Instead of working, I blog.

I’m just getting sick of dealing with LIteSpeed problems.  My big DW was using a lower version of LS and it was fine for a long time.  Then I upgraded to the new version and my backups went from 30mins to like 10hrs.  So I went back to the previous version.  Then I upgraded my DB from yukon to katmai and i upgraded LS at the same time hoping that the even newer version would work better with katmai on my big DW system.  That hasn’t happened.  It’s been ridiculous trying to get backups to even complete.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

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www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

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So I’m sitting here at the blogger table at the 2nd PASS keynote by Tom Casey and he brings up a good point.  Now this is something I’ve blogged about in the past, but it’s about that guy in your org who goes off and does his own thing and puts a small DB on his desktop and starts doing data loads, and crunching things on his own.  That can be a problem because IT isn’t involved and IT doesn’t even know it exists.  That’s why slammer was so devastating because of all those “unauthorized” DBs out there.  And everyone should be going through IT for these types of projects… or should they?

Tom actually brings up a good point that every piece of data, or every query doesn’t have to go through IT.  Some things aren’t big enough or are only for short-lived times and there’s no reason for it to be spun up as a project.  And again this is a fine line because as a DBA I really do have to know where my data’s going and if I let everyone just pull whatever they wanted, then server performance would be crap.  So it’s a tough line to walk because while we need to have some kind of decent control over where our server resources are going, we also don’t need to be involved in every little thing that crosses someone’s mind.

IT quite often also isn’t very responsive because we do have to plan things better than the users do and I think they lose sight of that.  The trick is for us to make it a real project while at the same time not slowing them down too much.

So I’m gonna go ahead and say that office users are free to keep things under our radar, but know that comes at a price.  If you lose the data or the code or it starts performing badly, then don’t come crying to us.  These are the things that IT brings to the table.  We bring recoverability, stability, accountability, etc.  And it’s quite possible that you start something on your own and then get IT involved when it gets too big or too important for you to manage yourself.  I really like this scenario because it’s often times easier for us to take over a project than it is to build it from scratch.  Sometimes it’s not because you have to re-write it to actually make it stable, but even that’s often times easier because you’ve already got the business logic and the GUI defined for you. 

So anyway, I like what I see in the demos on their new excel plugin (PowerPivot), but personally I’m waiting to see if it’ll actually work as well as they expect.  Because the data they’re using is highly specialized and I have to wonder how well my data will work with the product.  PowerPivot is a new BI plugin for excel 2010 but I really expect that it won’t really take hold for a couple yrs because the requirements to duplicate the scenario they outlined in the keynote are office 2010, sql server R2, and sharepoint 2010, and I just don’t see many people converting all of these that fast.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA

I’m sitting here at the bloggers’ table here at PASS listening to the announcements.  So far it’s just housecleaning, but Wayne is a good speaker. 

There’s been a lot of twitting this year and it really changes the face of the summit because you can find people and events just by pinging the group.  I didn’t think I’d like something like that, but it actually is pretty cool. 

I’m horrible at this live social blogging thing though so I’ll shut up now.

Ok we arrived in Seattle for PASS only I found out tonight that I’m not supposed to call it PASS.  Apparently the PC name for PASS is the PASS Summit.  Oh well…

So we started at the Tap House wtih Allen White and his wife and then went to the convention center (I can still call it that, right?) to register.  There we met up with tons of other MVPs and a few people that Jen follows on twitter.  Would that be her fellow twits?

I was talking to Allen about how things appear to be getting better because there are a lot more MVPs here than there have been the past couple yrs.  I think this is going to be a good week.

We also did our first DBAs@Midnight with Allen.  It was really fun.  We got to talk about Oracle and making mistakes, and powershell, etc.  It was a fun talk.  I’ll upload it soon so check back and I’ll let you know when it’s up.

Watch my free SQL Server Tutorials at:
http://MidnightDBA.ITBookworm.com

Read my book reviews at:
www.ITBookworm.com

Blog Author of:
Database Underground – http://www.infoworld.com/blogs/sean-mccown

Follow my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MidnightDBA