Thoughts on SQL Server

Interact with the PASS Board at the Summit

Bill Graziano — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:20:56 GMT

(This blog post comes from an email I sent to the Board about this. I left in some of the thoughts around it in addition to just what we’re doing. Plus we’re still working out some details.)

This year at the Summit we want to give the community a chance to ask questions of the Board and provide feedback. We also want to capture any suggestions people have.

First, The PASS Board of Directors will hold an open Q&A session Wednesday from 4:30PM until 6:15PM. It will be in room 6E. This overlaps with the last session but also runs 15 minutes past the end of the last spotlight. This means that everyone should be able to attend for at least 15 minutes if they’d like. There just aren’t any other scheduling options except before the keynotes. Hopefully not too many of you will be double-booked.

We’ll try to record it. Depends on what A/V is already in the room and what costs are. I’m leaning toward spending the cash but we’ll see. Cameras are welcome. Everyone in the community is welcome to record it, stream it, whatever. We’ll definitely take good notes. We expect people to come and go during this. If we get the same question three times that’s fine.

The session will probably be moderated. All the Board members will be answering questions. In cases where there are a variety of Board opinions on issues we’ll make sure everyone gets a chance to answer or ruminate. I think we’ll get very few questions in areas where PASS has an official policy so it will mostly be Board member’s opinions. We expect the community to drive the topics and we just make sure everyone gets heard.

Second, we’ve asked each Board member to spend one (or maybe even two hours) in the PASS Booth. We’re hoping to list all the Board members and their schedule during Wayne’s keynote. If not, they will be posted in the PASS Booth. This will give people a chance to speak with the Board in a relaxed setting and answer questions about PASS.

Finally, we’re going to have a suggestion box at the booth. Yes, pen and paper. Old school I know. We looked into an email alias. The only downside right now is that we don’t have a good process on the other end of that to deal with the feedback we get. HQ is completely swamped getting ready for Summit and doesn’t have any extra time at Summit. I don’t want us in a position of accepting suggestions we can’t process or even respond to.

Whatever we have in the box by Wednesday we’ll go through at the Q&A -- time permitting. We can probably find a volunteer to sort them for us. Any received after Wednesday will be processed by HQ when they get back up to speed following Summit. I expect we’ll get quite a few about Summit logistics. We’ll just have to see if we have time to address those. Otherwise the HQ logistics group can look through them as they have time. This is a stop gap measure for this Summit only. The post-Summit survey that goes out will also be a way to capture Summit specific feedback.

Going forward we’ll either setup an email alias or forums. I’m leaning toward forums but we’ll have to see what works logistically. Brent Ozar made some good comments about that the other day. That gives people a way to give feedback on ideas and add more information. And a way for the community to give feedback on the fly on various ideas. We’ll see if we can keep up with them :) It also gives us a way to ask them questions. That’s an area we’ve been sorely lacking (or at least I have).

See you all soon!

-Bill

(Cross posted from the PASS Blog: http://www.sqlpass.org/Community/PASSBlog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/119/Interact-with-the-PASS-Board-at-the-Summit.aspx)

The Facebook Reunion

Bill Graziano — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:01:32 GMT

Over the last year I’ve watched my usage of Facebook change. A party in my hometown really capped off the change. When I started out on Facebook all my friends were technology people. Facebook hadn’t invaded my hometown yet.

I grew up in Baldwin City, Kansas about 50 minutes southwest of Kansas City. The population was around 2,000 when I graduated from high school. That was back in the days of Miami Vice, Dire Straits, Back to the Future, Family Ties, Huey Lewis & the News, Rocky IV and Simple Minds. (And yes, I was just as cool as Don Johnson. Weren’t we all?) We used to stop at Jack’s Dari-Ring to get slushies on hot summer days. Now the town has McDonald’s, Sonic, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and a stop light. I’m not entirely sure that’s progress.

Each year Baldwin City hosts the Maple Leaf Festival. The town is full of maple trees that all change color about the same time. We have a parade, lots of booths selling painted saw blades, funnel cakes, quilts and other knick-knacks. The parade always brings out the best of small town America. Lots of local politicians, marching bands and floats. In that last picture are the runaway brides.

Over the last year or two my Facebook friend’s list has filled up with people from Baldwin City. I don’t have a huge number of friends on Facebook but it’s probably two-thirds Baldwin High School alumni now. And this year they decided to have a party.

Five girls from Baldwin organized it to coincide with Maple Leaf. Many of the high school classes hold their reunions at this time also. I watched the confirmations click up curious to see how many people would attend. I thought it would be great to see 20-30 people I hadn’t seen in a while. The confirmed count kept going up and finally stopped around 150. You have to remember that we typically graduate sixty people per year. So that’s 25% of the people in the 10 year range that I fell into.

I attached some pictures below. Yes, that’s me in the last picture with a very tipsy Lynn T. I hadn’t seen her in years! After getting 150 people to confirm I thought it would be great if half of them showed up. And half of them did. And so did the other half. And another half. And another half. They had a sign in sheet in the back and we had over 300 alumni sign in. Plus I have no idea how many spouses, dates and friends were running around. This quick little get together packed this place and kept the bar open until 1:30 in the morning when they finally threw us out. (Which brings up two interesting points: (A) Baldwin has a bar and (B) it stays open until 1:30! Who knew!)

I can’t remember a night I had so much fun! I saw so many people I hadn’t seen in years! People I never would have run into at a reunion because they weren’t in my class. All through the night I kept thinking about what next year is going to be like. I know it will be bigger. Can we get 500? Can we get 1,000? Facebook really did help us have a fantastic event.

I tend to use technology to further my career. I blog about technical topics. I write technical articles. I answer technical questions in forums. But Facebook has really turned into a medium where I interact with my non-technical friends. I think email is the only other thing like it. Is this how you use Facebook?

Almost a week with Ask SQLTeam

Bill Graziano — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:42:32 GMT

I launched the updated Ask SQLTeam almost a week ago and I’ve noticed a few interesting things.

First, a big thank you to the people answering questions. As people answer questions and their answers are voted up they get “reputation”. Right now the top 3 users in terms of reputation are mrdenny, Kristen and TG. Overall 27 people have earned the “Teacher” badge. That means they’ve answered at least one question that someone else voted up. Anyone that has earned 15 “reputation points” can vote up answers. When your answer is voted up you get 10 reputation points.

I expected we would be a little short of questions to start with but I didn’t realize that would be the biggest limitation on the site so far. We have plenty of people willing to answer questions. There just aren’t enough good questions to answer. Hint: Ask your SQL Server questions! There are lots of bright people willing to help out with SQL Server questions. I considered seeding the site with fake questions but that just doesn’t seem right. Hopefully allowing people to log into the site with their forum username and password will make it easier for people to participate.

The format is certainly a BIG CHANGE from a traditional forum. I often gazed longingly from afar at StackOverflow. I used the site a little to get my ASP.NET MVC questions answered but always felt a little too guilty to go answer SQL Server questions. If you’ve participated at StackOverflow then you’re used to it already. If not, it truly is a different way to ask and answer questions. The biggest change is that people are expected to edit their questions and answers rather than posting additional information. If you ask a question and someone wants clarification you’re expected to update your question rather than just add another post. Answers are the same way. This takes a little getting used to if you’re just interested in throwing up another post.

Some of the questions that have been asked would probably be better as a forum discussion. These are cases where it’s less of a Q&A and more of a guided discussion toward the answer. I’m not sure what the best way is to weed these out. Hopefully as people get more experienced with the site they’ll learn what’s appropriate.

One of the interesting questions people have is whether this will take traffic away from our existing forums. I don’t know the answer to that yet. Check back in six months and we’ll both know. I do expect it to take a certain amount of traffic but my hope is that the combined traffic is higher than just the forums before. People will probably prefer one over the other and gravitate to one location.

If you want your own site based on StackOverflow you can sign up at StackExchange. They are in open beta right now and won’t start charging for a while yet. The list of existing sites covers a fairly broad range of topics. Since this group was seeded from StackOverflow the list tends toward the technical in nature. One of the most popular is about World of Warcraft. Go figure! Another interesting site doing very well is Moms4mom.com – a site for parents to share parenting advice.

Logging into Ask SQLTeam using your forum account

Bill Graziano — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:52:11 GMT

Last week we launched Ask SQLTeam as an alternative to our forums. One of the interesting features of the site is that it uses OpenID as a login mechanism. Google and Yahoo both support OpenID and you can use them to login. What I really wanted was a way to login using a SQLTeam.com username and password. So I had to make SQLTeam.com an OpenID provider.

When you get to the main login screen just enter “http://openid.sqlteam.com” in the text box.

After clicking the Login button you’ll be taken to the SQLTeam OpenID page. Here you login using your SQLTeam.com forum username and password.

After you login you’re asked to confirm that you want to proceed and login using this OpenID.

After you click “yes” you’ll be taken back to Ask SQLTeam and given the option to create a new user. (See below if you already have an Ask SQLTeam account.) After clicking “Create New User” you’ll be taken back to the home page. Don’t forget to update your profile with your Display Name.

If you already have an Ask SQLTeam account you can still use your SQLTeam.com OpenID with your account. The site supports each account having two OpenIDs associated with each account. On your profile page, just look for the “new login” link. It will walk you through the steps above. After that you can login using either OpenID.

Strongly worded disclaimer: Please be aware that this is beta software. I haven’t tested it as extensively as I’d like. I also designed this specifically to work between the two sites on the SQLTeam.com domain. Using this as an Internet wide OpenID isn’t supported and may be actively prevented at some point in the future. My choice of URL isn’t ideal to support OpenID across the Internet. This feature is designed solely to allow existing forums users to easily try out Ask SQLTeam.com.

That all said, give it a try. It seems to work well and I’m happy with the growth in Ask SQLTeam so far.

Announcing the return of Ask SQLTeam

Bill Graziano — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:27:05 GMT

I stared SQLTeam.com nearly ten years ago. I wanted to build a place where people could learn about SQL Server. In the early days we had something called "Ask SQLTeam". People could submit questions and we'd use those to get ideas for articles. We tried to answer as many as we could on the site. Gradually the flood of questions became too much and that changed into the forums you see on the site today.

Today we're bringing Ask SQLTeam back. But in a different way.

I've watched the success of http://stackoverflow.com with interest. It has a couple of features that I really, really like. It's focused on getting great answers to questions and that answer is determined by the users. It's got much of what I wish I'd been able to write for SQLTeam.com. The people behind StackOverflow are making the software available to third-parties. I've signed up and I'm using the software behind the new Ask SQLTeam.

I've always taken great pride that the forums on SQLTeam were a great place to get questions answered. The members take pride in getting people's problems solved. The same thing will be true on ask.sqlteam.com.

I'd like to invite you to visit the site at ask.sqlteam.com. Take the question that you going to post in the forums and try it out there. You'd don't even need to register in order to post a question. Take a minute and answer a few questions. After ten years of doing this I’ve realized there are always more questions coming.

If you’re not familiar with the StackOverflow concept you can read our FAQ at http://ask.sqlteam.com/faq. As questions are asked, multiple people can answer and vote on which answer is the best. It will be easy to see which answer the community voted up and what answer was chosen by the person that asked the question.

The SQLTeam.com forums aren’t going away and will always be a great place to have a discussion on SQL Server. I’d encourage you to take a look at http://ask.sqlteam.com though. I think it will be a great place to get SQL Server questions answered. You can use either -- or both. It's up to you.

Sessions for new DBAs at PASS

Bill Graziano — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:36:06 GMT

I was recently asked if I thought the PASS Summit was appropriate for new database administrators. My answer was a resounding YES! But I wanted to add some specific reasons. If I was a new DBA here are the 12 sessions I’d try to attend at PASS:

Proactive DBA: Manage SQL Server Better
Ross LoForte (Microsoft Corp.)

The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit
Kevin Kline (Quest Software)

DRP101: Learn The Difference Between Your Log And Your Cluster
Brent Ozar (Quest Software)

Practical Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting for the graduated beginner but not yet expert.
Joe Yong (Scalability Experts)

Securing and Hardening a SQL Server Implementation - Notes from the Field
Ross Mistry (Convergent Computing)

Insight into Indexes
Gail Shaw (XpertEase)

SQL Server Execution Plans From Compilation To Caching To Reuse
Maciej Pilecki (Project Botticelli Ltd.)

DBAs Behaving Badly... Worst Practices for Database Administrators
Rod Colledge (Independant Consultant)

Storage for the DBA
Denny Cherry (Awareness Technologies)

Understanding Logging and Recovery in SQL Server
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)

SQL Server 2008 Manageability Features
Peter Ward (WARDY IT Solutions)

Troubleshooting applications accessing SQL Server
Abirami Iyer (Microsoft CSS)
Lakshmi Jonnakuti (Microsoft CSS)

There’s a little bit of everything thrown in. You’ll learn about backup, security, disaster recovery and performance. I threw in Kevin Kline’s session on free tools which will help with all of those.

There are also some pre-conference sessions that are appropriate for new DBAs. Either one of the following sessions on Monday would be helpful:

Care and Feeding of the Transaction Log (DBA Track)
Kalen Delaney (SQLearning)
Speaker Q&A: The Biggest Transaction Log Myth

SQL Server 2005/2008: Indexing for Performance (DBA Track)
Kimberly Tripp (SQLskills.com)
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)

Friday also brings two great choices:

Practical Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting (DBA Track)
Andrew Kelly (Solid Quality Mentors)
Speaker Q&A: Wait Stats Can't Wait

Disaster Recovery: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques (DBA Track)
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)
Kimberly Tripp (SQLskills.com)

In addition I think one of the biggest benefits of PASS is the people you’ll meet. You’ll find people like yourself in all these sessions. Knowing other new DBAs that you can share problems and solutions with is very valuable. Many of the people I ask for help with problems today are people I met through PASS.

I’d also encourage you to buy the Summit DVD. The price is very reasonable and you’ll get access to the other 150+ sessions that you didn’t have time to attend.

My apologies for the broken newsletter links

Bill Graziano — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:26:57 GMT

I use a custom application to generate the SQLTeam newsletter each week. It pulls out the blog posts I’ve flagged during the week and some recent forum posts. This week I was in the process of making some updates to the software and so I used my shiny new beta code. And in the process I broke all the links to the newsletter posts. My apologies. I’ll get it right next week.

A new company and a new home for ClearTrace

Bill Graziano — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:14:57 GMT

It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing SQL Server consulting for nearly ten years now. All that time I’ve been part of a firm called ClearData Consulting. Over the summer we made the decision to disband the company.

My new firm is scaleSQL Consulting. One thing I hope never to do again is try to come up with a name for a consulting firm. That’s just not very much fun. I’m going to continue to do performance tuning and database administration. And I’m going to spend time working on SQL Server scalability issues.

This also means that ClearTrace has a new home. If you visit the old pages on ClearData you’ll be redirected there automatically. You can now find ClearTrace at www.scalesql.com/cleartrace/.

I’ve also posted two of my recent presentations to the new site. These include the PowerPoint slides and all the demonstration files. My SQL Server Administration presentation is really just a checklist of steps for a new installation and basic configuration. It’s targeted at people that aren’t full-time database administrators. I’ve given this presentation to .NET developers, SharePoint experts, Access developers and group of SQL Server DBAs. This is my first attempt at a presentation that is 100% demos and no PowerPoint slides except for the introduction.

My second presentation is on Query Plan Usage. Many of the interesting problems I find in performance tuning are related to odd query plans. This presentation is an attempt to distill the knowledge down to a single hour. This also includes over 1,000 lines of SQL for the demos.

If you use Profiler to find SQL queries to tune I’d encourage you to give ClearTrace a try. It’s a great little utility designed to identify which queries use the most aggregated resources.

Bing’s Visual Search is pretty cool

Bill Graziano — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:52:49 GMT

Bing just announced a visual search feature. I mostly clicked on it because I enjoy bright, shiny things. Wow! I just spent 30 minutes filtering NFL players in all sort of weird ways. I don’t know how that helps my fantasy team yet. But it was interesting. Definitely worth a look. The “film legends” are also pretty cool!

Presenting in KC on SQL Server Administration on August 13th

Bill Graziano — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:22:06 GMT

I’m presenting at the Kansas City SQL Server User’s Group on Thursday, August 13th at Johnson County Community College. Check the monitors when you arrive for the room. We start at 6PM with 30 minutes of announcements and such. I’ll be starting at 6:30PM. I’ll probably go for 60-90 minutes.

I have seven PowerPoint slides to open and close the session. All the rest is going to be an ongoing demonstration of installing SQL Server and doing the post-installation configuration. I’ll have my SQL Server installation and configuration checklist as a handout for you to follow along and take notes.

This is the abstract I sent in to describe the session:

This session walks through a SQL Server installation, the post setup configuration, a basic security review, configuring a maintenance plan and basic performance monitoring. All with no PowerPoint slides. Instead we’ll walk through my SQL Server setup and configuration checklist and I’ll demonstrate everything I’m talking about. This session is great for new database administrators or part-time DBAs or anyone looking for a refresher. Experienced DBA’s will learn something too! You’ll get a copy of the checklist during the session and you’ll get a link to download a copy for later. Some of the interesting things you’ll learn during the session are:

Why the Shrink Database maintenance plan task doesn’t really shrink the database. And why you shouldn’t shrink a production database anyway.

Which database always needs its recovery model changed after installation?

What free utility you can use for maintenance on the free Express Edition of SQL Server

What is the most common mistake people make when configuring SQL Server Agent to send job notification failures

I’ve delivered this session before and received good feedback. The “PowerPoint-less” format went over very well. There’s lots of information for people that are part-time or new SQL Server DBAs. I also cover enough depth to provide value to more experienced database administrators.

Playing with Google Voice

Bill Graziano — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:33:24 GMT

I put my name down for the Google Voice trial a few months back. I recently received my invitation and configured my account. The entire process was painless and it has some interesting benefits:

I’m in the process of starting a new business and needed a work number. At free, this is an attractively priced alternative. I would like some way to have a fax number though. Right now I’m signed up for a second service that does fax.
Choosing a phone number was easy. You tell it where you are and if you want the number to spell any words. I couldn’t find anything with BILL or GRAZ in it so I settled for something with SQL in it.
I configured and confirmed both my home phone and cell phone. When someone calls the Google Voice Number it rings both phones and I can answer either one. During my testing I was listening to my cell phone ring, my home phone ring, talking caller ID on my home phone announcing the call and the TV displaying the caller ID. It was be a little overwhelming.
It passes the the caller ID of the caller through cleanly to both phones (and the television). That was a pleasant surprise.
GV has its own voice mail. It will email you a transcript of the voice mail. It can also send a text of the transcript if email isn’t fast enough. The transcription wasn’t completely accurate but it was easy to figure out the topic.
You can set phones to ring only during certain hours and/or on the weekends or weekdays. That would give me a way to shutdown the business phone on the weekend but still get messages promptly.
You can also screen calls. The caller starts to leave a message and you can listen to it and take the call if you choose. I haven’t done much with that at all. I’m not sure it’s a feature I want so I disabled it.
It doesn’t look like I can have two numbers yet. I’d really like a work number and home number. I may have to sign up for a second account. We’ll see.
You can switch calls from one phone to another mid-call on incoming calls. I haven’t tested this yet but I’m wildly curious about it.
Outbound international calls are cheap. For example, calls to Canada are $0.01 per minute. For an outbound call, you enter the number in GV, it calls the phone you specify to connect you and then it dials out to the number. That’s much cheaper than stupid AT&T.
The GV inbox looks and acts much like the GMail inbox.
You can’t port numbers to GV yet but you can port them away if you leave.
There are applications for Android and BlackBerry but none for the iPhone yet. There is however a mobile friendly web site that is easy to use.

Overall it’s an interesting service. I’m definitely going to use it and see how it works out.

(Note: if you can’t sign up using the link above try at http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html. That page has a pretty good description of how it works.)

SQL Server 2008 SP1 CU3 and SQL Server 2008 RTM CU6 Released

Bill Graziano — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:45:37 GMT

Microsoft continues to release cumulative updates roughly every two months. These two came right on schedule. As always I’ve updated my build list in the SQL Server Version article on SQLTeam.com.

Great Q&A with PASS presenters

Bill Graziano — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:10:27 GMT

At PASS we’ve been interviewing our pre-conference and post-conference speakers and publishing the interviews. The topics revolve around the speaker’s session and what they’re going to cover. For example, Brian Knight discussed about a common problem he sees in data warehouse implementations and how to overcome it. We’ve also done sessions with Kalen Delaney on the transaction log and Itzik Ben-Gan on query and index tuning.

We just published the interview with Paul Nielsen and Louis Davidson about their session on database design. I’m a firm believer that passion about a subject makes for a good presentation and these two are definitely passionate about their subject. They write about it, they talk about it and they practice it. The interview is worth reading on it’s own just for the insights into the challenges in database design.

Object naming and a good set of functional documentation are also tremendously important. There are so many systems out there with data structures that have weirdly named columns that cannot be removed because the person who created it is gone and no one is willing to delete it unless they are sure it’s completely useless. I like to think about "future me," and the nicer I can be to him, the better. I like to think that by working harder and doing a better job in the present, my future self can spend more time behaving like the Maytag repair man.

These two have been through a number of projects and production systems with design flaws and thought deeply about the issues and how to correct them. Add to that, they are both great presenters. Just the banter back and forth in the Q&A is entertaining! It should be a great session. And the Q&A is worth a read all on it’s own.

Is Nothing Safe Anymore?

Bill Graziano — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:05:25 GMT

When I connect my laptop to Wi-Fi hotspots I’m usually pretty careful. I look at the name of what I’m connecting to and make sure it looks reasonable. I know it’s no guarantee but if there is only one wi-fi hotspot with the airport name there’s a pretty good chance it’s the one I’m looking for. Apparently the new trend among cyber criminals is fake hotspots in vacation areas:

Cybercriminals are targeting travelers by creating phony Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, in hotels, and even aboard airliners.

Vacationers on their way to fun in the sun, or already there, think they're using designated Wi-Fi access points. But instead, they're signing on to fraudulent networks and hand-delivering everything on their laptops to the crooks.

I’d be especially intrigued by that hotspot on the airplane. Even though I know it’s probably not there’s a pretty good chance I’d give it a try.

It’s completely different with my iPhone. I’ll connect to anything with the hope of getting a faster connection. Wi-fi hotspot named “crooks”? Probably the name of some living nearby. How bad can it be?

I remember a scam years ago where crooks put false fronts on ATM machine. You use it normally and it captures your information. It’s one of the ways of “skimming” your information.

Researchers now say they can log your key strokes by “skimming” of your power.

In the power-line exploit, the attacker grabs the keyboard signals that are generated by hitting keys. Because the data wire within the keyboard cable is unshielded, the signals leak into the ground wire in the cable, and from there into the ground wire of the electrical system feeding the computer. Bit streams generated by the keyboards that indicate what keys have been struck create voltage fluctuations in the grounds

The article also says they can use a laser bounced of your laptop to capture the vibrations from my typing and identify what I’m typing. That one sounds a little harder to pull off.

I think all this is sending me a message. I’m not taking a computer on my next vacation. Well, I can dream can’t I?

Comparing Bing and Google

Bill Graziano — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:58:47 GMT

Until this weekend I hadn’t done much with Bing. I looked at the pretty pictures and tried a search now and then but that’s about it. I recently stumbled on Bing vs. Google. You can enter your search text and it will search both of them side by side. It also has a custom search provider you can add to FireFox. I do most of my searching through the browser.

I’ve been using this as my default search provider for a few days now and its kind of interesting. Pages that appear high on both lists are obviously something I want to read. I’m also intrigued by the pages that only appear on one site. I’ve been trying to see what Bing finds that Google doesn’t. I did a few tests with some SQL Server searches.

Google has A LOT more ads on their page for most searches.
Both seemed to return about a third commercial companies.
There seems to be a fair bit of overlap. Anywhere from a third to a half of the results usually matched.
Bing says it has more results. Searching on “SQL Server Backup” Bing returned 26.7 million to Google’s 8.3 million. Searching on SQL Server it was Bing’s 9.8 million to Google’s 670K. I never did click all the way through to verify these numbers.

I don’t have enough information to decide which is better yet. I really wish the site would give me some metrics on whether I clicked links in one engine or the other and whether or not those links appeared in the other search engine too.

In any case I’m enjoying seeing two sets of search results side by side. We’ll see how long that lasts though.