July 2006 - Posts

Team Edition for Database Professionals WebCast tomorrow

Microsoft is webcasting about Team Edition for Database Professionals tomorrow at 11:00 AM PDT. .

More cool webcasts are scheduled - .

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Team Edition for Database Professionals Team System DBAs Team Edition webcast

posted Monday, July 31, 2006 4:18 PM by admin with 0 Comments

Database Professionals: An Enterprise Requirement

A friend (who shall remain nameless) recently told me his company interviewed a competent database developer and DBA. All seemed in agreement an offer would be forthcoming until the very end of the recruiting process. At that time, someone made the comment "we don't need a DBA."

It would be notable if this sentiment wasn't so widespread - but I see it often. How often? Well, I would have to tell you how I see it to qualify that statement:

You see, people rarely say to me "We don't need you because we don't need a DBA." Mostly I see it in their applications - many of them prominent companies in which you may even own stock. I can tell when I examine their schema. I can see it when I execute Profiler against their SQL Server database.

Now, there are lots of reasons to design a denormalized schema. And there are lots of reasons to encapsulate the business rules in code. This is not what I'm talking about - though some of these systems would clearly perform better (or at all, in extreme cases) if they took advantage of better design patterns.

I'm talking about designs where this much is obvious:

1. At least two people designed the data layer; and
2. They did not communicate during the process.

Often, enterprise-level database design is shoveled onto developers as a secondary task. No, I'm not making this up - it's too tragic to joke about. There are developers out there who can handle this task, but they are few and far between. (Before I became a SQL Server DBA I was a developer who thought I was a SQL Server DBA...)

There will doubtless be readers who can provide examples of how their enterprise application was built by junior developers who did the database and code work and whose systems are performing just fine. I'm happy for you and sincerely hope the system scales. 

Designing a scalable solution  - database, application, or architecture - is one of those things that consumes time, thinking, resources, and money during the early phases of an enterprise development cycle. But it is - hands down - one of the best (if not the best) investments in the solution. And in today's market, scalability is as optional as security. And like security, a scalable design is not something you "add later." It's not part of the foundation - it is the foundation.

My experiences with designing scalable solutions has proven to me there is no free lunch nor any shortcuts that work. If anyone - me included - skips the work of designing for scalability, there comes a day when they (or I) must pay the fiddler. From what I hear and have experienced, designing in this fashion is most often sacrificed on the altar of a deadline. Trust me, if it falls apart in six weeks or six months, you haven't saved any time - and you may have lost a customer.

Someone told me this and I remember because it has proven true several times over: "Deliver quality late, no one remembers. Deliver junk on time, no one forgets."

If you're building (or upgrading to) cutting edge technology, you need a DBA.

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Software Business scalable database design quality

Happy Birthday to me

Today is my birthday. :)

It's a good day for lots of reasons. The entire weekend has been pretty good, if fact. My grown daughters Manda and Penny, son-in-law Tim, and future son-in-law Tony came to visit yesterday after church. Manda and Penny had fun playing with Christy's and my younger children, Stevie Ray and Emma Grace. Christy made an awesome meal - as usual - and good times were had by all. Everyone gave me M & M's for my birthday - the perfect birthday gift! :)

I'm 43.

Born in 1963, I was a couple years older than Stevie Ray is now (he's 3) when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the lunar surface and Collins orbited above. I wrote my first programming instructions (it would be a gross exageration to call it a "line of code") in 1975 on a Southwest Technical Products Motorola 6800-based system. As I recall, it was a trainer. I set the individual bits of the byte using toggle switches, then hit another switch to load the contents of this buffer into the accumulator. Another toggle switch incremented the address pointer. And so it began.

I remember the oddest things from my childhood. The things themselves aren't odd - it's odd that I remember them and not other stuff. I remember when the price of a small bag of M & M's went up from $0.10 to $0.15 at John A. Love's Exxon service station in Green Bay, Virginia - and thus became taxable, raising the price another penny to $0.16. I've been against taxation ever since.

I remember my oldest younger brother Mark (who just called to wish me a happy birthday) and I walking up the road a few houses to Granny's house - where Mom lives now. I remember putting on a tie to go to the old wooden church in Green Bay. It burned down 20 years ago and a new brick church was bult to replace it.

In the last year, I returned to this community where I spent so much of my childhood - the latter part wishing to escape and never return. It's a full-circle experience. Watching Stevie Ray put on his "little man suit" and tie to go to the Green Bay church is another.

So I took the day off, worked with Christy on building furniture for the kid's playroom, got a haircut, played with the kids, scheduled the Richmond User Groups social, watched some CMT, and kicked around some technical ideas. All in all, a great day thus far. :)

Happy birthday to me!

:{> Andy

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Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude): Cool Channel9 Video

Some of the development team for Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude) appear in a 52 minute demo video of the product on Channel9.

Definitely worth watching!

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community Team Edition for Database Professionals Team System MSDN Channel9

Announcing the ECPI Innsbrook .NET User's Group!

There's another Microsoft User Group in Richmond - the ECPI Innsbrook .NET User's Group.

I read about it first on Frank La Vigne's blog - thanks for passing on the information, Frank.

On behalf of the Richmond .Net Users Group and the Richmond SQL Server Users Group, welcome to the community!

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community User Group .Net Richmond, Va

posted Thursday, July 20, 2006 4:36 PM by admin with 0 Comments

Donald Farmer is blogging again

Donald Farmer, Microsoft's Group Program Manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence and Integration Services, is blogging again!

Mr. Farmer is a legend in the business intelligence community. Even so, he's always made time to answer questions from this aspiring author.

His post entitled Tales of Two Bills is an interesting read.

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community Donald Farmer SSIS blogs

posted Sunday, July 16, 2006 6:14 PM by admin with 0 Comments

Last night's meeting of the Richmond SQL Server Users Group

We had an awesome meeting last night! There must have been 25 people there and it was a great audience - lots of good questions and feedback.

As promised, here's the - now up to CTP4 in only a month! Great job, Team Edition for DBAs Team!

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community SQL Server Users Group Richmond, Va Team Edition for DBAs Team Edition Database Professionals

posted Friday, July 14, 2006 1:47 PM by admin with 0 Comments

Richmond SQL Server Users Group - July meeting

I'll be speaking at the July meeting of the Richmond SQL Server Users Group tomorrow night. The topic is "Introduction to Team Edition for Database Professionals." I plan to cover Schema Compare and Refactoring functionality.

Hope to see you there!

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community Richmond, VA SQL Server Users Group Team System Team Edition for Database Professionals

posted Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:48 AM by admin with 0 Comments

MSDN Search

There's an updated MSDN Search available at . The feature I like the most is the ability to search MSDN blogs.

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community MSDN Search Blogs

posted Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:40 AM by admin with 0 Comments

A metal card

The email I just received reads:
Congratulations!  Your order has been received.  You will receive your first
shipment of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium
Subscription in approximately 4 weeks.

Thank you for your support of Visual Studio Team System, and congratulations on
your no-charge 1-year subscription license! 

How COOL!

And I owe it all to my good freind: Tablet PC legend and MVP Frank La Vigne. Thanks Frank! He spoke tonight at the Richmond .Net Users Group meeting on "Welcome to the Mobile World." If you've never had the opportunity to hear Frank speak, you've missed out on a great presenter. He's passionate about mobile technology and it shows. Great job tonight, Frank!

Frank presented me with the free MSDN Premium subsciption tonight as he transitioned the presidency of the Richmond .Net Users Group from himself to me. I'm really excited about the Microsoft Developer Community in Richmond - especially after all the good work Frank's done. It will be challenging leading two UG's in town (I'm also president of the Richmond SQL Server Users Group), but I'm sure it will also be fun!

I left the Richmond, VA area almost five years ago. When I left, there was a struggling Microsoft Developer Community in town. I moved to Roanoke, Va for a few months, then to Jacksonville, FL for four years. It was in Jax that I witnessed the good things a thriving Developer Community brings to the local IT industry.

When I returned to Richmond last year, I was psyched about joining the local Developer Community and user groups. I contacted the local Developr Evangelist, G. Andrew Duthie, and asked about the local groups. He put me in contact with Frank.

Frank and I hit it off immediately. There was a kinship from the first time we met - along with mutual respect and admiration. Together with Darrell Norton and Susan Lennon, we worked to bring the first MSDN Code Camp to Richmond in April. And we're working on another for the Fall!

Frank and I started the local SQL Server Users Group in May, and have both been actively speaking at regional User Group meetings and code camps.

He's just a cool person, good guy, and uber-geek! You can read more about him on the personal section of his website. He's had some interesting experiences.

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Developer Community Richmond, Va MSDN Frank La Vigne

posted Friday, July 07, 2006 12:30 AM by admin with 1 Comments

Windows Genuine Advantage vs. Privacy

Steve Jones has an interesting editorial about WGA () at SQLServerCentral.com.

Like many of you, I too earn a living implementing Microsoft software. In addition, I've openly declared my admiration for Bill Gates as an individual and Microsoft as a company in an earlier blog.

That said, I think this is a huge mistake. I believe Microsoft is capable of doing a better job fighting piracy at the expense of privacy, and I believe they should.

Several comments in this interview with Peter Cullen, Microsoft's Chief Privacy Strategist, smack of the Sony rootkit debacle - including "phone home" functionality (that has since been removed from the product).

Although I'm certain lots of time, thought, and effort went into the development of WGA, the only viable solution is to stop it before this goes any farther. Please.

:{| Andy

Technorati Tags: WGA Microsoft Developer Community

posted Monday, July 03, 2006 2:37 AM by admin with 0 Comments