@ErikE That0s why we have World of Warcraft, no?

@gbn people still play wow?

Morning

Evening

(I love being contrary. Also it is actually evening here.)

@SimonRigharts Stackoverflow is my MMORPG of choice :D

@SimonRigharts And how is it in the fatherland today?

Lovely and warm actually, was about 25°C outside this afternoon

Every time I come back to Dunedin I get lovely weather, I dunno what's up with that

It snowed on Saturday here.

(I only come back to visit during summer)

Might have something to do with it. No horizontal sleet, then.

I haven't seen sleet in ... years

Well, contracting beckons ...

Well icy this morning. Bloody bus left a few mins early, so I had to run 3 miles to the train station. Could've done without that :/

have fun. or at least make lots of money.

@SimonRigharts I've made other plans.

running three miles over icy sidewalks? you're lucky you didn't put yourself in hospital

Yeah, I know. Had no choice 'cos the next train is 2 hours after & I can't be 2 hours late for work!

@Phil You really need to get out of ops work.

I contracted in poland for ages, so I'm used to snow/ice/cold :)

I pay an arm and a leg for my apartment, but being under a kilometre from work is handy at times

One thing I like about development is that nobody gives a shit what time you turn up.

I need to move. Well, I need to look for a new job first. This isn't challenging me in the slightest

@SimonRigharts Where do you live?

Thorndon, work is on Lambton Quay

@Phil May I suggest Business Intelligence? Can you do a data model?>

I'm about two minutes from the railway station

Yeah, I've just finished designing a DWH

@SimonRigharts Never spent a lot of time in Wellington, although I think it's about the nicest city in NZ.

which is also handy because I'm also two minutes from the central bus stop, so I don't even need a car to get around

@Phil Well, that puts you ahead of a lot of B.I. folks I've met. Ever worked in Banking or Insurance?

Nope. I've always worked in telecoms. Was offered a job in insurance in December but turned it down because of the location

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells It reminds me a lot of Dunedin. Except it actually has nightlife. Oh, and the weather is nicer

@Phil Plenty of work in telecoms. Maybe you should start pimping your CV around. What's your notice period?

a month

Pondering contracting again

Might get away with that. Contract jobs will wait a month quite often.

Insurance is a funny racket - it's mostly about requirements. The data volumes tend not to be all that strenuous, although the data can get fairly complex.

But, once you're in, you're in. Plus, it's a lot less stressful than a hedge fund.

Doesn't pay quite as much as financial markets and the people are dumber but they aren't arseholes.

I'm trying to figure out what my long-term plan is. Currently some experience with SQL Server and Sybase

Yeah, they were telling me at the interview that it was essentially read-only during the day with a load of batch ETL at night

My master plan is to start learning some SQL Server. Knowing oracle & SQl Server seems to be a goldmine

essentially I have three options I can see - specialise in either SQL Server or Sybase, lateral into BI stuff, or look to management

Nothing happens in realtime in Insurance.

My Sybase is already good, so shouldn't be too hard to transition

@Phil I think there's more SQL Server work out there than Oracle. I'm doing my first Oracle gig in 6 years.

Should I be glad I've never been exposed to Oracle?

@Phil I think getting some mileage on SQL Server wouldn't hurt. There's still a bit of a skill shortage, as pretty much everbody and their dog are using it these days.

@SimonRigharts Oracle's a bit more macho and hairy-chested than SQL Server, but it's actually quite a good product.

I think oracle is considered to have a higher learning curve

people just seem scared of it

They don't ship as much tooling as you get with SQL Server, so you really have to know your data dictionary with Oracle.

It's harder to get away without knowing the product, although the end result of incompetent SQL Server administration is really no better than incompetent Oracle administration.

Really, Oracle is a bit like Unix - you need to know your command line tools - but I don't think it's beyond the wit of man. Read the concepts guide off Oracle's web site. It will explain the terminology.

Indeed. Though it's incompetent dev that's usually the downfall :)

I did a post on dba.se the other day on the subject of 'Oracle 101 for SQL Server DBAs'.

I guess a good start is to look into the Oracle system data dictionary and find out how to get session and database metadata out of it.

... or just quietly step back anytime someone mentions Oracle, which is my current approach

Hehe

Then read up on how it manages memory.

@SimonRigharts Oracle isn't rocket science, I don't think there's anything to be afraid of.

You can download it of OTN and play with it.

I kind of got dropped in at the deep end with it, although I worked for an outfit that had Oracle DBAs on the books, so I could ask dumb questions,

Going to be on-call for two weeks starting next Monday. Guess I should clarify the response times required

It's going to suck intensely if I can't play sport because I have to return the call within two minutes or whatever

(On the bright side, the additional money works out to be like $200 per week after tax)

@SimonRigharts Oh, dear.

Daily contracting rate for a DBA is about 3-4x that.

Come to the dark side ...

That 200/week (after tax, so like $350 before) is the on-call allowance

on top of my salary

or are you saying contracted DBAs that are also on-call get 600-800/week as an on-call allowance?

I know. A contracting DBA might realistically expect to pull about £400/day in London.

I wouldn't get out of bed for less than £450/day contracting

Right, but cost of living and taxes are higher over there right

Seems like we're talking at cross purposes - you guys are talking about a daily contract rate, I'm talking about a weekly on-call allowance

@Phil I know, but 200 pesos isn't much money, even in NZ.

It's better than not being paid for it but still being expected to be on-call :v

Used to hate being on call

@SimonRigharts It is.

Plus I'd always get called by other people when it wasn't my week, as they were crap at troubleshooting :/

@Phil I did work as a dev DBA at one point, but I don't chase DBA work for precisely that reason.

I really don't like reactive workloads.

Occasionally I get calls for agents trying to recruit DBAs.

@Phil I'm lucky in that I'll be doing the calling rather than the one being called ;)

@Phil - I think the market's a bit softer these days, but around 2007-2008 you could pull £500+ just for being able to spell SQL.

Morning chaps

Evening

The contract DBA work that gets posted on job sites for 150/day has to be backup/restore monkeying!

There are a few taking the piss, but it looks like 'Oracle DBA' can still pull a decent contract rate. There are qutie a few in the 400-550 range.

That was the first page of results off Jobserve.

Not as soft as I thought.

Yup

@SimonRigharts - there you go. Get some Oracle DBA-ing under your belt.

Mhm. I'll throw that on the to-do list

Same thing for 'SQL Server DBA'

Same thing for 'Sybase DBA'

@SimonRigharts - Who needs Oracle?

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Are you or anyone you've worked with a pro at data visualization? Dashboard UI design, impress the directors type stuff?

I've done dashboards before.

I've even faked dashboards with SSRS.

Visualisation specialist. I know somebody who's done a fair bit of that, but he's in Zimbabwe at the moment.

Faking a dashboard with SSRS? Impressive

He's there for family reasons - his father-in-law is Morgan Tsvangarai's chief of staff.

interesting character! :)

@SimonRigharts Well, you can put multiple graphs on a report, and then set up links with actions to drill down the same report on a fixed path. It was dashboard-like enough.

@MarkStoreySmith He has the most interesting family of anyone I know.

His grandfather was king of the Acan (a spin-off tribe of the Ashanti).

Has 8 wives, about a dozen concubines and 52 children.

His father was the first black CEO of a publically listed company in Ghana.

he does, or his grandfather does?

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells That's got headache written all over it! :)

His father-in-law was the first black CEO of a publically listed company in Zimbabwe.

@SimonRigharts His grandfather does.

@MarkStoreySmith Oh, yes. His father had 4 wives and 17 children, and died of an aneurysm on a business trip to Germany.

@SimonRigharts His grandfather did - he's dead now. One of his uncles is the king now.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells An aneurysm has an inevitability about it with those numbers yapping in your ears!

Sort of a king - the throne is sort of subordinate to the Ashanti throne, so a duke might be a better analogy.

Anyway he has about 50 million cousins and endless, endless family dramas.

Makes me glad that both of my parents were only children.

Fun fact - the Ashanti weren't really into lumbar support, so the Ashanti throne is actually called 'The Golden Stool'.

Nice. I take it no-one pointed out to them that 'stool' is another word for shit in English?

Anyway, my friend is quite a good business analyst, and used to head up the B.I. team at a place that I worked for. He's quite warm and fluffy, so he's good at client-facing work.

@SimonRigharts Probably not, although the current king of the Ashanti used to work as a social worker in Brixton.

I've been doing pretty graphs in APEX for the last few days. Very easy to do. I'd never used APEX in anger before this. It's a fantastic platform

I think the term is really just a translation. I don't speak Kwi, so I have no idea what its actual name is.

@MarkStoreySmith Anyway, what do you want to build?

If you're feeling keen, you might be able to knock up a prototype with PerformancePoint.

Microstrategy also make an 'express' version that you can download from their site, and that comes with a dashboarding tool. However you would have to build a native metadata layer for your underlying database.

I think PP2007 can still be downloaded from Microsoft, and will install on WSS2.0 or 3.0.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells PerformancePoint was what I had in mind. It would be a fake/POC dashboard to replace a green screen dashboard a client has currently.

If I don't throw a POC in front of them, some monkey is going to write a native iPad app for it! Yes, indeedy.

I'm going to try get my hands on a sample data set tomorrow, see if theres anything to work with.

You can borrow one of my HPs to build it on if you want. Actually my friend has one that has performancepoint installed on it.

Put Win 2k3R2 on it, and upgrade to WSS3.0

You might need SQL Server 2005; I think PP2007 had some issue with SQL Server 2008, although I can't remember what it was.

If you've got a full MSDN subscription, SP2010 comes with PP.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Very kind. It would be a fake it job initially, just to demonstrate what can be done, so kit shouldn't be a problem.

Would you be interested as an evening or twos work on the side if it came up?

@MarkStoreySmith Within the bounds of possibility.

Note that I'm in Bournemouth during the week and my kit's at home in Sunningdale.

So I probably can't do it on a 'drop everything we need it now' basis.

Also, as for ipads, there is a dashboard tool for that platform, although I can't remember the name. I'm not sure how it connects back home.

It's quite good for doing demos apparently - you can do whizzy multitouch stuff that still impresses the natives (obligatory HH quote about digital watches). I have no idea whether it's any good as a B.I. tool, though.

Oracle have some native iPad BI apps

@Phil I think this one sat on top of an SSAS cube, but I wouldn't be surprised to find everybody and their dog doing ipad dashboard apps now.

@MarkStoreySmith - I think PP comes with some examples based on the Adventureworks database, so you might be able to do something based on those.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells No worries, it wouldn't be an emergency job

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Perfect, I'll try take a look at that tonight

The platform I used for PP was:

SQL Server 2005

Windows 2K3 server R2 64 bit

Upgrade Windows Sharepoint Services to 3.0 - I think PP needs this.

Much patching and coffee.

Install SQL Server components

Install PP - it may also have some prerequisites.

There's a 32 bit/64bit problem with it. You need to register the 64 bit .net 2.0 runtime with IIS if I remember rightly.

Good man. I'll do some monkeying in a VM later.

Google the .net thing - I can't remember the details, but PP will throw its toys out of the cot if it isn't set up right. It took a bit of google-fu and frigging to get it working.

Unfortunately the aforementioned HP with PP installed is in Zimbabwe now.

I believe I'm about to have a disagreement (again) regarding antivirus scanning of mdf ldf and ndf files!

@MarkStoreySmith real time? or scheduled "system scan"?

Likely both

support.microsoft.com/kb/2454053

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa175396%28SQL.80%29.aspx

Before I click that, I can almost guarentee its the same KB I've got open now :)

well documented feck ups with AV on a SQL box

ooo, nope thats a new one, ta!

so what one do you have please? for my arsenal... :-)

I was going to just send support.microsoft.com/kb/309422/en-us but I'll add the filter driver one in for effect!

Why oh why do people put virus scanners on DB boxes?

a) They shouldn't be internet facing

b) People shouldn't log directly into a desktop on them

c) They should be firewalled off

@MarkStoreySmith Need a bad cop?

Well, that had me baffled for 10 minutes. A column had been imported incorrectly and a straight "=" query on a given value wasn't bringing anything back

A quick select DUMP(foo) made me realise the data had invisible chr(13)s appended

Most failsome

@MarkStoreySmith

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc664531(office.12).aspx

aspnet_regiis.exe to register the 64 bit .net runtime.

Pretty sure that's the right version.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Cheers

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells This is Rackspace I'm having to point this out too!

In fairness, its possibly a windows monkey rather than data ape that's picked up the ticket, so it may well be done and he just can't get visibility.

do we have a canonical answer in meta on why things belong on DBA?

if not can we make one?

@JNK I guess the FAQ covers it but an expanded explanation to point people at probably has value

ok we will see if we can ping @jcolebrand to weigh in

or @jackdouglas

maybe it's like Beetlejuice

@jcolebrand...

@jcolebrand....2

@jcolebrand....3

@JNK Hello :-)

There is one in the works

IT WORKED

there is?

will the community be contributing wiki-style?

OK

I was thinking we should include some of the reasoning in there

since that seems to come up a lot

it's intended to be a sort of index of meta but will have a section dedicated to what's on topic here and the overlap with SO

@JNK are you concerned about the shouting? :-)

i think a lot of effort is wasted

explaining the same things over and over again

my philosophy with both programming and documentation is if you have to do something more than once, you need to write it out

@JNK I'm not so sure that technique translates well to human beings ;-)

it does

instead of having everyone keep writing in comments or answers bits and pieces of the reasoning

you have everyone collaborate once on a badass answer

and point to it

isn't this the point of canonical answers in the first place?

You are assuming someone who is upset wants to read stuff - I think they usually want to say stuff. If we spare them each a few minutes (with discretion of course - we care about users on SO with a credible record of their abilities on Qs that are now on-topic here) then each time we win one over, we get an SE experienced expert joining the site and making it a better place for everyone else.

.

but it is also true that it is helpful to have a nice place to direct people to read once they have calmed down :-)

yep, I'm not saying shut them down immediately

i'm saying make an answer we can point them to that contains all the info

then when they complain, we listen, explain a few salient points, then direct them to the CA

yup. lets not skip the 'listen' bit - especially for guys like this commenter

see how gbn handles him with respect - knowing him from SO I assume

yep I know

and it would be nice to point him to a CA as well

very true :-)

Also you were from SO too weren't you? Were you against database Qs coming here before you joined up?

yeah im from SO

I have like 20k from only SQL (and a few powershell) questions

and no I think this is a good idea

there are a ton of people scrambling to answer SQL questions who don't know what they are talking about on SE

SQL may be a special case since the language itself is pretty simple

and people feel like they "know" it because it's so ubiquitous

but the majority are clueless, especially when it comes to performance tuning, indexing, and more advanced stuff

I work with a lot of these people ;)

very interesting to hear that perspective

a lot of the complaining is about advanced querying

yep

Im a fan of analogies

and SQL is kind of like driving

almost everyone can drive to the store

a lot fewer can drive an 18-wheeler

even fewer can do stunt driving for movies

but with SQL everyone thinks they are a stunt driver because the barriers to entry are so low. The basic syntax is so simple! It's basically a sentence! I can do that!

yes, I agree, it lulls people into a false sense of security. you really need to know your RDBMS well to query 'well' though - many of those dabblers will never be able to understand why one query is faster than another (TBH I often don't)

yep, or the huge differences between RDBMS

and why it matters if it's MySQL or SS or Oracle or PostGre

I've often wanted to make a database rosetta stone to go with the unix one bhami.com/rosetta.html

@JNK I think what makes SQL unique is that you're using a declarative language to control a system that is dependent on mechanical components - disk platters revolving and heads moving.

Getting it right makes a huge difference to the performance of the process, but you have no direct control over the actual disk accesses. It's really the mother of all abstraction inversions.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells - agreed

it makes it almost a combination of science and art

trying to get a computer system to do what you want through suggestion

@JackDouglas - We've rented a garage and the F/C stuff is at Sunningdale now.

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells You storing it or running it ;-)

Storing.

The moving company got booted out of their premises - I think the freeholder wants to develop the site.

They couldn't get storage space that wasn't a whole lot more expensive, so they've gone out of storage now.

We ended up renting one of the garages in front of the block of flats at Sunningdale and putting a door on it. The floor is fairly dry and we've stacked everything on palettes so it won't get damp.

Not very high-tech.

@JNK - this meta question has some discussion about FAQ wording if you want to venture your $0.02 worth.

@JackDouglas - there's probably space for a rack in the garage. We've got FTTH in Sunningdale now, so one could put up a box with ssh access and plenty of bandwidth.

The arrays would keep the shed warm. :D

Are any of the SSD users here?

@BenBrocka laptop and home lab servers, yup. Can't persuade clients to use them yet though :)

I've noticed my whole PC seems to lock up on large writes to my SSD. IS that common or what?

Interesting late answer to a Q from @AlexKuznetsov dba.stackexchange.com/a/12389/2374

Accidentally saved a recording directly to the SSD and it locked up the PC for about 20 minutes (which is really damn weird because it wasn't a large file). Never had an HDD do that where the actual applications were locked up because of I/O

CPU use was nil

@BenBrocka Not that I've noticed. Is it old or a drive without TRIM support?

@BenBrocka One wonders if it might be on its last legs

I could swear it has TRIM and I'm using Win 7 which has support for that, been 3 years since I checked the specs on it

Nah, it's done this pretty much it's whole life time, nothing new, just wondering what the heck the deal is

Read times are blazing but it seems to have relatively slow write speed, copying large amounts of small files for example is pretty slow

Being a 3/4 year old SSD though it's pretty behind the times

If your so inclined, log everything into perfmon and run PAL over the data to see if anything sticks out

Might try, don't have much experience in profiling I/O stuff

I thought I checked perfmon with it a looong time ago and didn't notice anything though

@MarkStoreySmith Never dealt with Rackspace myself, but someone I knew did. He described them as 'a bit dotcom-ish'. I wouldn't be surprised to find a certain contempt for the niceities of database platform architecture in the culture there.

Maybe we can invent the .com hosting provider drinking game:

- take a sip if they make a noddy cock-up with the platform, such as installing a virus scanner on the DB server.

- take a sip if they suggest you switch to MySQL on Linux

- finish your glass if they suggest you move to a NoSQL platform such as MongoDB.

- take a sip if any of these words is mentioned: scalability, uptime, sharding or elastic.