DBPedias Blog

Slides- Moving from a Relational Database to Riak

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 20:00:00 -0500

January 3, 2013

Most teams considering using Riak come from a relational database background. From our webcast on moving from relational to Riak, the below slide deck covers an overview of Riak, how the architecture differs from a relational approach, the advantages for scaling and development, and what’s different about application building and database operating in a non-relational world. We also include a few stories of Riak users who replaced MySQL or added Riak to the mix.

Interested in learning more? Check out our overview, From Relational to Riak.

Basho Team

Transition from the Military to Civilian Work Force

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:11:25 -0500

I was at SQL Saturday in Phoenix last week and had a number of sidebar discussions with a solider that is transferring out of the Army lifestyle and over to the civilian world. This is a transition that I have done before, and I recall it well. I have not thought about it much over the last 15 years or so, but I do recall the nervousness that I had when I made the jump from the Marine Corps to the workforce as I know it today. When I made the transition I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take a class my last week in the corps to help me with the many changes I was about to experience. I debated not taking the class because I didn’t think it was going to be that different, but I sure am glad I did. So as I reflect on this experience I thought I would share a few tips that might make it a bit easier. If you have any that you think would fit well send them over to me and I will see what I can do to add them to the list.

Stay away from acronyms on your resume – There is a good chance that when someone is reviewing your resume that they did not serve in the military. With this being a fact, consider how many terms you use on a day to day basis that you consider normal knowledge. If someone is vetting your resume and does not understand all the terms you are using they may disqualify you simply because they don’t understand what you are trying to relay. My tip here is find a friend or a relative who does not know the military life and have them review your resume, if you use terms such as MOS or OD duty chances are they will catch it and help you explain more.
Chain of command – This was a difficult one for me. The chain of command is pretty simple to understand; even people in the civilian world use it. However, in the military I was taught that anything and everything in your life was important to your chain of command. In a time of high stress such as a situation where you are in battle and bullets are being fired at you this is completely understandable. Assume you are in a fighting position, and one of your troops had a pretty serious breakup via a “Dear John” letter. This is something you would want to know, but in the civilian world many supervisors get a little creped out when they know so much about you.
Your opinion – Many think that the military is a group of young people that are trained to not have and opinion. When the commanding officer says take that hill, he does not need to hear a bunch of people arguing about the right way to do it, or if you should even try to do it. Granted, these discussions on the best way may arise. In the civilian world, most employers want to know if you think that something is not being done in the best way. The secret here is understanding the line between open discussions on the best way to do things and just doing them with no opinion at all. With that being said, it is still critical to know that as a solider you don’t always know all the information that is relevant, in the civilian world that is the often the case as well.
Networking – In the military if you wanted to get the best equipment it never hurt to know someone in the supply area, well it’s true in the civilian world as well. Who you know can help you, use your contacts well, and as you make the transition understand you need to make as many contacts as you can.
YES SIR – A few years ago I had interviewed someone who was coming out of the Navy, when I talked with him the answer to everything was “Yes Sir“. When the candidate spoke it was not a yell, nor a bark but very direct. It is not critical to speak in such a formal way, however respect should always be paid.
Volunteer – I have heard the joke more times than I care to count, in the military you become a volunteer when everyone else steps back faster than you. I was told many times before boot camp that you should never volunteer for anything. In the civilian world, I cannot stress enough how important it is. Not only do you have the opportunity to stand out, but you have a chance to learn something new. Be the person your boss knows they can go to when the need to get something done. Be the person they can count on, the type of person you want on your team.

For My Sister, Kristi

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:21:56 -0500

As many know, I joke about being a strange, ADHD kid. I didn’t really fit in with the other kids and was really, really small for my age. I was bullied and very much a loner. Growing up, my closest friend was my middle sister, Kristi who is 2 1/2 years younger. She was the golden child- blond hair, blue eyes and very, very sweet. She was so easy-going that she was often frustrated by other kids, so my easy-going, but, hyper personality was preferable to them and we were happy to hang out together.

We grew up in a very rural area of upper Michigan and spent our days playing make believe in the fields and forests around our house on Lake Michigan. When we did move to higher population areas, first in Oregon and then in Virginia, we still hung out with each other than our school mates, even though we attended different schools.

I was the maid of honor at Kristi’s wedding to her husband, Jim and we’d visit when I’d come out to Oregon to visit about once a year. We’d pick up like we’d never been apart, which is common for sisters. I was happy to see that she and our youngest sister, Kimberly, became very close as they had grown up and they have continued with that relationship. It’s hard not to like Kristi, she is simply “likeable”.

She turned 43 this year and as she’s always been a bit of a health-nut, appeared to be in the prime of her life. She had no clear “cancer indicators” when she started having symptoms in January and it wasn’t until February that the doctor’s discovered she had what appeared to be colon cancer. Within weeks, scans came back showing she not only had colon cancer, it had spread to her liver.

Both my parents have had their challenges with cancer. My Mother had a battle with uterine cancer and my father, a version of leukemia, but both bounced back rather quickly with treatment. We respected Kristi’s desire to be private and expected her to make a full recovery.

This hasn’t happened. She is now, just a couple months later, stage 4 colon cancer. No treatment has hindered the progress of the cancer’s spread through her body and she is in her final battle. The ravages of the disease are not just physical, they have brought a horrible financial burden as her family has struggled to save her.

The feeling of helplessness is difficult. I, as many in my field can understand the need to “fix things” or at least make things better and there is so little I can do. My sister’s friend’s have put together a contribution site to assist in their financial struggle to help with the cost of her treatments. It makes the pain a little less knowing I can help ease the financial burden even if I can’t do anything to help save my sister.

If you would like to help Kristi’s and our family, click here.

Oracle Dictionary fragmentation

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:55:49 -0500

The purpose of this post is mainly to highlight the performance degradation due to dictionary index fragmentation. It is something that oracle not widely announce but it came from the physical structure of the database.

Oracle databases have the AGE and the age mainly came from the number of DDL operations done on the database. The DDL operations modify the dictionary and introduce fragmentation to the indexes and tables.

I have made the small test case

-- CREATE TABLE
DROP TABLE list_customers
/
CREATE TABLE list_customers
   ( customer_id             NUMBER(6)
   , cust_first_name         VARCHAR2(20)
   , cust_last_name          VARCHAR2(20)
   , nls_territory           VARCHAR2(30)
   , cust_email              VARCHAR2(30))
   PARTITION BY LIST (nls_territory) (
   PARTITION asia VALUES ('CHINA', 'THAILAND'),
   PARTITION europe VALUES ('GERMANY', 'ITALY', 'SWITZERLAND'),
   PARTITION west VALUES ('AMERICA'),
   PARTITION east VALUES ('INDIA'))
/
-- ADD partitions
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS '10046 trace name context forever, level 4'
/
ALTER TABLE list_customers ADD PARTITION south VALUES ('ANTARCTICA')
/
EXIT
-- DROP partition
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS '10046 trace name context forever, level 4'
/
ALTER TABLE list_customers DROP PARTITION south
/
EXIT

It is oversimplified method without dependancies to the object and object statistics. But it already create two massive traces.
In summary during the INSERT command we insert to tables
OBJ$, DEFERRED_STG$ and TABPART$
During delete operation we remove rows from this tables
As you all know insert-delete tables have high level of fragmentation on the indexed columns

We run the standard report for indexes on 3 mentioned tables and it shows that estimated number of leaf blocks for some of them dramatically smaller then the actual one.

INDEX	Estimated Size	Actual Size
SYS.TABPART$.I_TABPART_OBJ$	47	279
SYS.OBJ$.I_OBJ3	4	20
SYS.OBJ$.I_OBJ4	422	1475
SYS.OBJ$.I_OBJ1	422	969
SYS.TABPART$.I_TABPART_BOPART$	68	125
SYS.DEFERRED_STG$.I_DEFERRED_STG1	30	53
SYS.OBJ$.I_OBJ5	1269	1728
SYS.OBJ$.I_OBJ2	1269	1726

In case you would try to rebuild this indexes in usual way, you would get the oracle error

ORA-00701: object necessary for warmstarting database cannot be altered

that actually block all attempts to fix the fragmentation.

Index fragmentation primarelly affect index FULL and RANGE scans operation but not UNIQUE index scan. UNIQUE scan would be affected only when INDEX would grow for additional level.

The number in a table does not show something dramatic but it looks like we already have mensurable performance impact on common database operations, like name resolution.

In long term I think every database with high number of structure modifications has to go through process of APPLICATION DATA migration regularly once in 5-15 years.

New Theme: Snap

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:00:04 -0500

Happy Theme Thursday! Sharing and managing your work online should be easy, and today I’m thrilled to announce a new theme from our friends at The Theme Foundry that helps you do just that!

Snap is a responsive, lightweight, and minimalist theme that makes it easy to feature your projects. Snap’s clean grid based blog layout and configurable page templates also make it incredibly flexible.

Snap

Read more about Snap in the Theme Showcase, or test drive it for yourself by going to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard.

When the person you hire is not the person you hire

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:26 -0500

This is something I just heard about recently, but then experienced it for myself.

This story was told to me: A client is looking for a contractor and contacts a staffing firm to find candidates. The staffing firms sends a resume that looks real good. A technical interview is done via the phone, the candidate really knows his stuff and nails the interview, and he is hired. A few weeks later the new hire arrives and begins work. But something does not seem right. The contractor does not seem to be that sharp, nothing like he was during the interview. His coding skills are not that good. After a few weeks, the client does some digging, and it is discovered this person is not the person who did the interview!

It’s called the “bait and switch”, and the hope is the client remains unaware it is a different person. I’m guessing sometimes they get away with this switch, but you can imagine how upset the client is when they find out they have been tricked. It seems the staffing firm is tricked also. This happened twice, and both cases involved sponsored candidates from India. In one of the cases there was a group of seven who all lived together and one of them was really sharp and would do all the interviews for the other six, who were junior-level.

This then happened to me, and shows the extent some people will go to trick the client. The client I was at did a phone interview on a candidate that I participated in. The candidate did very well in the phone interview. Since the client had experienced the same bait-and-switch as above, the next step in the interview process is a required a face-to-face meeting. So they did a video interview on Skype, were we used Skype for the video and used a land-line for the voice. Once again the candidate did very well but….it turns out, we were talking to a different person on the land-line than who was on the video! We got suspicious when we saw how the video and voice were so out of sync, and doing some more digging turned up they were in fact different people. The guy on the video was pretending to be the guy talking on the land-line. Crazy!

I asked my recruiter friend about this, and he replied:

I saw it happen more often earlier in my career, not so much now (but it still does happen on rare occasions). Detroit in particular had a ton of foreign national firms set up show here in the 90’s and when this “bait & switch” became a trend, the Big 3 put an end to it. They’d make candidates give some form of ID (SS# or some other identifier). There would also be harsh penalties such as removal from the vendor blanket for firms that repeatedly used this tactic. The bait & switch is a rookie move. The staffing world can be a greasy business – unfortunately nothing really surprises me these days.

My 2013 SQL Saturday Schedule!

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:02:07 -0500

I’ve finally gotten my gear together for (what I consider) the “speaking season”. Here are the SQL Saturdays that I’m speaking at, or that I’ve submitted to, or are considering submitting to! I’ll update this list as plans solidify:

5/18/2013 – Atlanta - Scheduled to speak.
8/3/2013 – Baton Rouge - Submitted. Call for speakers closes 6/1/2013
8/17/2013 – NYC - Considering. Call for speakers closes 6/18/2013
8/24/2013 – OKC - Submitted. Call for speakers closes 6/21/2013
9/14/2013 – KSC - Submitted. Call for speakers closes 7/16/2013
9/28/2013 – Denver - Considering. Call for speakers closes 7/30/2013
10/15/2013 – PASS Summit – Submitted. Call for speakers closed.
12/7/2013 – D.C. - Considering. Call for speakers closes 10/8/2013

Let me know where you’re going to be! Maybe we’ll cross paths, shake hands, share info, sing a song…

Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen

Book Review – "Windows Powershell 3.0 Step By Step" by Ed Wilson, O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:51:00 -0500

I’ve as I’ve mentioned many times on twitter, I’ve become quite obsessed with Powershell over the last year and a half. I recently joined the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program and here is my first review.

Book Summary

Microsoft Certified Trainer, Ed Wilson, covers all of the facets of Powershell 3.0. Not only does he teach the reader how to use Powershell, he also teaches them to teach themselves Powershell. The book starts with the basics and builds to expert levels on many topics in Powershell. There is a section in the introduction on what chapters to read based on your background and ability and hopes/wants/needs for Powershell. This helped me pick and choose what to read and focus on. At the end of each chapter, there are exercises that really test your knowledge and drill the information into your brain. Also, throughout the book, there are Tips and Notes that help find the important information quickly. Finally, each chapter has a Quick Reference at the end that summarizes the main points which is extremely helpful in getting the information you need.

My Reactions

Since I got this book, I have used it as a reference everyday. In fact, I added a snippet to my $profile to open it when I open Powershell. I’ve seen a few videos and demonstrations of the Get-Command and Get-Member functions, but having the hands on exercises along with the the full explanations helped me finally understand how to use these – and that was in the first chapter! I love the "Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog" and this book uses a similar approach. It keeps things simple and builds upon the simple things. Due to the fact that this book uses a straightforward approach and makes the finding of information very easy, I recommend it to anyone interested in learning and/or improving their Powershell skills.

Magnify SQL Text with SSMS 2012

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:48 -0500

This is just a quick tip to help with folks who present SQL code at events such as SQL Saturday. While most presenters use tools like ZoomIt (which if you present, please please learn to use this wonderful, free tool) sometimes it can get nauseating for attendees to watch you constantly zooming in and out, especially on code.

A quick way around this is by using the magnification feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2012. To do this simply hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard and with your mouse scroll the mouse wheel up to increase the magnification and scroll down to decrease it. Alternatively you can simply click on the magnification dropdown, which is located at the bottom left of the query window (by default) and select your desired level of magnification.

That’s it! Now you can quickly magnify your code to make it easier for your audience to see and you can reserve the zooming to highlight other areas as needed.

Rated R (A Teaser)

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:05 -0500

How many lines of TSQL codes and Window Functions you need to come up with this?

With R, it takes about 2 commands:

> order <- as.matrix(sqlFetch(ch,"SalesDetails")
> summary(order)

To give you an idea, I prepared the data set into a view like this:

CREATE VIEW SalesDetails
AS
SELECT
 soh.OrderDate AS [Date],
 soh.SalesOrderID,
 ppc.Name AS Category,
 pps.Name AS Subcat,
 pp.Name as Product,
 SUM(sd.OrderQty) AS Qty,
 SUM(sd.LineTotal) AS LineTotal
FROM Sales.SalesPerson sp
 INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh
 ON sp.BusinessEntityID = soh.SalesPersonID
 INNER JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sd
 ON sd.SalesOrderID = soh.SalesOrderID
 INNER JOIN Production.Product AS pp
 ON sd.ProductID = pp.ProductID
 INNER JOIN Production.ProductSubcategory AS pps
 ON pp.ProductSubcategoryID = pps.ProductSubcategoryID
 INNER JOIN Production.ProductCategory AS ppc
 ON ppc.ProductCategoryID = pps.ProductCategoryID
GROUP BY ppc.Name, soh.OrderDate, soh.SalesOrderID, ppc.name, pps.Name, pp.Name,
 soh.SalesPersonID

And, that’s it. I just fed that view to the R engine and it summarized the dataset just by using those two commands.

This is not the perfect dataset to test with R.

I’d love to dig deeper into R because of its powerful analytical features.

What is R? “R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.” If you’re into statistics, linear/non-linear modelling, or simply want to try another tool to analyze your data warehouse, give R a shot.

If you want to start digging with R, Ted Malone ( b | t ) has a nice introduction to using R with SQL Server 2012. Get more information about R on the R Project website.

SCNs and Timestamps

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:05:00 -0500

The function ORA_ROWSCN returns an SCN from a row (or more commonly the block, unless ROWDEPENDENCIES has been used).

select distinct ora_rowscn from PLAN_TABLE;

But unless you're a database, that SCN doesn't mean much. You can put things in some sort of order, but not much more.

Much better is

select sys.scn_to_timestamp(ora_rowscn) from PLAN_TABLE;

unless it gives you

ORA-08181: specified number is not a valid system change number

which is database-speak for "I can't remember exactly".

That's when you might be able to fall back on this, plugging the SCN in place of the **** :

select * from

(select first_time, first_change# curr_change,

lag(first_change#) over (order by first_change#) prev_change,

lead(first_change#) over (order by first_change#) next_change

FROM v$log_history)

where **** between curr_change and next_change

It won't be exact, and it doesn't stretch back forever. But it is better than nothing.

PS. This isn't a perfect way to find when a row was really inserted/updated. It is probably at the block level, and there's 'stuff' that can happen which doesn't actually change the row but might still reset the SCN. If you're looking for perfection, you at the wrong blog :)

May 2013 PASSMN Meeting

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:43:40 -0500

Sponsor: C2IT Consulting

Date: May 21st, 2013

Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Live Meeting:

URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SRR9DN&role=attend&pw=zd%3F9c.2KJ
Meeting ID: SRR9DN
Entry Code: zd?9c.2KJ

Agenda:

4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
4:15-4:30 : SSMS 2012 – Tips, Tricks and New Features, by Rizwan Hassan
4:30-5:30 : SQL Server Security and Data Security, by Ross McNeely
5:30-6:00 : Announcements and prize giveaways

Click here for all the details and to RSVP

Presentation:

SQL Server Security and Data Security, by Ross McNeely

The presentation will walk through the requirements to secure SQL Server, and how to implement data security requirements. Ross decided to discuss both SQL Server Security and Data Security due to the amount of confusion that often occurs during the security phase of a project. Some of the topics included are SQL Server configuration, table/execution permissions, OLAP security, and using a security data model. The presentation will cover a large amount of material in a short time span, but hopefully you will find it informative.

Ross McNeely is a BI Practice Manager at C2 IT Solutions. As a Business Intelligence consultant Ross have installed and secured SQL Server instances for various customers. Ross has presented at several SQL Saturday in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Regardless if you have a beginner, intermediate, or advanced skill set, Ross will provide a solid foundation for each topic. Please join Ross McNeely for a fun and informative meeting.

Presentation:

SSMS 2012 – Tips, Tricks and New Features, by Rizwan Hassan

There are certain features in SSMS 2012 that we are unaware of and new features that learned while using SSMS 2012. I would like to share those features with you!!!

Rizwan Hassan started as System Administrator and evolved into SQL DBA Administrator. Rizwan have worked at Virteva and Kroll Ontrack. He is currently working at General Mills as SQL DBA. Responsible for 600 SQL instances with 3000 databases

Get Just The Tools: SSMS Download

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:04 -0500

Ever jump on a machine to connect to a SQL Server and find out… whoops! No tools. For some reason, the client machine doesn’t have SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) installed. Now I’m not talking about not having the SSMS installed on the server, but on the local workstation that you need to connect to the server with.

No tools has happened to me many times and, in fact, happened to me this past week. In the past, this would mean running around trying to get find the client’s SQL Server installation media. Maybe downloading a 4+ GB ISO of the entire SQL Server installation from TechNet. Or, hopefully, making sure the client had USB ports open on their machines and that I had my installation media backup drive with me. A lot of things that were more work than one would like.

With the release of SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1, there is a new option on the table. Instead of downloading everything, you can download just the management tools through the Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Express download page. Just select either SQLManagementStudio_x64_ENU.exe or SQLManagementStudio_x86_ENU.exe from the download options and you’ll have the full version of SSMS at your fingertips; in about a quarter the size of the full installation download.

I have seen the future of ERP

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:24:11 -0500

I’m at Oracle HQ in Redwood Shores this week for a workshop on implementing Oracle’s best user experience (UX) design practices in ADF.

Yesterday, the Oracle UX team hosted a confidential (strictly no photography!) event demoing some of the new stuff they are working on. If I told you the details I’d have to kill you, but what I can say is this: The future of ERP is as a platform, not an application.

I have been building custom user interfaces for Oracle E-Business Suite for years and have been struggling with inconsistent, incomplete and only slowly evolving APIs. With Fusion Applications, that’s all different - because Because it is service oriented from the bottom up, it becomes easy to build multiple interfaces to the core Fusion Applications services.

You’ll see many ways of accessing the Fusion Application platform on various devices. Oracle will be covering desktop, laptop, and mobile with various products specialized for each platform. But if you’re not happy with what Oracle is building, you can easily use the Fusion APIs to build your own interface. Who will be the first to implement Fusion Apps on Google Glass?

Widget Visibility and You

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:00:58 -0500

Since the dawn of time, humankind has yearned for control. While we can’t give you more control over most of your life, we can give you more control over your widgets. And today, with the new widget visibility tool, you can configure your widgets to be shown or hidden only on certain pages.

Widgets are a way to add new content (like your Twitter stream, a tag cloud, or a link to your blog archives) in the sidebar, header, or footer of your site. To see the widgets you have available to you, log in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on Appearance » Widgets. To add a widget, simply click on it and drag it up and over to the right of the widget screen, into the Default Sidebar, Header Area, or Footer Area section of your site. Then, to control visibility, expand the widget and click the Visibility button next to the Save button.

For example, if you wanted the Archives widget to only appear on category archives and error pages, choose “Show” from the first dropdown and then add two rules: “Page is 404 Error Page” and “Category is All Category Pages.”

You can also hide widgets based on the current page. For example, if you don’t want the Archives widget to appear on search results pages, choose “Hide” and “Page is Search results.”

Visibility is controlled by five aspects: page type, category, tag, date, and author, but each visibility rule is handled separately, so there isn’t a way, for example, to only display a widget on posts that are categorized as “Summer” and also tagged with “Picnic.”

The visibility panel is available today in every widget for every user on WordPress.com; visit Appearance » Widgets in your blog’s dashboard to take control. Or, to learn more about using widgets on your blog, check out our recent Introduction to Widgets series: Widgets 101, Widgets 201, and Widgets 301.

T-SQLTuesday #42: The New Adventure!

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:45:07 -0500

It’s time for T-SQL Tuesday the forty-second, Wendy Pastrick asked that we talk

T-SQL Tuesday!

about our experiences with change in our work lives. I’d like to share some exciting news about myself and the new adventure I am taking. Earlier this month I started a new journey with Dell as an Database Administrator Sr. Advisor. I also am happy to share why I decided to go down this path. Some of the reasons include new technology, career planning, exciting challenges with a great team.

New Technology!

I love being around new technology. Personally, I like to find new innovative technologies that can be used to improve business processes while save money and time. During the interview process I learned that the SQL team at Dell fits the bill. In fact, I heard about so many great projects including some under NDA all I can say is I feel like a kid in the candy store!

Career Planning!

Not every employeer makes it a priority to have you map your aspirations and goals. Very few companies help you do a fit gap assessment and tries to find business opportunities to fill them. Dell goes out of its ways to help you with your career planning. This might be the greatest perk of the job.

Exciting Challenges with a Great Team!

Not many people get excited about the opportunity to work with chained transactional replication where a subscriber is a publisher in another publication but I do. That’s right, I love to be challenged and I am excited to work with some talented people. I am going to get to do both in my new role. I will be working with multiple DBA’s who have been working with SQL Server for over ten years. I look forward to sharing my knowledge and soaking up everything I can from them.

Websites for the Greater Good: Non-Profits on WordPress.com

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:47:57 -0500

All kinds of organizations make their home on WordPress.com: small businesses, municipalities, religious organizations, schools, community groups. We also provide an online HQ for quite a few non-profits, from the global to the hyperlocal. They turn to WordPress.com for an easy-to-use, low cost solution that gets them an effective web presence without diverting thousands of dollars from their missions: helping others.

Here are just a few of the organizations that call WordPress.com home, and some of the ways they’ve used WordPress.com to create compelling sites that tell their stories and engage their supporters — nearly all for little or no cost:

Girls’ Globe

Girls’ Globe is a Sweden-based non-profit that connects individuals and organizations dedicated to the rights, health, and empowerment of women and girls.

The site creates a space for bloggers and non-profits to share stories of their challenges and successes. Each of those stories becomes a learning experience for women’s rights advocates, giving them a new tool, suggesting an effective strategy for advancing girls’ rights, and providing international exposure.

Girls’ Globe uses the Oxygen theme, taking advantage of its post slider to create a colorful, graphic homepage that showcases the site’s most powerful stories. A custom menu guides visitors both to topical content and to pages critical for any non-profit: About, Partners, and Donate, where embedded PayPal buttons let visitors easily support the organization using either US dollars or Swedish krona.

(Oxygen is a versatile theme that’s quite popular with non-profits — check out how the Little Hippies Foundation and SimpleNeeds Georgia have made it their own.)

Turning Pages

We found many literacy organizations on WordPress.com — fitting, for a platform that’s about writing and reading great content. Among them is Turning Pages, a South Carolina non-profit offering adult literacy and math classes and tutoring:

Turning Pages relies on the Confit theme, originally designed for restaurants but perfect for creating websites with focused, easily navigable home pages. Their mission is front and center, and the home page also makes important information like address and office hours, a contact form, and a donate button accessible with no further clicking. In the sidebar, a custom menu lets potential volunteers and adults seeking assistance find relevant information easily. (If you’re interested in building a website with a home page rather than a blog, as Turning Pages has, check out our home page tutorial.)

Confit is designed for a large custom background image, and Turning Pages has chosen a panoramic shot of the Congaree River bridge, a Columbia landmark. It adds visual interest and emphasizes that this is a community-focused organization while not distracting from the important content on the page — a perfect double-duty background.

Tuning Pages isn’t the only organization that saw the potential in the Confit theme — the Vida Vegan Conference is also using it to share information about its upcoming gala, benefitting a chimpanzee sanctuary.

Invisible Children

When the world first became aware of the atrocities committed in Uganda by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, sending footage of Kony viral, Invisible Children was one of the main drivers behind the campaign. A California-based non-profit, Invisible Children is dedicated to ending the use and abuse of child soldiers in Africa, and their online component is powered by WordPress.com VIP:

Invisible Children is packed with information, from an interactive crisis tracker that lets visitors zoom in to learn more about specific incidents across Africa to a lobbying sign-up form and Congressional calendar for would-be activists. Compelling video and data help them make the case for their work, and the site provides ample opportunity for interested visitors to get involved, from simply making a donation to attending an event to applying for a job.

The breadth of organizations using WordPress.com VIP is truly remarkable — from Invisible Children to the Partnership for a Drug Free America to the charity: water blog.

Metro Council for Teen Potential

You might not think that a theme called Fruit Shake featuring bananas in its header would be a good foundation for a non-profit website — but then, you haven’t seen the Metro Council for Teen Potential:

Based in Rochester, New York, The Metro Council is a community youth support organization offering health and skills education, mentoring, and leadership training to young people in the greater Rochester area. Using Fruit Shake, they’ve created a simple, clean site. A front-and-center mission statement and bold photos of the teens it works with give visitors an immediate sense of what the organization does, and the navigation options in the sidebar make it easy to sift through the site’s options.

From animal welfare organizations to museums and municipal organizations to scholarship funds to community groups distributing food and clothing to the homeless and beyond, non-profits use WordPress.com to get their word out about their missions, attract volunteers, fundraise, and organize events, all in the name of the greater good. We’re proud to give them a platform that helps them create change.

Myself in 2004

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:53:50 -0500

This is me in 2004

I’m in the center with the glasses

This picture was taken in an electronics factory in Zhongshan, China.

I’m not a big traveler and I never have been. I thought the opportunity to see China was a once in a lifetime thing. In my case, I found myself making the trip three times courtesy of my employer. It wasn’t the adventure I thought it would be. Unlike most tourists to China, my memories don’t include much else other than hotels, ferries and factory locations like the one you see here. I remember counting the days until each trip was over.

When I look at this picture, I remember a lot of things. I remember the anti-static lab coats and I’m reminded that I used to have more hair than I do now. The machine in front of me is meant to test a motherboard for the upcoming XBox 360. The guy on the right was an engineer, a hardware guy. My job was to install and support the software that collected test results and store them in a SQL Server database.

In Over My Head?

I remember the other people in this photo. It was an amazing assembly of talent. The people here were smart. But not just smart, they were smart and competent. They were ambitious and passionate about what they do and it’s rare to see that. I felt a little overwhelmed and I felt a little out of place. Everyone seemed so confident about what needed to be done. I guess I was no different. I knew what I had to do, but the confidence I showed was half acting.

For the most part, I was lucky. I installed the software and waited for a problem to support. It’s a testament to the company I worked for that I was able to wait more than work. But it wasn’t all super-smooth sailing.

Eventually I was asked to troubleshoot a burning issue and I wasn’t used to the pressure; hopefully it didn’t show. I felt like I was thrown into the deep end in order to learn how to swim. The head guy asked me to resolve something (and by the way Michael, the factory can’t operate until you do). The issues I faced were new to me and the pressure was on. Here’s a small subset of the kind of things I was asked to tackle:

Replication configuration issues. <bleah!>
Log files filling up (because replication’s log reader wasn’t operating properly)<ouch>
Concurrency bottlenecks. <just the beginning of the rest of my life>

In my career up until then, I was always able to ask a more experienced colleague for help. Here was the first time where I was it. There were no other colleagues to call on. If I couldn’t crack this nut, it wasn’t going to get cracked. In this case it was me and books online vs. SQL Server 2000. I did eventually get through those days and it felt amazing to beat those issues. But during the crisis itself, there was some anxiety.

Out of the Deep End

I came away from those experience with a bit more confidence than I started with. It was the first time I thought, “I’m fine, I can handle this”. By the end of my trips to China, the confidence I was showing wasn’t acting any more. I wasn’t just solving such crises, I was avoiding them. And back in Canada, I was asked to be on-call overnight in order to field questions from others in China.

I don’t believe there exists a training course anywhere that is equivalent to the confidence gained by solving these FIX IT NOW crises.

And it didn’t stop there, these other things helped boost my confidence even further:

SQL Server released 2005 with features that made a DBAs life so much easier than when supporting 2000.
I left my software development job for a different job focusing on databases full time.
twitter and #sqlhelp happened. It made me feel like I had the world on call. I don’t use it as much as I used to, but it’s nice to now it’s still there if I need it.

The Guy in the Picture

I’ve showed this picture a couple times to others in the past year. Each time I was encouraged to blog about it. This is me doing that. I have a lot of stories I could tell about these trips. In fact, I wish now that I kept a journal. So dear reader, if sometime in the future, we find ourselves hanging out and have nothing to chat about, ask me about 2004 Michael. Until then…

Should placement companies use a markup %?

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:20 -0500

To expand on what I talked about in Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?: If you are a consultant working through a placement firm, should the markup percentage (client bill rate divided by consultant rate minus one) be the same no matter what the hourly rate is?

Some placement firms use a fixed hourly rate markup, but many use a markup percentage. One placement company I am talking with does just that, and they like to have a 68% mark up. I can never understand why they use a percentage for mark up, especially one that high. After all, 68% of $50/hr and 68% of $150/hr is a $68/hr difference in margin!

In talking with a recruiter who has been in the industry a while, and is now a recruiter for his one-man shop, here was his response:

My answer is that each deal should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Percentages are dangerous for the reasons you mentioned – and that goes both ways. The candidate is punished when the rate is high, the vendor is punished when the rate is low. Having said that, most mid to large vendors (probably those at $50M or more) will have a percentage based formula where they bake their fixed costs into an Excel spreadsheet (insurance, rent, management overhead, vendor mgmt. system fees, etc) and use a percentage system to evaluate a deal.

I’ve worked in a few decent sized companies. At those firms we used excel spreadsheets pre-populated with the fixed amounts mentioned above (rent doesn’t change often, maybe annually, same goes for overhead, vendor fees, etc). In my experience, the spreadsheet was probably updated once a year, but the fixed costs are essentially left alone for the most part. The spreadsheet allowed for two variable data entry points: (1) employee cost and (2) the client bill rate. Employee cost was basically a candidate’s salary (or hourly rate) and health benefits (how many people are being insured – single, married or family benefits). The client bill rate is what it is, the rate the end client is paying the vendor. These two variables were set against the fixed costs mentioned earlier and the end result was a percentage. There were guidelines as to what percentages were acceptable (if above “X” percent, the sales guy gets a better cut, if below a certain percent, the sales guy wouldn’t make anything on the deal).

Publicly traded companies definitely follow this model because they have to report their quarterly earnings to Wall Street and these firms are typically graded on their margins. So management will bake in rewards or penalties for the sales/recruiting teams to keep everyone rowing in the same direction. So when a sales guy says he can’t do a deal, it is probably because the deal is at a certain margin where he’ll get punished with minimal commission. Some percentage systems involve a sliding scale that accounts for how high/low the bill rate is and higher rate deals would allow for a higher percentage to go to the candidate. This makes sense for the reasons you mentioned (20% of $50 if far different than %20 of $150 – and things like rent, insurance, vendor fees are all fixed costs, they don’t go up or down based on the amount in the bill rate). Having said that, some factors (insurance, workers comp, unemployment) do go up with a candidate that has a higher compensation, so those are some things to keep in mind.

All of the above basically applies to bigger and/or publicly traded companies. It doesn’t apply to the small guy – at least in my mind it doesn’t as we don’t have the overhead, the same pressure from Wall Street or from a parent company – we don’t answer to anyone but ourselves. For me, my rule of thumb is pretty simple: I have a “walk away” point where I won’t do a deal if it falls below a certain NET hourly amount. I don’t care about the percentage. I care more about the bigger picture:

- Who invested the most time in making the deal work?
- Does the vendor have some additional value (for example, are they a preferred vendor?)
- Supply and demand (and market rates) also come in to play (did I find this guy in a day, or did it take me 6 weeks?)
- Did the candidate bring the deal? (and did the vendor do nothing?)
- Dd the client give a low bill rate? Is there much room to work with?

If I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating a relationship with a client, to the point that when I make a suggestion, my candidate gets to cut to the front of the line and basically gets an interview on my recommendation – now I have value and my margin reflects that. Additionally, if there turns out to be multiple candidates available for that role, then that also comes in to play. If I talk to 5 candidates that have the same skill set (and assuming all things are equal) then it comes down to which candidate is cheapest. My rate will go up and down some to show the end client who is more expensive but generally the lower cost candidate gives a bigger margin. I guess I work backward and factor in the above points – since running my own firm I have never (and will never) start with a percentage in mind. It is all of the above (and some other things that I’m forgetting) that factor in to what type of a NET margin I’ll accept, then a percentage comes out of it and I look at it more as a reference point, nothing more.

And to put that in perspective, I don’t charge clients $150/hr then pass on $60/hr to my teammate and keep $90/hr for myself. My teammates make the lion’s share of the bill rate, and my hourly NET is still a nice little number that supports me and my family. I live by the rule that “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered”. Take what you need to live a nice life, but don’t get greedy because it’ll eventually catch up with you. I want candidates that have worked with me to feel that they got what the deserved. It leads to future referrals and repeat business with candidates. It is a small world, no need to get greedy…

For percentage markups, it seems that a common ground of was 80/20 (in favor of the consultant) was a good deal and 70/30 was more the norm. In my opinion, the ratio slides from bigger companies needing more (like 60/40 or 65/35) to smaller companies who can tolerate 80/20. The reason I say this is that I lived it first-hand 19 years ago and am living it again now. When I stated my own career in 1994, it was for a midsize company (a $400M company that went through an IPO, they are still doing well to this day). When they were a smaller company (pre-IPO), they signed up a lot of employees for 80/20 deals. As the company grew, and the company overhead, infrastructure, service offerings, sales/recruiting force, etc. grew, those once “decent” 80/20 deals became the company albatross, putting a serious drain on the overall company margins. It was my job to meet with the employees and try to re-work those 80/20 contracts. The message to the employee was “don’t worry about the split anymore, worry about your Net hourly take home pay”. If you were making $40/hr on a $50/hr bill rate, don’t focus on maintaining 80% of the new bill rate, instead give me a new hourly number (you are at $40/hr, do you want $45/hr?) and let me worry about the hourly bill rate to support that. Then I had to go to the client and fight for whatever bill rate increase I could get – and I was challenged to get it away from an 80/20 margin because the company had outgrown that. So sometimes focusing on the percentage or the split can be the wrong way to look at it. And for the past four years running my own small firm, I never look at it (other than as a reference point). As I said above, I have a walk away point based on a NET hourly number that starts my negotiation (or ends the negotiation) and I go from there. The many different factors (duration, amount of work, supply and demand, amount of money tied up in the deal, risk) all go in to what number I’ll tolerate. It is a case-by-case situation – at least for the small guy.

To answer about the 68% markup: For a large firm that seems pretty high. Note that W2 employees have FICA, FUTA, SUTA, Liability and Workers’ Comp which could arguable account for roughly 20% of the margin. But even after you take off the 20% and get it down to 48%, that is still too high in my opinion.