March 2009

Quick update: SQLSaturday, life in general

Not going to be a long post; I’ve got a major report due for work tomorrow, so I’m sitting at Schlotzky’s (I really should buy stock), waiting on the kids to get out.

* SQLSaturday is going well. Just picked up speaker shirts and gift mugs today, and they look awesome. Sent the check to Microsoft a couple of days late, but hopefully they won’t dump us. Started cleaning the roster from lunch no-pays, only to discover there’s a bug in our pay process, and a lot of people did pay. I think Andy Warren is just going to pay for everybody’s lunch next time rather than put up with me (just kidding, Andy).

* A couple of weeks ago, I started talking about the impact of Facebook on my own personal appearance. I’m proud to announce I’ve lost 5 pounds so far, and I’m determined to lose the next 5 by next Wednesday. My secret? Lots of veggies, very few carbs, and a lot of exercise. We’ll see what happpens.

* Anyway, Microsoft is coming in to the office next week to show us what SSAS and SSRS can do for us. I dread meetings like this because I’ve rarely met a consultant that doesn’t have the “I-have-a-hammer-and-that-looks-like-a-nail” mentality. It’s a good excuse to update documentation (which we’ve been needing to do, but it’s hard to justify hours for).

SQLSaturday #13 Update

So much stuff going on that it’s hard to keep track of; as of this moment, we’re at budget, which means that all of my expenses are able to be paid. I’m still working on getting a little more funding (just in case we need it), but I’m feeling really good about things right now. I’ve still got a long list of stuff to do, but we’re getting there.

Just in case you care, here’s my remaining to-do items:

1. Make sure that the restaurant is still available on April 24th for the speaker’s dinner. I sent a request in, and got a few initial emails, but haven’t heard back. I need to follow up with that.

2. Need name badges for volunteers, and hopefully for all of the registrants. My wife said I could find some at Office Max, which is good, because I was getting prices on fancy lanyards (which we don’t need).

3. Pick up event bags; Regions Bank is actually donating the event bags to us, so here’s a little shout out to them 🙂

4. Prep the event guide. The Microsoft conference center has names for its rooms, so I need to go back and change the names of the tracks to match. Should simplify my life as best I can.

5. Prepare my volunteer army for stuff they need to do. I still haven’t laid out a logistical plan, which I need to do soon.

6. The week before the event is going to be printer mayhem; I need to check on prices at the various business stores to see what printing the event guide will cost me.

7. Pursue the non-pays on the lunch fee list, as well as prepare to reimburse volunteers who paid.

8. Contact the SQL Short Session Speakers and see where they are at with their topics.

Ugggh. Too much stuff to do. On the plus side, free stuff is continuing to come in, so that’s exciting.

Facebook, and the world I left behind… (Part 2)

Continuing in my observations of my Facebook experience, I’ve noticed something else beyond just the collision of worlds; Facebook interactions often lead to self-reflection on physical attributes. In other words,

People want to see what you look like. You can’t hide physical features like on a traditional forum environment; there’s a strong pressure to post pictures of not only who you were (because most of your friends on Facebook are going to be people in the past), but who you are now. In my case, the who I am now could probably eat the who I was then for breakfast.

As a side note, I have noticed that most of the women I went to high school with have aged very well; if they were cute at 16, they’re beautiful now. Most of the men… well, let’s just say that I’m not the only one who didn’t hold up well over the years 🙂

A focus on the physical is not necessarily a bad thing; while part of me is now increasingly self-conscious about the fact that I have changed over the years, that self-consciousness may save my life. When I graduated high school, I weighed 120 lbs; college, 130. First Master’s? 180 (I had started working out, and was in pretty good shape at that point). Three years ago, (after long since ceasing regular physical exercise) I crossed the 300 pound mark. I started having some health issues, and I’ve been working out since then, and am now at 260. Looking at my friends on Facebook, I’m determined I’m going to get down to 220 by the time of my high school reunion (in August; 5 months). Facebook’s focus on the physical is going to be my motivation.

I realize that my true friends from high school don’t care that “there’s more of me to love”, and that an obsession over looks can be unhealthy, but I’m trying to put a positive spin on this; I need to get healthy. Seeing my friends that have been successful at that over the years is inspiring, and I want to be a part of that.

Facebook, and the world I left behind… (Part 1)

OK, so a few posts ago, I was questioning the level of connectivity required for the social DBA to be considered “involved” in the community, and I took a mild swipe at Facebook. Obviously, I now have to eat my words; I got connected to Facebook over the weekend, and I can begin to understand the addiction. I find myself checking every few hours or so to see if any one new has become my friend, or to see if any of my current friends have anything witty to say (or better yet, any old pictures to post).

Anyway, after a few days on Facebook, I have some observations (which I’ll cover over a few posts):

First, Worlds collide, and you better be ready. Goffman had a sociological theory commonly known as the Face and Mask. His principal thesis was that face is a mask that changes depending on the audience and the social interaction. In other words, we manifest a different persona around different audiences; you don’t act the same way around your boss as you do your best friend, do you (well, some of you might)?

With facebook, there is no distinction between friends; I’m friends with people from high school, college, a couple of jobs ago, and my current job. I’ve changed over the years, and I’m not always certain that I want my friends of today exposed to the hijinks of the past, yet, there’s no stopping it. The 17-year-old me collides with the 21-year-old me, the 30 year-old-me, and the near-40 me.

Furthermore, your own devilish past may not haunt you much, but Facebook also makes it too easy to introduce your friends from different worlds (“Pastor, I’d like you to meet Bob; Bob was my roommate in college, and he currently films adult movies.”). If I comment on a picture from 20 years ago, it’s very easy for anybody I know to read that comment, and trace it to anyone else involved now.

This is not necessarily a bad thing; life is about chance encounters, and it’s fun to see how things get sewn up into a spider’s web of interconnectedness. Just be prepared to run naked on Facebook; there are no masks to hide behind.

I plan on adding more thoughts to this later, but figured the image of naked Facebookers was enough to leave you hanging; Part 2 to follow.

Visual Studio For Team Systems: Database Professional

I’ve been struggling with VSTS:DB for some time; I love the idea of source controlling my development databases (right now we’re just using backups to prevent code loss), but I’ve not been able to really get my head wrapped around how VSTS:DB works. Even though I consider myself a developer, I guess I’m still a DBA at heart. Visual Studio is like a foreign language to me; I can pretty much figure out the equivelent of “where is the bathroom?”, but I wouldn’t consider myself fluent in it.

It’s obvious that VSTS:DB was designed for developers; they use VS terminology like solutions, projects, and references, but leave out common administrative tools like execution plans. The goal is to develop “off-line”, and then apply changes from source control to your development environment (so that additional application testing can be done); the model is that the source control is the truth, not the dev environment. Of course, if you’re at all remotely interested in this topic, there are better resources than I that describe this (but not many; see below).

Here’s the challenges I see with VSTS:DB

Poor documentation: I found a couple of forums, and one book that actually mentions DataDude. The online help files are OK, but help files aren’t how-to’s; they’re designed to respond to a specific question.

Reverse deployment: The product assumes a particular model of deployment; changes flow from a dev environment to source control, and are ultimately deployed to a production environment. However, in our shop, we often face the challenge that a stored procedure may need a performance tweak (such as an index hint); our datasets are so huge that the dev environment can’t always see those scenarios. A production DBA will make a change to code, but that change doesn’t get propogated back into source control, and we lose vision on it (unless we do a manual review of the change scripts and catch it).

The database-as-project metaphor: When application developers work with Visual Studio, a project represents a compiled piece of code (like a dll or an application). If they make changes, redeployment means replacement; the old dll is overwritten by the new dll. Databases obviously don’t work that way, and even though the tool seems smart enough to change CREATE scripts to ALTER scripts, I’m still not sure that’s the best way to deploy something. What if you’re working on some stored procs that aren’t ready to deploy? You can manage what gets deployed by doing a schema comparison, but it just seems klunky.

Adding features mid-release: Really not a challenge per se, but it is one of my pet peeves. Microsoft just released an RTM version of the GDR (General Redistribution Release) in November. According to the developers, it’s a “complete new release”, with several fundemental changes to the architecture. Although the official version is not out yet, it does mean that we have to be very precise when comparing what version of VSTS:DB you’re working on (are you on 2008 or 2008 GDR?).

Anyway, I hope that I can work my way through some of these challenges, and I’m sure that my perspective will change as I become more familiar with the way the VSTS works, but for now, I’m frustrated. I’m hoping that as I being detailing this journey, those frustrations will resolve themselves.

SQLSaturday #13 update

Things are trucking along; I finally got all of the speakers nailed down and had to choose between some very interesting presentations. After a discussion with the rest of the SQLSaturday team, I decided to add another room and track, and so we now have 34 presentations (plus a lunchtime special by Joe Celko). WOW.

BTW, we’re still way overbooked. If you put off reserving a slot, I’m sorry. Maybe next year.

Anyway, here’s the tentative graphical schedule; this is still subject to change, but it’s close to being done (I think):

SQLSaturday #13 schedule

SQLSaturday #13 schedule

I’ve also figured out a restaurant for the Speaker’s dinner, as well as the vendor for the box lunches on Saturday. Stuff left to do:

1. Get more sponsors! More money, more money.
2. Get the speaker’s shirts done.
3. Get the attendee gifts done.
4. Set up volunteer shifts.
5. More shwag.

Sheesh….

Sitting at Schlotzky’s…

Enjoying free wifi. I just discovered that I don’t like their vegetable beef soup. Too many vegetables, and it’s beef broth.

Anyway, Wednesday ritual; girls at activities, and I’m sitting at a keyboard trying to put some thoughts together to keep this blog moving forward. Clock is ticking down, so I may not be able to get it all out there, but there’s a few things that I need to put together. Consider this post a to-do list, and I may actually get to the rest of the items when I get home tonight.

So, here’s the list of stuff I’ve been doing this week:

1. Trying to figure out how to use DataDude and TFS. I know, this thing is supposedly loved by all, but it’s complicated; it’s a completely different mindset than stuff that I’m accustomed to working with.

2. Cleaning up the garage for a home office project. My wife loves the fact that I work from home; she just can’t stand me in the house. We’re talking about closing in our third bay of our garage (partially), and adding a home office.

3. Of course, a SQLSaturday update. Lots of stuff going on, and lots more to do 🙂