, and will provide a summary of the content and areas where performance can be improved. As y’all use the service, information will become available to help you compare your performance and engage in meaningful discussions with others about the issues you are facing.
Your feedback, your feedback, and participation will drive how Project Lucy evolves. Get involved by participating in the pilot program! And let me know what you think.
Disco, aka Discovery Wizard for SQL Server, like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever" except the pants aren't as tight
I really like the free SQL Server utility from Quest Software, nicknamed “Disco”, that enables you to discover and inventory all versions and editions of Microsoft SQL Server from the mid-1990′s onward. You can see what it does at http://questkb.com/category/sqlserver/discovery-wizard/.
I’ve had a lot of customers who have faced the challenge of bringing an unwieldy and chaotically growing SQL Server infrastructure to heel. It can be really daunting in a big enterprise trying to find all of the SQL Servers tucked behind third-party applications, Microsoft products like Sharepoint, and various tools that use SQL Server as its data repository.
I’m hearing rumors inside of Quest that Disco may be heading towards the great product dustbin in the sky. Me no likey!
If Disco is a tool you use and enjoy, or it’s a tool you would like to use and enjoy in the future, then please post a comment here and/or send an email to info@quest.com voicing your support for Disco. I’d like to see Quest keep this product free and supported, now and in the future.
Sometimes I’m timely in getting the news out on useful resources. And, other times, I’m a bit slower on the draw. As I told friends back at New Year’s Day, “As an official member of the Procrastinators Club, welcome to 2008!” On the other hand, it’s always good to remind folks of great resources that are still available and on the shelf. Why? Well, the Internet hits us with such a deluge of constantly new material, that we often forget about the old(ish) stuff that’s still really useful.
Darth Doofus, Emporer Palpatine, and Darth Goofus
Quest vConference for SQL Server
One of the most popular teaching sessions I ever engaged in was the Quest vConferences for SQL Server in 2010, with my good friends Buck Woody (blog | twitter) and Brent Ozar (blog | twitter).
These are evergreen favorites for their strong technical content and, perhaps, an outpouring of Brent’s faux chest hair in the latter part of the training events. Go to this URL for the code samples, download the slides, and to rate the presentation: http://questkb.com/live and or http://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/spring10/quest/conference/ondemand.asp. You can also get the full events shipped for free anywhere in North America on a single DVD.
24 Hours of PASS Celebrates Women in Technology
Kalen Delaney, author and expert, and one of the initiators of WiT within PASS
It’s always a big thrill for me when a successful initiative launched by PASS goes viral. One such example is the 24Hours of PASS. (See last year’s webcasts at http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/). I now see other industry trade groups and technology user groups launching their own 24 Hours type webcast marathons. Kudos – PASS folks thought of it first! (I’d give proper credit, if I could only remember who thought of it. Rick Heiges (blog | twitter), I think).
This year, 24 Hours of PASS is gearing up for an exceptional lineup of SQL Server and BI experts in 24 one-hour technical webcasts. This free training event takes place over two 12-hour days March 15-16, with each day beginning at 12:00 GMT (UTC). Click here to get registered: http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/Spring2011/. And in celebration of Women in Technology, PASS is hosting an all female line-up of speakers.
This is another area in which PASS has prompted many emulators. My memory of the details grow dim, since this was almost ten years ago, but I believe it was then PASS director Kalen Delaney (blog | twitter) and Microsoft liaison to the board Jacqueline Borges who put forward the idea of hosting a special Women in Technology luncheon. Since that time, WiT has gone on to be one of the best parts about the big PASS Summit and something widely emulated by other professional and trade associations.
Microsoft Thrive – Career Planning Insights
I was honored to be a featured speaker on the Microsoft Thrive website about this time last year. What’s Thrive? It’s a website put together by Microsoft that helps you plan out your career. It has certification and learning resources, career paths, and traditional learning patterns and practices. In other words, it tells you what you need to know to qualify for various kinds of it jobs and then gives you links to dive deeper. Check it out!
