SQL Musings

I’m Missing Data

Steve Jones — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:04:00 GMT

One of the things that I thought about doing after the 2008 PASS Summit was to bring someone along with me as a photographer/videographer that would take lots of pictures and video of the event. I thought about bringing my wife, but that didn’t work out and I dropped the ball on that task.

And I regret it.

Coming back, going through some of the images and video I did get made me realize how much I missed. I rarely stopped to take video, I’d forgotten my tripod support, I got distracted, and ended up not getting much in the way of media from the event.

Pat Wright walked around with his camera and got a lot of great shots, but he wasn’t always near me, and I realized that I missed a lot of shots.

So another goal for 2010. I need to carry a video camera and real camera (DSLR or other fast response camera) to events and make sure that I get some footage. I want to get some responses and impressions from people, more shots of the setup, the signs, and people milling around.

And some “manamana” quotes from people as well. I’d like a little Muppet video to come out of 2010.

Licensing For Everyone

Steve Jones — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:00 GMT

I used to really try not to over-license in the small companies I worked at. It seems I’d spend a few days every quarter or two counting up usage, asking people what they did, looking at logs, and eventually calculating our needs. Then compare the needs to what we’d purchased and I’d price out software. Typically I came to this conclusion.

License everyone.

It didn’t make sense to try and manage Office applications or SQL Server CALs. It was work, and it distracted me from other things I could be doing to make the company more productive. If we were over-licensed by a few hundred dollars a person, it was a waste of my time. And what I found was that we were rarely overlicensed, and as soon as I didn’t give someone Powerpoint or a SQL Server CAL, they’d request it.

I know that licensing is expensive, and not everyone needs all software, but there is a core set of software, and this likely includes SQL Server CALs, that should just be purchased for everyone and then ignored. It’s too hard to do anything else, and it’s likely a waste of time.

I do think that you ought to try and combine SQL Servers where possible, and share the instance with multiple databases, but I don’t think that it’s the same with clients. Get ‘em and forget ‘em.

It's Getting Confusing Talking Platforms

Steve Jones — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:48:00 GMT

There was a time that Windows ran on multiple architectures. We had the PowerPC, Alpha, and MIPS CPUs in addition to the Intel x86. That ended with Windows NT as it seemed those other architectures didn't generate a lot of sales and Microsoft discontinued the porting of the OS.

For a long time we had different editions of Windows and SQL Server, and it was a fairly simple matrix to determine what level of CPU and memory was supported in each edition. However that's getting confusing again. It was hard enough in Windows 2000/2003 with SQL Server on x86 and Itanium processors to figure out the maximums, but now that we have both Itanium and x64 platforms in addition to x86, and different limits as Windows 2008 grows beyond the limitations of the 32 bit platform, it's becoming confusing again.

I noticed this last week with a simple question. How many CPUs does W2K3 Datacenter Edition support on the 64 bit platform? There was a good argument over the answer of 64. That's because we have Itanium and x64 limits being different.

You'd think this would be simple to determine, but it's not. And as Microsoft continues to shorten product cycles, we'll likely start to have 3 or 4 versions of Windows and SQL Server in many of our environments, making it more and more confusing for everyone.

Workflow is important

Steve Jones — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:55:03 GMT

I have a pretty good administrative system here at SQLServerCentral for managing the site. The upgrades we made in 2007 really simplified some of the back end work, and while there are bugs and issues, it has made it easy for people to submit articles, scripts, and questions online. I typically have a queue of work that I dig through on a regular basis to edit articles, schedule things, etc.

However a number of people continue to send me articles through email. That's OK, and it's actually easier for me to edit things that way than with our online editor.

However that leaves me with two different workflows for articles, and no good way to sync them up. Especially as I don't have meta data that allows me to determine where an article came from. Without that, I can't easily feedback changes to someone. If I enter all articles in the system myself, then I struggle to effectively communicate with authors, who might be expecting emails or system messages on their content.

I'm behind again editing things, mostly from offline submissions. I was well caught up before the PASS Summit with my online submissions, but I'd dropped the ball on email submissions and have a few that are a month old.

So this week is article catch up week, to the detriment of other work.

Except writing, of course. I can't forget about that.

Blowing Off Steam and Recharging

Steve Jones — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:18:00 GMT

I’ve written a few things about why conferences and events are good, or why it’s valuable for an IT worker to go to them (Being Around Smart People is Exciting, The Conference ROI). I believe that if you take a motivated employee and send them to an event, it’s a win-win for both of you.

However what about the rest of your employees? What do you do to ensure they can blow off steam, recharge, and not burn out on the job?

On one hand you need to constantly be managing your people to detect issues, but I think it helps to give them the ability to self-manage themselves.

I read a great post by Andy Leonard on IT coaching. It’s worth the read, but what caught my eye was the Chill section. He said that people in his development room would appear to be laughing and having fun. Blowing off steam.

There is value to this. It allows people to unwind, and take a break from the intense concentration that good programming requires. Why does Google include games in their offices? Why does Fog Creek have a DVD player and game console in their Bionic Office? They realize it’s a good investment.

I worked in a startup, employee 22 or 23, and we had a room in our office dedicated to IT. Actually 2 rooms. One was large, and contained 7 desks, where we all sat together in a corner office. The other had a ping pong table, dart board, table hockey game, and a football. We’d work for an hour or two and then one of us would need a break and get someone else to come spend 5-10 minutes in a game. We might talk about an issue, we might design something, or just shoot the breeze, but it was refreshing. We had one guy that smoked, and we’d often throw the football with him while he had a cigarette.

Creative people need to de-stress. Give them a chance, and then turn them loose on your problems. I think you’ll find it works better than chaining them to a desk for 8 hours.

PASS Summit 2009 - Media

Steve Jones — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:01:00 GMT

There were tons of people taking pictures and video during the PASS Summit. I found a number of pictures on the Flickr Feed under the #sqlpass tag, and there are plenty more on Twitter as well.

A few of my pictures:

OK, I had to post this one because it was pretty funny. Grant Fritchey and I in kilts. I'm not sure how this got started, but sometime in August or September I started seeing my name and "kilt" on Twitter. Being a good sport, I grabbed one from Sportkilt.com and wore it on Wednesday.

It was fun, and I'm looking forward to doing it next year, perhaps as an annual tradition. I've enlisted a few other people, Andy Leonard, Tjay Belt, and Joe Webb among them and have already set a reminder in my calendar to ping them next July to get their own kilts.

Coincidentally, Wednesday is also the day of the Women in Technology luncheon. I thought kilts were a nice show of support for the women, and I think it's important that we do support them. The kilt isn't making fun of skirts, but rather making fun of myself a little. Not being afraid to be different, break a stereotype, something that I'd like my daughter to feel comfortable doing. Here’s an image of the panel from the WIT luncheon:

The convention center is nice, and despite being spread out across multiple floors, it seems comfortable to me. I’ve come to really like it, and once you know your way around, it’s easy to get from one place to another. I actually appreciate it more than the large stadium that’s the Orlando Convention Center.

There’s lot of signage, and you know what you’re in the PASS area, which was a large part of the convention center in 2009.

I do wish that the PASS booth and more seating was available near the sessions. There are lots of tables and chairs on the 6th floor, but I always find them a little uncomfortable to relax in. I’d prefer a few more sets of couches where people can sit and chat when they’re not attending a talk.

The keynotes were OK, though I’ll call out Dr. DeWitt’s presentation as fascinating. He’s one person that I’d love to sit in on a 3 or 4 hour lecture, not a 1 hour talk. I learned a lot about column databases from him in a short period of time.

The keynote with Bob Muglia, and then Ted Kummert was most interesting for the server rack, which at one point sounded like a jet engine. We thought it might take off briefly. Here’s a bit of the Twitter feed from that time:

joewebb: When the fans for a192 CPU server all kick on at one time, it sounds like an Apache helicopter is buzzing by. #sqlpass

SQLBoyWonder: We're in the back of the room, and can hear the fans back here...can't imagine how it sounds up front! #sqlpass

sqlagentman: Sounds like the server rack also doubles as a tanning booth. #sqlpass

Phil_Factor: I think I am a bit too near the Ibm server. I don't want to suddenly become part of the cloud #sqlpass

SQLCraftsman: Seeing yellow lights on server rack. IBM tech must be having a meltdown too. #sqlpass

bretupdegraff: Watch for shraptnal! RT @sqlagentman: ...Galagher... (the server rack is about to blow like a melon all over the front row...) #sqlpass

Tim_Mitchell: So at what point does that server achieve liftoff from the stage? Sounds like a turbine engine #sqlpass

paschott: Anyone else find it funny that the server fans are getting more tweets than the speakers? #sqlpass

paschott: "I must have hit the help button" #sqlpass

DamonRipper: The roar of that beastly server onstage is almost drowning out the speaker! #sqlpass

SQLDBA: I know why the demo's blowing up - it's running on the servers in that rack that's about to explode! #sqlpass

jrowlandjones: #sqlpass the 192 core IBM hairdryer has switched onto a cool setting.

There was a photowalk one morning that I’m sorry I missed. Seattle has some great sights, and there were some great photos. I enjoyed this one from the fountain near the Space Needle, where I got some pictures and video of my son last year. There are some other shots from the Photowalk here.

Who could forget the SQLServerCentral party, I’ll have to blog separately on all the photos from there:

One of the great things about attending conferences is that you can meet some icons in your industry. Here are two from SQL Server. Longtime author Joe Celko and newer author Kathu Kellenburger, both trying to teach us more about T-SQL.

and of course there was lots of fun at the Summit. Here are two of the PASS HQ staff having fun at the Microsoft Gameworks party:

There are a few from the SQL Karaoke nights as well in the feed, and if you search around, you might even see a little video from me as well.

If you attended the conference, relive it through some of the photos that are out there. And if you want to revisit some of the sessions, PASS has DVDs for sale, and many of the sessions( or maybe all of them) will be on demand from the PASS Summit site.

The SQLServerCentral Party

Steve Jones — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:03:45 GMT

I think it went off well this year, and it looks like it will be around next year as well. My initial conversations with PASS have gone well, and I expect a contract as soon as the staff recovers from the Summit.

Pat Wright, former PASS Board member, and super-shutterbug, took a bunch of pictures at the party. As you can see, there were plenty of happy people there:

I look a little confused in this one, but that’s probably because I felt a bit rushed at times. My main job was greeter, bouncer, doorman, so I didn’t get a lot of time in the event.

We had a lot of walkups this year, and I’ll plan for more next year. I actually was under budget for the party, so I ended up buying about 30 Starbucks gift cards and giving them out to people during the conference.

This was the second year in a row where we gave out the Exceptional DBA award. After a brief introduction from me, Brad McGehee (above) read a letter from Josef Richberg, the winner. Gail Shaw then talked a little about what the award means:

Next up was Rodney Landrum, with a few words about the judging.

And then last year’s winner, Dan McClane.

When the ceremony was done, we were back to gambling and having fun.

I usually have some Red Gate folks walking around, giving out prizes to dealers throughout the night. they award people randomly during gameplay and everyone has a chance to win. At the end of the night, I’d saved off a number of prizes. We had 3 great ones, all about $150-200 in value, for the 3 big gamblers.

We had a few other prizes left, and I decided to randomly give them out. Everyone could turn in their chips at the end and get a ticket from the casino people. I drew numbers out of a bin then and we gave away more great prizes.

I’m looking to run the same type of party next year, with lots more prizes, possibly fewer items and more random things at the end. I’ll also be looking to smooth out the event a little.

If you’ve got feedback, let me know. I’ve said it before, this is the best day of my year, and I’m hoping it’s a great one for you.

PASS Summit 2009 – Keynotes

Steve Jones — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:56:19 GMT

I’m not going to look back at the keynotes since I blogged about them. If you are interested, you can read about them:

Instead I’m going to focus on some constructive criticism. I like seeing a great speaker, and I’d like to see 3, 4, or 5 great ones at the PASS Summit in the future. So a few comments.

Be Interesting

Let me say this, other than Kevin Kline’s tribute and Dr. Dewitt’s talk, I had to go back and look at notes to remember what happened. All of the keynotes should be interesting to technical DBAs and developers. It doesn’t have to be a technical presentation, but then make it interesting in a business sense, or use thought provoking topic. Don’t market to us or give us a high level technical view.

PASS Remarks

I think it’s good to have some summaries of what PASS is doing as opening remarks. However I’d like to see them kept short and quick. I would also hope they were relevant to the event. Don’t spend a lot of time promoting the “rah-rah” PASS has these stats, and don’t read the slides.

Use the live Twitter feed, which I thought was cool to see in Wayne’s keynote, but use it to comment on what’s happening. Respond live to something that came up.

Overall I liked the events, and the presentations for exceptional volunteers. However smooth out the processes and get those people up front and ready to come on. So what if they know a day before and tell 12 friends. It’s still a surprise to most people. The tribute to Kevin Kline was wonderful, and anyone that thinks Wayne shouldn’t have cried is out of touch. Kevin deserved recognition for a decade of efforts and I think I might have teared up if I was presenting it.

The other thing I’d say is that you should pick the best speakers from the PASS board. Don’t just stick with a set agenda of the executive committee. The best people in those slots aren’t necessarily the best speakers. The three we had this year do a great job of being loose, but that might not be the case in the future.

Microsoft Keynotes

We had 3 this year. Three executives and one technical fellow. Two good, one bad, in my opinion.

We are SQL Server professionals. In two decades of doing this, the vast, vast majority of the probably thousands of people I have talked to think this way:

We believe in Microsoft products.

Sure, we complain and point out issues. But that’s because they’re issues, not because we want to switch to Oracle, Java, or something else. We’re already sold, we’re using your products, and we want to continue to use them. You don’t need to sell us.

So stop the marketing. Both MS keynotes were too focused on why MS products are great, what we see in new versions, etc. It’s boring, and it’s a waste of a chance to speak to people that already love your products. Give those presentations to mixed audiences, and instead pick something exciting to us. Something that doesn’t just talk new products, but speaks to the audience.

I’ve seen Bill Gates speak a number of times. Quite often he’s made fun of himself, but he’s looked forward. Not at the latest product releases. OK, he’s done that at times, but he’s also made me think. Steve Ballmer talks marketing, but he at least has more energy.

Pick interesting speakers, maybe more technical fellows or Microsoft Research people that will make us think. Pick a business speaker, perhaps like the keynotes from the first Business Intelligence conference, Michael Treacy or Dr. Robert Kaplan.

Make us think.

And pick interesting customer references. Find someone exciting. I talked to the customers later, and they had interesting things to say, but they weren’t interesting on stage. Get people engaged.

Lastly, make them short. The keynotes ran too long this year. Heck, take 5 minutes between them and throw out some MS t-shirts.

Dell Keynote

I’ve watched this twice now. In Denver two years ago and this year in Seattle. I have no idea who presented two years ago, but the guy that did it in 2009 was horrible. No offense to him, and he seems like a smart guy, but a few items that Dell should address.

1. Whoever wrote the presentation, and whoever approved the topic, remove them from the loop. They have no business being involved next year.

2. Know your audience – A high level, this-is-DR presentation is a waste of time for the vast majority of the attendees. A better topic would have been some real life disaster issues and how you would/could prevent them. Or even some of the cool stuff Dell has done in engineering larger servers.

3. Be fascinating - We are much more likely to talk about the Dell keynote positively if it catches our attention. Look to the Dr. DeWitt keynote for an idea of what's interesting. People loved that one. It doesn't have to be theoretical. Tell us how Dell.com handles transactions. Show us something large scale that you do. Pique our interest.

The marketing folks can't help themselves. They somehow try to tie Dell to the keynote and think we'll buy your products. Just stop that. Most of us don't have a choice in what we buy, so stop it. Impress us and we'll mention that to the decision makers.

Bloggers

It was great to have the blogger table this year and last year. I look forward to doing it next year if I'm invited and I think the exchange of tweets in real time adds to the event. One thing I'd recommend here so that people can read through accounts is have a way for us to send our posts to the PASS HQ. Most of us tweet them, but if you had a page we could submit thoughts on each keynote, or each day, that would be great. Or even low-tech with a series of email addresses (day1@sqlpass.org, tomcaseykn@sqlpass.org, etc.) and then have someone post them on the Summit event page, it would be a great way to promote us, and the PASS Summit at the same time.

I'd also like to see some fairly consolidated locations for pictures and videos that people shoot for the Summit. The #sqlpass hash tag seemed to work well, but it would be great to have someone clean up and produce some great timeline of the event a week or so later. Even the videos shown in the morning would be great promotions for the event.

I enjoyed the PASS Summit 2009, and am already looking forward to 2010.

Tomorrow I look back at some of the pictures and video I've seen of the event.

PASS Summit 2009 – Fun

Steve Jones — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:21:00 GMT

I’m not a big party guy, and in fact, more than a few people can attest to the fact that I’m likely to duck out early at evening events. However there are some fun things at PASS that I wanted to mention, and let you know what you can (likely) look forward to next year.

SQLServerCentral

I mention this a lot, at least I think I do, but we typically host an opening night party at the PASS Summit. We’ve done it for 6 or 7 years, and I’ve settled on a casino themed party. We have a code that you can use when you register to get a free ticket, or you can buy a ticket for $30.

We spend all the money that we get for the party on the event. I typically give away a polo shirt and a book to everyone, and then a lot of other prizes. Lots of DVDs, books this year, flash drives, cameras, and more. I save 3 big prizes for the big gamblers (a Zune HD, $150 to Best Buy, and a camera this year), and then randomly gave away other prices like a digital photo frame, to others at the end.

This has also become the event for the Exceptional DBA award presentation.

SQL Karaoke

I heard that after my party on Monday a bunch of people went out to a karaoke bar. I got dragged out there on Thursday night and while I didn’t torture anyone by getting on stage myself, it was great fun for about 20-25 Summit attendees.

I’m not sure that I’d want everyone coming, but there are a few places yo can go and if you have a group of people you’ve met, suggest that they go out and try something. Even wandering down near the water and finding a restaurant to sit and chat in would be great. There are also lots of bars with bands in Seattle.

Gameworks

I’ve always wondered by Gameworks wasn’t more a part of the Summit since it’s across the street from the Convention Center. I’m sure it’s a money thing, but this year it was rented by Microsoft for a Wed night party. I was only there for an hour, but it seemed people really enjoyed it. A great way to get to know someone and have fun playing games.

Vendor Parties

These are typically invitation only, but are a lot of fun. Ask about them at the various booths and see if you can get invited. I typically attend the SQL Sentry party since I’ve known the people working there for years and consider them friends. It’s usually a fairly small affair, but this year was packed with close to 100 people at one point.

Quest also usually throws a big party and I hear great things about it. There are likely other parties as well, so spend some time networking and getting to know vendors. If you are a customer, be sure to ask if something is going on. I also usually attend the Friends of Red Gate dinner as well.

SWAG and Dinner at the Day One dinner

It’s not necessarily a real party, but it can be fun. The end of the first day of sessions takes place in the vendor expo, with dinner catered among the various booths. It’s a chance for you to talk to vendors and grab some swag in a fun atmosphere.

There’s More

There are no shortage of things to do in Seattle, or in any of the other convention cities. Tim Mitchell wrote about being “That Guy” and he certainly wasn’t that guy this year, getting on stage to sing and attending other parties.

There are a number of MVP events, which limits them to a few people, but if you’re a part of that group, be aware.

Seattle is an interesting city, and things are relatively close. Cabs aren’t expensive, especially with 3-4 people sharing them, and you can reach a number of places. Things I’ve done in the past and would recommend:

The Space Needle – Not much here, but it’s a worldwide landmark
The Experience Music Project – Worth going in, and it has a Science fiction Museum in the building.
Seattle Seahawks / Seattle Mariners – Professional sports.
The Underground Tour – I found this fascinating and learned about Seattle history.
Museum of Flight – Good for adults and kids. Walk through a Concorde.

There are other museums and theaters as well if you like those things. I’d even recommend bringing your family the weekend before or after and seeing Seattle. My son and I had a great time in 2008 touring the city.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the keynotes and some things I think they could do to improve them.

PASS Summit 2009 – Overall Event

Steve Jones — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:45:00 GMT

I thought that we got a great Summit from PASS in 2009. This week I’ll be looking back at some of the things that occurred and give you some notes from my perspective on the event. I’ll also include some pictures from myself and others, along with a few videos where I can.

First, thanks and congrats to the PASS Board, and the PASS Staff, all of whom put together one of the smoothest Summits I’ve seen. It might be the best one, and while there are things that need to be changed or tweaked, the event just ran smoothly.

I wrote some blogs about the keynotes, but for the most part I was meeting people and seeing sessions all week, so I didn’t have time to blog. Heck, I barely had time to write editorials and no time to shoot video of them. The blogs I put out from last week:

I also wrote a bit about the Women in Technology lunch, which was great. I enjoyed it and plan to make that an annual part of my Summit experience. I’d encourage everyone to attend this, and to encourage women to come into technology. It’s not that men don’t need encouragement, but stereotypes often mean an extra effort would help with women.

The overall organization of the event, I thought, was much better this year. I didn’t see people too lost or confused. While many of us attend the Summit yearly, or every other year, a survey showed that this year we had about 40% first time attendees. That’s a big number, and while I saw a few people looking confused (I stopped to ask them if they needed help), it seemed that people easily found sessions and rooms, despite things being spread across 3 floors and both the North and South sides of the Summit.

It also seemed that quite a few people attended a pre- or post-conference session. That’s good to see, both for speakers and attendees. A full day of training, where you can get in depth knowledge on one particular subject. If you were in one of those sessions, I’d love to have specific notes about what value you got from the sessions.

Tomorrow I’ll write about some of the fun events from the Summit, things that are worth going to as a way to relax and have fun outside of the sessions.

The Nook

Steve Jones — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Barnes and Noble recently announced their new e-book reader, the Nook. It looks pretty cool, and in some ways I think it really blows past the Kindle. There is another reviews from Technology Review.

There are two big features that make me think this is a great new product that blows past the Kindle.

The first one is the lend feature. If you haven’t heard, with this you can “lend” your book to a friend to use not only on their Nook reader, but on their smartphone or PC/Mac. Any device that has a B&N reader can see the book for 14 days. That’s cool as I can give others an idea of what I recommend.

I know Amazon has the share among Kindles, but they devices have to be on the same account. I don’t necessarily want my wife on my account, or vice versa as I don’t want to see her books, or even manage a budget between us.

I don’t think this is a big deal, and I can’t see it costing lots of revenue. It’s more a way to create community and interest people. It also sounds good, which is important to ensuring people are happy with the device.

The second thing that I like is that it has wi-fi built in. I did find it interesting that Amazon is no longer using Sprint, but moving to ATT, which is the carrier for the nook as well. However ATT has horrible coverage where I am, and I constantly hear people complaining about coverage from them. So if that’s the case, and I can’t buy a book when I want, like from bed or in an airport, then wi-fi is a great second solution.

I like the idea of e-reading. I’m mostly using my iPhone to read for now. I would like to get a dedicated reader again at some point, mostly for the ease of reading in bright environments, and the tremendous battery life. However until I get some insurance or other coverage, and I have an easy way to get books from multiple sources, I’m not sure I want to invest in one.

Skipping SQL Connections

Steve Jones — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:24:12 GMT

I’ve never been to Las Vegas, and was looking forward to going for the first time this week for SQL Connections. SQLServerCentral is sponsoring a track and I was looking forward to speaking to a new group of people that doesn’t usually come to the PASS Summit.

That’s off now and it looks like I’m not meant for Vegas at this time. I have cancelled my trip, and won’t be attending the show.

I would like to go, I was planning on it, and slightly dreading turning around for another trip so soon. As late as Saturday afternoon, as I was driving back from the airport, returning from Seattle and the SQL PASS conference.

Then I got a call from my wife. I’d left her a message when I arrived in Denver, and as I got off the highway, my cell phone rang.

“Hi honey, glad you’re home from Seattle. I broke my arm.”

That was the welcome home for me. I immediately turned and headed to the hospital where I found my wife. She’s fine, in fact, more annoyed by the experience than hurt. She’s also more worried about the young colt she was working with than herself.

However with a spiral fracture of her forearm, and a hard splint until Wednesday, I can’t leave her alone. Between the need to feed horses, an older dog that needs help standing up, and kids, we aren’t confident that she could manage without hurting the fracture more.

She could manage, but she’d likely do too much, and turn what should be a simple fracture into something that needs surgery. That’s the big reason I need to be home.

So I’ll miss SQL Connections, a show that I’ve never been to. But I plan on going next year, and being prepped for a couple presentations. We’ve had bad luck with this trip, as another speaker also had to cancel due to medical issues with his family. I’ve learned that you need to be sure you have an extra presentation or two in your bag, just in case.

PASS Summit - David DeWitt Keynote

Steve Jones — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:29:54 GMT

Microsoft sent Dr. David DeWitt to do the last keynote of the PASS Summit. He's a technical fellow in the data and storage platform. He's looking forward to the future of SQL Server and is talking to future of technology and trends.

From 1 to 1000 MIPS is his talk.

His background, 32 years at the University of Wisconsin. He runs the Jim Gray Systems lab in Madison, with the idea of taking technology out of UW into the Microsoft product suite. It's not part of Microsoft Research, and has 3 faculty and 8 grad students.

Working on releases 1 and 2 of SQL Server Parallel Database Warehouse. Last year he talked about parallel database technology. The idea is to look at trends in hardware and then database system specialization in the next decade. I tend to agree with this and we might need to specialize with new database technology.

Let's go back to 1980. The VAX 11/780, 1MIPS, 1kb cache, 8MB memory, 80MB disk drives, 1MB/sec xfer all for $250k! This was the first 32 bit relational database. INGRES and Oracle were the main relational database vendors and the basic DBMS architecture is the same thing we use today.

However hardware is different. We now run around 2GIPS, 1MB caches on chip, 2GB/CPU RAM, and 800GB drives. Everything is 1,000x greater or more.

Disk Drives

If we look at transfer rates on disks, we're only about 65x improvement, and seek times are only about a 10x improvement. Quite a disparity.

1985, early benchmarks. 100TPS, 400 disk IOs/sec, with 14 drives. Roughly 30I IOs/sec per drive.

Go to 2009, we have 25,000TPS, 100,000 disk IOs/Sec, 330 drives with 300 IOs/sec equivalent!

So the 1000x improvement in CPUs has been almost negated by the 10X disk access/sec changes. That is amazing. And sobering.

Transfer Bandwidth/byte, a new metric. Dividing transfer rate by capacity, then you get .015 in 1980 drives, .0001 in today's drives. So the Dr. DeWitt sees drives as slower relatively. Hard to reconcile that in my little mind.

CPU Trends

1980 the VAXC had a single CPU, 8kb L1 cache, 6 cycles ot access memory. 10 cycles /instruction.

today we have multiple CPUs, 64kb private L! caches, 2-8MB shared L2 cache, 1 cycle/instruction. 2 cycles to access L1, 20 to access L2

What is the impact on DBMS performance. Looking at a DB2 on Linux, TPC-H queries on 10GB database and a 1GB buffer pool.

In looking at a CPU and where time is spent. Lots of time waiting for things, about 10% useful computation time. 50% of the time waiting on memory. Why? The L2 data cache is waiting on transfers. That is amazing.

Read 3 pages from disk, up to 9 L1 and L2 cache misses. An L2 cache miss can stall the CPU for up to 200 cycles.

An alternative physical layout is a column store. What does this mean? I wasn't sure this was a great idea when I read it last year, but I would recommend you read to understand. Now if we look at the cache misses, there's a difference. Same query we saw before now has many less cache misses. Less I/O is wasted.

In an example he gave, for a 10M row table. In a row store, for a simple query, 3 columns, you return 2GB of data and it takes 25 sec. A row stored only scans 280MB at 3.5 sec. That's amazing, though I'm not sure how useful this is for most of us. It's definitely built for data warehousing, and might not apply for OLTP loads.

Physical Representation

We have our row store, a column store, and hybrids. We could include an ID with the column as well. I know it's confusing, and I'm not giving enough detail, but it's confusing to me as well. This is probably in a paper, or series of papers somewhere. I'll try to find references.

Compression starts to work better because CPU is 1000x faster, but disks are 65x faster. So you spend the time doing decompression and it still works better. Some types that Dr. DeWitt talked about.

Run Length encoding, a good way to compress data. works well with sorted data.

Bit Vector encoding, another way to compress. Use bits to represent values if there are relatively few values. Combine this with RLE and increase compression.

Dictionary encoding - Create a dictionary for the values.

With a row store, you have different issues. You cannot run length compress in that store. Or not easily or well.

A column store scanner, to satisfy a query, is more complex. A much different path of working through a query. This is very interesting stuff, and very well explained.

However updates are an issue. No free lunch. The updates are hard and creates lots of work. Research is being done on how to make these more efficient, but it's a tough problem to solve.

There is more interesting stuff, but it's hard to relate. And I spent more time listening than typing. I'll write on this more, but it is interesting. There is work being done for SQL Server 10.5, and SQL Server 11 in this area. Some of this, the Vertipaq engine, is in SQL Server 10.5, which is SQL Server 2008 R2, I believe. Dr. DeWitt hinted at other things, but I'm not sure what will be used in future products.

Daniel Abadi (Yale) has a great technology blog. David DeWitt recommends him.

PASS Summit - DELL Keynote

Steve Jones — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:04:29 GMT

Note might be sparse here as it's not a great keynote. There's a lack of excitement, and enthusiasm from the speakers this week for keynotes. I've typically dreaded the vendor keynote because they work too hard to try and sell you something.

DELL is here to talk about SQL Server in the enterprise and specifically consolidation and configuration.

We're getting some ideas about configuration management, showing us types of data to track. This isn't worthy of a keynote. There is a good list of information, but it's not something that we need talked about in the morning session, and we certainly don't need it read to us.

Why do configuration management? You can learn how to classify systems for SLAs and support resources. It also gives you priority for DR.

Ay yi yi, this is almost painful. I do like technical information and not marketing, and this isn't a lot of marketing, but it is boring and uninspiring.

I quit, this just sucks. It's not worth reporting on, unless we go Mystery Science Theater 3000-style.

PASS Summit - Opening Remarks with Bill Graziano

Steve Jones — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:53:09 GMT

Bill, the Vice President of Marketing, opened the day with a few remarks about how to keep up with PASS. Then a tribute to Kevin Kline.

Kevin has been a part of PASS for 10 years, and it was great to see people recognizing his efforts. Wayne Snyder came up to say good bye to Kevin, the past President of PASS, after 10 years. An emotional moment, and Wayne broke up a little. I can relate to that and I'm not sure I'd be any better.

An award to Kevin for his service to PASS and he received a well deserved, standing ovation.

Our new directors, Thomas LaRock, Brian Moran, and Jerimaih Peschka, were noted on the stage. Our new executive committee is:

President Rushabh Mehta
Vice President of Finance Bill Graziano
Vice President of Marketing Rick Heiges
Past President Wayne Snyder

The European conference is scheduled for April in Neuss, Germany. It will be the 21-23rd, April, 2010.

The North American Summit is back in Seattle next year, November 8-11, 2010. If you're coming back to the Summit, the lowest price is available now, so if you can book it now, you'll save around $1000. http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/na2010.

The headquarters staff was recognized as well. They are a great group of people up in Vancouver that keep PASS running all year around. I certainly rely on them for a few things, and I think they're great. The most visible is Blythe Morrow (@blythemorrow) on Twitter, so if you have something to suggest or know, send them an email, or tweet Blythe.

Feedback

The way you change things at the Summit is with feedback. PASS is here for you as a user, so if there is something you want them to do, let them know. If there's something you liked, or disliked, about the Summit, fill out the surveys.

If you want to get the Summit on the East Coast, TELL PASS.

The speakers are also chosen partially based on the reviews that you give them. So if you enjoyed a session, be sure to let them know. If you didn't enjoy a session, give constructive criticisms.