SQLFamily

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

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

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

#SQLSATATL simply rocked…

sqlsatatlSo, last Saturday, I went to the first SQL Saturday in Atlanta that I had absolutely no responsibility on the actual day of the event.  I wasn’t an organizer, I didn’t really even volunteer.  As a chapter leader for AtlantaMDF, I do have to go in and pay the bills later this week, but for the most part, I got to walk around and revel in the day. 

And it was a good day.  The team (led by Geoff Hiten) pulled off another great event; 555 people attended the event, and there were some AWESOME sessions throughout the day.  I was in the 9 am slot, and my session on Biggish Data went well, even if (as usual) I had WAY too many slides.  Speaking of slides, you should be able to download the deck from the SQLSaturday 220 schedule (as well as many other great presentations).  I did have to slip out early since this weekend was my weekend with the kids.  My current youngest (Grace) had to get service hours for beta club, so she got to hang out with me, but I needed to get back home early to hang out with the oldest one.

So what was cool?  What did I learn?

  1. The number one highlight for me was watching Louis Davidson demo Red Gate’s SQL Monitor tool, and he chose one of my custom metrics to use in the show.  I respect Louis a lot, and it made my day.
  2. I learned that I need to cut out about 10 slides out of my presentation.
  3. I had a great conversation with a few people about table partitioning and performance gains; I think there’s enough material for a future session explaining why you will or won’t see performance benefits from partitioning.  Hmmmm….
  4. I had another excellent conversation with Robert Cain regarding the growth of SQLSaturday’s, and bounced around a few ideas about moving to a mid-tier model.  Kind of like what SQLRally was supposed to become, but different. 
  5. I also got to hang out with Andy Leonard.   He and my Grace had a good time discussing movies (Where’s my super suit?).

Mostly, I just got jazzed about being back in the #sqlfamily.  Hopefully, I can build off that momentum, and start blogging again.   Granted, the next few months are going to be personally interesting, but I need to make time to share again.

2013-05-20 by Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 0