What do you recommend from Oscar season? I'll say The Descendents

Last weekend I was all alone Sunday night. Monday was a holiday for me, my wife and kids were out of town, and it was too quiet in the house, so I decided to go see a movie. Safe House was my choice, and it was one I enjoyed during a two hour break from life. I don’t go see too many movies a year, outside of the kid-related ones, but this was fun.

This Sunday the 84th Annual Academy Awards take place, and while I won’t be watching them, it’s always interesting to me to see which movies and people win awards. A winning actor or actress might entice me to go see a future movie that ordinarily wouldn’t capture my interest. It’s always nice to see talented people working their craft, at least to me.

We tend to work hard in Information Technology, and it’s nice to get a break. With that in mind, I thought we might take a break this Friday from talking about work, and talk about leisure. The poll this week is:

Which movies from the 2011/2012 Oscar season would you recommend?

These don’t have to be movies that are up for awards, just anything released from last February until now. What did you like, or what would you recommend the rest of us avoid? Let us know this Friday which films might provide a nice escape from the pressures and stress of reality.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast - 20.0MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast - 16.6MB MP4 
• Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast - 3.4MB MP3 

Next week is the annual MVP Summit in Redmond, where MVPs from all over the world get together and have a chance to see advance presentations from Microsoft developers, and get the chance to get to know each other, and the staff at Microsoft.

From past experience, it can be a lot of fun, and it’s a good time to network and bond. The presentations can be hit or miss, but overall it’s been an enjoyable experience when I’ve gone (3 times). I’ve learned things, and getting to know someone on the SQL Server team face to face is invaluable. Those contacts have been helpful when trying to work with Microsoft or get more information about topics that I present to the community.

I’m not going this year, and a little disappointed in that. Despite the fact that it’s a good experience, it’s not worth the time to me right now. My wife has been traveling almost every week this year (12 trips so far) and I miss her. Travel for work is stressful, even when you’re not the one traveling, and it feels very chaotic at the ranch.

I’ve also got a lot of prep still to do for future presentations coming up at Dev Connections, SQL in the City, and more. I’ve still got more to learn about SQL Server 2012, and time is getting short.

I’ll miss seeing friends in Redmond, but I don’t regret not going. Even if I had the time, I would have skipped the Summit in favor of a week with SQL Skills in Tampa. I know I’d learn more, and definitely would prefer the weather there.

Vritualization madness can be very handy

I recently virtualized my Windows Home Server. I have had multiple boot drive failures, and I was getting tired of reinstalling the product. So I installed VirtualBox, then created a series of virtual disk drives and set my home server back up. It’s built on RAID 1 drives, so I’m hoping that it will last a long time, and even migrate to newer hardware over time.

On my laptop and desktop, I use VMWare to build test machines, and then use them for various versions of SQL Server in presentations. I can easily make changes in a VM on the desktop, copy the VHD files to my laptop, and then have the same environment ready when I deliver a presentation. Over the last ten years, virtualization has become a fantastic test environment for me and I can’t imagine doing without it. On the server side, I haven’t even noticed the migration of the SQLServerCentral servers from physical hosts to virtual machines, and they have performed very well.

However in one sense, nothing has changed for me on the server side. Our VMs are over provisioned, to prevent issues with the performance, just as they often were with physical machines. I suspect that is the case with many other virtual SQL Servers out there in production. However I’m not sure it’s a bad way to deploy VMs for a database server, especially with hardware so cheap.

I ran across a series of reports on the hypervisors of the future, which talks about the changes from the various vendors, and has a large section devoted to desktop hypervisors. It’s an interesting read, though quite a bit of the information is related to open source products. On the Windows 8 front, the Hyper-V changes look good, but I worry that licensing might prevent most of us from taking advantage of the enhancements.

I find virtualization to be an amazing way to get more work done on a desktop, in a very stable manner. I can test software in a VM and then remove it, or delete the host if the software causes issues. I can also simulate a large amount of hardware with much less effort than in the past. I urge you to try some virtualization software and experiment with the capabilities. Whether you build experience by working with software you can’t install elsewhere, or just learn some of the capabilities of the virtualization software, it will help you at some point in your career. I only expect there to be more and more VM deployment in all companies over the next decade.

Steve Jones

You can now use T-SQL to check for services information, as well as registry information, without using extended stored procedures or any hacks of xp_cmdshell. There are two new DMVs:

• sys.dm_server_registry
• sys.dm_server_services

These were not present in the RTM of SQL Server 2008 R2, but after installing SP1, they appear. The KB article for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 includes a note that new trace templates for Profiler are included, but I did not see a note about these two DMVs.

So much for not adding features in Service Packs.

In any case, you can query the sys.dm_server_services for service account information. You will get the service name, the startup type, the account, and more.

If you aren’t a Windows administrator on your SQL Server boxes, you should still be able to get information regarding the services from this DMV as long as you have VIEW SERVER STATE permission.

Failure is sometimes an option

We don’t expect ourselves to be perfect, do we? Is there ever any project you tackle that you might not complete? Is there a doubt that it might not work as expected, or that it may need substantial rework? I think that the vast majority of projects I undertake have some level of risk involved, and while I might understand that, I’m not sure I ever believe I will ever fail.

Most things that I’ve built in technology don’t work the first time, and in fact, I expect that. I have learned from mistakes, corrected the problems, and usually finished them with some level of success. That’s the way that so many of us in technology approach our jobs. We start building, find issues, and then fix them.

However you cannot every eliminate the risk that something will fail. There are times we need to abandon the project or abandon the work done and rebuild the software from scratch. Those failures should be learning opportunities, and should allow developers to improve their work. From my perspective it seems that too many managers, however, view failures as events that have to be avoided. Perfection and success are the only possible outcomes that are acceptable. One slip up and you may get fired.

It seems that’s what managers think about their career, so they continue to push down dead end roads, and throw more resources at a project to recover some small level of success.

We will always make mistakes. The true failure should come from failing to learn from the mistakes and improving your future work. If management cannot tolerate these setbacks, this problems, and allow for them, then the work will not only continue to be substandard, but people will spend more time worrying about avoiding blame than actually looking to improve their skills.

I can’t tell you when work should be abandoned, or a project is hopeless, but every project ought to be examined periodically for this situation, especially when it is apparent that it is in trouble. You can’t save all projects, but you can learn to let some of them go, or change the situation, before it becomes a bigger problem than it is.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast - 21.4MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast - 19.7MB MP4 
• Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast - 4.0MB MP3 

Here’s a short story to illustrate an issue you might encounter as a beginner if you are not clear about the backup process.

Let’s say you’re a junior DBA, and you create a database.

CREATE DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
go
CREATE TABLE MyTable( mychar CHAR(1), mytest VARCHAR(200))
go

You know that backups are important, so you setup a basic command like the first one below, schedule it in SQL Agent, and you have backups being performed. In between the backups, work is being done. Probably more than one INSERT, but this is just to show something is happening in the database.

-- schedule backup
BACKUP DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  TO DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
GO

-- do work
insert dbo.mytable SELECT 'a', 'b'
GO

-- backup database
BACKUP DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  TO DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
GO

This continues on, day after day. Work gets done, you run your nightly backups.

-- do work
insert dbo.mytable SELECT 'c', 'd'
GO

-- nightly backup
BACKUP DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  TO DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
GO

-- do work
insert dbo.mytable SELECT 'e', 'f'
-- mistake is made
DELETE dbo.mytable
-- more work
insert dbo.mytable SELECT 'g', 'h'
GO

-- nightly backup
BACKUP DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  TO DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
GO

Then one day, someone runs this and calls you:

-- mistake noticed
SELECT MyChar FROM dbo.mytable
GO

Only the row with “g” is returned from this. The user asks about all the other data. Where are the rows with “a”, “c”, and “e”?

You decide to restore.

-- restore, use good habits. NORECOVERY always.
USE master
GO
RESTORE DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  FROM DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
  WITH NORECOVERY
  , REPLACE
GO

-- bring online
RESTORE DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  WITH recovery
go

You check the data and you get this:

-- check data
USE BackupRestoreTest
GO
SELECT MyChar FROM dbo.mytable
GO

The results?

MyChar

———–

Nothing. No data. Why not? If you look, you’re last insert (row “g”) occurs after the delete and before the backup. Why isn’t it in the restore?

The answer comes from a few sources. If we read the BACKUP page in Books Online (BOL), we find that if we don’t include the INIT option for a disk file, the backup is appended to the current file. The phrase in BOL is:

“If the physical device exists and the INIT option is not specified in the BACKUP statement, the backup is appended to the device. ”

If we look at the INIT argument, we see that the default is NOINIT

“NOINTI – Indicates that the backup set is appended to the specified media set, preserving existing backup sets. If a media password is defined for the media set, the password must be supplied. NOINIT is the default.”

This means that we’ve essentially done this:

Our one file, MyBackup.bak, contains 4 full backup files. This file is larger than it needs to be, and also it poses a risk. If I lose this file, I don’t lose one backup, but I lose 4.

Can I check this? Sure. Run this:

RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'

I get these results:

You can see there are four files, with a “position” that differs.

Now, on the restore, why didn’t I get one row back in my table? The insert for row “g” occurred before the last full backup (backup 4), so why wasn’t it restored?

If we read the RESTORE Arguments page in BOL, we find out that for the FILE arguement

“When not specified, the default is 1, except for RESTORE HEADERONLY in which case all backup sets in the media set are processed. For more information, see "Specifying a Backup Set," later in this topic.”

The backup that was restored was our first backup, made before we did any work (inserted any rows).

What do we do? Well, we have a few choices. The last (fourth) backup would only get us the one row. If we restore the third backup, we lose the data in rows “e” and “g”. That’s usually what we want to do, so let’s restore that backup:

-- restore file 3
USE master
GO
RESTORE DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  FROM DISK = 'MyBackup.bak'
  WITH NORECOVERY
  , FILE = 3
  , REPLACE
GO
-- bring online
RESTORE DATABASE BackupRestoreTest
  WITH recovery
go
-- test data
USE BackupRestoreTest
go
SELECT TOP 10
   mychar, mytest
 FROM mytable

That gives me two rows back. I’ve lost some work, but I potentially have recovered more in many situations.

Ideally I could recover more if I had transaction log backups, but that’s another blog.

The main thing to be aware of here is to use the INIT command, write your backups to separate files, preferably with the timestamp in the file name. If you’re not sure how to do it, a maintenance plan can do it, or there’s a great script on SQLServerCentral that can help.

Lastly, the default recovery models mean you need log backups. Make sure you know how to manage your transaction logs.

Happy President's Day

It’s President’s Day in the US, and a holiday for me, so I’m having a Daddy Daughter day in Denver, away from work. Hopefully most of you in the US also have the day off and are enjoying yourselves away from a computer.

For those of you in the US, I hope your code compiles the first time, queries return quickly, and you enjoy the blooper reel I’ve compiled from the last few months.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast - 33.6MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast - 26.0MB MP4 

I didn’t have quite the level of participation for T-SQL Tuesday #027 that I would have liked. I understand it was a holiday, and many people might have been otherwise occupied (a good thing), and there’s less work for my round up (a good thing), but less information out there (a bad thing). Perhaps it wasn’t a great topic, but in any case, here’s the roundup.

In the early hours of the day, Rob Farley in Australia gave is a short preview of Big Data coming in 24 hours of PASS.

Right behind Rob, Pinal Dave in India gave a simple explanation of Big Data that I thought made it easy to understand some of the concepts behind how Big Data and SQL Server fit together.

Sebastian Meine wrote an interesting piece on purging data, and how large data manipulation operations can benefit from indexing.

The SQL Philosopher talks about some of the challenges of rapidly growing data in his environment.

Vinod Kumar has a nice summary of what the challenges of Big Data in general can be.

Bob Pusateri has a post on why he loves Big Data. I agree with him that Big Data gives the DBA a chance to shine, but also a chance for lots of headaches. You have to decide how you feel about that.

Mike Walsh has a post on what he’s doing with Big Data, and Hadoop, with a client of his. An interesting read on the application of large data sets.

Are sales more important than development?

Last year my wife moved from a sales engineering position to a sales rep job with her company. It has been a bit of a challenge, but she’s enjoyed it, and it’s been good for the family. On top of a small raise, she has a large potential upside to her income as a sales representative. I’m amazed how much money some of the people in her company make from selling software and services, and I sometimes wonder how it works out.

Recently I sent her this link about salespeople and commissions. It talks about the problems with commissions and the potential misunderstandings of what commissions actually do for our company. I know that some companies think paying salespeople flat rates and no commission is heresy. I know others that have transitioned to flat rates, including many retail companies, and they have continued to achieve high sales.

As we debated the benefits of paying commissions,  we argued a bit about the relative value of the positions. She asked me if everyone received a salary, who shoudl be paid more. I said that I thought it was easy to replace salespeople in a company, so developers. My wife countered with “it’s easy to replace programmers.” So for a Friday poll, I thought I’d ask the tech people out there.

Should salespeople make more than programmers?

You can assume a commission structure, or salaries for everyone, but when you look at the value each brings to a company, and the ways in which they can help grow business, which is more valuable? Which is easier to replace? Replacing a top performer in either place is probably hard, but what’s your opinion?

I still stand by the idea that it’s easier to replace salespeople. While I think selling is a skill, I think it’s one more easily learned by a wider variety of the population. I think programming has a fundamental mindset that is hard to teach.

Or maybe it’s a larger number of people would be more willing to spend their days trying to sell something than sitting in a cubicle writing code.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

• Watch the Windows Media Podcast - 22.0MB WMV 
• Watch the iPod Video Podcast - 19.2MB MP4 
• Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast - 3.9MB MP3 

Why you would want to do this is a longer discussion, but suffice it to say that if your environment allows for self-signed certificates, you have a couple options for creating these in SQL Server and Windows. I’ll show you how easy this can be using these two methods:

• makecert
• CREATE CERTIFICATE

Please be careful if you plan on creating your own certificates. The value of a certificate and asymmetric keys comes in the hierarchy of trust for these certificates and if you do not have a strong hierarchy, you could potentially be making your security worse, rather than better.

Makecert

The Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) contains a number of utiltiies, one of which is makecert. It’s a command line tool that creates certificates for you, and It’s easy to use.

I downloaded the SDK, extracted it, and then fired up a command prompt, running this:

makecert -sv "c:\EncryptionPrimer\MyHRCert.pvk" -pe -a sha1 -b "01/01/2012" -e "12/31/2012" -len 2048 -r -n CN="HR Protection Certificate" c:\EncryptionPrimer\MyHRCert.cer

This code creates a private key file (MyHRCert.pvk) and a public key certificate (MyHRCert.cer)

You can click the link and read the parameters, but it’s really that simple. When you create this certificate, you can use the FROM FILE options for CREATE CERTIFICATE to load this certificate into your SQL Server.

CREATE CERTIFICATE

I guess technically you are using the CREATE CERTIFICATE in either case here, but this section looks at the actual creation of the certificate by SQL Server.

CREATE CERTIFICATE is standard DDL, like so many other commands in SQL Server. The parameters are similar to those for makecert. Here’s a statement that matches up with the one above.

create certificate MySalaryCert
   ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = N'R3allyToughP@ssword4You'
   WITH SUBJECT = 'HR Protection Certificate',
   START_DATE = '20120101',
   EXPIRY_DATE = '20121231';

Note that you don’t need to specify the algorithm or other parameters. SQL Server handles that for your. You also don’t need to specify the two files here. The database engine stores these keys inside the database. You should make a backup of them, and you can use the BACKUP CERTIFICATE command to do this.