It might be the nature of sensitive data means keeping the use of encryption quiet, but that shouldn't matter. If you are keeping your keys safe, the algorithms and deployments you use should not matter. This Friday I wanted to ask a question about your use of encryption in real world systems.

Read the rest of "Encryption in Production" at SQLServerCentral.

The first was the idea that we might have more data APIs in the future, designed to make the exchange of data easier. The people that work with data imports and exports have probably been hoping for his to become more prevalent, and it has gotten better. However I do think that data is becoming the most important part of the technology world. It isn't the software, or the platform, or the device, but the data that's available that is the most valuable part of a technology system.

Read the rest of "API Changes" at SQLServerCentral.

As much as I'd like to say this is a good idea, I can see this being more of a tool for abuse than a tool for making changes. I suspect most managers would take negative feedback personally and investigate more, perhaps even asking network people to comb through logs to find out who posted comments, or perhaps even assume that a particular employee had written the commend without any evidence. We are often entirely petty in our reactions to criticisms, and I'm not sure most of the managers I have worked with would actually use this data to improve the way they perform their job.

Read the rest of "Morale Data" at SQLServerCentral.

However it's not just the desk you work at that might be a problem. There's an article that talks about the dangers of mobile devices, and the potential problems of working while on the go, in bed, etc. As we use these devices more and more, it's possible that we are inducing other repetitive motion injuries, similar to carpal tunnel syndrome. If you are a heavy user or a tablet, smartphone, or other device away from your desk, I would recommend you read the article and think about how you use your device.

Read the rest of "Healthy Work Habits" at SQLServerCentral.

That's pretty cool from my perspective. They have a passion for their jobs, they like the different aspects of it, and they aren't going to change that to save a few dollars or make their jobs easier. They don't want to avoid responsibility for parts of their jobs, they want to embrace all of their jobs, as something they enjoy doing.

Read the rest of "No Cloud for Stack Exchange" at SQLServerCentral.

I know you can't attend every session, and you can't see all the content that week, but the sessions are recorded and attendees can get DVDs of the content. I love that, and it means I can pop in and out of sessions, checking out the content and topics, and mark those in a program that I want to watch later. It also means that I can focus on the important parts of the conference: meeting people.

Read the rest of "Back to Vegas" at SQLServerCentral.

I'd hope that most people would not attempt to write code in this method, but I've seen many developers do just that. They start trying other solutions until one works, often implementing the solution without understanding how it works. The fact that it works, even in a limited way, is often good enough for most people.

Read the rest of "Jiggly Code" at SQLServerCentral.

He left Microsoft as a full time employee in 2008, and has moved on to working with the Gates Foundation. His missions there, along with his wife, Melinda, is to improve people's lives. The foundation has primarily focused on ending disease and hunger in developing countries, and to date has done some very good work for millions around the globe. I ran across an infographic recently that talks about philanthropy and have reprinted a portion here:

Read the rest of "Better Than Batman" at SQLServerCentral.

As computers become a commodity, and we use them more and more to live our lives as well as work, does it make sense for workers to purchase their own machines and use them in a corporate setting? I know some companies give workers a computer allowance and the workers can take the machine with them if they quit, presumably if they work at the company for longer than a few months. Other companies give their employees money for technology, which can be exciting for technical people that might want to upgrade their monitors or other accessories regularly.

Read the rest of "BYOD" at SQLServerCentral.

These days the pace of technology change is high. SQL Server is a stable platform that many companies might install and use for a decade, but it seems we have new features to learn every 18-24 months as new versions are released. I think more and more of us have to understand a wider variety of features and platform all the time...

Read the rest of "The Virtual Lab" at SQLServerCentral.

When I was younger, I was very money driven, looking for new jobs or ways that would allow me to earn more money. I have been in and out of consulting, always looking to move up in the world. As I grew older, had a family, and (hopefully) grew wiser, I realized that most of the time I hadn't be happier by making more money. Finding more money became a game, but the things that really helped me enjoy life were the challenges, the people, and the experiences I had in different places. It's not my advice, and it's not often followed, but it's advice I think it well worth following: do something with your life that you enjoy.

Read the rest of "WWBOD" at SQLServerCentral

At some point we transitioned to Turbo Pascal, which compiled hundreds of lines in a split second, on par with the speed of today's compilers, which are often working through thousands of lines of code. Is that a good thing, however? Has this speed improvement ended up building poor habits in developers?

Read the rest of "Coding More Carefully" at SQLServerCentral.

The article did make some good points about evaluating security for your company. You should understand what these certifications means, and in some cases, make sure the provider has multiple designations. For example, both ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 are needed together to ensure a reasonable level of security. The provider should also be able to provide you with copies of their audits, and contract with you to ensure ongoing audits and vulnerability tests. These are reasonable requests, and they are measures you should have in place for any of your facilities.

Read the rest of "Cloud Safety" at SQLServerCentral.

When a developer needs to reference data in another database (or on another server), they have a variety of ways in which they can do this. Some people prefer a three or four part naming convention, others use a view local to the database, and still others might use synonyms. While they all work, from a maintenance standpoint, I think a view or synonym provide a nice layer of abstraction while minimizing the potential maintenance headaches of future changes.

Read the rest of "Referencing Remote Data" at SQLServerCentral.

On one hand, I think this is a great idea for the browsers. It has the potential to not only ensure better security on the desktop, but potentially also making life easier for developers. If the browsers automatically update to the latest code, that means that the majority, or maybe all, of your clients will be running the same browser. That would greatly simplify the testing and coding requirements for developers.

Read the rest of "Are Auto-Updates Good?" at SQLServerCentral.

I'm sure there are similar examples of this for all software vendors, especially those that sell large software packages such as ERP applications. Some are probably without merit, and are the result of customers not fully understanding what they are buying, but some are probably valid complaints where salespeople have misled customers in order to complete a sale.

Read the rest of "Truth and Demos" at SQLServerCentral.

I was reading an interview with our main administrator, Simon, who also manages the SQLServerCentral servers, about the recent challenges of managing infrastructure for the DBA in Space contest. We had no idea how big the contest would be, and we knew that there might be a need to scale up rapidly to handle thousands of users accessing the site in a short period of time as new web-isodes of Brad's adventures were released.

Read the rest of "Cloud Patches" at SQLServerCentral.

It's the last Friday of the year, and rather than ask you about the resolutions you are making overall, I wanted to ask this question:

Read the rest of "The Data Resolutions" at SQLServerCentral.

The other big push in 2011 seems to have been "the cloud". It's everywhere, from consumer Windows 7 commercials to the updates to the SQL Server tools to support the SQL Azure platform. I haven't found many people that are excited about moving their databases to the cloud, but more and more people are testing the platform, and I suspect we'll start to see some apps that don't require high security or extremely high performance appearing in the cloud in 2012. I have embraced the cloud in many ways over the last couple years (Evernote, Dropbox, Live Mesh) and I find it to be an advantage in managing a busy life.

Read the rest of "The Year in Review - 2011" at SQLServerCentral.

Whether you think this software is legitimate or Carrier IQ and the carriers had the right to deploy it, you should be aware that from a public perspective this is a failure of software. It seems as though a back door of sorts, a spy program has been developed and approved by companies that sell cellular phone services, and it is a poor reflection of their business.

Read the rest of "Data and Privacy" at SQLServerCentral.

Those of us working in IT are very lucky for the most part. We have good jobs, jobs that don't require heavy physical exertions, we work in offices not in inclement weather, and we are paid well relative to many other professions.

Read the rest of "All I want for Christmas" at SQLServerCentral.

Part of social engineering is the inherent trust for others that most of us have. Part of it is the desire that most people have to help others. However I think a part of it is also the attitude that many workers have when they aren't treated well. When employees don't feel they are a part of the company family and just work for a paycheck, they are less vigilant or caring about safeguarding the digital assets, and sometimes physical assets, of the company.

Read the rest of "Pride and Security" at SQLServerCentral.

However we're only a small part of the SQL Server track. SQLskills.com headlines the track, as they have for many years, with Kimberly L. Tripp, Paul Randal, and Jonathan Kehayias presenting some amazing information based on their years of experience (go to one of the SQLskills.com classes if you can). Paul and Kimberly have also invited a number of other great speakers, including Aaron Bertrand, Allen White, Brent Ozar, Glenn Berry, Mike Walsh, and more. These are the people that write many of books, blogs, and articles that you read to learn more about the SQL Server platform.

Read the rest of "The Connections Launch Event" at SQLServerCentral.

However, carrying around a smartphone isn't without a risk. The features and capabilities of the various mobile operating systems are a double edged sword. The power of the smartphone can easily be used for attacks against your network. This piece talks about hackers targeting the mobile platforms as another attack vector. That's scary, especially as most of these mobile OSes were not designed to be secure.

Read the rest of "Be careful with your smartphone" at SQLServerCentral.

Many of you have replied that your companies are resistant to this, or your boss doesn't think it's a good idea. I have certainly had a few managers that felt that way, but I've also had success over time in changing their minds a bit. I've been able to get them to give me the chance to pilot ideas in a small way. Sometimes it's taken years, but I've learned to play "long ball" and think about succeeding over time, not getting my way this week.

Read the rest of "Propose this to your boss" at SQLServerCentral.

When I look at the SQLServerCentral architecture, while much smaller, still scales nicely on a single database server (clustered) and a web server. If I needed more performance, I'd hope that I could do something more similar to the setup at StackOverflow, with better development and fewer parts of my architecture than adding the type of complexity that powers Instagram.

Read the rest of "Jacks of all trades" at SQLServerCentral.

If you read the comments, there are all sorts of flaws and potential holes with encryption, which are valid arguments. However that doesn't mean that you shouldn't implement any encryption on your removable or portable drives, especially those in laptops. Those devices are like the locks on your home or car. They can be defeated by determined professionals, but all too often the casual criminal doesn't bother if they are in place.

Most of the time I've taken a job in the US, it's been an "at will" employment, with a verbal contract between me and the hiring manager or HR representative. Nothing was signed, and I essentially did whatever my manager wanted, regardless of my job title. That was fine with me. Currently I have a written contract, but the requirements for my position are a little vague and my duties aren't explicitly spelled out.

Read the rest of "The Employment Contract" at SQLServerCentral.

I've been proud to work on SQL Server over the last 6 years from a security perspective as there have been very few security patches issued, and correspondingly, few vulnerabilities disclosed. It's possible Microsoft has muzzled some researchers, but I doubt it. I would guess that if any serious security issues existed in SLQ Server 2005, 2008, or R2, we'd have heard about them. I think the security engineering process that is used for SQL Server has truly resulted in more secure software.

Read the rest of "Not So Unbreakable" at SQLServerCentral.

The post notes that the buffer pool will not grow beyond 64GB, though it doesn't mention limits in any of the other memory spaces that SQL Server uses. However assuming that the memory outside of the buffer pools scales, it might be time to think about installing extra instances of SQL Server on a single host if you are licensing by the core. With a commodity server costing under $10k with 6 cores and 96GB of RAM (no HDDs), one could easily consider placing 2-3 SQL Server instances on this hardware with each getting 24+GB of RAM.

Read the rest of "Sharing Your Database Server" at SQLServerCentral.

For the database administrator, however, this should be a wake-up call that lets you know you can't rely on the firewall to protect you. If you have a small 3 machine, one subnet network, maybe, but in most enterprises there are many subnets and complex rules to implement. That means that your company might not be a soft chewy center protected by a hard shell. It might be a soft center protected by Swiss cheese that does little to limit the influx of unauthorized requests.

Read the rest of "Layers of Security" at SQLServerCentral.

That's what TDE is designed for, but the machines that are most likely to be stolen, laptops that contain Express Edition instances, can't implement TDE. Why not? It's an "Enterprise only feature". Why? I assume this is a sales technique to force those companies required to implement data at rest protection will pay more for their instances, but in reality this results in less security for lots of SQL Server applications.

Read the rest of "Not having TDE in all editions is stupid" at SQLServerCentral.

However for most companies, the security is only examined when there is an actual issue. I know most IT people that manage web systems are told about security lapses when the site si defaced, or when your data is discovered posted in some other location.

Read the rest of "A Welcome Intruder" at SQLServerCentral.

One of the advantages of virtualized servers is that they can be moved from one set of physical hardware to another. If you find that your virtual machine (VM) is not receiving enough resources from the host, you can move it to another less busy host, and improve performance. What's even more amazing is that you can move this VM while it is in use. In fact, your clients may not even notice that the VM has migrated to another host, even while connected. To me, that's absolutely amazing.

Read the rest of "Fast Migrations" at SQLServerCentral.

This time, however, I tried something completely new. I didn't check my email from SQLServerCentral, visit the site, or do anything else work related during the time away. That's a first for me, as the last few years I've been pruning emails on my phone during vacation, handling minor items as I had time. It was hard, since my email client would show an ever increasing count of unread messages, but I made a point of not working during the time away.

Read the rest of "A Refreshing Break" at SQLServerCentral.

There was a time when I managed multiple DBAs and worked to remove them from meetings whenever possible. It was hard, with the workers always feeling like they wanted to know what was going on, and managers always wanting staff available for detailed updates if needed. Too often I felt that staff time in meetings, and performing updates, was wasted. Managers should take quick updates to meetings, and handle the coordination as much as possible.

Read the rest of "Thinking Time" at SQLServerCentral.

"What do you do?"

Read the rest of "What's Your Title?" at SQLServerCentral

This isn't good for your brand as a developer. If you don't know what SQL Injection is, you shouldn't be developing software. If you don't know how to code to avoid it, you shouldn't be hired by anyone to build software. If you can't write a stored procedure around a query or built a parameterized call to a database engine, you need to learn how or find another career.

Read the rest of "More SQL Injection" at SQLServerCentral.

And that's interesting. Developers, administrators, if you're administering databases in any way, you've got a chance to enter the contest. You can get started now by signing up and going through all the videos, answering the questions as you go. The contest ends Friday, November 18, 2011, so there are a few days left to follow Brad McGehee on his space alien adventure and have fun with a few silly questions.

Read the rest of "Do You Want to be a DBA in Space?" at SQLServerCentral.

In the two decades I've worked with SQL Server, there has been some advice that I've always given to people: don't backup to the network, and don't try to put a database on a file share. SQL Server hasn't dealt with either of those situations well for most of my career, and they've been a regular source of issues for clients and posters to the forums at SQLServerCentral. Network technology, while quickly improving, was still flaky enough that I always recommend that people keep their data and backups local as a guideline.

However technology evolves, and when it does, it's time for the advice to change. Lately I have seen more and more people making backups across the network that seem very reliable. Even the tendency of Ethernet protocols to delay packets when collisions occur is mitigated by the increasingly common 1Gbps and 10Gbps network speeds that many companies are using. While I might still be a little nervous about running backups across the network, that's my personal bias and I don't know if I would continue to recommend against those backups.

Read the rest of "Network Databases? Is it time for a change?" at SQLServerCentral

The majority of the people that I know working in technology do not seem to have college degrees in computer science. I know many people with degrees in many other subjects, and quite a few people that don't have a degree. In most of those cases, the successful individuals have worked in the real world and gathered their knowledge about technology through hard work across time. It also seems that many of the people I've met with CS degrees are often those that make he most mistakes in real world software development or system administration.

Colleges don't teach you all the skills you need in the real technology world. The best workers I know in this business are the most adaptable, thinking laterally about problems, and bringing flexible approaches to solving problems. With many surveys showing a shortage of technical talent likely in the next few years, we ought to be encouraging more people to enter the technology field.

Read the rest of "The Industry Problem" at SQLServerCentral.

Read the rest of "License by Core" at SQLServerCentral.

There seems to be a quest to move closer and closer to real time decision making. Gather data, analyze it, and make decisions instantly, preferably with the help oif expert systems. That makes some sense, and as shown in the article, it can allow analysts to respond to events very quickly, performing verification, fraud checks, or just about anything you can think of.

It's a good goal, and it can definitely help many companies make more informed decisions at any point in time. However there are problems as well. Sometimes short term data can fundamentally distort the picture of reality. Some of our large stock market meltdowns are the result of automated systems, perhaps not so much expert systems, as very quick reacting systems that might overvalue the last few pieces of data and make decisions that are less than optimal.

Read the rest of "Real Time Dangers" at SQLServerCentral.

Many authors write articles and speak about techniques that you can use to build more efficient applications. The most popular sessions given by speakers and requested by attendees are those that deal with improving performance. Writing better code, troubleshooting issues, and increasing the efficiency of our systems are under our control seem to be the priorities for most IT workers that I know. Every time we build something a little better, it's a great win for the author.

Read the rest of "Going Green in Software Development" at SQLServerCentral.

These days it also seems that many people are disenchanted with their jobs. They work for the paycheck with little loyalty or concern for their company's business, and I think that's fair. When I hear about companies that are not very loyal or concerned with their employees, asking for more work every year without more compensation, with less people and the threat of layoffs hanging over the employee's head, I think employees have to start treating themselves as self-employed. They should consider their employment as a "contract" with their employer, one that is temporary.

However I don't know that this is how the majority of people feel. It seems that I regularly meet people that like their jobs, and feel their employers treat them fairly. I feel that way, and think my employer does an excellent job of partnering with employees, rather than exploiting them. People are treated fairly, trusted, and in return, they do a professional job, to the best of their abilities.

Read the rest of "The Good Job" at SQLServerCentral.

Are you looking for a BI project in your company to get some experience with? I've got an idea that you might try tackling as a side project, or even an informal project within the business.

One of the problems that many corporations face today is a regular turnover of employees. That causes a loss of productivity, moral suffers, and projects may run late. This might be because of poor working conditions, poor management, or some other factor. While you might not be able to change that, perhaps you can help bring some visibility to potential problems.

Read the rest of "The HR Scorecard" at SQLServerCentral.

I saw a note recently about the cost of decisions in programming made over time (thanks to BrentOzar, PLF). It's an interesting look back at what decisions might have ended up costing computing a tremendous amount of pain and problems over time. It's a nice read, especially if you remember something about the history of computing and how technology has evolved over the last forty or so years.

Making decisions and choices early on in the development of a system is hard work. There's a reason why architects are paid well, and sometimes seem slow to decide how to proceed. The high pay, however, is a reason why so many people crave the architect title, and even find reasons why they should get it, even when under qualified. Unfortunately we have no good guidelines on how to decide what titles someone should have, or they have earned.

Read the rest of "The Cost of Architecture" at SQLServerCentral.

I have worked with every version of SQL Server since it was first available from Microsoft on OS/2. Each version has improved the features, the stability, and the scalability, and I've looked forward to each change. In many of the companies I worked at, we had a fairly homogenous environment, with one or two versions to support. I think some of that was the timing of my employment dates with the version release dates. If I'd stayed longer at a few jobs, I think I might have ended up supporting three versions of SQL Server in a few places.

That seems to have changed, however with the long delay of SQL Server 2005, and then the very short delays for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. Now it seems many companies have two or three versions at a minimum and might have 4 versions, with SQL Server 2000 servers still available. The last year on Twitter I've seen a number of DBAs noting that they are retiring SQL Server 2000 instances at a good clip, with a few people eliminating the version from their environments, but there are plenty of instances still out there.

Read the rest of "Which Versions of SQL Server Do You Have?" at SQLServerCentral.

I was at the PASS Summit last week in Seattle and once again the final keynote, from Dr. David DeWitt, was amazing. This year he talked about NoSQL, and Hadoop in particular, which Microsoft is supporting. There was a series of integration points with Hadoop announced last week from Microsoft, including Hadoop in the Azure space and an ODBC driver for Hadoop. Dr Dewitt's talk was voted on by the community, and he spent his time talking about NoSQL, Hadoop, and the changing world of Big Data.

I watched his talk and a few things struck me. First big data is big. The definition might vary for many of us, but when you get into the multi-petabyte range, it's big. eBay and Facebook were used as examples, each with around 60PB of data. For those of you thinking your systems aren't big, it's all relative. Many of us at smaller companies have smaller budgets, less hardware, and ten, or even one, terabyte might be big.

Read the rest of "Not Only SQL" at SQLServerCentral.

It's somewhat amusing that the reason we can't likely anonymize data anymore is because we have too much of it. All the different data sets that can be cross referenced, suing public data, make the success rate of anonymizing techniques low. I don't know how practical it is for someone to actually combine data sets from public sources and using the information to determine the identities of people from other data sets. I do know, however, that there are lots of smart people out there with access to cheap computing resources and lots of spare time on their hands. This might be 21st century vandalism, and we, as data professionals, will be the people that have to deal with it.

Read the rest of "Protecting Data" at SQLServerCentral.

When you look at the various editions of SQL Server available from Microsoft, there is a strange combination of restrictions at each level. Features, maximum amounts of hardware, database size, and even licensing change from edition to edition. A DBA making the decision on which edition to buy is faced with a choice that is more complex than it needs to be in order to solve a problem. The DBA not only considers the scale of their hardware, but also the mix of features present in that particular edition. It becomes even more complex for third party vendors, who may not be able to request that Enterprise or Data Center editions must be used for their product and must often choose to develop an application with a minimal amount of features.

I would rather see all features in all editions and change the licensing model to charge by the scale of server I want. Charge me one price for a single socket, 2GB of RAM machine and more for a dual socket, 8GB machine. Let me pay by the scale, or the amount of performance I'm willing to pay for. I don't know that Microsoft will change, but I think it would be a better way to license their software.

Read the rest of "Give us all the features" at SQLServerCentral.

If you were in the Exhibition Hall yesterday at the PASS Summit, you were witness to an amazing announcement about a new contest. Red Gate Software is sending a DBA into space, giving you the chance to actually take a trip into space and experience weightlessness. How absolutely, freaking, amazing is that?

As a kid I loved science fiction, dreaming of the chance to have a flying car, or serve on some spaceship like the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon. As I grew up, it seemed that most people were enamored with the idea of technology advancing to the point where we would fly in space, or more easily travel around the world. It still seems that we're missing the Jetson's cars that I expected would be around by 2011. Not only haven't we duplicated the feats of 2001: A Space Odyssey by sending a ship to Jupiter, we haven't even sent a manned mission to Mars. Forty years

Read the rest of "The Contest that's out of this World" at SQLServerCentral

This is going to be so cool.

I heard about this over the summer, and it's quite possible that my jaw literally dropped when I was told. It was stunning, surprising, something that I never expected. Especially with the short lead-in talk I was given before the news. As Jes Borland (blog | @grrl_geek) might say, "Squeeeeeeeeeeee". It's exciting, and I can't say what it is yet. As I write this, I'm almost bouncing out of my seat from the excitement.

Come to the Red Gate booth at 10am

Read the rest of "The Countdown" at SQLServerCentral.

At conferences and events I have found that the vast majority of sessions are one hour long. Sometimes events have experimented with 75 or 90 minute sessions, but the majority of talks I've heard were an hour, short enough to get an idea of how to use a feature or have an idea about why you might use something, but too short for in depth learning. More in depth sessions are usually all day sessions, or multi-day classes, which are very focused, and expensive. It seems that it's rare the many employees get the chance to attend this type of training.

This year the Summit is trying something new, with a few half day sessions that should provide a deep dive in a number of areas during one focused three hour time slot. There are sessions on a variety of topics including performance tuning from Tom LaRock, and Scaling SQL Server from Glenn Berry. The sessions take place on Wed and Thur in the afternoon, so check the schedule if you're interested.

Read the rest of "The Half Day Experiment" at SQLServerCentral.

It's hurricane season on the East Coast of the US right now, and after Hurricane Irene, I'm sure there are more than a few IT workers that are worried about their disaster recovery (DR) plans. Irene didn't cause much damage, but it was a reminder that there are situations which are completely out of our control, but could easily end up causing us problems with our infrastructure.

SQL Server gives us numerous ways to prepare for disasters with different technologies like database mirroring, log shipping and more. The new Always On features in Denali will give us even more options, and may be worth the cost of an upgrade. While DBAs seem to regularly practice backups and restores, recovering a full application often requires more than a SQL Server restore. This Friday, I wanted to ask how often you practice your recovery.

Read the rest of "The DR Test Schedule" at SQLServerCentral.

Next week is the PASS Summit in Seattle, where lots of SQL Server professionals will be gathering to network, bond, and learn a bit about SQL Server. I've been fortunate enough to attend many SQL Server events, and the highlights of the trips are always the chance to sit and talk with many of you out there that read this newsletter on a daily basis.

When I first started going to conferences in my career, I was often "that guy" as Tim Mitchell put it. I'd go to events, sit in as many sessions as possible, but often hang out alone at nights, catching up on work or watching a little TV. Over time I realized that some valuable information at sessions came from the speaker answering questions informally at the end. I'd hang out with those groups, listening and learning. The next year I even asked a few questions, getting solutions to a few issues in my environment.

Read the rest of "Come Find Me at the Summit" at SQLServerCentral

When we finished, my daughter and I talked about what awesome thing had happened to each of us that day. She said that me giving her 5 extra minutes to play with a friend before we left was great. I told her the crazy, illegal, solo, 5 hit volleyball return I made at her practice that made everyone laugh was the highlight of my day. We challenged the rest of the family to find an awesome thing from that day, and everyone enjoyed it. Since then we've made it a point to regular ask what awesome thing happened to each other.

Read the rest of "An Awesome Job" at SQLServerCentral.

I was talking with someone recently about features in SQL Server and they mentioned that partitioning was something DBAs should know. It's only available in the Enterprise and Data Center editions for production use, but my friend noted that it works in Developer edition and felt there was no excuse for a DBA not being familiar with a feature that's been out since SQL Server 2005, nearly four versions removed from its introduction.

I can understand that, but if you don't have the ability to actually tune large data sets and see the impact of partitioning in a larger, production environment, it's easy to dismiss this as a feature that doesn't provide many benefits in a smaller situation. The same could be said for clustering, SSIS imports, or any number of features that aren't often used. So how do you actually learn to get some experience with these features?

Read the rest of "How do you learn the advanced stuff?" at SQLServerCentral.

I can't believe I'm driving to the airport again today for a trip out of the country. Given the troubles that I've typically had crossing the Atlantic, it seems crazy to me that I'm going to go for the second time this year. In my life, I've flown to Europe 9 times and each trip has always been a one-stop each way, yet I've never had less than 5 planes and had as many as seven. A few years ago I thought that would end as I flew to the UK and made it back to Chicago with three planes. I then proceeded to get on, and off, three more planes before the fourth managed to get me to Denver.

This time I'm trying a new route, actually flying through Calgary. My one Canadian trip was smooth, so maybe I'll have an easy trip over the SQL Bits 9: Query Across the Mersey. Simon Sabin and the rest of the organizers have invited me to come quite a few times and I finally committed this year. I've been wanting to attend the event, which many friends have greatly enjoyed. I'm looking forward to getting to the home of the Beatles, Liverpool and seeing Chris Testa-O'Neill's band along with the Fab Beatles, entertaining everyone on Thursday night. Assuming I can get there in time.

Read the rest of "Bits Bound" at SQLServerCentral

It's time for the annual SQLServerCental party at the PASS conference in Seattle again. It's become an event that's a lot of fun, and a great way for the SQL Server community to have some fun and get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere. This year we've once again combined the party with the Exceptional DBA awards, and I'm honored to be there to celebrate noted SQLServerCentral author Jeff Moden as the winner.

We have once again contracted for a casino themed party with various game tables around. We'll call them the card game where you try to get twenty one, the competitive card game with a flop, river and turn, the roll-the-ball-around-the-circle-and-guess-the-number game, and probably that dice game as well. Have to be careful with the spam filters these days. ;)

Read the rest of "Know When to Hold 'Em" at SQLServerCentral

However when we talk about disaster recovery is seems that the vast majority of people plan for a data center failure, or a hurricane, or a major disaster. Those are possibilities, but the risk of them happening is low. It's rare that a major disaster will hit any particular part of the world and therefore the risk is often very low. With a low risk, it might not be worth spending a lot of money on extra hardware to handle a situation that may never occur. I know that most of the time the management I've worked for haven't felt it was worth spending a lot of money to prepare for a major disaster. There are systems that are worth duplicating to ensure high availability, and in many cases it does seem that management is willing to pay for spare systems when downtime is an issue.

Read the rest of "Probabilities and Disaster Recovery" at SQLServerCentral.

I saw this piece on Learning Unix from Miguel de Icaza that brought back memories. Michael is a well known developer that is working an open source implementation of .NET called Mono. He worked at Microsoft and continues to bring .NET to other platforms, but he primarily works on Unix based systems. The post laments the lack of basic Unix knowledge and tricks from many of the developers he meets. His recommendation is a few books and tutorials to learn shell commands, emacs, and more.

Those bring back memories for me since I learned to use emacs early in college. I went through tutorial and enjoyed the editor much more than vi and learned to take advantage of shell commands for quick scripts or tools that would make my programming tasks easier. Those skills helped me when I moved to the DOS/Windows world and scripted many tasks, and even helped in SQL Server with the scripting tasks is SSIS and SQLCMD. As I look over PowerShell scripts these days, I find myself seeing the same constructs as I saw in Korn shell, but with different syntax.

Read the rest of "Big Gaps" at SQLServerCentral.

I don't think the AppStore model is dying, however. One of the things that I have noticed in the apps between the iPhone and the Android devices at the ranch is that the quality of the iOS apps is higher. It's rare that I have crashes, there is more consistency between the various interfaces, things work as you expect, and they run well. It's not that Android apps are horrible, but outside of the large company apps, the quality of any particular app is likely to be lower. That's expected because there is no gate that prevents someone from building a poor quality app and deploying it in the Android marketplace.

Read the rest of "A Better Application Model" at SQLServerCentral.

I used to hear that one of the strengths of Linux was the thousands of volunteers that would help you get a patch or a fix in record time when you reported an issue. That worked well, but not well enough for many companies that really wanted a company to stand behind patches. A few companies, like Red Hat, sold support agreements with the "free as in beer" OS that ended up costing companies almost as much as a regular license of another OS. While Linux is a great system, it hasn't taken over the world like many people thought.

Lately there's been a different flavor of open-ness on the Internet. It seems that so much of what we read and is pushed out to us as news or information is based on the crowd-sourcing of what's popular. Facebook shows a "most active" view, Twitter has trending topics and re-tweets, and many news sites like Reddit use a crowd voting mechanism to help determine what you see first on their front page.

Read the rest of "Data Quality on the Open Web" at SQLServerCentral.

The byline for this piece about cloud computing is great. It a sarcastic comment about problems in the cloud, and if you read it, then maybe you won't think every problem in the cloud is cause for the complete abandonment of cloud computing as a tool in your technology toolbelt. As cloud vendors grow, they often standardize and build more homogenous infrastructures that could have cascading failures. We've seen this in the past with hosting companies that provided data center services, and we've seen it in large companies that centralize and standardize their systems.

When I started my career, I saw in in mainframe computing as well. That was more amusing as we would all stand up in our cubes, and if you saw a significant number of others standing up, you knew the entire mainframe was down. These days I think Twitter lets us know as quick as any monitoring software when there's a large outage. That's assuming Twitter isn't down.

Read the rest of "Cloud Common Sense" at SQLServerCentral.

DBAs don't get security? That's surprising to me, but it's the first line of this piece on the gap between DBAs and security staff in many companies. Apparently according to a survey, most DBAs don't apply security patches very often, don't manage change control, and don't have tight controls or an understanding of how to detect and respond to unauthorized changes to data.

That might be the case in the Sybase world, or even the Oracle world, where it seems that I hear the DBAs do more management of corporate fiefdoms than database platforms. In the SQL Server world, however, we haven't had too many security patches, and I know most DBAs are diligent about applying the service packs, if they're allowed to by software vendors.

Read the rest of "Not on the Same Page" at SQLServerCentral.

At one point when I was in college, I spent a few weeks touring around Europe. I had a bicycle with me, a backpack with a couple changes of clothes, and wandered throughout parts of France, Spain, and Italy, staying in hostels and living a carefree life. However my few weeks were nothing compared to what many students in Australia often do. I met a few dozen students at different times from down under that were on a walkabout from school, traveling around the world for a year, experiencing life on their own terms, far away from home.

I was somewhat jealous, and I even considered joining them for an extended vacation of my own. I never did, but I've always wondered if I should have. My wife and I read One Year Off about seven or eight years ago and debated taking a walkabout the world with our kids, but decided against it. As I've gotten older, I'm not sure it's the way I would want to live my life, but I admire those that can live like that. Personally, I'm not evens sure what I would do on a sabbatical, something that my company, Red Gate Software, has provided to a few of my co-workers.

Read the rest of "A Walkabout" at SQLServerCentral.

It used to be that most serious developers went to college and studied CS. Those people that wanted to make a living programming computers became grounded in theory, struggled through assembler class, and understood the classic waterfall development technique. They could write bubble sorts and quick sorts, and could create and destroy pointers in thin air. At least in theory.

As computer science curriculums evolved, they became more practical. Students no longer had to learn C or emacs (a shame, IMHO), but learned Java and .NET, working in nicely crafted IDEs like the ones they would use in the corporate world. Practical programming classes allowed students to build more rich and interesting applications, instead of just building virtual linked lists that weren't visualized outside of one's imagination.

Read the rest of "The Apprentice" at SQLServerCentral.

It used to be that most serious developers went to college and studied CS. Those people that wanted to make a living programming computers became grounded in theory, struggled through assembler class, and understood the classic waterfall development technique. They could write bubble sorts and quick sorts, and could create and destroy pointers in thin air. At least in theory.

As computer science curriculums evolved, they became more practical. Students no longer had to learn C or emacs (a shame, IMHO), but learned Java and .NET, working in nicely crafted IDEs like the ones they would use in the corporate world. Practical programming classes allowed students to build more rich and interesting applications, instead of just building virtual linked lists that weren't visualized outside of one's imagination.

Read the rest of "The Apprentice" at SQLServerCentral.

One of the things that I've heard more and more over the last two years is that developers who have actually "done" something are worth hiring. With so many people worried about their jobs in this economy, having more skill, talent, and accomplishments should help you to feel more secure. Even if you don't feel secure, I would expect that the more skilled you are, the more likely you are to get a job.

These days it's easier than ever to build an application. Hardware is cheap and powerful, often costing $500 or less for a laptop that runs most tools. Hosting services are cheap, or even free. There are so many ways for someone to showcase their development talents that it does truly seem to be wise to pick and choose those developers who have shown some talent over those that are content to sit in a cube and allow someone else to manage their efforts.

Read the rest of "Learning for Profit" at SQLServerCentral.

This is the story of Manna, the manager of a fast food restaurant. It's a great read, and perhaps a little shocking. Manna is a piece of software, reading sensors, reacting, and letting employees know what to do with a synthesized voice through a set of headphones that the everyone wears in a fast good restaurant. In this tale, Manna evolves into a software system that is spread throughout many industries, essentially displacing managers and many workers at all levels in all industries. With the ability of these different "Manna" variants to communicate and negotiate contracts among themselves, the US devolves into an Orwellian nightmare place to live.

It's a science fiction story, but the fears that it evokes are similar to those I've heard expressed from many people in the IT field across my two decades in this industry. A friend of mine left IT a decade ago, while working as an Exchange admin for a company with 50,000 mailboxes. He was sure in 5 years his job would be automated and eliminated. I knew a few people that moved out of DBA work in the early 2000s, after Microsoft released SQL Server 7 and 2000, with some marketing messages that the products didn't require a DBA. A few years ago I heard a few people arguing that PowerPivot would kill most BI development jobs because it was so easy for end users to build their own analysis applications.

Read the rest of "The Robot DBA" at SQLServerCentral.

It seems that there are relatively few very talented hackers that can break into your systems. The vast majority of data breaches and issues are from one of two attack vectors: social engineering or script kiddies. Social engineering is hard to fight, especially in large companies where everyone doesn't know everyone. Script kiddies are more numerous since they don't need any talent and merely deploy scripts written by others to attack your systems.

Recently it seems that there have been quite a few hacker attacks on systems, often using fairly simple SQL Injection techniques, that aren't vandalism, and aren't for profit. These attacks are motivated by hackers who are offended by the companies or organizations and are standing up for customers. That might be worrisome to DBAs and data professionals since you can't hide data breaches if the attackers publicly post the data they've copied and you will certainly receive some of the blame for any breach of security.

Read the rest of "From Vandalism to Serious Crime" at SQLServerCentral.

In the relational databases we have all different types of data that we store. We have the basic types of integers, character data, dates and times, and more. As the RDBMS platforms have evolved, we have also added spatial, XML, and other types of data that build on these base types. By classifying them as different types, even if we are storing numbers, or characters, we can more efficiently work with these data types.

As the world changes and expands, I think we will end up with more and more data that takes advantage of different data types, and perhaps even adds more. This week, I wanted you to look forward, and predict what changes we might see in our data storage in the future.

Read the rest of "The Growth of Data Types" at SQLServerCentral

It's not a short yellow bus special cloud, at least I hope not. Amazon is introducing a cloud for the US government, designed to meet their regulatory and compliance requirements. The idea here is that there are different needs for some sensitive information that the US government deals with, or at least some departments. I think most of us recognize this might be the case, and the same cloud infrastructure that some company like SQLServerCentral needs wouldn't be appropriate for OSHA or some other department.

Amazon introduced this US only cloud that is physically and logically accessible in the US only and adheres to some alphabet soup of regulatory requirements. It should allow more government organizations to store or process data in a cloud environment. I think this is a good move on Amazon's part, and a potential benefit for some US agencies that might process lots of data at times, but not want the overhead of a large IT infrastructure to maintain permanently.

Read the rest of "The Special Cloud" at SQLServerCentral.

"An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest.” - ~Benjamin Franklin

Most of us are working to provide for ourselves and our families. We go to a job every day, earning money that we use to pay our bills and, hopefully, enjoy our lives outside of work. Most of us should be saving for retirement as well, for the future when we might not be able to work, or we've reached that age where we want to slow down. Given the recent issues in our economies around the globe, perhaps we ought to be saving even more, and not just for retirement. The chances that any of us will be out of work at some point are going up and we might need that savings for that kind of rainy day.

Read the rest of "An Investment in Knowledge" at SQLServerCentral.

How long do you expect to keep a piece of data in any of your databases? Chances are if you're like me, you rarely think about it and expect that you need to store all the data perpetually. As long as you have a job, and the database is being used by some system, you keep the data.

Over time that becomes a problem. Some companies are starting to examine the legal issues of old data, mostly emails, but potentially other records, and digitally shredding or removing that data over time. For others there are the problems of storage, with the raw space needed to keep all this data growing faster than hardware budgets. More and more companies are looking to archive data that is less used to ease the stress on their storage and backup systems.

Read the rest of "Keep Data Forever" at SQLServerCentral.

What do people buy most of before a hurricane? Wal-Mart determined that batteries are the number ones sales item before a hurricane, but the second most sold item was surprising: pop-tarts. That's the type of intelligence that can come from analysts asking the right questions about their customers and then IT delivering systems that can help them get an answer.

More and more companies are starting to deal with big data. Big data is usually seen as extremely large sets of data. Those data sets often exceed the capability of what a single database server can handle, and place a strain on existing IT infrastructures, especially when there is an explosion of new datab types. Hadoop is an open source framework that's designed to deal with large sets of data and help with the processing and analysis of these large data sets.

Read the rest of "Pop Tarts and Hurricanes" at SQLServerCentral.

Is it a good time to be in the technology business? I think so, as the US unemployment rate stands at just above 9%, but the rate in IT is listed as about 4%. There might be some errors in how they are classifying and counting IT jobs, and the unemployment is not evenly distribute across the US, but that still seems like a significant difference. As a comparison, much of the medical profession is similarly employed, as are teachers (yeah!), but construction trades are showing > 20% unemployment.

Not only are there lots of jobs in the technology area, but overall technology pays a much higher salary (or wage) than many other industries. Whether you think you are paid well or not, peruse some other professions on Dice, Monster, or another job board and compare salaries. Keep in mind the US median income is $48k, meaning half the people make more and half make less. I suspect most IT workers are in the "more" side of that range.

Read the rest of "The Talent Crunch" at SQLServerCentral.

I have a few friends that are working virtualize almost their entire computer infrastructures. They work in large and small companies, but there is a constant push to avoid the bare metal installation of any operating system onto physical hardware, making every Windows or Unix machine a virtual machine on top of a hypervisor. I was surprised to hear that companies were being to aggressive, but the cost benefits can be huge, and when virtualization is done in a smart way, performance doesn't suffer.

However virtualization can change security, especially when you have VMs that are allowed to move from physical host to physical host. The state of New Mexico embarked on a similar project, and were concerned over security of the virtual machines. Their department had dismissed some employees because of a security breach a few years earlier and security was on the forefront of their minds. Additional security as well as network controls were used in their project, and I hope they also implemented strong auditing procedures.

Read the rest of "Virtual Security" at SQLServerCentral.

Twitter is an amazing application. I still remember hearing about it in the spring of 2008 as some type of "let others know what you're doing" service. It seemed a little silly to me and I couldn't understand the value. My first tweet is lost for now, but I know that I struggled to find a use for the service at the beginning. Like many people, I ended up updating my status with inane things like "Getting a latte from Starbucks."

Since then I've found Twitter to be a very exciting way of keeping in touch with people around the world, learning new things, and even getting information at various events. It's the ultimate water cooler that makes me smile, laugh, and share interesting information. There is a great SQL Server community on Twitter, and an amazing hashtag (#sqlhelp) that might help you solve some complex SQL issue. It's happened before, and it's amazing when it does, especially considering that responses are limited to 140 characters.

Read the rest of "A Flock of SQL Servers" at SQLServerCentral.

One of the ways in which some companies have tried to keep the prices of their products down is by changing the packaging. It used to be that you would buy a half gallon of ice cream or laundry detergent, but now you'll find that often you are getting slightly less for the same price you used to pay. For the former that might be a nice way of lowering your portions but for the latter that's just annoying. I find that to be a subtle point of deception by some companies, and it likely will continue into future.

For those of us that work for a company, we might find a similar erosion in an area that we have come to expect a certain level of benefit. A recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management found that many companies were lowering the level of benefits that they offer to workers. The costs of those benefits have been rising, and as companies try to keep a certain level of profitability, it seems workers are feeling some of the effects.

Read the rest of "Benefits" at SQLServerCentral.

I found a report recently that eBay had implemented 100TB of SSD storage from Nimbus Data for their virtual infrastructure. That's a huge amount of very fast storage, which definitely helps explain how the eBay auctions seem to run so quickly. Apparently eBay isn't the only company that's moving to SSDs for part of their infrastructure as Facebook spent $69million on FusionIO storage.

SSD storage isn't cheap, with eBay reporting $25k for a 2.5TB device, which is about 2.5 times the cost of my rough pricing from Dell for a similar HDD device. The SSDs have amazing performance, though I'm not sure what the reliability is compared to HDDs. There are plenty of vendor studies that promise long lasting drives, but I think we'll have to see what more people report as they deploy these drives over time.

Read the rest of "Going Big with SSDs" at SQLServerCentral.

Last year I got into a debate, and an argument, with a friend over the growth of Google and their profits. I took the position that while Google has provided a good service to the world with their search engine and their founders have earned money, they will find it harder and harder to continue to follow the mantra of "do no evil" if they feel they need to continue to grow their profits. Given the recent shutdowns of some of the "good projects" they had embarked upon to make the world a better place, that prediction seems to be coming true.

Building a business is hard, and as shown in the numbers, most don't succeed. Many do, however, and the vast majority of businesses out in the world today are small ones, with less than a 100 people. However those small businesses don't account for most of the revenue in the US. Large businesses do, which isn't all the unexpected since those large companies do business in areas that are important to most people (energy, oil, banking, etc.).

Read the rest of "Keeping Your Soul" at SQLServerCentral.

There are lots of things to talk about in there, but one thing in particular seemed to stand out to me. I n many cases, the justification for getting some project approved, or moving forward, is different than in many companies. It's not the personal relationship with the person in charge, or because it seems like a good idea, but because thedata matters. That's a quote used quite often in the book.

Read the rest of "Data Matters" at SQLServerCentral.

There have been a number of issues with Dropbox and their encryption process for files stored on their systems. This highlights some of the issues with cloud services, as I've talked about as well. I use Dropbox, but for any files that have identity information, I encrypt them locally and only store the encrypted versions.

There have been quite a few issues with cloud-type services related to security, and at this point, I think it's good. The press about the Sony hacks, the RSA issues, and others should be scaring consumers and management in companies into demanding better security from vendors. Without a strong emphasis on security from clients, cloud vendors have no reason to spend more effort on security than they do now. I am actually hoping that insurance doesn't cover the Sony issues, which will help force companies to consider purchasing insurance specifically for security issues. That will force insurance companies to demand better security as well.

Read the rest of "The Window Is Shrinking" at SQLServerCentral.

One of the reasons that we have so many gadgets at low costs, with a regular re-fresh and re-tool of the internals is that many of our computing chips and circuit boards are built overseas in factories that are optimized for low costs and rapid evolution to new technologies. That works fine for consumers, but it presents a problem for a government concerned with security.

Since the fabrication plants are under the control of a foreign government, that means that the military and governments that want to use the same chips that consumers use must vet the designs, and then the end product. This piece talks about the problems with the supply chain that can come from foreign suppliers that might have incentives to allow hardware hacks into the designs at the request of their own governments.

Read the rest of "Hardware Hacking" at SQLServerCentral.

Many people have been skeptical about the move to cloud computing, especially in the database groups. There are valid reasons to worry about security, legal issues, and more. I certainly think that using cloud services requires some planning and careful examination of the impact to your environment, but I also think that many companies will want to make the move, so it pays to learn more about cloud computing and be prepared with realistic, rational concerns from the database perspective.

Anthony Skipper of ServiceMesh gave a presentation on some of the problems and lessons learned from moving to cloud computing. It was picked up in an Information Week piece that summaries some of the areas that can cause problems for your company. The list of issues is a good one, and worth reading through.

Read the rest of "The Woes of Cloud Computing" at SQLServerCentral.

Many people have been skeptical about the move to cloud computing, especially in the database groups. There are valid reasons to worry about security, legal issues, and more. I certainly think that using cloud services requires some planning and careful examination of the impact to your environment, but I also think that many companies will want to make the move, so it pays to learn more about cloud computing and be prepared with realistic, rational concerns from the database perspective.

Anthony Skipper of ServiceMesh gave a presentation on some of the problems and lessons learned from moving to cloud computing. It was picked up in an Information Week piece that summaries some of the areas that can cause problems for your company. The list of issues is a good one, and worth reading through.

Read the rest of "The Woes of Cloud Computing" at SQLServerCentral.

I wrote about data scientists while back, which seems to be a field that involves the analysis of large amounts of data and the tools involved. The definition of this area is a little nebulous, but that hasn't stopped companies from looking for people to work in this area. There are jobs for data scientists, and perhaps for interesting, there seems to be more and more jobs for people to work with "big data".

This article shows a huge trend up in the "big data" keywords in job listings. That makes sense as I think the data growth has far outpaced the ability of tools to work with large datasets. Excel had a problem with large amounts of data until recently, and most of the other tools used are either very expensive or home grown.

Read the rest of "Jobs for Data Scientists" at SQLServerCentral.

Are you going to start seeing more pressure for outages in applications? I suspect many outages are caused more by application issues than database ones, but those two are becoming very tightly linked as we look to more rapidly deploy features and enhancements in our applications, which often include database changes

This outage from United shows that there can be a huge impact, not only financially, but also an inconvenience to clients and potential lost future business. A company might struggle to with future business after a large outage, especially when there are so many other choices easily available to consumers across the Internet.

Read the rest of "The Impact of Outages" at SQLServerCentral.

saw Captain America recently and enjoyed it. I've been following the Marvel comics as they move to the movie screen, having seen Iron Man and Thor as well, and looking forward to The Avengers next year. My kids have enjoyed the movies as well, and it's likely to be a nice family night out when it releases.

It's the middle of summer, with many blockbuster movies released this year that fall into the science fiction, or even geeky, areas at my house. We have had a new Transformers and X-Men movies, Falling Skies on TV, along with a (scary) introduction to Dr. Who for my daughter, and I've enjoyed a few books like the Solar Clipper Seriesand the Spinward Fringe series.

Read the rest of "Geeky Distractions" at SQLServerCentral.

I've written a number of pieces about telecommuting over the years, and while some people have had success in getting permission to work from home, many of you tell me that your current manager, and likely every manager you've ever had wouldn't allow it. There are a huge group of people that are convinced telecommuting is not in their future. I think you're wrong, and let me tell you a story.

Years ago I went to work for a small (50 people), old company. The CEO had worked their his whole life, his father had worked there most of his life, and they had very conservative values and ideals. They both wore suits to the office every day and I was expected to do the same, even as an IT guy. I went out and bought 4 or 5 suits the first year I worked there, along with slacks, shirts, and (shudder) ties.

Read the rest of "You Can Telecommute" at SQLServerCentral.

One of the things I've been doing lately is looking forward to future versions of SQL Server. Not SQL 11/Denali, which has CTP 3 out now, but more towards the future. SQL 12 and beyond, and wondering how the platform can advance and incorporate new ideas and knowledge from other areas such as NoSQL or NewSQL. I also have been trying to decide which parts of SQL Server could be improved to be more robust of scalable, or address some failings in the platform.

Our systems seem to be growing larger, and storage seems to cost less all the time. While this doesn't always result in cost savings, it does mean that we may be ready to increase the page size in SQL Server once again, perhaps growing to 16k or even 64k. If that follows as I/O transfer sizes grow, then is it time to add in a rowid marker of some sort that gives us a unique handle to every row on a page?

Read the rest of "Time for a ROWID?" at SQLServerCentral.

Michael Stonebraker, a database pioneer and researcher, recently said that Facebook's implementation of MySQL was "a fate worse than death," and they ought to rewrite their entire infrastructure. I think that analogy is a bit extreme. That statement also shows me that relational databases can scale to some dramatic heights with creative engineering as Facebook as shown with MySQL. I suspect that Facebook could easily use SQL Server and complex sharding of data to power the site if they wanted to in place of MySQL.

Mr. Stonebraker has another solution for the "oldSQL" problem of scaling to very high volumes of transactions while maintaining ACID principles. He has a company that makes VoltDB, a database that lives in memory, complies with ACID principles, and can scale to very high transaction volumes.

Read the rest of "NewSQL Can Save the World" at SQLServerCentral.