Paul Randal, of SQLSkills, recently announced a chance to win a free seat in their 5-day IEPTO1 or IEPTO2 classes in October (2017). You can sign up for their SQL Insider’s newsletter here.
I was extremely fortunate to attend IEPTO1 back in Spring 2015 and blogged about it here.
This blog post is hopefully to win a free seat in IEPTO2.
Why I want to attend IEPTO2 taught by SQLSkills
After attending IEPTO1, I was confident enough to interview and get a job that treasured employees that seek knowledge in their field. At the recommendation of Tim Radney, of SQLSkills, I created this blog, purchased my very first heavy-duty laptop (Dell M6800, 32GB RAM, 1.5TB SSD, etc) to create a lab environment, and did all the IEPTO1 homework that Kimberly and Paul suggested we do.
I want to attend IEPTO2 because in my current job, I am the SQL Server Engineer solely in charge of deploying a high available solution, using Windows Server Failover Cluster and SQL Server, as part of the Joint Strike Fighter (F35) program. I want to dive deeper into SQL Server!
Why I’ll make the best use of the knowledge I’ll get from being in the class
Since everything is being built from scratch, the knowledge I would get from IEPTO2 would directly relate to my current job. Topics such as Module 2 (IO concepts), Module 3 (Storage) and Module 4 (SQLOS / CPU) would help me tremendously in the production build-out of the SQL Server environment. I could literally put to use what I learned as soon as I got back from attending IEPTO2. What perfect timing for a chance to win!
What my favorite performance tuning challenge is
My favorite performance tuning challenge is index tuning. When it comes to performance tuning indexes, I have to admit that I need more experience/knowledge. It’s still my favorite though because I know how HUGE of a difference having the right indexes make in performance! I remember a story Kimberly told (during IEPTO1) about a client that had the wrong indexes. and were having horrible performance. Once she tuned the indexes, the SQL Server was blazing fast! I love that type of stuff!
(This is a guest blog post by Tony Branson (t | b). Tony is a Database Load Balancing Senior Analyst at ScaleArc.)
Are you struggling to keep your systems up and running as your online applications continue to grow popular? Is your service always available and equipped to meet the requirements of performance scalability? Does your platform ensure failure recovery without losing data? Whether you are a small startup or a globally renowned brand, customers expect that your systems remain available and accessible round the clock. When you store every single transaction for millions of users and manage more than a hundred thousand queries every second, your database should be designed with scalability in mind.
The widely adopted master/slave model does help enterprises to ensure availability and uninterrupted connectivity but when it comes to transactional support, this approach lacks performance scalability. There are several other reasons that make MySQL a preferred database management system like:
The flexibility of open source
Ease of Use
Solid data security layers
Cost-effectiveness
Compatibility with major operating systems
But when a MySQL master-slave cluster is used to achieve the goal of high-availability and scalability, the complex sharding strategy can prove to be a tricky task.
Dynamic load balancing technology lets you handle even high loads rapidly and reliably without needing any modifications to your database. It automatically manages your traffic while ensuring the highest performance for your applications. It ensures complete consistency between replicas, facilitates faster failover and permits the shutdown of nodes for maintenance without affecting the service. MySQL server load balancing lets you scale your application, supports heavy traffic and identifies unhealthy VM instances while adding healthy ones by routing the traffic to virtual machines that are in close proximity. You can use a load balancing solution for query routing and prevent service outages by directing report queries to their designated servers.
When Your MySQL Deployment Needs to Go Beyond A Single Instance
Database load balancing facilitates uninterrupted use of MySQL even as organizations continue to grow while simplifying the tasks of your IT support team. It eliminates the issues arising due to vendor lock-in and the hassles of having to switch between systems. Load balancing lets you capitalize on unlimited horizontal scalability especially if your business processes run on MySQL entirely. Database load balancing not only addresses the issues arising due to the paucity of technical resources but also facilitates scalable MySQL deployments both in cloud and on premise.
Saving Statistics Early On
Monitoring is essential but if your legacy monitoring system is sending false positives frequently, it can leave your system administrators numb. This makes it important to capture all the metrics to facilitate timely actions when problems crop up as workloads change.
Too Much Configuration Tweaking Can Degrade Performance
DBAs typically spend most of their time tweaking configurations but it rarely works to optimize server performance. Don’t rely on the defaults that are shipped with your MySQL as they are outdated and don’t fit your unique circumstances. Using the server tuning tools rarely makes sense as they often come coded with inaccurate advice that is seldom right.
A Quick Solution to Scaling MySQL
Modify your MySQL application to update the connections to one IP or port connections to another using a code update and then divert the “update” connections to the master database and the “read” connections to a virtual server. Use a load balancing solution that uses least connections across the slave servers so that all the connections are routed to a single IP. Sharding is another well-established and reliable approach to scaling a MySQL database as it is easy to manage and completely transparent.
While MySQL efficiently performs the replication work it fails to balance load and distribute the queries among multiple servers. It may or may not be able to offer a low-latency environment. A load balancing software integrates replication aware routing so you can specify a delayed threshold without making any changes to your application. This approach is sure to optimize database performance and increase availability.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Kevin: A few distinct but interrelated evolutions are occurring simultaneously. First, Microsoft now cares most about owning the enterprise data center no matter whose technology was originally in there. So you’re going to see a lot more support from Microsoft in the area of open-source technologies that were previously anathema. You’ve already seen SQL Server on Linux, but why stop there? There’s considerable mindshare behind PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. Microsoft wants to serve its customers on all of those platforms. Second, cloud is indisputably a “thing” to be reckoned with. If you’re a SQL Server DBA and you’re not catching up on cloud technologies, then you’re definitely falling behind. And don’t forget, in the cloud, poorly performing SQL code and applications cost the company money. So you’d be well served to start learning as much as you can about tuning SQL Servers. Third, the data science disciplines are a “thing” as well. Microsoft is building out these offerings as an adjuct to SQL Server with each new release and sometimes without a new release. One of the great things about the cloud is that it reduces the need for old fashioned skills of DBAs of the 1990’s. If you switch your energies from maintaining those skills into learning a bit more about ML and data science algorithms, you’ll be much more valuable to the business where you’re employed. Finally, the pace of innovation will continue to accelerate. Microsoft has truly mastered a new paradigm of software development. That means new features and capabilities will continue to roll out with regularity. As a person who’s tried hard to keep up the pace, I find it a struggle. For me, this has two implications: A) You’d best specialize so that you don’t go crazy with all of the new things to learn, and B) if you aren’t at least studying a little bit every day, you’re probably complacently settling for obsolescence.
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Kevin: First of all, there will be DBAs doing exactly what they’re doing now even 20 years from now. That’s reality. I still talk to many people every year who develop apps in COBOL for mainframes. I’ve heard a lot of pronouncements that “X technology is dead!” In truth, most popular technologies never truly die. They just fade away bit by bit in a process that takes a long, long time. Heck, they only turned off TTY services for the deaf in the last couple years. That’s a telegraph era technology!
However, our profession certainly isn’t standing still. In many ways, the DBA will be more important than ever. But the DBA of tomorrow will be a lot different than the DBA of today. Most DBAs I know are pretty good at coding SQL, but not great. You’ll have to pursue mastery to stay relevant. Many DBAs of today aren’t really specialists in the knowledge domain of the organizations they work for. That’ll have to change if the DBA wants to add value to data science and data visualization projects. I guess what I’m getting at is that many organizations are getting better at collecting data, but they still have almost no idea how to turn that data into actionable information. The DBA of the future will be able to assist on those kinds of projects.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Kevin: I’m most proud of being a founder of the international PASS organization and being its president from 2004-2008. I was president for two terms for a very simple reason, we were on the verge of extinction and needed consistent, focused leadership to survive those difficult times. When I say “leadership”, I don’t mean myself. I mean the team of leaders we’d assembled at that time – Wayne Snyder, Joe Webb, Bill Graziano, Rick Heiges, and others. The entire team was laser-focused on making the organization survive and thrive. When I attend the PASS Summit today, with its many thousands of attendees and many hundreds of speakers and dozens of monthly webinars, I like to think “I was one of the few who dug the well that watered this beautiful garden”. :-)
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Kevin: I read a LOT of non-fiction books. One such book I’d recommend is “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jarrod Diamond. The book is a masterclass in the connectedness and long chain of cause-and-effect in the human experience. The book was inspired by the question “Why did Western civilization achieve salience in the last few centuries when other civilizations were far more advanced in other earlier epochs?” The short answer is guns, germs, and steel – guns that won wars, germs which we Westerners were immune to but wiped out tens of millions in other civilizations, and steel with its advanced prerequisites in chemistry, metallurgy and supply chains. He then proceeds to answer the even deeper question of “Why did Western civilization get those things before others?”, which is the riddle to be solved. I also love: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Godel Escher Bach, Connections, The Story of English, The Checklist Manifesto and most everything that David Ambrose has written (Band of Brothers, Undaunted Courage).
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Kevin: Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Strive for mastery. Invest yourself in deliberate practice, frequently engage in experimentation, and read voraciously. To do this effectively, you can’t be a generalist. The good news is that the experts command a higher wage and better billing rates. 😊 If an analogy helps, thinks about professional sports teams going through their annual draft. They don’t say “We’d like a good all-around player”. They say “We want the best power hitter / running back / defender we can get”. They want someone who is singularly talented. Now, if you’re good at more than one thing, more power to you. But you’re not even going to be in consideration for the great jobs if you’re not an A+ player in one of the important specialties of your field. Strive for mastery.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Argenis: I see SQL Server continuing to gain ground and becoming even more prevalent than it is today. SQL Server on Linux will be HUGE. It already is with more than 1M Docker repo pulls.
And SQL Server is today and will be everywhere. Cloud, On-Prem, your laptop. Now that it runs on Docker a lot of developers will love to have a local instance they can develop on – for free. Quick and easy. Microsoft has REALLY turned around from how things were pre-Satya. I’m loving it. I do feel that SQL Server could use a little more love on the “size of data” realm. Meaning, handling terabytes or data in SQL Server should be “easier” than it is today. And I think sooner than later Microsoft will acknowledge that and work on features to handle that scale problem..
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Argenis: I’m not sure that we even have a great definition of what a “Traditional SQL Server DBA” is.
Let me give you an example: If you’re babysitting a reindex or DBCC process every weekend, trust me when I tell you – you WILL be rendered irrelevant. Maybe not next month, but at some point you will be. You need to provide value to your employer by automating everything that can be automated, and help your business achieve better outcomes by not only keeping the lights on…but so much more. You need to figure what that “so much more” means for your company.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Argenis: Quite honestly, Argenis Without Borders 2.0, when we raised over $25K for Doctors Without Borders. Not a technical achievement, but something that actually touches lives in peril.
I owe a lot of that success story to my good friend and fellow troublemaker Kirsten Benzel.
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Argenis: I only read…stuff on the Internet. I’m too much of an ADHD victim to read a book all the way through. I have read quite a few, but it’s not something I do frequently.
Catch up on blogs, twitter, and really good sites like, for example, SQLPerformance.com. It’s time well invested.
If you want to get a feel for what the startup world is like and innovations taking place constantly, be sure to check Hacker News.
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Argenis: That really depends. I consider myself mostly focused on the DB Engine, but I became a pretty knowledgeable person in the storage realm in the last two years since I joined Pure Storage. That combination has proven to be very good for my career. So I’d say…just find something you love and be really good at it. If you want to be a good generalist, you can be successful at that. If you’re bored and twiddling your thumbs all day, find something that’s intellectually satisfying.
And surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Not that intelligence is contagious, but ideas and conversations spark good changes in your brain…embrace your inner geek!
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Denny: For a lot of people things are definitely going to be more cloud focused. Some companies will stay on-premises for a variety of reasons, but for a lot of people moving to the cloud is going to become a reality. The cloud isn’t that scary. It’s a little different, but that’s about it. Looking at Azure SQL DB, it’s basically just SQL Server. It does most of what normal SQL Server does, it runs queries, etc. There’s just less patching and day to day management that needs to be done because Microsoft is taking care of that for you.
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Denny: No, I don’t see the role of the traditional DBA being replaced. Evolving? Absolutely. But not being replaced.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Denny: The best thing I think I’ve done for the SQL Server community would probably be getting Speaker Idol up and running at the PASS Summit. This gives new speakers who aren’t well known to the committee a chance to get in front of an audience at the PASS summit, get feedback from some great presenters (the judges) and one of them gets a slot the next year at the summit.
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Denny: It’s been a really long time since I’ve sat down a read a book, technical or not. For technical knowledge I just Google these days. If you had to make me pick a book, then I’d go with Kevin Kline’s T-SQL book from 200 years ago (or something like that). It should be on every data platform person’s shelf.
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Denny: I would still say focus on one area of SQL Server, but broaden how you work with that component. Myself I’m an engine/HA/performance tuning guy. I basically never touch SSAS, SSRS, SSIS, etc. I can install all those things, but that’s about it. But because of how I understand how the engine works, I have a better understanding than most about how SQL DB in Azure works compared to RDS in Amazon for example. So while I’d stayed fairly narrow in SQL Server terms, I’ve been able to spread out a bit outside of the database engine so that I can see it in more global or enterprise deployment terms. The traditional DBA isn’t going anywhere, and there will be people who only deal with on-premises deployments for years and make good money. But there’s lots of money to be made in this cloudy world as well.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Benjamin: Well, I really don’t see many big changes in five years, it is a very short time. As an example we can look back a few years ago when SQL Server in-memory technologies like Hekaton and columnstore indexes were originally released. We were very excited about these technologies but later realized that they were initially released with serious limitations leaving us to wait for them to mature and become widely adopted. So I hope a wide adoption of these technologies, especially Hekaton, in the next few years.
Currently Microsoft has announced SQL Server for Linux so I hope that release is widely used within the next few years too. I confess I was very skeptical when I learned that this SQL Server version was not really a Linux port but instead the same Windows executable running on a Linux process. I know it makes perfect sense from the time-to-release point of view so we all hope doing this does not have any performance limitations. I started my career with Unix back in the 90s so it is cool be to working in this platform again. I also worked with Linux since the beginning and remember that for a few years nobody even knew what Linux was.
Regarding SQL Server version adoption, we know the market is usually a few versions behind so I would not be surprised if in five years the most popular versions are SQL Server 2014 or maybe SQL Server 2016.
Finally, although companies are using or exploring the public cloud in some way, sometimes minor, at least with the current technology, most mission critical databases will continue to run on SQL Server on-premises.
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Benjamin: Of course not, it will evolve, actually it is always evolving, changing every day but will not be replaced. This also correlates with my earlier comment that companies will continue to use SQL Server on-premises.
By the way, isn’t the same for any other role in technology? Probably this applies to any other “traditional” technology role as well :-)
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Benjamin: Probably my books. I’ve been an occasional blogger and I have done presentations all over the world. But the feedback from my query optimizer and query tuning books has been incredible. I’ve got e-mails and messages with great feedback from all over the world. I never expected something like it. I also just recently published a new book called “High Performance SQL Server” which I still don’t know how, Apress convinced me to call it the “Go Faster Book” :-)
As a matter of fact, writing has been a big challenge for me. Being English my second language I am extremely surprised that I ended writing books. I still remember the days when writing a 2-3 pages article was a big challenge which was even afraid to publish. I finally started blogging and was pleasantly surprised when after writing just a handful of articles about the query optimizer, Red Gate offered me to write an entire book about the subject, which was published in 2011.
I’ve also been doing SQL Server presentations all over the world. I just came back from an amazing SQLSaturday in Chile and I am scheduled to present in a conference in Brazil soon.
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Benjamin: I haven’t read any book in a long, long time so probably I don’t have much to say here. And probably the last ones I read were technology or music related. So about SQL Server I would always recommend anything with the name Kalen Delaney or Itzik Ben-Gan on it. The late Ken Henderson was one of my favorites as well.
I recently worked on the technical review of Kalen’s new book “SQL Server Internals: In-Memory OLTP” so I know this will be an extraordinary book. And if you want to learn about query tuning and optimization and SQL Server performance in general, of course I recommend you my books :-)
Finally, anyone who would read me even a little bit on twitter or Facebook may know that more than reading, I am a huge fan of rock and roll music, so I would usually prefer listening to records, going to concerts or playing guitar.
PD. By the way, the best rock autobiography is still “The Dirt” by Motley Crue :)
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Benjamin: This is a tough question and one I had myself several times in my career. And probably there is not a correct answer here. Back in the late 90s while working with several database technologies I decided to specialize in SQL Server. I initially tried to cover everything SQL Server just to realize that may need to specialize even further. I remember learning SSAS and the entire BI stack but never worked much with it. Interestingly I became an advanced DTS developer because I worked in a large project using this technology but never got really advanced on its replacement, SSIS. So I think now I try to cover everything related to the SQL Server engine and perhaps specialize in query tuning and optimization and SQL Server performance in general, which no surprise are also the topics I write and present about.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Mindy: While a lot has changed in the Microsoft Data Platform in the last 5 years, the customers I work with have not changed nearly as quickly, and I really don’t see that pattern changing much over the NEXT 5 years. To be clear, I work mostly with the transportation and logistics industry (think 18 wheelers & railroads). I see many companies attempt to maximize ROI by keeping hardware and database platform licenses as long as possible. (It’s very common for our customers to still be on SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2. We even have a handful that remain on SQL 2005!) There IS some adoption of cloud technologies in this particular industry, but really, they are just now starting to dip their toes into Azure and AWS. What they are adopting “in the cloud” is not their main fleet ERP, it’s the standard applications that don’t need major customization (email, project management, human resources management). For these out-of-the box applications, I see active and enthusiastic adoption of SaaS based solutions. For the larger transportation fleets in the US, their ERP systems are highly customized and have been developed over long periods of time. Their solutions are mature and very robust, and primarily based on legacy style client-server architecture. It’s just not that easy to move a full ERP ecosystem into the cloud. Add to that a demographic that generally feels that being cutting edge isn’t a priority. Five years from now I expect the majority of the large trucking company ERP platforms that run on SQL Server will still be on-prem. They may be virtualized, but they won’t be in the cloud.
On the opposite side of the coin, I think that for newly developed software, developing SaaS based products that live in the cloud is already the predominant and accepted way to do things. Software companies are not building brand new applications that have a local install or are client-server in their architecture anymore. Startups and brand new applications are almost solely using the cloud as their infrastructure. Five years from now almost all applications written between now and then will have a cloud based database backend.
Older on-premise client-server based applications will need to adapt over time or they’ll die out. That’s not going to happen in a brief 5 years, but it is a sign that’s fairly obvious to anyone paying attention. The on-premise servers eventually are going to have a mostly “Kodak Moment”. It’s not going to be in 5 years though. Maybe 15. I’ll be almost 65 then….yeah, 15 sounds good (ha ha).
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Mindy: Not in the next 15 years. Beyond that, I have a hard time imaging what’s going to be happening with technology. I don’t know that in 2002 I could have imagined what the iPhone/Android does today. 30 years ago I certainly had no idea where we would be with technology today, it’s really astonishing if you stop and think about it a bit. But in the next 15 years…while the DBA may not need to be concerned with backups or maintenance anymore (Administrative role significantly reduced), the concept of a Data Professional, who helps design / architect for scalability, and more importantly – who understands the business, that’s going to be needed for a long time to come. Especially the business part. It’s one thing to simply tune a stored procedure or SQL statement, it’s quite another to look at what it’s doing, understand the code itself, and then question “Is that even necessary? Why are we doing that? The business doesn’t work that way.” Sometimes code is written under a false assumption or incorrect idea about how a business works. It takes a combined skillset with an understanding of both the business rules and database platform. A computer algorithm is going to have a very long way to go before it can replace that piece of what a DBA provides.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Mindy: That’s an awkward question because I don’t want to appear like I’m bragging. I love working with SQL Server and data. I’m very passionate about it. I’ve devoted over 20 years to it, and it’s been very rewarding. I guess the things I’m most proud of to date are:
Being one of the 3 Program Managers for the PASS Summit for the last 3 years in a row (2015-2017). It’s a huge amount of work, but leading teams to go through all the abstracts, choosing the presentations, balancing the program and then scheduling – I can directly see the results of all our work each time I attend Summit. It’s a very good feeling. I love my #sqlfamily.
Building a team of DBAs at my workplace pretty much from scratch. It’s a great team, currently 5 members, hopefully soon to be 6 (we’re looking for a new teammate, preferably out of Oklahoma City). I love mentoring them and leading them, being their champion and encouraging them. They’ve all grown so much and I feel that because of my passion for SQL Server I encourage their passion. Two of these DBAs have presented at their local SQL User Group in Cleveland now, and one of them is about to do his 2nd SQL Saturday. Almost the entire team is actively blogging publicly now (https://drcdba.com/, https://ericblinn.com/, http://iconicdba.com, http://www.sqlmason.com). It makes me really proud and happy to see them growing professionally and being excited about their career.
The Keynote speech I delivered at TMW and PeopleNet’s In.Sight conferece. The subject was Data Quality and Reference Data. I spoke to almost 3000 transportation industry leaders in the big ballroom at the Gaylord Opryland. I have had compliments on the speech continually since, and it’s really reaffirming. I hope to be invited to speak again this year.
Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard – Chip & Dan Heath
And I just ordered this book last night, it had good reviews and it sounded interesting:
IBM and the Holocaust – The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation
And I love history, especially local history. I love knowing who built an old building and what a neighborhood used to be like, how the roads got to be the way they are. I live in Dallas now, and these two Dallas history related books have been fun for me to read:
Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker
Dallas-Forth Worth Freeways, Texas-Sized Ambition
On this one, I have the table book – whoah, it’s now $299! Good grief. Fortunately, you can download each chapter in full color via PDF here
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Mindy: One of the things that has allowed me to excel in my career was the inch wide / mile deep approach. Suggesting that someone else do that is complicated though because it requires opportunity. It takes time to become a mile deep. Until you get to be a mile deep, what are you? (I guessing digging that mile deep trench??). How will you generate income in the meantime? I was lucky to be given the opportunity to develop my skills because I landed a job with Unisys who was invested in developing mile-deep SQL Server Scalability and Performance folks from within their ranks. They would send us off to Unisys University and different Unisys and Microsoft Performance Laboratories for multiple weeks/year for boot camp style immersive training. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
When someone needs a specialist, that’s who they call. It doesn’t make sense for a brain surgeon to also be good at oncology. Both of these are inch-wide / mile-deep specialties. People will pay more and explicitly seek out those professionals when they need one. A general practitioner on the other hand is a mile-wide and inch-deep. There are lots and lots of general practitioners. Same with Pediatricians. They still make a very good living, but they aren’t able to charge rates similar to the medical specialists. Ever gotten a bill from an anesthesiologist? It’ll make you gasp.
As far as what I think is wise. I think it’s wise to understand what makes you happy, look at the opportunities you have been presented and make a career decision based upon those things. Sometimes you don’t actually make a career “decision”, it just kind of happens. There is no right answer for everyone. Had I not been given the opportunity I was given, I could well have ended up more a generalist, you never know. Life is weird that way.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Allan: I dislike the word “cloud” on its own, similar to how I feel about inaccurately using the word “cluster.” Are we talking about the WSFC or Pacemaker? An FCI? An AG? All of it? Something else?
When people say “the cloud” they usually mean the public cloud (Azure, Amazon, Google, et al). This is just an evolution from when companies ran and built everything. Instead of building and owning a house, it is being rented and someone else is responsible for nearly all of the day-to-day management.
I don’t see the public cloud stopping on premises deployments any time soon. Many companies who are on premises only today will have the public cloud somewhere as part of their infrastructure. Not all will, but I think we will see more hybrid solutions especially for disaster recovery. Virtualization took a long time to catch on with SQL Server deployments, and the public cloud to me is following a similar – but also faster – trajectory. I remember people who swore they’d never virtualize, and are now nearly 100% virtualized. The key thing is to put the right architecture in place to support the business, and that may be on physical servers, virtualized, private clouds, hybrid solutions that span on premises and the public cloud, or just in the public cloud.
As for SQL Server itself? Five years is one, maybe two versions from now. v.Next is already in the pipeline. It will continue to evolve and change. As is already the case, many are a version or three behind. I bet five years from now some folks will just be starting to consider SQL Server 2016..
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Allan: If you mean what I would call a “pure” or “classic” DBA where that person basically just handles backups and basic SQL Server administrative tasks, yes, that type of DBA will be largely replaced or eliminated via automation.
The modern DBA role continues to evolve. Data is the lifeblood of companies, and someone has to take care of it. Sure, there’s DevOps which is the answer in some cases, but not in others. Outsourcing and remote DBAs have not, for the most part, replaced good DBAs in companies. Those services augment a good DBA staff or pick up the slack when a company is understaffed or lacks expertise in a specific skillset. In-house DBAs know their data and their business, and they are constantly working to make that data do more (and do it more reliably).
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Allan: I am always humbled when a month, a year, or more later people come up to me and thank me after I did something (a talk, released a book or paper, a blog post, etc.) and they tell me how it helped them or impacted them. That’s why I do what I do.
I tend to look in forward. I don’t like to linger on the past. I try to push the envelope. Sometimes I fail, other times I succeed. Some selected highlights:
The SQL Server 2000 failover clustering whitepaper that, arguably more than anything, set my career in motion to where it is now.
Continuing to have a good relationship with Microsoft as well as companies like VMware and championing/changing/influencing to make things better for anyone using SQL Server. There’s a lot I do which I don’t talk about, but you guys see the benefits of much later on. It’s not always about the public accolades.
Seeing how the influence of my writing, teaching, speaking, and consulting over the years created a big interest in the availability and infrastructure aspects of SQL Server. Today more people are speaking, writing, etc. on the topic; that was not the case for many years.
Offering in person classes with hands on labs. They are a lot of work but for availability, you need it. Just seeing demos often times does not cut it.
Selling out a preconference at PASS Summit 2016, and having people come up to me asking if they can still get in even on the day I was delivering it. It is very humbling this far into my career that people still want to see and hear what I have to offer.
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Allan: I do love to read, but don’t have the time I used to devote to it. I sometimes find time on planes, and if so, it’s usually something to do with history, music, or occasionally, business. The latest book I’ve been reading is Van Halen Rising by Greg Renoff. Another outstanding book is Bill Bruford’s autobiography, which is arguably the best music-related book I have ever read and it’s well written, too.
One book I always recommend to people is Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust. It should appeal to both history and tech folks, but it obviously deals with a subject that is not always the easiest for people to face head on. Even taking the horrific events it’s based on out of the picture, it is a cautionary tale and example of how data from computers was used 80 years ago.
For fiction, I’d recommend The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. Having spent time in a studio and around the music industry a bit, this is a fun view and not too far off the mark of what can happen, not unlike Spinal Tap. There’s enough even for the knobhead gear techie music person like me in this one, too.
There are two business books I’ve found useful over the past few years. Twitter is Not a Strategy by Tom Doctoroff and Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by the Disney Institute with Theodore Kinni.
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. high availability), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Allan: Before I tackle the tech aspect, there’s more to having a successful career than whatever tech skills you do or do not have. You need to also have excellent soft skills, which includes being able to present to diverse audiences. If you are not thinking about developing your non-tech skills, you should be. I’ve always said I can teach tech, but I can’t instill things like common sense, passion, or intuition. Being tech savvy means more than knowing a few features from a textbook point of view. The real world is messy.
Have a solid foundation (the wide), but be excellent at one aspect of SQL Server (or whatever else) you are passionate about (the deep). I’ve never just focused on one aspect of SQL Server. Availability encompasses many related areas, some of which are Windows Server, WSFCs, networking, security, virtualization, and storage in addition to SQL Server itself and everything that comes with that.
When you are early on in a career, it is not uncommon to be more of a generalist, but as you find where your heart lies, you can tailor your skills further. Think of your career as a journey, not a destination. It must be managed with a long term view, much like someone’s retirement funds. Where do you want to be in a few years? If you are currently having the same year of experience every year a la the movie Groundhog Day, that’s not a career. You need to experience new things and be challenged to grow. That may also involve taking some risks along the way.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Erin: Let me state that I don’t think 5 years ahead in my own life, so trying to predict changes in technology really isn’t in my comfort zone. That said, it’s 2017 and there are still a large number of companies running SQL Server 2008 and 2008R2 in production. Therefore, in 2022 I think that companies will still be running SQL Server 2014 and maybe even SQL Server 2012. I expect there will still be a box version of SQL Server that’s current, and people will still be migrating to the cloud. Will there be more solutions in the cloud, compared to on site? That might be too close to call.
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Erin: Define traditional J I love to ask people what they do all day – whether they’re a DBA, Developer, Systems Admin, etc. I have yet to find a “typical” job description for a SQL Server DBA. I don’t see the role of data professional (credit goes to Buck Woody for that term, I think) being eliminated. As long as there’s data, there will be a DBA or similar person needed. Someone will always need to know how to put data in a database, how to keep safe, how to keep it available, and how to access it. Data just keeps growing – the “DBA role” may evolve, but as long as you like working with databases and data in some capacity, there will be a job for you.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Erin: Interesting question – not something I’ve ever really thought about. I think I might be most proud of being known as someone who continues to encourage people to use Extended Events instead of Trace and Profiler. There are many people that evangelize XE, I am certainly not the only one, but in terms of what I’m trying to do for the community, that’s probably it. I think I’ve exposed a fair number of people to XE, but the jury is still out on how many I’ve actually converted!
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Erin: Reading is an escape for me. So when you say non-technical, non-fiction book I think: learning. And biographies. So…Katharine Graham’s biography, Personal History, was very good. I loved Daring Greatly and Rising Strong by Brené Brown, but you need to be into personal development to enjoy those (I also recommend her TedTalk, The power of vulnerability. And then some fiction books that come into my head:
The Martian by Andy Weir – great premise, lots of technical details, good humor, well written overall; the movie is really good, too
The Mitch Rapp books by Vince Flynn – in the vein of Tom Clancy (whose books I also like), but with an elite fighter instead of Jack Ryan; I hope they never make them into movies
Still Alice by Lisa Genova – told from the perspective of a person with early-onset Alzheimer’s, it hits close to home, it’s heart-breaking, and it’s given me an understand I might not have found; the movie is good, the book is better.
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. Database Engine), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Erin: I think what’s wise is to pursue what interests you. If you want to learn about SSRS/IS/Azure because you find it interesting, then do it. But if you do something because you “have to” or “feel you should”, then when you work with it, when you talk about it with others, when you teach it, it’s not as easy to be passionate about it. I think you can be really good at your job, even if you don’t like it. But where’s the fun in that? You can be focused or you can have a breadth of knowledge, people can succeed either way, it’s a matter of liking what you do.
I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.
Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?
Pinal: This is a great question. I personally believe just like any other technology, in premise hosting of SQL Server will remain in place as much as the cloud adoption will grow. I do not see cloud technology replacing in-premises installation in the next 5 years. As a SQL Server Performance Tuning Consultant, I get the opportunity to work with lots of different organizations and I noticed that quite a lot of people still using the old technology as SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. They are willing to pay a very high amount to tune their server to run faster, rather than migrating to newer versions. May be after 10 years or so we will see strong shift and focus on the cloud.
Mohammad: Do you ever see the traditional SQL Server DBA role being replaced/eliminated?
Pinal: DBA’s role is evolving. I see quite a lot of people talking about this subject. Just like any other role, new responsibilities and new skills are going to be added in the Role of DBA and old one will be eliminated. It is going to be like that onwards for not only DBA but all the jobs. I think it is just our fear to learn new stuff, once we overcome it, it will be easier to migrate to the new job definition of DBA.
Mohammad: What are you most proud of doing/accomplishing for the SQL Server community so far in your career?
Pinal: I think it has to be building my blog https://blog.sqlauthority.com. I have been blogging every single day for the last 10 years and every single day I am equally excited to learn and write new stuff.
Mohammad: What non-technical/non-fiction book/s would you recommend? If you only read technical books…what do you recommend?
Pinal: I love reading books. I pretty much read everything from fiction to business books. It is difficult to list one or two books to read so I am going to list three books, which are my all time favorite books.
Mohammad: For someone who’s career focus has been on one aspect of SQL Server (i.e. Database Engine), do you think it would be wise for them to become a “jack of all trades” by starting to learn, SSRS/IS/Azure, etc. or remain focused on their area of expertise? In another words, which would you say is more valuable? mile wide / inch deep or inch wide / mile deep?
Pinal: I can’t talk about others, but I have figured out that it is impossible to be successful as jack of all trades. I have been focusing on SQL Server Performance Tuning aspect of SQL Server for many years and I still learn something new every single time when I am going out for consultation. I think it is a good idea to know what is going around you, but it is important that you know one thing very very well. For me it is SQL Server Performance Tuning but for you, it can be any one or two things.
