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• Exceptional DBA 2011 Jeff Moden on why you should enter in 2012

  - by RedAndTheCommunity

  My "reign" as the Red Gate Exceptional DBA is almost over and I was asked to say a few words about this wonderful award. Having been one of those folks that shied away from entering the contest during the first 3 years of the award, I thought I'd spend the time encouraging DBAs of all types to enter. Winning this award has some obvious benefits. You win a trip to PASS including money towards your flight, paid hotel stay, and, of course, paid admission. You win a wonderful bundle of software from Red Gate to make your job as a DBA a whole lot easier. You also win some pretty incredible notoriety for your resume. After all, it's not everyone who wins a worldwide contest. To date, there are only 4 of us in the world who have won this award. You could be number 5! For me, all of that pales in comparison to what I found out during the entry process. I'm very confident in my skills, but I'm also humble. It was suggested to me that I enter the contest when it first started. I just couldn't bring myself to nominate myself. When the 2011 nomination period opened up, several people again suggested that I enter, so I swallowed hard and asked several co-workers to have a look at the online nomination form and, if they thought me worthy, to write a nomination for me. I won't bore you with the details, but what they wrote about me was one of the most incredible rewards that I could ever have hoped to receive. I had no idea of the impact that I'd made on my co-workers. Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top. "Even if I hadn't made it to the top 5 for the award, I had already won something very near and dear that no one can ever top." There's only one named winner and 4 "runners up" in this competition every year but don't let that discourage you. Enter this competition. Even if you work in the proverbial "Mom'n'Pop" shop, get your boss and the people you work with directly to nominate you. Even if you don't make it to the top 5, you might just find out that you're more of a winner than you think. If you're too proud to ask them, then take the time to nominate yourself instead of shying away like I did for the first 3 years. You work hard as a DBA and, as David Poole once said, if you're the first person that people ask for help rather than one of the last, then you're probably an Exceptional DBA. It's time to stand up and be counted! Win or lose, the entry process can be a huge reward in itself. It was for me. Thank you, Red Gate, for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Thanks for listening folks and for all that you do as DBAs. As 'Red Green' says, "We're all in this together and I'm pullin' for ya". --Jeff Moden Red Gate Exceptional DBA 2011

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• .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4, F# decompilation in .NET Reflector, our crazy shipping schedule, and some p

  - by Bart Read

  Yes, with a list of topics that broad, it can only be another update on what's happening in Red Gate's .NET Developer Tools division....(read more)

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• Inside Red Gate - The Office

  - by Simon Cooper

  The vast majority of Red Gate is on the first and second floors (the second and third floors in US parlance) of an office building in Cambridge Business Park (here we are!). As you can see, the building is split into three sections; the two wings, and the section between them. As well as being organisationally separate, the four divisions are also split up in the office; each division has it's own floor and wing, so everyone in the division is working together in the same area (.NET and DBA on the left, SQL Tools and New Business on the right). The non-divisional parts of the business share wings with the smaller divisions, again keeping each group together. The canteen One of the downsides of divisionalisation is that communication between people in different decisions is greatly reduced. This is where the canteen (aka the SQL Servery) comes in. Occupying most of the central section on the first floor, the canteen provides free cooked lunch every day, and is where everyone in the company gathers for lunch. The idea is to encourage communication between the divisions; having lunch with people in a different division you wouldn't otherwise talk to helps people keep track of what's going on elsewhere in the company. (I'm still amazed at how the canteen staff provide a wide range of superbly cooked food for over 200 people out of a kitchen in which, if you were to swing a cat, it would get severe head injuries.). There's also table tennis and table football tables that anyone can use, provided you can grab them when they're free! Office layout Cubicles are practically unheard of in the UK, and no one, including the CEOs, has separate offices. The entire office is open-plan, as you can see in this youtube video from when we first moved in (although all the empty desks are now full!). Neil & Simon, instead of having dedicated offices, move between the different divisions every few months to keep up to date with what's going on around the company; sitting with a division gives you a much better overall impression of how the division's doing than written status reports from the division heads. There's also the usual plethora of meeting rooms scattered around the place; when we first moved in in 2009 we had a competition to name them all. We've got Afoxalypse A & B, Seagulls A & B, Traffic Jam, Thinking Hats, Camelids A & B, Horses, etc. All the meeting rooms have pictures on the walls corresponding to their theme, which adds a nice bit of individuality to otherwise fairly drab meeting rooms. Generally, any meeting room can be booked by anyone at any time, although some groups have priority in certain rooms (Camelids B is used a lot for UX testing, the Interview Room is used for, well, interviews). And, as you can see from the video, each area has various pictures, post-its, notes, signs, on the walls to try and stop it being a dull office space. Yes, it's still an office, but it's designed to be as interesting and as individual as possible.

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• PASS 13 Dispatches: Memory Optimized = On

  - by Tony Davis

  I'm at the PASS Summit in Charlotte for the Day 1 keynote by Quentin Clarke, Corporate VP of the data platform group at Microsoft. He's talking about how SQL Server 2014 is “pushing boundaries” and first up is SQL Server 2014's In-Memory OLTP technology (former codename “hekaton”) It is a feature that provokes a lot of interest and for good reason as, without any need for application rewrites or hardware updates, it can enable us to ensure that an application can find in memory most or all of the data it needs, and can lead to huge improvements in processing times. A good recent hekaton use cases article talks about applications that need a “Shock Absorber” when either spikes or just a high rate of incoming workload (including data in ETL scenarios) become a primary bottleneck. To get a really deep look at this technology, I would check out David DeWitt's summit keynote tomorrow (it will be live streamed). Other than that, to get started I'd recommend Kalen Delaney's whitepaper. She offers a lot of insight into how it works and how to start to define memory-optimized tables, and natively compiled stored procedures. These memory-optimized tables uses completely optimistic multi-version concurrency control – no waiting on locks! After that, Tom LaRock has compiled a useful set of links to drill deeper, and includes one to Microsoft's AMR tool to help you gauge the tables that might benefit most. Tony.

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• Book Review: The Art of XSD - SQL Server XML schemas

  The 14 chapters of "The Art of XSD”, written by MVP Jacob Sebastian, will take the reader step-by–step all the way from the basics of XML Schema design all the way to advanced topics on SQL Server XML Schema Collections. Reviewer Hima Bindu Vejella gives it an 8/10 rating, and gives us an excellent distilled description of what the book has to offer.

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• Inside Red Gate - Introduction

  - by Simon Cooper

  I work for Red Gate Software, a software company based in Cambridge, UK. In this series of posts, I'll be discussing how we develop software at Red Gate, and what we get up to, all from a dev's perspective. Before I start the series proper, in this post I'll give you a brief background to what I have done and continue to do as part of my job. The initial few posts will be giving an overview of how the development sections of the company work. There is much more to a software company than writing the products, but as I'm a developer my experience is biased towards that, and so that is what this series will concentrate on. My background Red Gate was founded in 1999 by Neil Davidson & Simon Galbraith, who continue to be joint CEOs. I joined in September 2007, and immediately set to work writing a new Check for Updates client and server (CfU), as part of a team of 2. That was finished at the end of 2007. I then joined the SQL Compare team. The first large project I worked on was updating SQL Compare for SQL Server 2008, resulting in SQL Compare 7, followed by a UI redesign in SQL Compare 8. By the end of this project in early 2009 I had become the 'go-to' guy for the SQL Compare Engine (I'll explain what that means in a later post), which is used by most of the other tools in the SQL Tools division in one way or another. After that, we decided to expand into Oracle, and I wrote the prototype for what became the engine of Schema Compare for Oracle (SCO). In the latter half of 2009 a full project was started, resulting in the release of SCO v1 in early 2010. Near the end of 2010 I moved to the .NET division, where I joined the team working on SmartAssembly. That's what I continue to work on today. The posts in this series will cover my experience in software development at Red Gate, within the SQL Tools and .NET divisions. Hopefully, you'll find this series an interesting look at what exactly goes into producing the software at Red Gate.

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• The Legend of the Filtered Index

  - by Johnm

  Once upon a time there was a big and bulky twenty-nine million row table. He tempestuously hoarded data like a maddened shopper amid a clearance sale. Despite his leviathan nature and eager appetite he loved to share his treasures. Multitudes from all around would embark upon an epiphanous journey to sample contents of his mythical purse of knowledge. After a long day of performing countless table scans the table was overcome with fatigue. After a short period of unavailability, he decided that he needed to consider a new way to share his prized possessions in a more efficient manner. Thus, a non-clustered index was born. She dutifully directed the pilgrims that sought the table's data - no longer would those despicable table scans darken the doorsteps of this quaint village. and yet, the table's veracious appetite did not wane. Any bit or byte that wondered near him was consumed with vigor. His columns and rows continued to expand beyond the expectations of even the most liberal estimation. As his rows grew grander they became more difficult to organize and maintain. The once bright and cheerful disposition of the non-clustered index began to dim. The wait time for those who sought the table's treasures began to increase. Some of those who came to nibble upon the banquet of knowledge even timed-out and never realized their aspired enlightenment. After a period of heart-wrenching introspection, the table decided to drop the index and attempt another solution. At the darkest hour of the table's desperation came a grand flash of light. As his eyes regained their vision there stood several creatures who looked very similar to his former, beloved, non-clustered index. They all spoke in unison as they introduced themselves: "Fear not, for we come to organize your data and direct those who seek to partake in it. We are the filtered index." Immediately, the filtered indexes began to scurry about. One took control of the past quarter's data. Another took control of the previous quarter's data. All of the remaining filtered indexes followed suit. As the nearly gluttonous habits of the table scaled forward more filtered indexes appeared. Regardless of the table's size, all of the eagerly awaiting data seekers were delivered data as quickly as a Jimmy John's sandwich. The table was moved to tears. All in the land of data rejoiced and all lived happily ever after, at least until the next data challenge crept from the fearsome cave of the unknown. The End.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #5 of Multiple

  - by Grant Fritchey

  In the Tuning Red Gate series I've shown you how to look at a current load on the system and how to drill down to look at historical analysis of the system. I've also shown how you can see the top queries and other information from the current status of the system. I have one more thing I can show you before we need to start fixing things and showing how that affects the data collected, historical moments in time. For example, back in Post #3 I was looking at some spikes in some of the monitored resources that were taking place a couple of weeks back in time. Once I identify a moment in time that I'm interested in, I can go back to the first page of Monitor, Global Overview, and click on the icon: From this you can select the date and time you're interested in. For example, I saw some serious CPU queues last week: This then rolls back the time for all the information that's available to the Global Overview and the drill down to the server and the SQL Server instance there. This then allows me to look at the Top Queries running at this point, sort them by CPU and identify what was potentially the query that was causing the problem right when I saw the CPU queuing This ability to correlate a moment in time with the information available to you in the Analysis window makes for an excellent tool to investigate your systems going backwards in time. It really makes a huge difference in your knowledge. It's not enough to know that something happened at a particular time. You need to know what it was that was occurring. Remember, the key to tuning your systems is having enough knowledge about them. I'll post more on Tuning Red Gate as soon as I can get some queries rewritten. I'm working on that.

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• C# via Java: Introduction

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, I’ve recently changed jobs. Rather than working in .NET land, I’ve migrated over to Java land. But never fear! I’ll continue to peer under the covers of .NET, but my next series will use my new experience in Java to explore the design decisions made in the development of the C# programming language. After all, the design of C# was based on Java 1.2, and both languages have continued to evolve since then, incorporating modern software engineering concepts and requirements. Exploring the differences and similarities between the two will (hopefully) give us a deeper understanding into why .NET is implemented the way it is, the trade-offs involved, and what choices were made when new features were designed and added to the language and framework. Among others, I’ll be looking at differences in: Primitives Operators Generics Exceptions Accessibility Collections Delegates and inner classes Concurrency In my next post, I’ll start off by looking at the type primitives available in each language, and how Java and C# actually incorporate two different concepts of primitive types in their fundamental language design and use. I’m also thinking of looking at the inner details of Java and the JVM in my blogs, as well as C# and the CLR. If you’ve got any comments or thoughts on this, please let me know.

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• Brad's Sure DBA Checklist

  Sometimes, all a DBA needs, to help with day-to-day work, is a checklist of best-practices and dos and don’ts. It provides a handy reminder. Brad has come up with a new update to his famous checklist

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• High Performance Storage Systems for SQL Server

  Rod Colledge turns his pessimistic mindset to storage systems, and describes the best way to configure the storage systems of SQL Servers for both performance and reliability. Even Rod gets a glint in his eye when he then goes on to describe the dazzling speed of solid-state storage, though he is quick to identify the risks.

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• Spolskism or Twitterism: A Doctor writes...

  - by Phil Factor

  "I never realized I had a problem. I just 'twittered' because it was a social thing to do. All my mates were doing it. It made me feel good to have 'followers'; it bolstered my self-esteem. Of course, you don't think of the long-term effects on your work and on the way you think. There's no denying that it impairs your judgment…" Yes, this story is typical. Hundreds of people are waking up to the long term effects of twittering, and seeking help. Dave, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our reporter… "I started using Twitter at work. Just a few minutes now and then, throughout the day. A lot of my colleagues were doing it and I thought 'Well, that's cool; it must be part of what I should be doing at work'. Soon, I was avidly reading every twitter that came my way, and counting the minutes between my own twitters. I tried to kid myself that it was all about professional development and getting other people to help you with work-related problems, but in truth I had become addicted to the buzz of the social network. The worse thing was that it made me seem busy even when I was really just frittering my time away. Inevitably, I started to get behind with my real work." Experts have identified the syndrome and given it a name: 'Twitterism', sometimes referred to as 'Spolskism', after the person who first drew attention to the pernicious damage to well-being that the practice caused, and who had the courage to take the pledge of rejecting it. According to one expert… "The occasional Twitter does little harm to the participant, and can be an adaptive way of dealing with stress. Unfortunately, it rarely stops there. The addictive qualities of the practice have put a strain on the caring professions who are faced with a flood of people making that first bold step to seeking help". Dave is one of those now seeking help for his addiction… "I had lost touch with reality. Even though I twittered my work colleagues constantly, I found I actually spoke to them less and less. Even when out socializing, I would frequently disengage from the conversation, in order to twitter. I stopped blogging. I stopped responding to emails; the only way to reach me was through the world of Twitter. Unfortunately, my denial about the harm that twittering was doing to me, my friends, and my work-colleagues was so strong that I truly couldn't see that I had a problem." Like other addictions, the help and support of others who are 'taking the cure' is important. There is a common bond between those who have 'been through hell and back' and are once more able to experience the joys of actually conversing and socializing, rather than the false comfort of solitary 'twittering'. Complete abstinence is essential to the cure. Most of those who risk even an occasional twitter face a headlong slide back into 'binge' twittering. Tom, another twitterer who has managed to kick the habit explains… "My twittering addiction now seems more like a bad dream. You get to work, and switch on the PC. You say to yourself, just open up the browser, just for a minute, just to see what people are saying on Twitter. The next thing you know, half the day has gone by. The worst thing is that when you're addicted, you get good at covering up the habit; I spent so much time looking at the screen and typing on the keyboard, people just assumed I was working hard.I know that I must never forget what it was like then, and what it's like now that I've kicked the habit. I now have more time for productive work and a real social life." Like many addictions, Spolskism has its most detrimental effects on family, friends and workmates, rather than the addict. So often nowadays, we hear the sad stories of Twitter-Widows; tales of long lonely evenings spent whilst their partners are engrossed in their twittering into their 'mobiles' or indulging in their solitary spolskistic habits in privacy, under cover of 'having to do work at home'. Workmates suffer too, when the addicts even take their laptops or mobiles into meetings in order to 'twitter' with their fellow obsessives, even stooping to complain to their followers how boring the meeting is. No; The best advice is to leave twittering to the birds. You know it makes sense.

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• .NET Reflector 7.2 Early Access Build 1 Released

  - by Bart Read

  I've just posted up full details of this release on the .NET Reflector blog at http://www.reflector.net/2011/05/life-is-a-journey-not-a-destination-net-reflector-7-2-ea-1-has-been-released/ and, breaking with previous tradition, this includes a fairly extensive changelog. You can download this EA build from the .NET Reflector homepage at http://www.reflector.net/. Enjoy! (And please don't forget to tell us what you think on the forum, http://forums.reflector.net/, using the tags #7.2 and #eap.)...(read more)

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• Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

  - by Fatherjack

  So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via  sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc **  What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me  to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing.   * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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• Music before bells and whistles

  - by Tony Davis

  Why is it that Windows has so much difficulty in finding content on its file system? This is not an insurmountable technical problem; on my laptop, I have a database within which I can instantly find text or names within millions of records, within 300 milliseconds. I have a copy of Google Desktop that can find phrases within emails or documents, almost as quickly. It is an important, though mundane, part of an operating system to be able to find files. The first thing I notice within Windows is that the facility to find files or text within files is called 'search' rather than 'find'. Hmm. This doesn’t bode well. What’s this? It does a brute-force search for file names? Here we are in an age when we can breed mice that glow in the dark, and manufacture computers that fit in our shirt pockets, and we find an operating system that is still entirely innocent of managing and indexing content in hierarchical data. I can actually read the files of my PC into a database, mimic the directory/folder hierarchies and then find files in a flash; but when I do the same with Windows Vista, we are suddenly back in a 1960s time warp. Finding files based on their name is bad enough, but finding files based on the content that they contain is more or less asking for an opportunity to wait 20 minutes in order to see a "file not found" message. Sadly, with Windows 7, Microsoft seems to have fallen into the familiar trap of adding bells and whistles before finishing the song. It's certainly true that Microsoft has added new features and a certain polish to Windows Search 4.0, the latest incarnation. It works more like a web search and offers a new search syntax, called Advanced Query Syntax, which allows you to search on file author, file size, date ranges (e.g. date:=7/4/09still does not work reliably. I've experienced first-hand its stubborn refusal, despite a full index, to acknowledge the existence of a file I know exists, based on a search for a specific term within that file that I know is in there somewhere; a file that Google Desktop search, or old wingrep, finds in seconds. When users hark back to the halcyon days of Windows XP search, you know something is seriously amiss. Shouldn't applications get the functionality right before applying animated menus and Teletubby graphics, or is advancing age making me grumpy? I’d be pleased to hear your views, as always. Cheers, Tony.

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• Exitus Acta Probat: The Post-Processing Module

  - by Phil Factor

  Sometimes, one has to make certain ethical compromises to ensure the success of a corporate IT project. Exitus Acta Probat (literally 'the result validates the deeds' meaning that the ends justify the means)It was a while back, whilst working as a Technical Architect for a well-known international company, that I was given the task of designing the architecture of a rather specialized accounting system. We'd tried an off-the-shelf (OTS) Windows-based solution which crashed with dispiriting regularity, and didn't quite do what the business required. After a great deal of research and planning, we commissioned a Unux-based system that used X-terminals for the desktops of  the participating staff. X terminals are now obsolete, but were then hot stuff; stripped-down Unix workstations that provided client GUIs for networked applications long before the days of AJAX, Flash, Air and DHTML. I've never known a project go so smoothly: I'd been initially rather nervous about going the Unix route, believing then that  Unix programmers were excitable creatures who were prone to  indulge in role-play enactments of elves and wizards at the weekend, but the programmers I met from the company that did the work seemed to be rather donnish, earnest, people who quickly grasped our requirements and were faultlessly professional in their work.After thinking lofty thoughts for a while, there was considerable pummeling of keyboards by our suppliers, and a beautiful robust application was delivered to us ahead of dates.Soon, the department who had commissioned the work received shiny new X Terminals to replace their rather depressing lavatory-beige PCs. I modestly hung around as the application was commissioned and deployed to the department in order to receive the plaudits. They didn't come. Something was very wrong with the project. I couldn't put my finger on the problem, and the users weren't doing any more than desperately and futilely searching the application to find a fault with it.Many times in my life, I've come up against a predicament like this: The roll-out of an application goes wrong and you are hearing nothing that helps you to discern the cause but nit-*** noise. There is a limit to the emotional heat you can pack into a complaint about text being in the wrong font, or an input form being slightly cramped, but they tried their best. The answer is, of course, one that every IT executive should have tattooed prominently where they can read it in emergencies: In Vino Veritas (literally, 'in wine the truth', alcohol loosens the tongue. A roman proverb) It was time to slap the wallet and get the department down the pub with the tab in my name. It was an eye-watering investment, but hedged with an over-confident IT director who relished my discomfort. To cut a long story short, The real reason gushed out with the third round. We had deprived them of their PCs, which had been good for very little from the pure business perspective, but had provided them with many hours of happiness playing computer-based minesweeper and solitaire. There is no more agreeable way of passing away the interminable hours of wage-slavery than minesweeper or solitaire, and the employees had applauded the munificence of their employer who had provided them with the means to play it. I had, unthinkingly, deprived them of it.I held an emergency meeting with our suppliers the following day. I came over big with the notion that it was in their interests to provide a solution. They played it cool, probably knowing that it was my head on the block, not theirs. In the end, they came up with a compromise. they would temporarily descend from their lofty, cerebral stamping grounds  in order to write a server-based Minesweeper and Solitaire game for X Terminals, and install it in a concealed place within the system. We'd have to pay for it, though. I groaned. How could we do that? "Could we call it a 'post-processing module?" suggested their account executive.And so it came to pass. The application was a resounding success. Every now and then, the staff were able to indulge in some 'post-processing', with what turned out to be a very fine implementation of both minesweeper and solitaire. There were several refinements: A single click in a 'boss' button turned the games into what looked just like a financial spreadsheet.  They even threw in a multi-user version of Battleships. The extra payment for the post-processing module went through the change-control process without anyone untoward noticing, and peace once more descended. Only one thing niggles. Those games were good. Do they still survive, somewhere in a Linux library? If so, I'd like to claim a small part in their production.

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• Understanding each other in web development

  - by Pete Hotchkin

  During my career I have been lucky enough to work in several different roles within web development with many extremely talented people, from incredible designers who were passionate about the placement of every pixel right through to server administrators and DBAs who were always measuring the improvements they were making to their queries in the smallest possible unit. The problem I always faced was that more often than not I was stuck in the middle trying to mediate between these different functions and enable each side to understand the other’s point of view. The main areas of contention that there have always been between these functional groups in my experience have been at 2 key points: during the build phase and then when there is a problem post-build. During both of these times it is often easier for someone to pass the buck onto someone else than spend the time to understand the other person’s perspective. Below is a quick look at two upcoming tools that will not only speed up the build phase for each function, but  also help when it comes to the issues faced once a site has been pushed live. In my experience a web project goes through several phases of development. The first of these is design, generally handled as Photoshop files which are then passed onto a front-end developer. This is the first point at which heated discussions can arise. One problem I’ve seen several times is that the designer doesn’t fully understand the platform constraints that need to be considered, and as a result has designed something that does not translate very well or is simply not possible. Working at Red Gate, I am lucky enough to be able to meet some amazing people and this happened just the other day when I was introduced to Neil Kinnish and Pete Nelson, the creators of what I believe could be a great asset in this designer-developer relationship, Mixture. Mixture allows the front end developer to quickly prototype a web page with built-in frameworks such as bootstrap. It’s not an IDE however, it just sits there in the background and monitors the project files in the background so every time you save a file from your favorite IDE, it will compile things like LESS, compact your JavaScript and the automatically refresh your test browser so you can see the changes instantly. I think one of the best parts of this however is a single button that pushes the changed files up to the web so the designer can instantly see how far the developer has got and the problem that he is facing at that time without the need to spend time setting up a remote server. I can see this being a real asset to remote teams where there needs to be a compromise between the designer and the front-end developer, or just to allow the designer to see how the build is progressing and suggest small alterations. Once the design has been built into the front end the designer’s job is generally done and there are no other points of contention between the designer and the other functions involved in building these web projects. As the project moves into the stage of integrating it into the back end and deploying it to the production server other functions start to be pulled in and other issues arise such as the back-end developer understanding the frameworks that they are using such as the routes that are in place in an MVC application or the number of database calls that the ORM layer is actually making. There are many tools out there that can actually help with these problems such as mini profiler that gives you a quick snapshot of what is going on directly in the browser. For a slightly more in-depth look at what is happening and to gain a deeper understanding of an application you may be working on though, you may want to consider Glimpse. Created by Nik and Anthony, it is an application that sits at the bottom of your browser (installed via NuGet) which can show you information about how your application is pieced together and how the information on screen is being delivered as it happens. With a wealth of community-built plugins such as one for nHibernate and linq2SQL (full list of plugins on NuGet). It can be customized directly to your own setup to truly delve into the code to see what is happening, and can help to reduce the number of confusing moments about whether it is your code that is going wrong or whether there is something more sinister happening directly on the server. All the tools that I have mentioned in this post help to do one thing above all, and that is to ease the barrier of understanding between the different functions that are involved in building and maintaining a web application. In my experience it is very easy to say “Well, that’s not my problem”, simply because the two functions involved don’t truly understand the other’s point of view. Software should not only be seen as a way to streamline our own working process or as a debugging tool but also a communication aid to improve the entire lifecycle of a web project. Glimpse is actually the project that I am the designer on and I would love to get your feedback if you do decide to try it out or if you would like to share your own experiences of working on web projects please fill in your details at https://www.surveymk.com/s/joinGlimpse  or add a comment below and I will get in touch with you.

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• Going Metro

  - by Tony Davis

  When it was announced, I confess was somewhat surprised by the striking new "Metro" User Interface for Windows 8, based on Swiss typography, Bauhaus design, tiles, touches and gestures, and the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API on which Metro apps were to be built. It all seemed to have come out of nowhere, like field mushrooms in the night and seemed quite out-of-character for a company like Microsoft, which has hung on determinedly for over twenty years to its quaint Windowing system. Many were initially puzzled by the lack of support for plug-ins in the "Metro" version of IE10, which ships with Win8, and the apparent demise of Silverlight, Microsoft's previous 'radical new framework'. Win8 signals the end of the road for Silverlight apps in the browser, but then its importance here has been waning for some time, anyway, now that HTML5 has usurped its most compelling use case, streaming video. As Shawn Wildermuth and others have noted, if you're doing enterprise, desktop development with Silverlight then nothing much changes immediately, though it seems clear that ultimately Silverlight will die off in favor of a single WPF/XAML framework that supports those technologies that were pioneered on the phones and tablets. There is a mystery here. Is Silverlight dead, or merely repurposed? The more you look at Metro, the more it seems to resemble Silverlight. A lot of the philosophies underpinning Silverlight applications, such as the fundamentally asynchronous nature of the design, have moved wholesale into Metro, along with most the Microsoft Silverlight dev team. As Simon Cooper points out, "Silverlight developers, already used to all the principles of sandboxing and separation, will have a much easier time writing Metro apps than desktop developers". Metro certainly has given the framework formerly known as Silverlight a new purpose. It has enabled Microsoft to bestow on Windows 8 a new "duality", as both a traditional desktop OS supporting 'legacy' Windows applications, and an OS that supports a new breed of application that can share functionality such as search, that understands, and can react to, the full range of gestures and screen-sizes, and has location-awareness. It's clear that Win8 is developed in the knowledge that the 'desktop computer' will soon be a very large, tilted, touch-screen monitor. Windows owes its new-found versatility to the lessons learned from Windows Phone, but it's developed for the big screen, and with full support for familiar .NET desktop apps as well as the new Metro apps. But the old mouse-driven Windows applications will soon look very passé, just as MSDOS character-mode applications did in the nineties. Cheers, Tony.

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• Inside Red Gate - Ricky Leeks

  - by Simon Cooper

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

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• Antenna Aligner Part 10: Updates and emails…

  - by Chris George

  Since my last post back in July, I’ve not done huge amounts of work on my app for two reasons. Firstly, no time! Secondly, I wanted to leave it out in the wild for a while and see what happened. Well, what happened?  over 1,300 users, that’s what’s happened!  This uptake is beyond my wildest expectations, and apart from a couple of issues that I’ll mention in a minute, most of the feedback has been very positive indeed! I’ve had several emails giving me feedback and reporting issues, all of which I have made a point of replying to immediately. This act alone has met with favourable replies! One of the main issues was with iPad. So it turns out that my app is only accurate in portrait mode. Turning it into landscape will offset the direction by +-90degrees! Whoops! I think I’ve fixed this by disabling the orientation switching, but I have not yet had an iPad to test this on. I had several emails from iPod Touch users claiming the app did not work for them. Specifically, the compass view did not work. On investigation, it turns out that the iPod Touch does not have the compass hardware required to do this. Unfortunately there is no way to exclude iPod Touch’s from the list of supported devices, so I’ve just had to make it very clear in the itunes description that the device is not fully supported.  You can still get the list of transmitters, but you then have to use a real compass to get the bearing. But that’s not the end of the world. Several customers have requested the aerial polarisation to be displayed in the app. I was already working on this, and the data was already there, it was just a case of displaying this in the UI. I have a solution now, and this will be in the next release. Of course, with the Digital switchover in full swing across the UK, there have been one set of data updates (in 1.0.3), and another is due shortly. This reflects the transmitters as they switch over the digital fully and their power output increased. So all in all I’m very pleased with the feedback I’ve had, and I’m looking to get the next release out there by early December (allowing for the 2-3 week Apple approval lag!)  

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• A quick look at: sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server places data into cache as it reads it from disk so as to speed up future queries. This dmv lets you see how much data is cached at any given time and knowing how this changes over time can help you ensure your servers run smoothly and are adequately resourced to run your systems. This dmv gives the number of cached pages in the buffer pool along with the database id that they relate to: USE [tempdb] GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) , database_id ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; This gives you results which are quite useful, but if you add a new column with the code: …to convert the pages value to show a MB value then they become more relevant and meaningful. To see how your server reacts to queries, start up SSMS and connect to a test server and database – mine is called AdventureWorks2008. Make sure you start from a know position by running: -- Only run this on a test server otherwise your production server's-- performance may drop off a cliff and your phone will start ringing. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS GO Now we can run a query that would normally turn a DBA’s hair white: USE [AdventureWorks2008] go SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] …and then check our cache situation: A nice low figure – not! Almost 2000 pages of data in cache equating to approximately 15MB. Luckily these tables are quite narrow; if this had been on a table with more columns then this could be even more dramatic. So, let’s make our query more efficient. After resetting the cache with the DROPCLEANBUFFERS and FREEPROCCACHE code above, we’ll only select the columns we want and implement a WHERE predicate to limit the rows to a specific customer. SELECT [sod].[OrderQty] , [sod].[ProductID] , [soh].[OrderDate] , [soh].[CustomerID] FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] WHERE [soh].[CustomerID] = 29722 …and check our effect cache: Now that is more sympathetic to our server and the other systems sharing its resources. I can hear you asking: “What has this got to do with logging, Jonathan?” Well, a smart DBA will keep an eye on this metric on their servers so they know how their hardware is coping and be ready to investigate anomalies so that no ‘disruptive’ code starts to unsettle things. Capturing this information over a period of time can lead you to build a picture of how a database relies on the cache and how it interacts with other databases. This might allow you to decide on appropriate schedules for over night jobs or otherwise balance the work of your server. You could schedule this job to run with a SQL Agent job and store the data in your DBA’s database by creating a table with: IF OBJECT_ID('CachedPages') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE CachedPages CREATE TABLE CachedPages ( cached_pages_count INT , MB INT , Database_Name VARCHAR(256) , CollectedOn DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE() ) …and then filling it with: INSERT INTO [dbo].[CachedPages] ( [cached_pages_count] , [MB] , [Database_Name] ) SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , ( COUNT(*) * 8.0 ) / 1024 AS MB , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY database_id After this has been left logging your system metrics for a while you can easily see how your databases use the cache over time and may see some spikes that warrant your attention. This sort of logging can be applied to all sorts of server statistics so that you can gather information that will give you baseline data on how your servers are performing. This means that when you get a problem you can see what statistics are out of their normal range and target you efforts to resolve the issue more rapidly.

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Step Away From That Computer! You’re Not Qualified to Use It!

  - by Michael Sorens

  Most things tend to come with warnings and careful instructions these days, but sadly not one of the most ubiquitous appliances of all, your computer. If a chainsaw is missing its instructions, you’re well advised not to use it, even though you probably know roughly how it’s supposed to work. I confess, there are days when I feel the same way about computers. Long ago, during the renaissance of the computer age, it was possible to know everything about computers. But today, it is challenging to be fully knowledgeable even in one small area, and most people aren’t as savvy as they like to think. And, if I may borrow from Edwin Abbott Abbott’s classic Flatland, that includes me. And you. Need an example of what I mean? Take a look at almost any recent month’s batch of Windows updates. Just two quick questions for you: Do you need all of those updates? Is it safe to install all of those updates? I do software design and development for a living on Windows and the .NET platform, but I will be quite candid: I often have little clue what the heck some of those updates are going to do or why they are needed. So, if you do not know why they are needed or what they do, how do you know if they are safe? Of course, one can sidestep both questions by accepting Microsoft’s recommended Windows Update setting of “install updates automatically”. That leads you to infer that you need all of them (which is not always the case) and, more significantly, that they are safe. Quite safe. Ah, lest reality intrude upon such a pretty picture! Sadly, there is no such thing as risk-free software installation, and payloads from Windows Update are no exception. Earlier this year, a Windows Secrets Patch Watch article touted this headline: Keep this troublesome kernel update on hold. It discusses KB 2862330, a security update originally published more than 4 months earlier, and yet the article still recommends not installing it! Most people simply do not have the time, resources, or interest, to go about figuring out which updates to install or postpone or skip for safety reasons. Windows Secrets Patch Watch is the best service I have encountered for getting advice, but it is still no panacea and using the service effectively requires a degree of computer literacy that I still think is beyond a good number of people. Which brings us full circle: Step Away From That Computer! You’re Not Qualified to Use It!

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• IT Admin for Thrill Seekers

  - by Tony Davis

  A developer suggested to me recently that the life of the DBA was, surely, a dull one. My first reaction was indignation, but quickly followed by the thought that for many people excitement isn't necessarily the most desirable aspect of their job. It's true that some aspects of the DBA role seem guaranteed to quieten the pulse; in the days of tape backups, time must have slowed to eternity for the person whose job it was to oversee this process, placing tapes into secure containers, ensuring correct labeling, and.sorry, I drifted off there for a second. On the other hand, if you follow the adventures of the likes of Brent Ozar or Tom LaRock, you'd be forgiven for thinking that much of a database guy's time is spent, metaphorically, diving through plate glass windows in tight fitting underwear in order to extract grateful occupants from burning database applications. Alas it isn't true of the majority, but it isn't as dull as some people imagine, and is a helter-skelter ride compared with some other IT roles. Every IT department has people who toil away in shadowy corners doing quiet but mysterious tasks. When you ask them to explain what they do, you almost immediately want them to stop, but you hear enough to appreciate that these tasks are often absolutely vital to the smooth functioning of an IT organization. Compared with them, the DBAs are prima donnas. Here are a few nominations: Installation engineer - install all of the company's laptops and workstations, and software, deal with licensing, shipping and data entry.many organizations, especially those subject to tight regulation, would simply grind to a halt without their efforts. Localization engineer - Not quite software engineering, not quite translation, the job is to rebuild a product in a different language and make sure everything still works. QA Tester - firstly, I should say that the testers at Red Gate seem to me some of the most-fulfilled in the company. I refer here to the QA Tester whose job is more-or-less entirely to read a script, click some buttons and make sure the actual and expected values match. Configuration manager - for example, someone whose main job is to configure build environments so that devs can access their source code; assuredly necessary for the smooth functioning and productivity of the team, and hopefully well-paid. So what other sort of job in IT should one choose if the work of a DBA proves to be too exciting? Or are these roles secretly more exciting than many imagine? I invite you all to put forward your own suggestions. Cheers, Tony.

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• Red Gate does Byte Night 2012

  - by red(at)work

  On the 5th of October 2012, a team of nine plucky Red Gaters braved the howling wind and the driving rain to sleep outside. No tents or mattresses were allowed – all we took for protection were sleeping bags, groundsheets, plastic sacks and Colin’s enormous fishing umbrella (a godsend in umbrella-y disguise). Why would we do such a thing? For Byte Night, an annual tech sector sleepout in support of Action for Children, who tackle the causes as well as the consequences of youth homelessness. Byte Night encourages technology professionals to do for one night a year what thousands of young people have to do every night – sleep rough.  We signed up for Byte Night in the warm, heady midst of the British summer, thinking it couldn’t possibly be all that bad. Even on the night itself – before the rain began to fall, sat in the comfort and warmth of a company canteen, drinking wine and eating chill and preparing to win the pub quiz – we were excited and optimistic about the night that lay ahead of us. All of that changed as soon as we stepped out into one of the worst rainstorms of the year. Brian, the team’s birthday boy, describes it best: Picture the scene: it’s 3 am on a Friday. I’m lying outside, fully clothed in a sleeping bag, wearing a raincoat, trussed up inside a large plastic pocket, on a ground sheet beneath a giant umbrella, wedged so tightly between two of my colleagues that I can’t move my arms. I’m wide awake, staring up at the grey sky beyond the edge of the umbrella; a limp, flickering white glow hints at a moon somewhere behind the drifting clouds. I haven’t slept since we first moved outside at 11 pm. Outside. Did I mention we were outside? I’m hung over. I need the loo. But there is no way on earth that I’m getting out of this sleeping bag. It’s cold. It’s raining. Not just raining, but chucking it down. It’s been doing this non-stop since 10pm. The rain sounds like a hyperactive drummer on the fishing umbrella, and the noise is loud and relentless. Puddles of water are forming all over the groundsheet, and, despite being ensconced inside the plastic pouch, I am wet. The fishing umbrella is protecting me from the worst of the driving rain, but not all of me is under it, and five hours of rain is no match for it. Everything is wet. My left side has become horribly damp. My trainers, which I placed next to my sleeping bag, are now completely soaked through. Mmm. That’ll be fun in the morning. My head is next to Colin’s head on one side, and a multi-pack of McCoy’s cheddar and onion crisps on the other. Don’t ask about the tub of hummus. That’s somewhere down by my ankles, abandoned to the night. Jess, who is lying next to me, rolls over onto her side. A mini waterfall cascades from her rain-pouch onto my face. Bah. I continue to stare into the heavens, willing the dawn to hurry up. Something lands on my face. It’s a mosquito. Great. Midnight, when this still seemed like fun – when we opened some champagne and my colleagues presented me with a caterpillar birthday cake, when everyone was drunk and jolly and full of stoic resolve – feels like a long time ago. Did I mention that today is my birthday? The remains of the caterpillar cake endure the same fate as the hummus, left out in the rain like a metaphor for sadness. It’s getting colder. I can see my breath. Silence has descended on the group, apart from the rustle of plastic. And the rain, obviously. Someone snores, and I envy whoever it is the sweet escape of sleep. I try to wriggle a bit further down inside my sleeping bag, but it doesn’t want to be wriggled into. Only 3 hours till dawn. 180 minutes. I begin to count them off, one at a time.  All nine of us got to go home in the morning, but thousands of children across the UK don’t have that luxury. If you’d like to sponsor the Red Gate Byte Night team, our JustGiving page can be found here.   Chris, before the outside bit actually happened. More photos from Byte Night Cambridge 2012 can be found here.

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