Education

#SQLPASS–Who’s Making It Rain?

 

As promised in my previous post (#SQLPASS–Good people, bad behavior…), I’d like to start diving in to some of the controversies that have cropped up in the last year and critically analyze what I consider to be “bad decisions”.  This first one is complex, so let me try to sum up the players involved first (with yet another post to follow about the actual decision).  Please note that I am NOT a fan of conspiracy theories (no evil masterminds plotting to rule SQL Server community), so I’m trying to avoid inferring too much about motive, and instead focusing on observable events.

A lot of the hubbub over the last couple of weeks about the Professional Association for SQL Server wasn’t just about the election or the password controversy, but about the decision to become simply PASS in all marketing materials (gonna need a new hashtag for twitter). So much controversy, in fact, that Tom LaRock, current Board President, wrote an excellent blog post about building a bigger umbrella for Mike.  I applaud Tom for doing this; it’s a vision, and that’s a great thing to have.  However, I wanted to take this metaphor, and turn it on its side; if we need umbrellas, then who’s making it rain?  Let’s take a look at the pieces of the puzzle.

 

Community as Commodity

To figure out the rainmakers, we need to define what the value of the Professional Association for SQL Server is.  If you’re reading this post, I bet you can look in a mirror and figure it out.  It’s you.  Your passion, your excitement, your interest in connecting and learning about SQL Server is the commodity provided by the organization.  We (the community) have reached a certain maturity in our growth as a commodity; we recruit new members through our enthusiasm, and we contribute a lot of free material to the knowledge base for SQL Server.  At this point, it’s far easier to grow our ranks than it would be to start over.   

However, the question I would ask is: what do YOU get out of membership?  For most of us, it’s low-to-no cost training (most of which is provided by other community members).   The association provides a conduit to connect us.   The value to you increases when you grow. Exposure to new ideas, new topics, a deeper understanding of the technology you use; all of these are fuel for growth.  In short, as individuals, community members profit most from DEPTH of knowledge.

The more active you are in the community, the more likely you’ll be able to forage out valuable insight; how many of you are active in the Professional Association of SQL Server?   According to this tweet from the official twitter account, 11,305 people have active profiles with the organization.  While that’s not a great metric for monitoring knowledge seekers, it does provide some baseline of measure for people who care enough to change their profiles when prompted. 

 

Microsoft Needs A New Storm

The Professional Association for SQL Server was founded to build a community of database professionals with an interest in learning more about Microsoft SQL Server; the founding members of the organization were Microsoft and Computer Associates, who obviously saw the commodity in building a community of people excited about SQL Server.  The more knowledge about SQL Server in the wild, the more likely that software licenses and training will increase.  Giving away training and knowledge for a lost cost yields great dividends in the end.

This is not a bad thing at all; it’s exciting to have a vendor that gives away free stuff like training.  However, it appears that Microsoft is making a slight shift away from a focus on SQL Server.  What makes me think this?

  • It’s getting cloudy (boy, I could stretch this rain metaphor): software as a service (including SQL as a service) is a lot more profitable in the long run than software licensing.  By focusing more on cloud services (Azure), Microsoft is positioning itself as a low-to-no administration provider.  
  • Electricity (Power BIQuery): Microsoft is focusing pretty heavily on the presentation layer of traditional business intelligence, and touting how simple it is to access and analyze data from anywhere in Excel “databases”.  Who needs SQL Server when your data is drag-and-drop? 
  • The rebranding of SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse: Data warehouse sounds like a database; Analytics Platform System sounds sexier, implying that your data structures are irrelevant.  Focus on what you want to do, not how to do it.

The challenge that Microsoft faces is that is has access to a commodity of SQL Server enthusiasts who don’t exactly fit the model of software-as-a-service; those of us that are comfortable with SQL Server on premise haven’t exactly made the leap to the cloud.  Also, many DBA’s dabble in Excel; they’re not Analytics practitioners.  In short, Microsoft has Joe DBA, but is looking for Mike Rosoft (see what I did there?), the Business Analyst.  Mike uses Microsoft tools to do things with data, not necessarily databases.  The problem?  Mike doesn’t have a home.   In order to maximize profits, Microsoft needs to invest in the growth of a larger and more diverse commodity.  In short, Microsoft wants a BROADER audience, but they want them to be excited and passionate about their technology.

Rain Dancing With C&C

The Professional Association for SQL Server has been managed by Christianson & Company since 2007.  While the Professional Association for SQL Server Board of Directors is made up of community volunteers, C&C is a growing corporation with the traditional goal of any good for-profit company: to make money.  How does C&C make money? They grow and sell a commodity.  If the Professional Association for SQL Server grows as an organization, C&C’s management of a larger commodity increases in value.   As far as I can tell, the Professional Association for SQL Server is C&C’s only client that is managed in this way.

The community gets free/low-cost training; C&C helps manage that training while diverting the cost to other players (i.e., Microsoft and other sponsors).  If Microsoft is looking for a broader commodity, C&C will be most successful if they can serve that BROADER audience.   The Professional Association for SQL Server’s website claims to serve a membership of 100,000+; that number includes every email address that has ever been used to register for any form of training from the association, including SQLSaturday’s, 24HOP, and Summit.  Bigger numbers means increased value when trying to build a bigger umbrella.

Yet, this 100,000+ membership is rarely reflected in anything other than marketing material.  Only 11,305 of them are eligible to vote; less (1,570) actually voted in the last election.  5,000 members are estimated to attend Summit 2014.  Perhaps the biggest measure of activity is the number of attendees at SQLSaturdays (18,362).  Any way you slice it, it seems to me that the number of people that are actively seeking DEEPER interactions are far fewer than the BROAD spectrum presented as members.  Furthermore, it would seem that reaching more than 100,000 members is challenging; if only 11,000 members are active in the community, and they’re the ones recruiting new members, how do you keep growing?  You reach out to a different audience.

 

Summary

I feel like it’s important to understand the commercial aspect of community building.  In short:

  • Microsoft needs to reach a broader audience by shifting focus from databases to simply data;
  • Christianson & Company will be able to grow as a company if they can help the Professional Association for SQL Server grow as a commodity;
  • The community has reached critical mass; it’s far easier to add to our community than it would be to build a new one.
  • The association has reached several members of the community (100,000+); far fewer of them are active  (11,305).

Where am I going with this?  That’s coming up in my next post.  While I don’t deny the altruism in the decision by the Board of Directors to reach out to a broader audience, I also think we (the commodity) should understand the financial benefits of building a bigger umbrella.

2014-10-20 by Blogging is FUN! PASS SQLServerPedia Syndication 12

#SQLPASS–Good people, bad behavior…

I’ve written and rewritten this post in my mind 100 times over the last couple of weeks, and I still don’t think it’s right.  However, I feel the need to speak up on the recent controversies brewing with the Professional Association for SQL Server’s BoD.  Frankly, as I’ve read most of the comments and discussions regarding the recent controversies (over the change in name, the election communication issues, and the password issues), my mind keeps wandering back to my time on the NomCom.

In 2010, when I served on the NomCom, I was excited to contribute to the electoral process; that excitement turned to panic and self-justification when I took a stance on the defensive side of a very unpopular decision.  I’m not trying to drag up a dead horse (mixed metaphor, I know), but I started out standing in a spot that I still believe is right:

The volunteers for the Professional Association of SQL Server serve with integrity.

Our volunteers act with best intentions, even when the outcomes of their decisions don’t sit well with the community at large.  However, we humans are often flawed in our fundamental attributions. When WE make a mistake, it’s because of the situation we are in; when somebody else makes a mistake, we tend to blame them.  We need to move past that, and start questioning decisions while empathizing with the people making those decisions.

In my case, feeling defensive as I read comments about “the NomCom’s lack of integrity” and conspiracy theories about the BoD influencing our decision, I moved from defending good people to defending a bad decision.  This is probably the first time that I’ve publically admitted this, but I believe that we in the NomCom made a mistake; I think that Steve Jones would have probably made a good Director.  Our intention was good, but something was flawed in our process.

However, this blog post is NOT about 2010; it’s about now.  I’ve watched as the Board of Directors continue to make bad decisions (IMO; separate blog forthcoming about decisions I think are bad ones), and some people have questioned their professionalism.  Others have expressed anger, while some suggest that we should put it all behind us and come together.  All of these responses are healthy as long as they separate the decisions made from the people making them, and that we figure out ways to make positive changes.  Good people make mistakes; good people talk about behaviors, and work to address them.

So, how do we work to address them?  The first step is admitting that there’s a problem, and it’s not the people.  Why am I convinced that it’s not the people?  Because every year we elect new people to the board, and every year there’s some fresh controversy brewing.  Changing who gets elected to the board doesn’t seem to seem to stimulate transparency or proactive communication with the community (two of the biggest issues with the Professional Association for SQL Server’s BoD).  In short, the system is not malleable enough to be influenced by good people.

I don’t really have a way to sum this post up; I wish I did.  All I know is that I’m inspired by the people who want change, and it saddens me that change seems to be stunted regardless of who gets elected.  Something’s gotta give at some point.

*************
Addendum: you may have noticed that I use the organization’s full legal name when referring to the Professional Association for SQL Server.  Think of it as my own (admittedly petty) response to the “we’re changing the name, but keeping our focus” decision.

2014-10-02 by PASS Professional Development SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 8

A tiny step in the right direction #SQLPASS

Ah, summertime; time for the annual “community crisis” for the Professional Association for SQL Server.  I’ve tried to stay clear of controversies for the last couple of years, but it’s very hard to be a member of such a passionate group of professionals and not have an opinion of the latest subject d’jour.   The short form of the crisis is that there’s questions about how and why sessions get selected to present at the highly competitive Summit this year (disclaimer: I got selected to present this year).  For more details, here’s a few blog posts on the subject:

The point of my post is not to rehash the issue or sway your opinion, dear reader, but rather to focus on a single tiny step in the right direction that I’ve decided to make.  One of the big issues that struck me about the whole controversy is the lack of a repeatable objective tool for speaker evaluations.  As a presenter, I don’t always get feedback, and when I do, the feedback form varies from event to event, meeting to meeting.  Selection committees are forced to rely on my abstract-writing skills and/or my reputation as a presenter; you can obfuscate my identity on the abstract, but it’s tough to factor in reputation if do that.

While I agree that there are questions about the process that should be asked and ultimately answered, there’s very little that I can do to make a difference in the way sessions get selected.  However, as a presenter, and a chapter leader for one of the largest chapters in the US, I can do a little something.

  1. I am personally committing to listing every presentation I make on SpeakerRate.com, and soliciting feedback on every presentation.  To quote Bleachers, “I wanna get better”.
  2. I will personally encourage every presenter at AtlantaMDF to set up a profile and evaluation at SpeakerRate for all presentations going forward.
  3. We will find ways to make feedback electronic and immediate at the upcoming Atlanta SQLSaturday so that presenters can use that information going forward.
  4. I will champion the evaluation process with my chapter members and speakers, and continue to seek out methods to improve and standardize the feedback process.

Do I have all of the right answers? No.  For example, SpeakerRate.com seems to be barely holding on to life; no mobile interface, and a lack of commitment from its members seems to indicate that the site is dying a slow death.  However, I haven’t found an alternative to provide a standard, uniform measure of presentation performance.

Do I think this will provide a major change to the PASS Summit selection?  Nope.  But I do think that a sea change has to start somewhere, and if enough local chapters get interested in a building a culture of feedback and evaluation, that could begin to flow up to the national level.

2014-07-01 by PASS SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 5

Speaking at CodeStock 2014

So, this announcement’s way overdue; in about 2 weeks (July 11-12,2014), I’ll be presenting a couple of sessions at CodeStock 2014 in lovely Knoxville, TN.   I haven’t been to CodeStock since 2009, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s grown.

The Elephant in the Room; A DBA’s Guide to Hadoop & Big Data by Stuart Ainsworth

DATE & TIME

Jul 11th at 9:55 AM until 11:05 AM

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LOCATION

400b

RATING (0 VOTES)

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Speaker(s): Stuart Ainsworth
The term "Big Data" has risen to popularity in the last few years, and encompasses data platforms outside of the traditional RDBMS (like SQL Server). The purpose of this session is to introduce SQL Server DBA’s to Hadoop, and to promote understanding of how schema-less data can be collected and accessed in coordination with the traditional SQL models. We’ll cover the basic vocabulary of the Hadoop platform, Microsoft’s integration efforts, and demonstrate how to get started with "big data".

 

Managing a Technical Team: Lessons Learned by Stuart Ainsworth

DATE & TIME

Jul 12th at 11:10 AM until 12:20 PM

TRACK

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LOCATION

400b

RATING (0 VOTES)

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Speaker(s): Stuart Ainsworth
I got promoted to management a couple of years ago, and despite what I previously believed, there were no fluffy pillows and bottles of champagne awaiting me. My team liked me, but they didn’t exactly stoop and bow when I entered the room. I’ve spent the last year relearning everything I thought I knew about management, and what it means to be a manager of a technical team. This session is intended for new managers, especially if you’ve come from a database (or other technical) background.

2014-06-26 by Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

Speaking at the #SQLPASS #Summit14

I know I’m a day late with this announcement, but I haven’t blogged in months, so what’s the rush?  I am very excited, however, about presenting a full session and a lightning talk at the PASS Summit in Seattle in November.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: A DBA’S GUIDE TO HADOOP AND BIG DATA

Speaker(s):  Stuart Ainsworth

Duration: 75 minutes

Track: BI Platform Architecture, Development & Administration

You’re a SQL Server DBA working at Contoso and your boss calls you out of your cubicle one day and tells you that the development team is interested in implementing a Hadoop-based solution to your customers. She wants you to help plan for the implementation and ongoing administration. Where do you begin?

This session will cover the foundations of Hadoop and how it fundamentally differs from the relational approach. The goal is to provide a map between your current skill set and "big data.” Although we’ll talk about basic techniques for querying data, the focus is on basic understanding how Hadoop works, how to plan for growth, and what you need to do to start maintaining a Hadoop cluster.

You won’t walk out of this session a Hadoop administrator, but you’ll understand what questions to ask and where to start looking for answers.

 

TEN-MINUTE KANBAN

Speaker(s):  Stuart Ainsworth

Duration: 10 minutes

Track: Professional Development

The goal of this Lightning Talk is to cover the basic principles of the Lean IT movement, and demonstrate how Kanban can be used by Administrators as well as developers. Speaker Stuart Ainsworth will cover the basic concepts of Kanban, where to begin, and how it works.

Kanban boards can be used to highlight bottlenecks in resource and task management, as well as identify priorities and communicate expectations. All this can be done by using some basic tools that can be purchased at an office supply store (or done for free online).

2014-06-26 by Conferences PASS SQL Server SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

Steel City SQL Users Group–March 18, 2014– @SteelCitySQL

Next Tuesday, I’m loading up Big Blue, and driving over to Birmingham to present at the Steel City SQL Users Group.  I’ll be talking about the Agile DBA.  Should be fun!

http://www.steelcitysql.org/

Featured Presentation

The Agile DBA: Managing your To-Do List

Speaker: Stuart Ainsworth

Summary: Agile development is all the rage, but how do the principles apply to database administrators? This presentation will introduce the basics of the Agile Manifesto, and explain how they can be applied to non-development IT work, such as database administration, maintenance, and support. We’ll cover scrum (one of the most popular development methodologies) and kanban, and identify some of the common struggles with implementing them in an organization. This is an interactive discussion; please bring your tales of success and your horror stories.

About Stuart: Stuart Ainsworth (MA, MEd) is a manager working in the realm of financial information security. Over the past 15 years, he’s worked as a research analyst, a report writer, a DBA, a programmer, and a public speaking professor. In his current role, he’s responsible for the maintenance of a data analysis operation that processes several hundred million rows of data per day.

2014-03-14 by Conferences Professional Development SQL SQLServerPedia Syndication User Groups 0

The Evolution of the DBA

Recently, there’s been a couple of great posts about the Death of the Database Administrator, including a response by Steve Jones and a several reactions by the staff of SQL Server Pro; the central premise behind the supposed demise revolves around this one major thought:

 

The evil cloud has reduced the need for internal systems infrastructure, including database administration.  It’s a storm of needs for faster development (agility) and the rise of hosted services; who needs a database server, when you can rent space on Azure?   Please note that I’m not specifically anti-cloud, but I’m casting it as the villain when careers are on the line.

Furthermore, in shops where the cloud is banned (e.g., financial services),  developers are using tools like Entity Framework to write SQL for them. Tuning SQL thus becomes an application change as opposed to a stored procedure change; DBA’s who do performance tuning have to focus on index maintenance and hardware acquisition.  Code tuning is now part of the development domain, and the career of the pure SQL developer is gasping in comparison.   

Like all great controversial statements, there’s an element of truth; the cloud, agile approaches, and new technologies are reducing the need for traditional database administrators, but I think we’re a long way away from pulling the plug.  However, I will say that over the next decade, these trends will probably continue to grow, eating away at the availability of jobs that do strict database administration (and the SQL developer will probably expire altogether).  But not yet.

What this does mean is that if you are intending to be employed 10 years from now, and you’re a database administrator, you’ve got two choices to make today:

  1. Master a specialty.  If you’re planning on consulting for a living,  this is a great choice.  Get so intimate with the database product of your choice that you become the go-to person for problem-solving.  Companies that have large installations of SQL Server will need secondary support as the product becomes easier to maintain (and big problems get obfuscated by GUI’s).
  2. Expand your horizon.  Instead of focusing on super in-depth mastery of your database platform, broaden your perspective; if you’re a SQL Server guy like me, start learning a little bit about SSRS, SSAS, and SSIS (if you don’t already know it).  Spread out into Hadoop, and NoSQL; dabble in MySQL and SQLLite.  Understand what the cloud can do, and where it makes sense to use it.

So go deep or go broad, but go.  I wouldn’t start quaking in my boots just yet about the demise of your career, but change is coming; those who adapt, survive.

For me? I’m going broad.  I’ve built a home-brewed server, and downloaded a copy of the HortonWorks Hadoop Sandbox.  Stay tuned for my adventures with Hadoop.

2014-02-06 by Code Education Professional Development SQLServerPedia Syndication 2

SQLSaturday 285 (#sqlsatatl) pre-cons are now live!

SQL Saturday #285 is offering 3 preconference sessions on Friday, May 2 at the GSU campus in Alpharetta, site of SQL Saturday #285 on Saturday, May 3:
Kalen Delaney: What the Hekaton!? A Whole New Way to Think About Data Management

SQL Server Hekaton, Microsoft’s new In-Memory table technology being shipped as part of SQL Server 2014, will completely change the way you think about data management. As a DBA, you’ll need to analyze your memory and storage needs completely differently. All Hekaton data is always stored in memory, and the data stored on disk is basically just a REDO log used to regenerate the contents of your memory-optimized tables. In this full-day seminar, Kalen Delaney (a SQL Server MVP for over 20 years) will show you the in-memory architecture for your Hekaton data and indexes, and discuss what gets written to disk during checkpoints, as well as what gets logged. She will explain how the recovery process recreates your Hekaton tables. Finally, she’ll go into detail on just what it is that makes Hekaton so much FASTER!

 

Denny Cherry: SQL Performance Tuning & Optimization

In this session you will learn about SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 performance tuning and optimization. Industry Expert Denny Cherry will guide you through tools and best practices for tuning queries and improving performance within Microsoft SQL Server.  This session will guide you through real life performance problems which have been gathered and tuned using industry standard best practices and real world skills.

 

 

Teo Lachev: Deep Dive into the Microsoft BI Semantic Model (BISM)

The chances are that your organization has a centralized data repository, such as ODS or a data warehouse, but you might not use it to the fullest. Join this insightful full-day event to understand the importance of having a semantic layer that bridges users and data. In the Microsoft BI world, BISM consists of Power Pivot, Tabular, and Multidimensional. 

All 3 presenters are published authors and Microsoft MVPs many times over. These sessions are a huge value to spend a day with an acknowledged SQL Server

thought leader.

Early registration is only $129 until March 1, when the price of any remaining seats will go up to $149. Follow @AtlantaMDF on Twitter and get a promo code for $10 off the early registration price (for Kalen Delaney or Denny Cherry)! We’ll tweet the promo code at 9am Thursday (Jan 23) – it’s only good for 10 uses (for each session), so be sure to check your Twitter feed tomorrow morning!

2014-01-22 by Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

Back on the trail…. #sqlsatnash

I realize that I should probably be blogging about my New Year’s resolutions, but meh… I’ve been super busy surviving the holidays.  So busy in fact that I’ve failed to mention that I’ll be presenting at the SQLSaturday in Nashville on January 18, 2014.  I actually got selected to present TWO topics, which is HUGE for me.  Hoping that I can refine a presentation, and get ready for our own SQLSaturday in Atlanta.

Working with “Biggish Data”

Most database professionals know (from firsthand experience) that there continues to be a “data explosion”, and there’s been a lot of focus lately on “big data”. But what do you do when your data’s just kind of “biggish”? You’re managing Terabytes, not Petabytes, and you’re trying to squeeze out as much performance out of your aging servers as possible. The focus of this session is to identify some key guidelines for the design, management, and ongoing optimization of “larger-than-average” databases. Special attention will be paid to the following areas: * query design * logical and physical data structures * maintenance & backup strategies

Managing a Technical Team: Lessons Learned

I got promoted to management a year ago, and despite what I previously believed, there were no fluffy pillows and bottles of champagne awaiting me. My team liked me, but they didn’t exactly stoop and bow when I entered the room. I’ve spent the last year relearning everything I thought I knew about management, and what it means to be a manager of a technical team. This session is intended for new managers, especially if you’ve come from a database (or other technical) background; topics we’ll cover will include:*How to let go of your own solutions. *Why you aren’t the model you think you are, and *Why Venn diagrams are an effective tool for management.

2014-01-06 by Conferences SQL SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

PASS 2013 Summit Evals are out!

And I didn’t do too bad; wish I had done better.  I said that when I was done, I felt like it was a “B” level presentation, and it was; I got a 4 out of 5 on my evals.  If I had been a less experienced speaker, I would be thrilled with that; as it stands, I’m a little bummed.  I know that it’s tough to get accepted to speak at Summit, and I feel bad that I didn’t hit this one out of the park.

However, it was a great experience; 73 people attended my session, which is a big audience for me.  I struggled with my demos throughout (I don’t even want to listen to the audio because I’m worried about how bad it was), and I should have worked on finding ways to better connect with my audience.  The feedback I got was really constructive:

Was a good intro, just would have liked to have seen some broader examples. For example converting XML into relational tables, not in detail but just at a high level.

Lots of demos geared towards people who have already written a lot of XQuery. This should have been a 201 session. A discussion on why you’d even use the XML datatype would have been useful. What problem does the XML datatype even solve for people?

I think I would have benefitted from a hard copy (gasp) of the XML data.  I would have been able to see the data and compared it to your on screen results

Way too fast, too ambitious for a 101 session

Well put together and paced. Very clear and coherent

Scale back expectations if it really is a 101 level session

So it sounds like I didn’t do the best job of making my abstract clear; people had different expectations than what I had for what a 100 level course was supposed to be.  I do agree that it was too much content, and if I present on the topic again, I’ll be sure to go back to splitting this up to focus on the basics of XPath, and save a discussion of FLWOR for later.  Also, I really should have used demos much more judiciously; I kept running code and trying to work the magnifier, when I should have just used slides for the basics, and then done a much more thorough demo.

So what did I learn?  Connect with the audience first and foremost.  If I could have kept them engaged and entertained, I may have covered less material, but may have inspired them to do more research on their own (which in the end, is the point of this whole exercise).

2013-11-07 by PASS Professional Development SQL Server SQLServerPedia Syndication 0