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  • SQL SERVER – Stored Procedure and Transactions

    - by pinaldave
    I just overheard the following statement – “I do not use Transactions in SQL as I use Stored Procedure“. I just realized that there are so many misconceptions about this subject. Transactions has nothing to do with Stored Procedures. Let me demonstrate that with a simple example. USE tempdb GO -- Create 3 Test Tables CREATE TABLE TABLE1 (ID INT); CREATE TABLE TABLE2 (ID INT); CREATE TABLE TABLE3 (ID INT); GO -- Create SP CREATE PROCEDURE TestSP AS INSERT INTO TABLE1 (ID) VALUES (1) INSERT INTO TABLE2 (ID) VALUES ('a') INSERT INTO TABLE3 (ID) VALUES (3) GO -- Execute SP -- SP will error out EXEC TestSP GO -- Check the Values in Table SELECT * FROM TABLE1; SELECT * FROM TABLE2; SELECT * FROM TABLE3; GO Now, the main point is: If Stored Procedure is transactional then, it should roll back complete transactions when it encounters any errors. Well, that does not happen in this case, which proves that Stored Procedure does not only provide just the transactional feature to a batch of T-SQL. Let’s see the result very quickly. It is very clear that there were entries in table1 which are not shown in the subsequent tables. If SP was transactional in terms of T-SQL Query Batches, there would be no entries in any of the tables. If you want to use Transactions with Stored Procedure, wrap the code around with BEGIN TRAN and COMMIT TRAN. The example is as following. CREATE PROCEDURE TestSPTran AS BEGIN TRAN INSERT INTO TABLE1 (ID) VALUES (11) INSERT INTO TABLE2 (ID) VALUES ('b') INSERT INTO TABLE3 (ID) VALUES (33) COMMIT GO -- Execute SP EXEC TestSPTran GO -- Check the Values in Tables SELECT * FROM TABLE1; SELECT * FROM TABLE2; SELECT * FROM TABLE3; GO -- Clean up DROP TABLE Table1 DROP TABLE Table2 DROP TABLE Table3 GO In this case, there will be no entries in any part of the table. What is your opinion about this blog post? Please leave your comments about it here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Stored Procedure, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Returning Identity Value in SQL Server: @@IDENTITY Vs SCOPE_IDENTITY Vs IDENT_CURRENT

    - by Arefin Ali
    We have some common misconceptions on returning the last inserted identity value from tables. To return the last inserted identity value we have options to use @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT function depending on the requirement but it will be a real mess if anybody uses anyone of these functions without knowing exact purpose. So here I want to share my thoughts on this. @@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY and IDENT_CURRENT are almost similar functions in terms of returning identity value. They all return values that are inserted into an identity column. Earlier in SQL Server 7 we used to use @@IDENTITY to return the last inserted identity value because those days we don’t have functions like SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT but now we have these three functions. So let’s check out which one responsible for what. IDENT_CURRENT returns the last inserted identity value in a particular table. It never depends on a connection or the scope of the insert statement. IDENT_CURRENT function takes a table name as parameter. Here is the syntax to get the last inserted identity value in a particular table using IDENT_CURRENT function. SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('Employee') Both the @@IDENTITY and SCOPE_IDENTITY return the last inserted identity value created in any table in the current session. But there is little difference between these two i.e. SCOPE_IDENTITY returns value inserted only within the current scope whereas @@IDENTITY is not limited to any particular scope. Here are the syntaxes to get the last inserted identity value using these functions SELECT @@IDENTITY SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() Now let’s have a look at the following example. Suppose I have two tables called Employee and EmployeeLog. CREATE TABLE Employee ( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()) ) CREATE TABLE EmployeeLog ( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()) ) I have an insert trigger defined on the table Employee which inserts a new record in the EmployeeLog whenever a record insert in the Employee table. So Suppose I insert a new record in the Employee table using following statement: INSERT INTO Employee (EmpName,EmpSal) VALUES ('Arefin','1') The trigger will be fired automatically and insert a record in EmployeeLog. Here the scope of the insert statement and the trigger are different. In this situation if I retrieve last inserted identity value using @@IDENTITY, it will simply return the identity value from the EmployeeLog because it’s not limited to a particular scope. Now if I want to get the Employee table’s identity value then I need to use SCOPE_IDENTITY in this scenario. So the moral is always use SCOPE_IDENTITY to return the identity value of a recently created record in a sql statement or stored procedure. It’s safe and ensures bug free code.

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  • Returning Identity Value in SQL Server: @@IDENTITY Vs SCOPE_IDENTITY Vs IDENT_CURRENT

    - by Arefin Ali
    We have some common misconceptions on returning the last inserted identity value from tables. To return the last inserted identity value we have options to use @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT function depending on the requirement but it will be a real mess if anybody uses anyone of these functions without knowing exact purpose. So here I want to share my thoughts on this. @@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY and IDENT_CURRENT are almost similar functions in terms of returning identity value. They all return values that are inserted into an identity column. Earlier in SQL Server 7 we used to use @@IDENTITY to return the last inserted identity value because those days we don’t have functions like SCOPE_IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT but now we have these three functions. So let’s check out which one responsible for what. IDENT_CURRENT returns the last inserted identity value in a particular table. It never depends on a connection or the scope of the insert statement. IDENT_CURRENT function takes a table name as parameter. Here is the syntax to get the last inserted identity value in a particular table using IDENT_CURRENT function. SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('Employee') Both the @@IDENTITY and SCOPE_IDENTITY return the last inserted identity value created in any table in the current session. But there is little difference between these two i.e. SCOPE_IDENTITY returns value inserted only within the current scope whereas @@IDENTITY is not limited to any particular scope. Here are the syntaxes to get the last inserted identity value using these functions SELECT @@IDENTITYSELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY() Now let’s have a look at the following example. Suppose I have two tables called Employee and EmployeeLog. CREATE TABLE Employee( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE()))CREATE TABLE EmployeeLog( EmpId NUMERIC(18, 0) IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, EmpName VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, EmpSal FLOAT NOT NULL, DateOfJoining DATETIME NOT NULL DEFAULT(GETDATE())) I have an insert trigger defined on the table Employee which inserts a new record in the EmployeeLog whenever a record insert in the Employee table. So Suppose I insert a new record in the Employee table using following statement: INSERT INTO Employee (EmpName,EmpSal) VALUES ('Arefin','1') The trigger will be fired automatically and insert a record in EmployeeLog. Here the scope of the insert statement and the trigger are different. In this situation if I retrieve last inserted identity value using @@IDENTITY, it will simply return the identity value from the EmployeeLog because it’s not limited to a particular scope. Now if I want to get the Employee table’s identity value then I need to use SCOPE_IDENTITY in this scenario. So the moral is always use SCOPE_IDENTITY to return the identity value of a recently created record in a sql statement or stored procedure. It’s safe and ensures bug free code.

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  • Inside Red Gate - Ricky Leeks

    - by Simon Cooper
    So, one of our profilers has a problem. Red Gate produces two .NET profilers - ANTS Performance Profiler (APP) and ANTS Memory Profiler (AMP). Both products help .NET developers solve problems they are virtually guaranteed to encounter at some point in their careers - slow code, and high memory usage, respectively. Everyone understands slow code - the symptoms are very obvious (an operation takes 2 hours when it should take 10 seconds), you know when you've solved it (the same operation now takes 15 seconds), and everyone understands how you can use a profiler like APP to help solve your particular problem. High memory usage is a much more subtle and misunderstood concept. How can .NET have memory leaks? The garbage collector, and how the CLR uses and frees memory, is one of the most misunderstood concepts in .NET. There's hundreds of blog posts out there covering various aspects of the GC and .NET memory, some of them helpful, some of them confusing, and some of them are just plain wrong. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. And, if you have got an application that uses far too much memory, it can be hard to wade through all the contradictory information available to even get an idea as to what's going on, let alone trying to solve it. That's where a memory profiler, like AMP, comes into play. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the issue. .NET memory management is a large, complicated, and misunderstood problem. Even armed with a profiler, you need to understand what .NET is doing with your objects, how it processes them, and how it frees them, to be able to use the profiler effectively to solve your particular problem. And that's what's wrong with AMP - even with all the thought, designs, UX sessions, and research we've put into AMP itself, some users simply don't have the knowledge required to be able to understand what AMP is telling them about how their application uses memory, and so they have problems understanding & solving their memory problem. Ricky Leeks This is where Ricky Leeks comes in. Created by one of the many...colourful...people in Red Gate, he headlines and promotes several tutorials, pages, and articles all with information on how .NET memory management actually works, with the goal to help educate developers on .NET memory management. And educating us all on how far you can push various vegetable-based puns. This, in turn, not only helps them understand and solve any memory issues they may be having, but helps them proactively code against such memory issues in their existing code. Ricky's latest outing is an interview on .NET Rocks, providing information on the Top 5 .NET Memory Management Gotchas, along with information on a free ebook on .NET Memory Management. Don't worry, there's loads more vegetable-based jokes where those came from...

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  • SQL Saturday 194 - Exeter

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    Many kudos goes to Jonathan and Annette Allen and the others on the team for confirming SQL Saturday 194 in Exeter on the 8th and 9th of March.  The event home page is here http://www.sqlsaturday.com/194/eventhome.aspx and I delighted that myself and Dave Morrison will be presenting a full day pre-con on the 8th on favourite subjects “TSQL and Internals”. Here is the full abstract : TSQL and internals - When faced with performance issues there are many lines of attack. Tuning the engine itself can get you so far, however for maximum effect you need to understand how the engine and how it translates SQL statements into performable actions. This is not a simple task, it is a massive task to deal with a multi-table join and the number of permutations can be immense. To back up this knowledge, we can create better performing TSQL and understand the impact that is has upon the engine and recognize the pitfalls and gotcha’s that exist in SQLServer. Ultimately, there is no ‘best way’ to perform a single task only many variations of ‘it depends’ , but now we can pick the most appropriate option for the required dataload. Over the years, there have been many myths and misconceptions have grown around the product, some have basis in older versions and some are just wrong. Continuing to build on the knowledge given so far these issue will be explored and broken down and proved or disproved. Finally we will look to the future and explore SQL Server 2012 and the new functionality that that brings and some of the common uses that we will be able to address. After completion of this days pre-con, attendees will have a more complete knowledge of execution plans, and how they relate to the physical and logical actions that SQLServer will be executing on their behalf. The attendees will also have a more rounded and fuller knowledge of TSQL and the implications of incorrectly defining a query. Dave is a fountain of knowledge on execution plans and optimizer internals and ,though i may flatter myself, I’m no shrinking violet when it comes to TSQL and such matters.  I hope that if you cant join us, then there are other pre-cons available from other experts in their fields that may ‘float you boat’ too.  The pre-con page is http://sqlsouthwest.co.uk/SQLSaturday_precon.htm Also, excitingly, this pre-con day is sponsored by Fusion-IO which is a great boon for the day. If you want a more of this then i am offering a 2 day TSQL course starting on the 19th of March. More details on this are available here

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  • How do I prevent ISPs from killing downloads of files in mid-transfer?

    - by Gorchestopher H
    I run a small website with a few users, low traffic, mostly to share personal mp3 files with a small community. Depending on their ISP, my users can't always download or stream larger files. By larger I mean larger than 1MB. Essentially the host either stops sending, or the client stops receiving. One of the links along the connection chain simply ends its connection before the transfer completes Trace-route shows no connection issues. There are no connection issues with short transfers that don't take more than a few seconds. It's these 10 second transfers that just end up ending. Just doing a straight download with a direct link can yield this error if you have the wrong ISP. Strangely enough, this is most common with users with ISPs who are essentially independent providers that buy service via a fiber link. Unfortunately these providers aren't very knowledgeable, are unable to do any testing, and insist it's a problem with the host. I have gotten my host to transfer my site to different servers of their, to the same effect. Nearly identical sites (affiliate sites actually) experience no such issue. What can I be doing to further troubleshoot this matter? How can I prove that someone is dropping the ball, and identify who that party is? Can I do a 5Mb traceroute? EDIT Maybe I can clear up some misconceptions with my question: The files are not very large. They are simply over 2Mb. The users do not have "slow" connections, they are at least 5mbps. This "time out" happens very quickly, in the realm of 5 seconds, so I don't know if it's a timeout or not. The user often gets 1 or 2Mb in this chunk of time. I have tried streaming with a flash player. I have tried saving the target. Forcing the download. I have tried allowing the browser to stream the file. I have tried different browsers (FF, IE, Chrome). Users are able to download identical files when on different hosts.

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  • ESXi Server with 12 physical cores maxed out with only 8 cores assigned in virtual machines

    - by Sam
    I have an ESXi 5 server running on a 2-processor, 12-core system with hyperthreading enabled. So: 12 physical cores, 24 logical ones. On this server are 4 Windows 7 VMs, each configured for 2 processors, each running VMware Tools. Looking at my stats in vSphere, my "core utilization" is constantly maxed out. Yes, these machines are working hard, but only 8 cores have been allocated. How is this possible? Should I look into reducing the processor count per machine as in this post: VMware ESX server? I checked to ensure that hardware virtualization is enabled in the BIOS of the machine (a DELL R410). I've also started reading up on configuration, but being a newbie there's a lot of material to catch up on. It also seems I should only bother with advanced settings and pools if I'm really pushing the load, and I don't think that I should be pushing it with so few VMs. I suspect that I have some basic, incorrect configuration setting, but it's also possible that I have some giant misconceptions about virtualization. Any pointers? EDIT: Given the responses I've gotten so far, it seems that this is a measurement problem and not a configuration problem, making this less critical. Perhaps the real question is: How does the core utilization of the server reach a higher percentage than all individual cores' core utilization, and given that this possibility makes the metric useless for overall server load, what is the best global metric for measuring CPU load on hyper-threaded systems?

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  • Question for Vim search and peck typists

    - by mike
    I'm trying to write a Vim tutorial and I'd like to start by dismissing a few misconceptions, as well as giving some recommendations. I don't know if I should dismiss touch-typing as a misconception, or include it as a recommended prerequisite. At the time I learned the editor, I had already been touch typing for a couple of years, so I have absolutely no idea what would be the experience of a two-fingered typist in Vim. Are you a vim two-fingered typist? what has your experience been like? EDIT: I'm not sure if my question was clear enough. Maybe it's my fault, I don't know. I get mixed replies and other questions (why do you write this? what does one have to do with the other?), instead of empirical info (I don't touch type and it's been (fine|hell)). Some programmers touch-type others search and peck. In the middle, there's Vim which requires a certain affinity with keys to do various operations. I am a touch typist and I have no clue what my experience would have been like with the editor if I wasn't. I can't honestly picture myself pecking some of these combos. But like I said, I don't know what it is like. Before telling someone to start using Vim, I'd like to know if I should dismiss touch-typing as a misconceived requirement. So, I'll rephrase the question, have you felt that not being a touch-typist has impeded on your experience with Vim?

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  • If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 22, 2010 2:02 PM I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

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  • Today's Links (6/29/2011)

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Event-Driven SOA: Events meet Services | Guido Schmutz Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz shows you how to achieve extreme loose coupling within a Service-Oriented Architecture by using event-driven interactions. Misconceptions About Software Architecture | Sanjeev Kumar A concise, to-the-point, and informative article by Sanjeev Kumar. Good Leaders Acknowledge What Can't Be Done - Jeffrey Pfeffer - Harvard Business Review "None of us likes to admit to bad decisions," says Jeffrey Pfeffer. "But imagine how much harder that is for someone who has been chosen to lead a large organization precisely because he or she is thought to have the power to see the future more clearly and chart a wise course." Suboptimal Thinking within Enterprise Architecture | James McGovern McGovern says: "We need to remember that enterprises live and thrive beyond just the current person at the helm." Boundaryless Information Flow | Richard Veryard "If all the boundaries are removed or porous, then the (extended) enterprise or ecosystem becomes like a giant sponge, in which all information permeates the whole," Veryard says. "Some people may think that's a good idea, but it's not what I'd call loose coupling." Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits | Rob Reynolds This series of events includes a Technology and Architecture track. New Date for Implementation of Sun Hands-On Course Requirement (Oracle Certification) As announced on the Oracle Certification website, Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification tracks will include a new mandatory course attendance requirement. VirtualBox 4.0.10 is now available for download | Bob Netherton Netherton shares information on the new release. Updated Technical Best Practices whitepaper | Anthony Shorten The Technical Best Practices whitepaper has been updated with the latest advice. "New advice includes new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations," says Shorten. Kscope 11 ADF, AIA and Business Rules | Peter Paul van de Beek Whitehorses Solution Architect Peter Paul van de Beek shares his impressions of KScope11 presentations by Markus Eisele, Sten Vesterli, and Edwin Biemond. Amazon AWS for the learning experience | Andrej Koelewijn "Using AWS changes your expectations how your internal data center should operate," says Koelewijn. BPMN is dead, long live BPEL! (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jürgen Kress shares information -- including a long list of speakers -- for the SOA & BPM Integration Days 2011 conference, October 12th & 13th 2011 in Düsseldorf. InfoQ: HTML5 and the Dawn of Rich Mobile Web Applications James Pearce introduces cross-platform web apps development using HTML5 and web frameworks, such as jQTouch, jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap, outlining what makes a good framework. InfoQ: Interview and Book Excerpt: CMMI for Development "Frameworks like TOGAF are used to define an architecture that aligns IT assets and resources to support key business needs and processes of key stakeholders," says SEI's Mike Konrad. "But the individual application systems, capabilities, services, networks, and other IT assets and infrastructure still need to be acquired, developed, or sustained." InfoQ: Architecting a Cloud-Scale Identity Fabric | Eric Olden "The most cited reason for not moving to the cloud is concern about security," says Olden. "In particular, managing user identity and access in the cloud is a tough problem to solve and a big security concern for organizations."

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  • SQLUG Events - London/Edinburgh/Cardiff/Reading - Masterclass, NoSQL, TSQL Gotcha's, Replication, BI

    - by tonyrogerson
    We have acquired two additional tickets to attend the SQL Server Master Class with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp next Thurs (17th June), for a chance to win these coveted tickets email us ([email protected]) before 9pm this Sunday with the subject "MasterClass" - people previously entered need not worry - your still in with a chance. The winners will be announced Monday morning.As ever plenty going on physically, we've got dates for a stack of events in Manchester and Leeds, I'm looking at Birmingham if anybody has ideas? We are growing our online community with the Cuppa Corner section, to participate online remember to use the #sqlfaq twitter tag; for those wanting to get more involved in presenting and fancy trying it out we are always after people to do 1 - 5 minute SQL nuggets or Cuppa Corners (short presentations) at any of these User Group events - just email us [email protected] removing from this email list? Then just reply with remove please on the subject line.Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal Master Class - Thurs, 17th June - LondonREGISTER NOW AND GET A SECOND REGISTRATION FREE*The top things YOU need to know about managing SQL Server - in one place, on one day - presented by two of the best SQL Server industry trainers!This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance.The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:>> Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour >> Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data >> Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database >> Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, LondonWhen: Thursday 17th June 2010*REGISTER TODAY AT www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql on the registration form simply quote discount code: BOGOF for both yourself and your colleague and you will save 50% off each registration – that’s a 249 GBP saving! This offer is limited, book early to avoid disappointment.Wed, 23 JunREADINGEvening Meeting, More info and registerIntroduction to NoSQL (Not Only SQL) - Gavin Payne; T-SQL Gotcha's and how to avoid them - Ashwani Roy; Introduction to Recency Frequency - Tony Rogerson; Reporting Services - Tim LeungThu, 24 JunCARDIFFEvening Meeting, More info and registerAlex Whittles of Purple Frog Systems talks about Data warehouse design case studies, Other BI related session TBC Mon, 28 JunEDINBURGHEvening Meeting, More info and registerReplication (Components, Adminstration, Performance and Troubleshooting) - Neil Hambly Server Upgrades (Notes and Best practice from the field) - Satya Jayanty Wed, 14 JulLONDONEvening Meeting, More info and registerMeeting is being sponsored by DBSophic (http://www.dbsophic.com/download), database optimisation software. Physical Join Operators in SQL Server - Ami LevinWorkload Tuning - Ami LevinSQL Server and Disk IO (File Groups/Files, SSD's, Fusion-IO, In-RAM DB's, Fragmentation) - Tony RogersonComplex Event Processing - Allan MitchellMany thanks,Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPUK SQL Server User Grouphttp://sqlserverfaq.com"

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  • IE9, HTML5 and truck load of other stuff happening around the web

    - by Harish Ranganathan
    First of all, I haven’t been updating this blog as regularly as it used to be.  Primarily, due to the fact was I was visiting a lot of cities talking about SharePoint, Web Matrix, IE9 and few other stuff.  IE9 is my new found love and I simply think we have done great work in improving the browser and browsing experiences for our users. This post would talk about IE, general things happening around the web and few misconceptions around IE (I had earlier written about IE8 and common myths When you think about the way web has transformed, its truly amazing.  Rewind back to late 90s and early 2000s, web was a luxury.  There were lot of desktop applications running around and web applications was starting to pick up.  Primarily reason was not a lot of folks were into web development and the areas of web were confined to HTML and JavaScript.  CSS was around here and there but no one took it so seriously.  XML, XSLT was fast picking up and contributed to decent web development techniques. So as a web developer all we had to worry about was, building good looking websites which worked well with IE6 and occasionally with Safari.  Firefox was  not even in the picture then and so was Chrome.  But with the various arms of W3C consortium and other bodies working actively on stuff like CSS, SVG and XHTML, few more areas came into picture when it comes to browsers supporting standards.  IE6 for sure wasn’t up to the speed and the main issue we were tackling then was privacy and piracy.  We did invest a lot of our efforts to curb piracy and one of the steps into it was that, IE7 the next version of IE would install only on genuine windows machines.  What this means, is that, people who were running pirated windows xp knowingly/unknowingly could not install IE7 and the limitations of IE6 really hurt them.  One more thing of importance is that, if you were running pirated windows, lots of chances that you didn’t get the security updates and thereby were vulnerable to run viruses/trojans on your system. Many of them actually block using IE in the first place and make it difficult to browse.  SP2 came as a big boon but again was there only for genuine windows machines. With Firefox coming as a free install and also heavily pushed by Google then, it was natural that people would try an alternative.  By then, we had started working on IE8 supporting the best standards (note HTML5, CSS 2.1 and other specs were then work in progress.  they are still) Later, Google in their infinite wisdom realized that with Firefox they were going nowhere and they released Chrome.  Now, they heavily push Chrome even for Firefox users, which is natural since its their browser. In the meanwhile, these browsers push their updates as mandatory and therefore have a very short lifecycle to add enhancements and support for stuff like CSS etc., Meanwhile, when IE8 came out, it really was the best standards supported browser and a lot of people saw our efforts in improving our browser. HTML5 is the buzz word in the industry and there is a lot of noise being made by many browsers claiming their support for it.  IE8 doesn’t have much support for HTML5.  But, with IE9 Beta, we have great support for many of HTML5 specifications.  Note that, HTML5 is still work under progress and one of the board of members working on the spec has mentioned that these specs might change and relying on them heavily is dangerous.  But, some of the advances such as video tag, etc., are indeed supported in IE9 Beta.  IE9 Beta also has full hardware acceleration support which other browsers don’t have. IE8 had advanced security features such as smartscreen filter, in-private browsing, anti-phishing and a lot of other stuff.  IE9 builds on top of these with the best in town security standards as well as support for HTML5, CSS3, Hardware acceleration, SVG and many other advancements in browser.  Read more at http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/highlights/html5  To summarize, IE9 Beta is really innovative and you should try it to believe what it provides.  You can visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/  to install as well as read more on this. Cheers !!!

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.” Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.”

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  • Setup and configure a MVC4 project for Cloud Service(web role) and SQL Azure

    - by MagnusKarlsson
    I aim at keeping this blog post updated and add related posts to it. Since there are a lot of these out there I link to others that has done kind of the same before me, kind of a blog-DRY pattern that I'm aiming for. I also keep all mistakes and misconceptions for others to see. As an example; if I hit a stacktrace I will google it if I don't directly figure out the reason for it. I will then probably take the most plausible result and try it out. If it fails because I misinterpreted the error I will not delete it from the log but keep it for future reference and for others to see. That way people that finds this blog can see multiple solutions for indexed stacktraces and I can better remember how to do stuff. To avoid my errors I recommend you to read through it all before going from start to finish.The steps:Setup project in VS2012. (msdn blog)Setup Azure Services (half of mpspartners.com blog)Setup connections strings and configuration files (msdn blog + notes)Export certificates.Create Azure package from vs2012 and deploy to staging (same steps as for production).Connections string error Set up the visual studio project:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/11/08/developing-asp-net-mvc4-based-windows-azure-web-role.aspx Then login in to Azure to setup the services:Stop following this guide at the "publish website" part since we'll be uploading a package.http://www.mpspartners.com/2012/09/ConfiguringandDeployinganMVC4applicationasaCloudServicewithAzureSQLandStorage/ When set up (connection strings for debug and release and all), follow this guide to set up the configuration files:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspxTrying to package our application at this step will generate the following warning:3>MvcWebRole1(0,0): warning WAT170: The configuration setting 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString' is set up to use the local storage emulator for role 'MvcWebRole1' in configuration file 'ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg'. To access Windows Azure storage services, you must provide a valid Windows Azure storage connection string. Right click the web role under roles in solution manager and choose properties. Choose "Service configuration: Cloud". At "specify storage account credentials" we will copy/paste our account name and key from the Azure management platform.3.1 4. Right click Remote desktop Configuration and select certificate and export to file. We need to allow it in Portal manager.4.15 Now right click the cloud project and select package.5.1 Showing dialogue box. 5.2 Package success Now copy the path to the packaged file and go to management portal again. Click your web role and choose staging (or production). Upload. 5.3Tick the box about the single instance if that's what you want or you don't know what it means. Otherwise the following will happen (see image 4.6)5.4 Dialogue box When you have clicked the symbol for accept- button you will see the following screen with some green indicators down at the right corner. Click them if you want to see status.5.5 Information screen.5.6 "Failed to deploy application. The upload application has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability in case one of the instances becomes unavailable. "To fix, go to step 5.4If you forgot to (or just didn't know you were supposed to) export your certificates. The following error will occur. Side note, the following thread suggests. To prevent: "Enable Remote Desktop for all roles" when right-clicking BIAB and choosing "Package". But in my case it was the not so present certificates. I fund the solution here.http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dotnetstocktradersampleapplication/thread/0e94c2b5-463f-4209-86b9-fc257e0678cd5.75.8 Success! 5.9 Nice URL n' all. (More on that at another blog post).6. If you try to login and getWhen this error occurs many web sites suggest this is because you need:http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.Providers.LocalDBOr : http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.ProvidersBut it can also be that you don't have the correct setup for converting connectionstrings between your web.config to your debug.web.config(or release.web.config, whichever your using).Run as suggested in the "ordinary project in your solution. Go to the management portal and click update.

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  • Clip a wpf Popup at bounds of a main window

    - by BrandonS
    From what I understand, the popup exists within it's own visual tree. However, I've noticed a few properties, Clip and ClipToBounds. What I am wanting to do is Visually clip a popup at the right and bottom edges of a window regardless of the fact that the popup is independent of the bounds of the window. I'm not using XAML, but if somebody knows how to do it in XAML, then that's fine. I can get to the main window using System.Windows.Application.Current.MainWindow. Is it possible from this to get a value that I can use to clip the popup? I'm assuming that if there is a value that I can use, then I would be able to bind the clipping of the popup to that value. This is really not necessary since after the popup initially opens, if the window gets moved or resized, the popup closes. So I would really only need to clip the popup when it opens. The reason I would like to do this is because although I am using a popup, I don't want it to appear as a popup that exists outside of the window. FYI this is for a popup calendar for a custom datebox. Any ideas, as well as clarification of misconceptions that I may have, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Brandon

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  • If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

    - by Brian Dayton
                    I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: -          At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles -          Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: -          My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home -          One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning -          My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future.   I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: -          I shared an office with one of them -          I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.        

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  • SQL SERVER – PAGELATCH_DT, PAGELATCH_EX, PAGELATCH_KP, PAGELATCH_SH, PAGELATCH_UP – Wait Type – Day 12 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    This is another common wait type. However, I still frequently see people getting confused with PAGEIOLATCH_X and PAGELATCH_X wait types. Actually, there is a big difference between the two. PAGEIOLATCH is related to IO issues, while PAGELATCH is not related to IO issues but is oftentimes linked to a buffer issue. Before we delve deeper in this interesting topic, first let us understand what Latch is. Latches are internal SQL Server locks which can be described as very lightweight and short-term synchronization objects. Latches are not primarily to protect pages being read from disk into memory. It’s a synchronization object for any in-memory access to any portion of a log or data file.[Updated based on comment of Paul Randal] The difference between locks and latches is that locks seal all the involved resources throughout the duration of the transactions (and other processes will have no access to the object), whereas latches locks the resources during the time when the data is changed. This way, a latch is able to maintain the integrity of the data between storage engine and data cache. A latch is a short-living lock that is put on resources on buffer cache and in the physical disk when data is moved in either directions. As soon as the data is moved, the latch is released. Now, let us understand the wait stat type  related to latches. From Book On-Line: PAGELATCH_DT Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is not in an I/O request. The latch request is in Destroy mode. PAGELATCH_EX Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is not in an I/O request. The latch request is in Exclusive mode. PAGELATCH_KP Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is not in an I/O request. The latch request is in Keep mode. PAGELATCH_SH Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is not in an I/O request. The latch request is in Shared mode. PAGELATCH_UP Occurs when a task is waiting on a latch for a buffer that is not in an I/O request. The latch request is in Update mode. PAGELATCH_X Explanation: When there is a contention of access of the in-memory pages, this wait type shows up. It is quite possible that some of the pages in the memory are of very high demand. For the SQL Server to access them and put a latch on the pages, it will have to wait. This wait type is usually created at the same time. Additionally, it is commonly visible when the TempDB has higher contention as well. If there are indexes that are heavily used, contention can be created as well, leading to this wait type. Reducing PAGELATCH_X wait: The following counters are useful to understand the status of the PAGELATCH: Average Latch Wait Time (ms): The wait time for latch requests that have to wait. Latch Waits/sec: This is the number of latch requests that could not be granted immediately. Total Latch Wait Time (ms): This is the total latch wait time for latch requests in the last second. If there is TempDB contention, I suggest that you read the blog post of Robert Davis right away. He has written an excellent blog post regarding how to find out TempDB contention. The same blog post explains the terms in the allocation of GAM, SGAM and PFS. If there was a TempDB contention, Paul Randal explains the optimal settings for the TempDB in his misconceptions series. Trace Flag 1118 can be useful but use it very carefully. I totally understand that this blog post is not as clear as my other blog posts. I suggest if this wait stats is on one of your higher wait type. Do leave a comment or send me an email and I will get back to you with my solution for your situation. May the looking at all other wait stats and types together become effective as this wait type can help suggest proper bottleneck in your system. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Martijn Verburg

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    JavaOne Rock Stars, conceived in 2005, are the top-rated speakers at each JavaOne Conference. They are awarded by their peers, who, through conference surveys, recognize them for their outstanding sessions and speaking ability. Over the years many of the world’s leading Java developers have been so recognized. Martijn Verburg has, in recent years, established himself as an important mover and shaker in the Java community. His “Diabolical Developer” session at the JavaOne 2011 Conference got people’s attention by identifying some of the worst practices Java developers are prone to engage in. Among other things, he is co-leader and organizer of the thriving London Java User Group (JUG) which has more than 2,500 members, co-represents the London JUG on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process, and leads the global effort for the Java User Group “Adopt a JSR” and “Adopt OpenJDK” programs. Career highlights include overhauling technology stacks and SDLC practices at Mizuho International, mentoring Oracle on technical community management, and running off shore development teams for AIG. He is currently CTO at jClarity, a start-up focusing on automating optimization for Java/JVM related technologies, and Product Advisor at ZeroTurnaround. He co-authored, with Ben Evans, "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" published by Manning and, as a leading authority on technical team optimization, he is in high demand at major software conferences.Verburg is participating in five sessions, a busy man indeed. Here they are: CON6152 - Modern Software Development Antipatterns (with Ben Evans) UGF10434 - JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs’ “Adopt” Programs in Your Group (with Csaba Toth) BOF4047 - OpenJDK Building and Testing: Case Study—Java User Group OpenJDK Bugathon (with Ben Evans and Cecilia Borg) BOF6283 - 101 Ways to Improve Java: Why Developer Participation Matters (with Bruno Souza and Heather Vancura-Chilson) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Kirk Pepperdine, Ellen Kraffmiller and Henri Tremblay) When I asked Verburg about the biggest mistakes Java developers tend to make, he listed three: A lack of communication -- Software development is far more a social activity than a technical one; most projects fail because of communication issues and social dynamics, not because of a bad technical decision. Sadly, many developers never learn this lesson. No source control -- Developers simply storing code in local filesystems and emailing code in order to integrate Design-driven Design -- The need for some developers to cram every design pattern from the Gang of Four (GoF) book into their source code All of which raises the question: If these practices are so bad, why do developers engage in them? “I've seen a wide gamut of reasons,” said Verburg, who lists them as: * They were never taught at high school/university that their bad habits were harmful.* They weren't mentored in their first professional roles.* They've lost passion for their craft.* They're being deliberately malicious!* They think software development is a technical activity and not a social one.* They think that they'll be able to tidy it up later.A couple of key confusions and misconceptions beset Java developers, according to Verburg. “With Java and the JVM in particular I've seen a couple of trends,” he remarked. “One is that developers think that the JVM is a magic box that will clean up their memory, make their code run fast, as well as make them cups of coffee. The JVM does help in a lot of cases, but bad code can and will still lead to terrible results! The other trend is to try and force Java (the language) to do something it's not very good at, such as rapid web development. So you get a proliferation of overly complex frameworks, libraries and techniques trying to get around the fact that Java is a monolithic, statically typed, compiled, OO environment. It's not a Golden Hammer!”I asked him about the keys to running a good Java User Group. “You need to have a ‘Why,’” he observed. “Many user groups know what they do (typically, events) and how they do it (the logistics), but what really drives users to join your group and to stay is to give them a purpose. For example, within the LJC we constantly talk about the ‘Why,’ which in our case is several whys:* Re-ignite the passion that developers have for their craft* Raise the bar of Java developers in London* We want developers to have a voice in deciding the future of Java* We want to inspire the next generation of tech leaders* To bring the disparate tech groups in London together* So we could learn from each other* We believe that the Java ecosystem forms a cornerstone of our society today -- we want to protect that for the futureLooking ahead to Java 8 Verburg expressed excitement about Lambdas. “I cannot wait for Lambdas,” he enthused. “Brian Goetz and his group are doing a great job, especially given some of the backwards compatibility that they have to maintain. It's going to remove a lot of boiler plate and yet maintain readability, plus enable massive scaling.”Check out Martijn Verburg at JavaOne if you get a chance, and, stay tuned for a longer interview yours truly did with Martijn to be publish on otn/java some time after JavaOne. Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Martijn Verburg

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    JavaOne Rock Stars, conceived in 2005, are the top-rated speakers at each JavaOne Conference. They are awarded by their peers, who, through conference surveys, recognize them for their outstanding sessions and speaking ability. Over the years many of the world’s leading Java developers have been so recognized. Martijn Verburg has, in recent years, established himself as an important mover and shaker in the Java community. His “Diabolical Developer” session at the JavaOne 2011 Conference got people’s attention by identifying some of the worst practices Java developers are prone to engage in. Among other things, he is co-leader and organizer of the thriving London Java User Group (JUG) which has more than 2,500 members, co-represents the London JUG on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process, and leads the global effort for the Java User Group “Adopt a JSR” and “Adopt OpenJDK” programs. Career highlights include overhauling technology stacks and SDLC practices at Mizuho International, mentoring Oracle on technical community management, and running off shore development teams for AIG. He is currently CTO at jClarity, a start-up focusing on automating optimization for Java/JVM related technologies, and Product Advisor at ZeroTurnaround. He co-authored, with Ben Evans, "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" published by Manning and, as a leading authority on technical team optimization, he is in high demand at major software conferences.Verburg is participating in five sessions, a busy man indeed. Here they are: CON6152 - Modern Software Development Antipatterns (with Ben Evans) UGF10434 - JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs’ “Adopt” Programs in Your Group (with Csaba Toth) BOF4047 - OpenJDK Building and Testing: Case Study—Java User Group OpenJDK Bugathon (with Ben Evans and Cecilia Borg) BOF6283 - 101 Ways to Improve Java: Why Developer Participation Matters (with Bruno Souza and Heather Vancura-Chilson) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Kirk Pepperdine, Ellen Kraffmiller and Henri Tremblay) When I asked Verburg about the biggest mistakes Java developers tend to make, he listed three: A lack of communication -- Software development is far more a social activity than a technical one; most projects fail because of communication issues and social dynamics, not because of a bad technical decision. Sadly, many developers never learn this lesson. No source control -- Developers simply storing code in local filesystems and emailing code in order to integrate Design-driven Design -- The need for some developers to cram every design pattern from the Gang of Four (GoF) book into their source code All of which raises the question: If these practices are so bad, why do developers engage in them? “I've seen a wide gamut of reasons,” said Verburg, who lists them as: * They were never taught at high school/university that their bad habits were harmful.* They weren't mentored in their first professional roles.* They've lost passion for their craft.* They're being deliberately malicious!* They think software development is a technical activity and not a social one.* They think that they'll be able to tidy it up later.A couple of key confusions and misconceptions beset Java developers, according to Verburg. “With Java and the JVM in particular I've seen a couple of trends,” he remarked. “One is that developers think that the JVM is a magic box that will clean up their memory, make their code run fast, as well as make them cups of coffee. The JVM does help in a lot of cases, but bad code can and will still lead to terrible results! The other trend is to try and force Java (the language) to do something it's not very good at, such as rapid web development. So you get a proliferation of overly complex frameworks, libraries and techniques trying to get around the fact that Java is a monolithic, statically typed, compiled, OO environment. It's not a Golden Hammer!”I asked him about the keys to running a good Java User Group. “You need to have a ‘Why,’” he observed. “Many user groups know what they do (typically, events) and how they do it (the logistics), but what really drives users to join your group and to stay is to give them a purpose. For example, within the LJC we constantly talk about the ‘Why,’ which in our case is several whys:* Re-ignite the passion that developers have for their craft* Raise the bar of Java developers in London* We want developers to have a voice in deciding the future of Java* We want to inspire the next generation of tech leaders* To bring the disparate tech groups in London together* So we could learn from each other* We believe that the Java ecosystem forms a cornerstone of our society today -- we want to protect that for the futureLooking ahead to Java 8 Verburg expressed excitement about Lambdas. “I cannot wait for Lambdas,” he enthused. “Brian Goetz and his group are doing a great job, especially given some of the backwards compatibility that they have to maintain. It's going to remove a lot of boiler plate and yet maintain readability, plus enable massive scaling.”Check out Martijn Verburg at JavaOne if you get a chance, and, stay tuned for a longer interview yours truly did with Martijn to be publish on otn/java some time after JavaOne.

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  • SQL SERVER – TechEd India 2012 – Content, Speakers and a Lots of Fun

    - by pinaldave
    TechEd is one event which every developers and IT professionals are looking forward to attend. It is opportunity of life time and no matter how many time one gets chance to engage with it, it is never enough. I still remember every single moment of every TechEd I have attended so far. We are less than 100 hours away from TechEd India 2012 event.This event is the one must attend event for every Technology Enthusiast. Fourth time in the row I am going to attend this event and I am equally excited as the first time of the event. There are going to be two very solid SQL Server track this time and I will be attending end of the end both the tracks. Here is my view on each of the 10 sessions. Each session is carefully crafted and leading exeprts from industry will present it. Day 1, March 21, 2012 T-SQL Rediscovered with SQL Server 2012 – This session is going to bring some of the lesser known enhancements that were brought with SQL Server 2012. When I learned that Jacob Sebastian is going to do this session my reaction to this is DEMO, DEMO and DEMO! Jacob spends hours and hours of his time preparing his session and this will be one of those session that I am confident will be delivered over and over through out the next many events. Catapult your data with SQL Server 2012 Integration Services – Praveen is expert story teller and one of the wizard when it is about SQL Server and business intelligence. He is surely going to mesmerize you with some interesting insights on SSIS performance too. Processing Big Data with SQL Server 2012 and Hadoop – There are three sessions on Big Data at TechEd India 2012. Stephen is going to deliver one of the session. Watching Stephen present is always joy and quite entertaining. He shares knowledge with his typical humor which captures ones attention. I wrote about what is BIG DATA in a blog post. SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolutions – I will be presenting this Session along with Vinod Kumar. READ MORE HERE. Securing with ContainedDB in SQL Server 2012 – Pranab is expert when it is about SQL Server and Security. I have seen him presenting and he is indeed very pleasant to watch. A dry subject like security, he makes it much lively. A Contained Database is a database which contains all the necessary settings and metadata, making database easily portable to another server. This database will contain all the necessary details and will not have to depend on any server where it is installed for anything. You can take this database and move it to another server without having any worries. Day 3, March 23, 2012 Peeling SQL Server like an Onion: Internals Demystified – Vinod Kumar has been writing about this extensively on his other blog post. In recent conversation he suggested that he will be creating very exclusive content for this presentation. I know Vinod for long time and have worked with him along many community activities. I am going to pay special attention to the details. I know Vinod has few give-away planned now for attending the session now only if he shares with us. Speed Up – Parallel Processes and unparalleled Performance – Performance tuning is my favorite subject. I will be discussing effect of parallelism on performance in this session. Here me out, there will be lots of quiz questions during this session and if you get the answers correct – you can win some really cool goodies – I Promise! READ MORE HERE. Keep your database available – AlwaysOn – Balmukund is like an army man. He is always ready to show and prove that he has coolest toys in terms of SQL Server and he knows how to keep them running AlwaysON. Availability groups, Listener, Clustering, Failover, Read-Only replica etc all will be demo’ed in this session. This is really heavy but very interesting content not to be missed. Lesser known facts about SQL Server Backup and Restore – Amit Banerjee – this name is known internationally for solving SQL Server problems in 140 characters. He has already blogged about this and this topic is going to be interesting. A successful restore strategy for applications is as good as their last good known backup. I have few difficult questions to ask to Amit and I am very sure that his unique style will entertain people. By the way, his one of the slide may give few in audience a funny heart attack. Top 5 reasons why you want SQL Server 2012 BI – Praveen plans to take a tour of some of the BI enhancements introduced in the new version. Business Insights with SQL Server is a critical building block and this version of SQL Server is no exception. For the matter of the fact, when I saw the demos he was going to show during this session, I felt like that I wish I can set up all of this on my machine. If you miss this session – you will miss one of the most informative session of the day. Also TechEd India 2012 has a Live streaming of some content and this can be watched here. The TechEd Team is planning to have some really good exclusive content in this channel as well. If you spot me, just do not hesitate to come by me and introduce yourself, I want to remember you! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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  • SQLAuthority News – #TechEdIn – TechEd India 2012 Memories and Photos

    - by pinaldave
    TechEd India 2012 was held in Bangalore last March 21 to 23, 2012. Just like every year, this event is bigger, grander and inspiring. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Family Event Every single year, TechEd is a special affair for my entire family.  Four months before the start of TechEd, I usually start to build the mental image of the event. I start to think  about various things. For the most part, what excites me most is presenting a session and meeting friends. Seriously, I start thinking about presenting my session 4 months earlier than the event!  I work on my presentation day and night. I want to make sure that what I present is accurate and that I have experienced it firsthand. My wife and my daughter also contribute to my efforts. For us, TechEd is a family event, and the two of them feel equally responsible as well. They give up their family time so I can bring out the best content for the Community. Pinal, Shaivi and Nupur at TechEd India 2012 Guinea Pigs (My Experiment Victims) I do not rehearse my session, ever. However, I test my demo almost every single day till the last moment that I have to present it already. I sometimes go over the demo more than 2-3 times a day even though the event is more than a month away. I have two “guinea pigs”: 1) Nupur Dave and 2) Vinod Kumar. When I am at home, I present my demos to my wife Nupur. At times I feel that people often backup their demo, but in my case, I have backup demo presenters. In the office during lunch time, I present the demos to Vinod. I am sure he can walk my demos easily with eyes closed. Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 My Sessions I’ve been determined to present my sessions in a real and practical manner. I prefer to present the subject that I myself would be eager to attend to and sit through if I were an audience. Just keeping that principle in mind, I have created two sessions this year. SQL Server Misconception and Resolution Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 We believe all kinds of stuff – that the earth is flat, or that the forbidden fruit is apple, or that the big bang theory explains the origin of the universe, and so many other things. Just like these, we have plenty of misconceptions in SQL Server as well. I have had this dream of co-presenting a session with Vinod Kumar for the past 3 years. I have been asking him every year if we could present a session together, but we never got it to work out, until this year came. Fortunately, we got a chance to stand on the same stage and present a single subject.  I believe that Vinod Kumar and I have an excellent synergy when we are working together. We know each other’s strengths and weakness. We know when the other person will speak and when he will keep quiet. The reason behind this synergy is that we have worked on 2 Video Learning Courses (SQL Server Indexes and SQL Server Questions and Answers) and authored 1 book (SQL Server Questions and Answers) together. Crowd Outside Session Hall This session was inspired from the “Laurel and Hardy” show so we performed a role-playing of those famous characters. We had an excellent time at the stage and, for sure, the audience had a wonderful time, too. We had an extremely large audience for this session and had a great time interacting with them. Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 I wanted to approach this session at level 400 and I was very determined to do so. The biggest challenge I had was that this was a total of 60 minutes of session and the audience profile was very generic. I had to present at level 100 as well at 400. I worked hard to tune up these demos. I wanted to make sure that my messages would land perfectly to the minds of the attendees, and when they walk out of the session, they could use the knowledge I shared on their servers. After the session, I felt an extreme satisfaction as I received lots of positive feedback at the event. At one point, so many people rushed towards me that I was a bit scared that the stage might break and someone would get injured. Fortunately, nothing like that happened and I was able to shake hands with everybody. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Crowd rushing to Pinal at TechEd India 2012 Networking This is one of the primary reasons many of us visit the annual TechEd event. I had a fantastic time meeting SQL Server enthusiasts. Well, it was a terrific time meeting old friends, user group members, MVPs and SQL Enthusiasts. I have taken many photographs with lots of people, but I have received a very few back. If you are reading this blog and have a photo of us at the event, would you please send it to me so I could keep it in my memory lane? SQL Track Speaker: Jacob and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 SQL Community: Pinal, Tejas, Nakul, Jacob, Balmukund, Manas, Sudeepta, Sahal at TechEd India 2012 Star Speakers: Amit and Balmukund at TechEd India 2012 TechED Rockstars: Nakul, Tejas and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 I guess TechEd is a mix of family affair and culture for me! Hamara TechEd (Our TechEd) Please tell me which photo you like the most! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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  • SQLAuthority News – #TechEDIn – TechEd India 2012 – Things to Do and Explore for SQL Enthusiast

    - by pinaldave
    TechEd India 2012 is just 48 hours away and I have been receiving lots of requests regarding how SQL enthusiasts can maximize their time they’ll be spending at TechEd India 2012. Trust me – TechEd is the biggest Tech Event in India and it is much larger in magnitude than we can imagine. There are plenty of tracks there and lots of things to do. Honestly, we need clone ourselves multiple times to completely cover the event. However, I am going to talk about SQL enthusiasts only right now. In this post, I’ll share a few things they can do in this big event. But before I start talking about specific things, there is one thing which is a must – Keynote. There are amazing Keynotes planned every single day at TechEd India 2012. One should not miss them at all. Social Media I am a big believer of the social media. I am everywhere - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and GPlus. I suggest you follow the tag #TechEdIn as well as contribute at the healthy conversation going on right now. You may want to follow a few of the SQL Server enthusiasts who are also attending events like TechEd India. This way, you will know where they are and you can contribute along with them. For a good start, you can follow all the speakers who are presenting at the event. I have linked all the speakers’ names with their respective Twitter accounts. Networking Do not stop meeting new people. Introduce yourself. Catch the speakers after their sessions. Meet other SQL experts and discuss SQL as well as life aside SQL. The best way to start the communication is to talk about something new. Here are a few lines I usually use when I have to break the ice: SQL Server 2012 is just released and I have installed it. How many SQL Server sessions are you going to attend? I am going to attend _________ I am a big fan of SQL Server. Sessions Agenda Day 1 T-SQL Rediscovered with SQL Server 2012 - Jacob Sebastian Catapult your data with SQL Server 2012 integration services - Praveen Srivatsa Processing Big Data with SQL Server 2012 and Hadoop  - Stephan Forte SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective – Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar Securing with ContainedDB in SQL Server 2012  - Pranab Majumdar Agenda Day 2 Hand-on-Lab – Exploring Power View with SQL Server 2012 – Ravi S. Maniam Hand-on-Lab - SQL Server 2012 – AlwaysOn Availability Groups  - Amit Ganguli Agenda Day 3 Peeling SQL Server like an Onion: Internals Debunked  - Vinod Kumar Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance  - Pinal Dave Keeping Your Database Available – ‘AlwaysOn’  - Balmukund Lakhani Lesser Known Facts of SQL Server Backup and Restore  - Amit Banerjee Top five reasons why you want SQL Server 2012 BI - Praveen Srivatsa Product Booth and Event Partners There will be a dedicated SQL Server booth at the event. I suggest you stop by there and do communication with SQL Server Experts. Additionally there will be booths of various event partners. Stop by their booth and see if they have a product which can help your career. I know that Pluralsight has recently released my course on their online learning site and if that interests you, you can talk about the subject with them. Bring Your Camera Make a list of the people you want to meet. Follow them on Twitter or send them an email and know their location. Introduce yourself, meet them and have your conversation. Do not forget to take a photo with them and later on, share the photo on social media. It would be nice to send an email to everyone with attached high resolution images if you have their email address. After-hours parties After-hours parties are not always about eating and meeting friends but sometimes, they are very informative. Last time I ended up meeting an SQL expert, and we end up talking for long hours on various aspects of SQL Server. After 4 hours, we figured out that he stays in the same apartment complex as mine and since we have had an excellent friendship, he has then become our family friend. So, my advice is that you start to seek out who is meeting where in the evening and see if you can get invited to the parties. Make new friends but never lose mutual respect by doing something silly. Meet Me I will be at the event for three days straight. I will be around the SQL tracks. Please stop by and introduce yourself. I would like to meet you and talk to you. Meeting folks from the Community is very important as we all speak the same language at the end of the day – SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part III

    - by Tara Kizer
    Well we’re about a month past PASS Summit 2011, and yet I haven’t finished blogging my notes! Between work and home life, I haven’t been able to come up for air in a bit.  Now on to my notes… On Thursday of the PASS Summit 2011, I attended Klaus Aschenbrenner’s (blog|twitter) “Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting”, Joe Webb’s (blog|twitter) “SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple”, Kalen Delaney’s (blog|twitter) “What Happened? Exploring the Plan Cache”, and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) “More DBA Mythbusters”.  I think my head grew two times in size from the Thursday sessions.  Just WOW! I took a ton of notes in Klaus' session.  He took a deep dive into how to troubleshoot performance problems.  Here is how he goes about solving a performance problem: Start by checking the wait stats DMV System health Memory issues I/O issues I normally start with blocking and then hit the wait stats.  Here’s the wait stat query (Paul Randal’s) that I use when working on a performance problem.  He highlighted a few waits to be aware of such as WRITELOG (indicates IO subsystem problem), SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD (indicates CPU problem), and PAGEIOLATCH_XX (indicates an IO subsystem problem or a buffer pool problem).  Regarding memory issues, Klaus recommended that as a bare minimum, one should set the “max server memory (MB)” in sp_configure to 2GB or 10% reserved for the OS (whichever comes first).  This is just a starting point though! Regarding I/O issues, Klaus talked about disk partition alignment, which can improve SQL I/O performance by up to 100%.  You should use 64kb for NTFS cluster, and it’s automatic in Windows 2008 R2. Joe’s locking and blocking presentation was a good session to really clear up the fog in my mind about locking.  One takeaway that I had no idea could be done was that you can set a timeout in T-SQL code view LOCK_TIMEOUT.  If you do this via the application, you should trap error 1222. Kalen’s session went into execution plans.  The minimum size of a plan is 24k.  This adds up fast especially if you have a lot of plans that don’t get reused much.  You can use sys.dm_exec_cached_plans to check how often a plan is being reused by checking the usecounts column.  She said that we can use DBCC FLUSHPROCINDB to clear out the stored procedure cache for a specific database.  I didn’t know we had this available, so this was great to hear.  This will be less intrusive when an emergency comes up where I’ve needed to run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE. Kalen said one should enable “optimize for ad hoc workloads” if you have an adhoc loc.  This stores only a 300-byte stub of the first plan, and if it gets run again, it’ll store the whole thing.  This helps with plan cache bloat.  I have a lot of systems that use prepared statements, and Kalen says we simulate those calls by using sp_executesql.  Cool! Paul did a series of posts last year to debunk various myths and misconceptions around SQL Server.  He continues to debunk things via “DBA Mythbusters”.  You can get a PDF of a bunch of these here.  One of the myths he went over is the number of tempdb data files that you should have.  Back in 2000, the recommendation was to have as many tempdb data files as there are CPU cores on your server.  This no longer holds true due to the numerous cores we have on our servers.  Paul says you should start out with 1/4 to 1/2 the number of cores and work your way up from there.  BUT!  Paul likes what Bob Ward (twitter) says on this topic: 8 or less cores –> set number of files equal to the number of cores Greater than 8 cores –> start with 8 files and increase in blocks of 4 One common myth out there is to set your MAXDOP to 1 for an OLTP workload with high CXPACKET waits.  Instead of that, dig deeper first.  Look for missing indexes, out-of-date statistics, increase the “cost threshold for parallelism” setting, and perhaps set MAXDOP at the query level.  Paul stressed that you should not plan a backup strategy but instead plan a restore strategy.  What are your recoverability requirements?  Once you know that, now plan out your backups. As Paul always does, he talked about DBCC CHECKDB.  He said how fabulous it is.  I didn’t want to interrupt the presentation, so after his session had ended, I asked Paul about the need to run DBCC CHECKDB on your mirror systems.  You could have data corruption occur at the mirror and not at the principal server.  If you aren’t checking for data corruption on your mirror systems, you could be failing over to a corrupt database in the case of a disaster or even a planned failover.  You can’t run DBCC CHECKDB against the mirrored database, but you can run it against a snapshot off the mirrored database.

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  • Agile Executives

    - by Robert May
    Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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