Search Results

Search found 12423 results on 497 pages for 'get proactive customer adoption team'.

Page 143/497 | < Previous Page | 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150  | Next Page >

• JavaOne 2011: Content review process and Tips for submissions

  - by arungupta

  The Technical Sessions, Birds of Feather, Panels, and Hands-on labs (basically all the content delivered at JavaOne) forms the backbone of the conference. At this year's JavaOne conference you'll have access to the rock star speakers, the ability to engage with luminaries in the hallways, and have beer (or 2) with community peers in designated areas. Even though the conference is Oct 2-6, 2011, and will be bigger and better than last year's conference, the Call for Paper submission and review/selection evaluation started much earlier.In previous years, I've participated in the review process and this year I was honored to serve as co-lead for the "Enterprise Service Architecture and Cloud" track with Ludovic Champenois. We had a stellar review team with an equal mix of Oracle and external community reviewers. The review process is very overwhelming with the reviewers going through multiple voting iterations on each submission in order to ensure that the selected content is the BEST of the submitted lot. Our ultimate goal was to ensure that the content best represented the track, and most importantly would draw interest and excitement from attendees. As always, the number and quality of submissions were just superb, making for a truly challenging (and rewarding) experience for the reviewers. As co-lead I tried to ensure that I applied a fair and balanced process in the evaluation of content in my track. . Here are some key steps followed by all track leads: Vote on sessions - Each reviewer is required to vote on the sessions on a scale of 1-5 - and also provide a justifying comment. Create buckets - Divide the submissions into different buckets to ensure a fair representation of different topics within a track. This ensures that if a particular bucket got higher votes then the track is not exclusively skewed towards it. Top 7 - The review committee provides a list of the top 7 talks that can be used in the promotional material by the JavaOne team. Generally these talks are easy to identify and a consensus is reached upon them fairly quickly. First cut - Each track is allocated a total number of sessions (including panels), BoFs, and Hands-on labs that can be approved. The track leads then start creating the first cut of the approvals using the casted votes coupled with their prior experience in the subject matter. In our case, Ludo and I have been attending/speaking at JavaOne (and other popular Java-focused conferences) for double digit years. The Grind - The first cut is then refined and refined and refined using multiple selection criteria such as sorting on the bucket, speaker quality, topic popularity, cumulative vote total, and individual vote scale. The sessions that don't make the cut are reviewed again as well to ensure if they need to replace one of the selected one as a potential alternate. I would like to thank the entire Java community for all the submissions and many thanks to the reviewers who spent countless hours reading each abstract, voting on them, and helping us refine the list. I think approximately 3-4 hours cumulative were spent on each submission to reach an evaluation, specifically the border line cases. We gave our recommendations to the JavaOne Program Committee Chairperson (Sharat Chander) and accept/decline notifications should show up in submitter inboxes in the next few weeks. Here are some points to keep in mind when submitting a session to JavaOne next time: JavaOne is a technology-focused conference so any product, marketing or seemingly marketish talk are put at the bottom of the list.Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are better options for submitting product specific talks. Make your title catchy. Remember the attendees are more likely to read the abstract if they like the title. We try our best to recategorize the talk to a different track if it needs to but please ensure that you are filing in the right track to have all the right eyeballs looking at it. Also, it does not hurt marking an alternate track if your talk meets the criteria. Make sure to coordinate within your team before the submission - multiple sessions from the same team or company does not ensure that the best speaker is picked. In such case we rely upon your "google presence" and/or review committee's prior knowledge of the speaker. The reviewers may not know you or your product at all and you get 750 characters to pitch your idea. Make sure to use all of them, to the last 750th character. Make sure to read your abstract multiple times to ensure that you are giving all the relevant information ? Think through your presentation and see if you are leaving out any important aspects.Also look if the abstract has any redundant information that will not required by the reviewers. There are additional sections that allow you to share information about the speaker and the presentation summary. Use them to blow the horn about yourself and any other relevant details. Please don't say "call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to find out the details" :-) The review committee enjoyed reviewing the submissions and we certainly hope you'll have a great time attending them. Happy JavaOne!

  Read the article

• From DBA to Data Analyst

  - by Denise McInerney

  Cross posted from the PASS Blog There is a lot changing in the data professional’s world these days. More data is being produced and stored. More enterprises are trying to use that data to improve their products and services and understand their customers better. More data platforms and tools seem to be crowding the market. For a traditional DBA this can be a confusing and perhaps unsettling time. It’s also a time that offers great opportunity for career growth. I speak from personal experience. We sometimes refer to the “accidental DBA”, the person who finds herself suddenly responsible for managing the database because she has some other technical skills. While it was not accidental, six months ago I was unexpectedly offered a chance to transition out of my DBA role and become a data analyst. I have since come to view this offer as a gift, though at the time I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Throughout my DBA career I’ve gotten support from my PASS friends and colleagues and they were the first ones I turned to for counsel about this new situation. Everyone was encouraging and I received two pieces of valuable advice: first, leverage what I already know about data and second, work to understand the business’ needs. Bringing the power of data to bear to solve business problems is really the heart of the job. The challenge is figuring out how to do that. PASS had been the source of much of my technical training as a DBA, so I naturally started there to begin my Business Intelligence education. Once again the Virtual Chapter webinars, local chapter meetings and SQL Saturdays have been invaluable. I work in a large company where we are fortunate to have some very talented data scientists and analysts. These colleagues have been generous with their time and advice. I also took a statistics class through Coursera where I got a refresher in statistics and an introduction to the R programming language. And that’s not the end of the free resources available to someone wanting to acquire new skills. There are many knowledgeable Business Intelligence and Analytics professionals who teach through their blogs. Every day I can learn something new from one of these experts. Sometimes we plan our next career move and sometimes it just happens. Either way a database professional who follows industry developments and acquires new skills will be better prepared when change comes. Take the opportunity to learn something about the changing data landscape and attend a Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or Big Data Virtual Chapter meeting. And if you are moving into this new world of data consider attending the PASS Business Analytics Conference in April where you can meet and learn from those who are already on that road. It’s been said that “the only thing constant is change.” That’s never been more true for the data professional than it is today. But if you are someone who loves data and grasps its potential you are in the right place at the right time.

  Read the article

• AdventureWorks 2014 Sample Databases Are Now Available

  - by aspiringgeek

    Where in the World is AdventureWorks? Recently, SQL Community feedback from twitter prompted me to look in vain for SQL Server 2014 versions of the AdventureWorks sample databases we’ve all grown to know & love. I searched Codeplex, then used the bing & even the google in an effort to locate them, yet all I could find were samples on different sites highlighting specific technologies, an incomplete collection inconsistent with the experience we users had learned to expect.  I began pinging internally & learned that an update to AdventureWorks wasn’t even on the road map.  Fortunately, SQL Marketing manager Luis Daniel Soto Maldonado (t) lent a sympathetic ear & got the update ball rolling; his direct report Darmodi Komo recently announced the release of the shiny new sample databases for OLTP, DW, Tabular, and Multidimensional models to supplement the extant In-Memory OLTP sample DB.  What Success Looks Like In my correspondence with the team, here’s how I defined success: 1. Sample AdventureWorks DBs hosted on Codeplex showcasing SQL Server 2014’s latest-&-greatest features, including:  In-Memory OLTP (aka Hekaton) Clustered Columnstore Online Operations Resource Governor IO 2. Where it makes sense to do so, consolidate the DBs (e.g., showcasing Columnstore likely involves a separate DW DB) 3. Documentation to support experimenting with these features As Microsoft Senior SDE Bonnie Feinberg (b) stated, “I think it would be great to see an AdventureWorks for SQL 2014.  It would be super helpful for third-party book authors and trainers.  It also provides a common way to share examples in blog posts and forum discussions, for example.”  Exactly.  We’ve established a rich & robust tradition of sample databases on Codeplex.  This is what our community & our customers expect.  The prompt response achieves what we all aim to do, i.e., manifests the Service Design Engineering mantra of “delighting the customer”.  Kudos to Luis’s team in SQL Server Marketing & Kevin Liu’s team in SQL Server Engineering for doing so. Download AdventureWorks 2014 Download your copies of SQL Server 2014 AdventureWorks sample databases here.

  Read the article

• The Changing Face of PASS

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

  Read the article

• Back to Basics: Structuring a Web Page with CSS and ASP.NET

  Nick Harrison explains why such habits as using nested HTML Tables to position content in the right place on the browser page is bad practice and, nowadays, avoidable. This is just one 'Markup smell' that he discusses on the way to demonstrating the benefits of CSS Style-sheets and ASP.NET Master Pages. span.fullpost {display:none;}

  Read the article

• How to Hibernate from .NET Apps and How to enable Hibernate in Windows XP

  The usage of Computer desktop or laptop is increased all around the world phenomenally. This link gives you the picture on how power consumption is for various devices we use daily. to reduce the power consumption Hibernate is one of the best way provided by default in Windows Vista or Windows 7. Hibernate feature enables you to close the machine without closing your applications, that means the applications will be restored as they were once we restart the machine. Hibernate feature is not enabled in Windows XP by default. I’ve seen many people that they run (do not switch off) the machines months and months as they do not want to close the windows or applications running in Windows XP. below are the steps to enable Hibernate in Windows XP. Right click on Desktop. Click on properties. Go to screen save tab. Click on power button Select Hibernate tab Check the checkbox “Enabled Hibernate” Apply the settings. Now when you try to shutdown, “Shut down windows” dialog shows “Hibernate” options. Now you can safely close the machine without closing your applications or windows as they will be restored once you on the machine. </SPAN? Some time you might want to provide this future programmatically for the applications you develop for windows. Generally you might want to provide this option in windows applications where process needs huge time. Download managers are the one of the best example. below is the code to do a Hibernate from the .NET code. using System.Windows.Forms;namespace CodeKicks.WinApp.Machine{ public static class MyMachineHelper { public static void DoHibernate() { //Application.SetSuspendState(PowerState.Suspend, true, false); Application.SetSuspendState(PowerState.Hibernate, true, false); } }} span.fullpost {display:none;}

  Read the article

• Is it possible to have multiple sets of key columns in a table?

  - by Peter Larsson

  Filtered indexes is one of my new favorite things with SQL Server 2008. I am currently working on designing a new datawarehouse. There are two restrictions doing this It has to be fed from the old legacy system with both historical data and new data It has to be fed from the new business system with new data When we incorporate the new business system, we are going to do that for one market only. It means the old legacy business system still will produce new data for other markets (together with historical data for all markets) and the new business system produce new data to that one market only. Sounds interesting this far? To accomplish this I did a thorough research about the business requirements about the business intelligence needs. Then I went on to design the sucker. How does this relate to filtered indexes you ask? I'll give one example, the Stock transaction table. Well, the key columns for the old legacy system are different from the key columns from the new business system. The old legacy system has a key of 5 columns Movement date Movement time Product code Order number Sequence number within shipment And to all thing, I found out that the Movement Time column is not really a time. It starts out like a time HH:MM:SS but seconds are added for each delivery within the shipment, so a Movement Time can look like "12:11:68". The sequence number is ordered over the distributors for shipment. As I said, it is a legacy system. The new business system has one key column, the Movement DateTime (accuracy down to 100th of nanosecond). So how to deal with this? On thing would be to have two stock transaction tables, one for legacy system and one for the new business system. But that would lead to a maintenance overhead and using partitioned views for getting data out of the warehouse. Filtered index will be of a great use here. MovementDate DATETIME2(7) MovementTime CHAR(8) NULL ProductCode VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL OrderNumber VARCHAR(30) NULL SequenceNumber INT NULL The sequence number is not even used in the new system, so I created a clustered index for a new IDENTITY column to make a new identity column which can be shared by both systems. Then I created one unique filtered index for old system like this CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Legacy (MovementDate, MovementTime, ProductCode, SequenceNumber) INCLUDE (OrderNumber, Col5, Col6, ... ) WHERE SequenceNumber IS NOT NULL And then I created a new unique filtered index for the new business system like this CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Business (MovementDate) INCLUDE (ProductCode, OrderNumber, Col12, ... ) WHERE SequenceNumber IS NULL This way I can have multiple sets of key columns on same base table which is shared by both systems.

  Read the article

• New release of &quot;OLAP PivotTable Extensions&quot;

  - by Luca Zavarella

  For those who are not familiar with this add-in, the OLAP PivotTable Extensions add features of interest to Excel 2007 or 2010 PivotTables pointing to an OLAP cube in Analysis Services. One of these features I like very much, is to know the MDX query code associated with the pivot used at that time in Excel: You can find all the details here: http://olappivottableextend.codeplex.com/ It was recently released a new version of the add-in (version 0.7.4), which does not introduce any new features, but fixes a significant bug: Release 0.7.4 now properly handles languages but introduces no new features. International users who run a different Windows language than their Excel UI language may be receiving an error message when they double click a cell and perform drillthrough which reads: "XML for Analysis parser: The LocaleIdentifier property is not overwritable and cannot be assigned a new value". This error was caused by OLAP PivotTable Extensions in some situations, but release 0.7.4 fixes this problem. Enjoy!

  Read the article

• PASS: Bylaw Changes

  - by Bill Graziano

  While you’re reading this, a post should be going up on the PASS blog on the plans to change our bylaws.  You should be able to find our old bylaws, our proposed bylaws and a red-lined version of the changes.  We plan to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that point we’ll decide whether to vote on these changes or take other action. The executive summary is that we’re adding a restriction to prevent more than two people from the same company on the Board and eliminating the Board’s Officer Appointment Committee to have Officers directly elected by the Board.  This second change better matches how officer elections have been conducted in the past. The Gritty Details Our scope was to change bylaws to match how PASS actually works and tackle a limited set of issues.  Changing the bylaws is hard.  We’ve been working on these changes since the March board meeting last year.  At that meeting we met and talked through the issues we wanted to address.  In years past the Board has tried to come up with language and then we’ve discussed and negotiated to get to the result.  In March, we gave HQ guidance on what we wanted and asked them to come up with a starting point.  Hannes worked on building us an initial set of changes that we could work our way through.  Discussing changes like this over email is difficult wasn’t very productive.  We do a much better job on this at the in-person Board meetings.  Unfortunately there are only 2 or 3 of those a year. In August we met in Nashville and spent time discussing the changes.  That was also the day after we released the slate for the 2010 election. The discussion around that colored what we talked about in terms of these changes.  We talked very briefly at the Summit and again reviewed and revised the changes at the Board meeting in January.  This is the result of those changes and discussions. We made numerous small changes to clean up language and make wording more clear.  We also made two big changes. Director Employment Restrictions The first is that only two people from the same company can serve on the Board at the same time.  The actual language in section VI.3 reads: A maximum of two (2) Directors who are employed by, or who are joint owners or partners in, the same for-profit venture, company, organization, or other legal entity, may concurrently serve on the PASS Board of Directors at any time. The definition of “employed” is at the sole discretion of the Board. And what a mess this turns out to be in practice.  Our membership is a hodgepodge of interlocking relationships.  Let’s say three Board members get together and start a blog service for SQL Server bloggers.  It’s technically for-profit.  Let’s assume it makes $8 in the first year.  Does that trigger this clause?  (Technically yes.)  We had a horrible time trying to write language that covered everything.  All the sample bylaws that we found were just as vague as this. That led to the third clause in this section.  The first sentence reads: The Board of Directors reserves the right, strictly on a case-by-case basis, to overrule the requirements of Section VI.3 by majority decision for any single Director’s conflict of employment. We needed some way to handle the trivial issues and exercise some judgment.  It seems like a public vote is the best way.  This discloses the relationship and gets each Board member on record on the issue.   In practice I think this clause will rarely be used.  I think this entire section will only be invoked for actual employment issues and not for small side projects.  In either case we have the mechanisms in place to handle it in a public, transparent way. That’s the first and third clauses.  The second clause says that if your situation changes and you fall afoul of this restriction you need to notify the Board.  The clause further states that if this new job means a Board members violates the “two-per-company” rule the Board may request their resignation.  The Board can also  allow the person to continue serving with a majority vote.  I think this will also take some judgment.  Consider a person switching jobs that leads to three people from the same company.  I’m very likely to ask for someone to resign if all three are two weeks into a two year term.  I’m unlikely to ask anyone to resign if one is two weeks away from ending their term.  In either case, the decision will be a public vote that we can be held accountable for. One concern that was raised was whether this would affect someone choosing to accept a job.  I think that’s a choice for them to make.  PASS is clearly stating its intent that only two directors from any one organization should serve at any time.  Once these bylaws are approved, this policy should not come as a surprise to any potential or current Board members considering a job change.  This clause isn’t perfect.  The biggest hole is business relationships that aren’t defined above.  Let’s say that two employees from company “X” serve on the Board.  What happens if I accept a full-time consulting contract with that company?  Let’s assume I’m working directly for one of the two existing Board members.  That doesn’t violate section VI.3.  But I think it’s clearly the kind of relationship we’d like to prevent.  Unfortunately that was even harder to write than what we have now.  I fully expect that in the next revision of the bylaws we’ll address this.  It just didn’t make it into this one. Officer Elections The officer election process received a slightly different rewrite.  Our goal was to codify in the bylaws the actual process we used to elect the officers.  The officers are the President, Executive Vice-President (EVP) and Vice-President of Marketing.  The Immediate Past President (IPP) is also an officer but isn’t elected.  The IPP serves in that role for two years after completing their term as President.  We do that for continuity’s sake.  Some organizations have a President-elect that serves for one or two years.  The group that founded PASS chose to have an IPP. When I started on the Board, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) selected the slate for the at-large directors and the slate for the officers.  There was always one candidate for each officer position.  It wasn’t really an election so much as the NomCom decided who the next person would be for each officer position.  Behind the scenes the Board worked to select the best people for the role. In June 2009 that process was changed to bring it line with what actually happens.  An Officer Appointment Committee was created that was a subset of the Board.  That committee would take time to interview the candidates and present a slate to the Board for approval.  The majority vote of the Board would determine the officers for the next two years.  In practice the Board itself interviewed the candidates and conducted the elections.  That means it was time to change the bylaws again. Section VII.2 and VII.3 spell out the process used to select the officers.  We use the phrase “Officer Appointment” to separate it from the Director election but the end result is that the Board elects the officers.  Section VII.3 starts: Officers shall be appointed bi-annually by a majority of all the voting members of the Board of Directors. Everything else revolves around that sentence.  We use the word appoint but they truly are elected.  There are details in the bylaws for term limits, minimum requirements for President (1 prior term as an officer), tie breakers and filling vacancies. In practice we will have an election for President, then an election for EVP and then an election for VP Marketing.  That means that losing candidates will be able to fall down the ladder and run for the next open position.  Another point to note is that officers aren’t at-large directors.  That means if a current sitting officer loses all three elections they are off the Board.  Having Board member votes public will help with the transparency of this approach. This process has a number of positive and negatives.  The biggest concern I expect to hear is that our members don’t directly choose the officers.  I’m going to try and list all the positives and negatives of this approach. Many non-profits value continuity and are slower to change than a business.  On the plus side this promotes that.  On the negative side this promotes that.  If we change too slowly the members complain that we aren’t responsive.  If we change too quickly we make mistakes and fail at various things.  We’ve been criticized for both of those lately so I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line.  My rough assumption to this point is that we’re going too slow on governance and too quickly on becoming “more than a Summit.”  This approach creates competition in the officer elections.  If you are an at-large director there is no consequence to losing an election.  If you are an officer the only way to stay on the Board is to win an officer election or an at-large election.  If you are an officer and lose an election you can always run for the next office down.  This makes it very easy for multiple people to contest an election. There is value in a person moving through the officer positions up to the Presidency.  Having the Board select the officers promotes this.  The down side is that it takes a LOT of time to get to the Presidency.  We’ve had good people struggle with burnout.  We’ve had lots of discussion around this.  The process as we’ve described it here makes it possible for someone to move quickly through the ranks but doesn’t prevent people from working their way up through each role. We talked long and hard about having the officers elected by the members.  We had a self-imposed deadline to complete these changes prior to elections this summer. The other challenge was that our original goal was to make the bylaws reflect our actual process rather than create a new one.  I believe we accomplished this goal. We ran out of time to consider this option in the detail it needs.  Having member elections for officers needs a number of problems solved.  We would need a way for candidates to fall through the election.  This is what promotes competition.  Without this few people would risk an election and we’ll be back to one candidate per slot.  We need to do this without having multiple elections.  We may be able to copy what other organizations are doing but I was surprised at how little I could find on other organizations.  We also need a way for people that lose an officer election to win an at-large election.  Otherwise we’ll have very little competition for officers. This brings me to an area that I think we as a Board haven’t done a good job.  We haven’t built a strong process to tell you who is doing a good job and who isn’t.  This is a double-edged sword.  I don’t want to highlight Board members that are failing.  That’s not a good way to get people to volunteer and run for the Board.  But I also need a way let the members make an informed choice about who is doing a good job and would make a good officer.  Encouraging Board members to blog, publishing minutes and making votes public helps in that regard but isn’t the final answer.  I don’t know what the final answer is yet.  I do know that the Board members themselves are uniquely positioned to know which other Board members are doing good work.  They know who speaks up in meetings, who works to build consensus, who has good ideas and who works with the members.  What I Could Do Better I’ve learned a lot writing this about how we communicated with our members.  The next time we revise the bylaws I’d do a few things differently.  The biggest change would be to provide better documentation.  The March 2009 minutes provide a very detailed look into what changes we wanted to make to the bylaws.  Looking back, I’m a little surprised at how closely they matched our final changes and covered the various arguments.  If you just read those you’d get 90% of what we eventually changed.  Nearly everything else was just details around implementation.  I’d also consider publishing a scope document defining exactly what we were doing any why.  I think it really helped that we had a limited, defined goal in mind.  I don’t think we did a good job communicating that goal outside the meeting minutes though. That said, I wish I’d blogged more after the August and January meeting.  I think it would have helped more people to know that this change was coming and to be ready for it. Conclusion These changes address two big concerns that the Board had.  First, it prevents a single organization from dominating the Board.  Second, it codifies and clearly spells out how officers are elected.  This is the process that was previously followed but it was somewhat murky.  These changes bring clarity to this and clearly explain the process the Board will follow. We’re going to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that time we’ll decide whether to approve these changes.  I’m also assuming that we’ll start another round of changes in the next year or two.  Are there other issues in the bylaws that we should tackle in the future?

  Read the article

• The Excel Column Name assigment problem

  - by Peter Larsson

  Here is a generic algorithm to get the Excel column name according to it's position. By changing the @Base parameter, you can do this for any sequence according to same style as Excel. DECLARE @Value INT = 8839,         @Base TINYINT = 26   ;WITH cteSequence(Value, Delta, Quote, Base, Chr) AS (     SELECT  CAST(@Value AS INT) AS Value,             CAST(1 AS INT) AS Delta,             CAST(@Base AS INT) AS Quote,             CAST(@Base AS INT) AS Base,             CHAR(65 +(@Value - 1) % @Base) AS Chr       UNION ALL       SELECT  Value AS Value,             Quote AS Delta,             26 * Quote AS Quote,             Base AS Base,             CHAR(65 +((Value - Delta)/ Quote - 1) % Base) AS Chr     FROM    cteSequence     WHERE   CHAR(65 +((Value - Delta)/ Quote - 1) % Base) <> '@' ) SELECT  CAST(Msg AS VARCHAR(MAX)) FROM    (             SELECT        '' + Chr             FROM        cteSequence             ORDER BY    Delta DESC             FOR XML        PATH('')         ) AS x(Msg)

  Read the article

• SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

  Read the article

• SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2. The Awesome Returns.

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Two years ago 59 SQL Server MVP's came together and helped make one of the best book on SQL Server out there. Each chapter was written by an MVP about a part of SQL Server they loved working with. This resulted in superb quality content and excellent ratings from the readers. To top it off all earnings went to a good cause, the War Child International organization. That book was SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. This year 63 SQL Server MVPs, me included, decided it was time do repeat the success of the first book. Let me introduce you the: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2 The topics in 60 chapters are grouped in 5 groups: Architecture, Database Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, Business Intelligence. They represent over 1000 years of daily experience in various areas of SQL Server. I have contributed chapter 28 in Database Development group titled Getting asynchronous with Service Broker. In it I show you the Service Broker template you can use for secure communication between two or more SQL server instances for whatever purpose you may have. If you haven't heard of Service Broker it's a part of the database engine that enables you to do completely async operations in the database itself or between databases and instances. The official release of the book will be next week at PASS where there will be 2 slots where most of the authors will be there signing the books you bring. This is also a great opportunity to meet everyone and ask about any problems you may have. So definitely come say hi. Again we decided on a charity that will be supported by this book. It's called Operation Smile. They provide free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe. You can also help them by donating. You can preorder it on at Manning Publications website or on Amazon. By having it you not only get to learn a lot, improve your skills and have fun but you also help a child have a normal life. If that's not a good cause then I don't know what it is.

  Read the article

• My Reference for Amy Lewis

  - by Denise McInerney

  The 2013 election campaign for the PASS Board of Directors is underway. There are seven qualified candidates running this year. They all offer a wealth of experience volunteering for PASS and the SQL Server community. One of these candidates, Amy Lewis, asked me to write a reference for her to include on her candidate application. I have a lot of experience working with Amy and was pleased to provide this reference: I enthusiastically support Amy Lewis as a candidate for the PASS Board of Directors. I have known and worked with Amy in various PASS' volunteer capacities for years, starting when we were both leaders of SIGs (the precursors to the Virtual Chapters.) In that time I have seen Amy grow as a leader, taking on increasing responsibility and developing her leadership skills in the process. From the Program Committee to the BI Virtual Chapter to her local user group's SQL Saturday Amy has demonstrated a capacity to organize and lead volunteers. A successful leader delivers results, and does so in a way that encourages and empowers the people she is working with; Amy embodies this leadership style. As Director for Virtual Chapters I have most recently worked with Amy in her capacity of DW/BI VC Leader. This VC is one of our largest and most active, and Amy's leadership is a key contribution to that success. I was pleased to see that Amy was also thinking about succession and prepared other volunteers to take over the chapter leadership. Amy has shown an understanding of PASS' strategic goals and has focused her volunteer efforts to help us reach those goals. For the past couple of years we have been trying to expand PASS reach and relevance to SQL communities around the world. The VCs are a key vehicle for this expansion. Amy embraced this idea and organized the VC to engage volunteers in Europe & Australia and provide content that could reach SQL professionals in those regions. A second key strategy for PASS is expanding into the data analytics space. Again Amy rose to the occasion helping to shape the program for our first Business Analytics Conference and leveraging the BI VC to promote the event. By all measures I think Amy is prepared to serve on the Board and contribute in a positive way.

  Read the article

• Moving from local machine to group web development environment

  - by Djave

  I'm a freelancer who currently creates websites locally using something like MAMP to test websites locally before pushing them live with FTP. I'm looking at taking on my first employee, and I would need to be able to work on websites with them simultaneously. Can anyone explain or provide links to some good documentation on team workflow, or some key phrases I should be googling to get started on my set up? Unlike a lot of the stackoverflow community I've never worked in a dev team, large or small as I'm self taught so just need to know where to start. At present I'm thinking I need an extra computer to use as a server, then use Git or some such to version control files on that computer, as well as installing apache on it so it can be viewed by any computers in my current home network. Is this heading down the right track?

  Read the article

• SQL MDS - Updating the Name attribute of member using Staging Table

  - by Randy Aldrich Paulo

  Creating member is usually done by populating the Member Staging Table (tblStgMember), during this process you assign a value for member code and member name. Now if you want to update the member name attribute you can do this by adding record in Attribute staging table (tblStgMemberAttribute) with Attribute Name = "Name". If you try populating the tblStgMember table it will say that the member code already exists.   INSERT INTO mdm.tblStgMemberAttribute (ModelName, EntityName, MemberType_ID, MemberCode, AttributeName, AttributeValue) VALUES (N'Product', N'Product', 1, N'BK-M101', N'Name',N'Updated Member Name Description')

  Read the article

• A story from SQLvdb and Idera

  - by Peter Larsson

  A year or so back, I struggled with some consistency problems so I figured out I needed a way to "mount" backup files as a virtual database. At the time (SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008) my choice fell on Idera's SQLvdb because it felt easy enough to use. I used it a few times and it worked great. Some time later we upgraded to SQL Server 2008R2 and I didn't use SQLvbd for a long time. Until yesterday... I was upset that suddenly SQLvbd took more than 2 hours to mount the backup file (if it succeeded at all). I uninstalled the application and went for lunch. After lunch, I decided to give SQLvbd another chance so I emailed their tech support and got a response within 30 minutes or so. Now, since I am a SQL Server MVP, they gave me another serial number than my first and I downloaded and installed a newer version. But also this version was really slow. I emailed back to them with the additional information they requested and to my surprise I had got an email this morning when I came back to work, where Idera explained some of the issues (bugs) and asked my to test a newer version. I did, and now a fresh mount of a 100GB database (compressed to 20GB with native compression) located on our SAN takes less than 6 minutes! Thank you. //Peter

  Read the article

• Infrastructure and Platform As A Service in Private Cloud at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

  - by Anand Akela

  Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)— the world’s largest laser, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)— need research environment that requires re-creating the physical environment and conditions that exist inside the sun. They have built private cloud infrastructure using Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c to provision such an environment for research.  Tim Frazier of LLNL joined the "Managing Your Private Cloud With Oracle Enterprise Manager' session at Oracle Open World 2012 and discussed how the latest features in Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c enables them to accelerate application provisioning in their private cloud. He also talked about how to increase service delivery agility, improve standardized roll outs, and do proactive management to gain total control of the private cloud environment. He also presented at the "Scene and Be Heard Theater" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and shared a lot of good information about his project and what they are doing in their private cloud environment. Learn more by looking at Tim's presentation .

  Read the article

• Handy SQL Server Function Series: Part 1

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  I've been preparing to give a presentation on SQL Server for a while now, and a topic that was recommended was SQL Server functions.  More specifically, the lesser-known functions (like @@OPTIONS), and maybe some interesting ways to use well-known functions (like using PARSENAME to split IP addresses)  I think this is a veritable goldmine of useful information, and researching for the presentation has confirmed that beyond my initial expectations.I even found a few undocumented/underdocumented functions, so for the first official article in this series I thought I'd start with 2 of each, COLLATIONPROPERTY() and COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID().COLLATIONPROPERTY() provides information about (wait for it) collations, SQL Server's method for handling foreign character sets, sort orders, and case- or accent-sensitivity when sorting character data.  The Books Online entry for  COLLATIONPROPERTY() lists 4 options for code page, locale ID, comparison style and version.  Used in conjunction with fn_helpcollations():SELECT *, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'LCID') LCID, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CodePage') CodePage, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'ComparisonStyle') ComparisonStyle, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'Version') Version FROM fn_helpcollations()You can get some excellent information. (c'mon, be honest, did you even know about fn_helpcollations?)Collations in SQL Server have a unique name and ID, and you'll see one or both in various system tables or views like syscolumns, sys.columns, and INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS.  Unfortunately they only link the ID and name for collations of existing columns, so if you wanted to know the collation ID of Albanian_CI_AI_WS, you'd have to declare a column with that collation and query the system table.While poking around the OBJECT_DEFINITION() of sys.columns I found a reference to COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID(), and the unknown property "Name".  Not surprisingly, this is how sys.columns finds the name of the collation, based on the ID stored in the system tables.  (Check yourself if you don't believe me)Somewhat surprisingly, the "Name" property also works for COLLATIONPROPERTY(), although you'd already know the name at that point.  Some wild guesses and tests revealed that "CollationID" is also a valid property for both functions, so now:SELECT *, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'LCID') LCID, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CodePage') CodePage, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'ComparisonStyle') ComparisonStyle, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'Version') Version, COLLATIONPROPERTY(name,'CollationID') CollationID FROM fn_helpcollations() Will get you the collation ID-name link you…probably didn't know or care about, but if you ever get on Jeopardy! and this question comes up, feel free to send some of your winnings my way. :)And last but not least, COLLATIONPROPERTYFROMID() uses the same properties as COLLATIONPROPERTY(), so you can use either one depending on which value you have available.Keep an eye out for Part 2!

  Read the article

• Dealing with a developer continuously ignoring edge cases in his work

  - by Alex N.

  I have an interesting, fairly common I guess, issue with one of the developers in my team. The guy is a great developer, work fast and productive, produces fairly good quality code and all. Good engineer. But there is a problem with him - very often he fails to address edge cases in his code. We spoke with him about it many times and he is trying but I guess he just doesn't think this way. So what ends up happening is that QA would find plenty issues with his code and return it back for development again and again, ultimately resulting in missed deadlines and everyone in the team unhappy. I don't know what to do with him and how to help him overcome this problem. Perhaps someone with more experience could advise? Thank you!

  Read the article

• New Extended Events Blog on MSDN

  - by Jonathan Kehayias

  The SQL Server Team at Microsoft created a new blog last week on the MSDN site for Extended Events.  If you are interested in learning about Extended Events from the group on the SQL Server Team that built it, you might be interested in adding this blog to your RSS Reader: http://blogs.msdn.com/extended_events/default.aspx There are plenty of references available on Extended Events by clicking the tag in my tag cloud as well. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick...(read more)

  Read the article

• 65536% Autogrowth!

  - by Tara Kizer

  Twice a year, we move our production systems to our disaster recovery site.  Last Saturday night was one of those days.  There are about 50 SQL Server databases to be moved to the DR site, which is done via database mirroring.  It takes only a few seconds to failover, but some databases have a bit more involved work such as setting up replication.  Everything went relatively smooth, but we encountered a weird bug on our most mission critical system.  After everything was successfully failed over to the DR site, it was noticed that mirroring was in a suspended state on one of the databases.  We thought we had run into a SQL Server 2005 bug that we had been encountering and were working with Microsoft on a fix.  Microsoft did fix it in both SQL Server 2005 service pack 3 cumulative update package 13 and service pack 4 cumulative update package 2, however SP3 CU13 and SP4 both recently failed on this system so we were not patched yet with the bug fix.  As the suspended state was causing us issues with replication, we dropped mirroring.  We then noticed we had 10MB of free disk space on the mount point where the principal’s data files are stored.  I knew something went amiss as this system should have at least 150GB free on that mount point.  I immediately checked the main database’s data file and was shocked to see an autgrowth size of 65536%.  The data file autogrew right before mirroring went into the suspended state. 65536%! I didn’t have a lot of time to research if this autgrowth problem was a known SQL Server bug, so I deferred that research to today.  A quick Google search yielded no results but emphasis on “quick”.  I checked our performance system, which was recently restored with a copy of the affected production database, and found the autogrowth setting to be 512MB.  So this autogrowth bug was encountered sometime in the last two weeks.  On February 26th, we had attempted to install SQL 2005 SP4 on production, however it had failed (PSS case open with Microsoft).  I suspected that the SP4 failure was somehow related to this autgrowth bug although that turned out not to be the case. I then tweeted (@TaraKizer) about this problem to see if the SQL Server community (#sqlhelp) had any insights.  It seems several people have either heard of this bug or encountered it.  Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) referred me to this Connect item. Our affected database originated on SQL Server 2000 and was upgraded to SQL Server 2005 in 2007.  Back on SQL Server 2000, we were using the default file growth setting which was a percentage.  Sometime after the 2005 upgrade is when we changed it to 512MB.  Our situation seemed to fit the bug Aaron referred to me, so now the question was whether Microsoft had fixed it yet. I received a reply to my tweet from Amit Banerjee (twitter) that it had been fixed in SP3 CU1 (KB958004).  My affected system is SP3 CU8, so I was initially confused why we had encountered the bug.  Because I don’t read things fully, I had missed that there are additional steps you have to follow after applying the bug fix.  Amit set me straight.  Although you can read this information in the KB article, I will also copy it here in case you are as lazy as me and miss the most important section of it (although if you are as lazy as me, you won’t have read this far down my blog post): This hotfix will prevent only future occurrences of this problem. For example, if you restore a database from SQL Server 2000 to a SQL Server 2005 instance that contains this hotfix, this problem will not occur. However, if you already have a database that is affected by this problem, you must follow these steps to resolve this problem manually: Apply this hotfix. Set the file growth settings for the affected files to percentage settings, and then set the settings back to megabyte settings. Take the database offline, and then bring it back online. Verify that the values of the is_percent_growth column are correct in the sys.database_files system table and in the sys.master_files system table.

  Read the article

• Guest blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics by Will Hutchinson

  - by Takin Babaei

  Overview:  Price Analytics helps companies understand how much of each sale goes into discounts, special terms, and allowances. This visibility lets sales management see the panoply of discounts and start seeing whether each discount drives desired behavior. In Price Analytics monitors parts of the quote-to-order process, tracking quotes, including the whole price waterfall and seeing which result in orders. The “price waterfall” shows all discounts between list price and “pocket price”. Pocket price is the final price the vendor puts in its pocket after all discounts are taken. The value proposition: Based on benchmarks from leading consultancies and companies I have talked to, where they have studied the effects of discounting and started enforcing what many of them call “discount discipline”, they find they can increase the pocket price by 0.8-3%. Yes, in today’s zero or negative inflation environment, one can, through better monitoring of discounts, collect what amounts to a price rise of a few percent. We are not talking about selling more product, merely about collecting a higher pocket price without decreasing quantities sold. Higher prices fall straight to the bottom line. The best reference I have ever found for understanding this phenomenon comes from an article from the September-October 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review called “Managing Price, Gaining Profit” by Michael Marn and Robert Rosiello of McKinsey & Co. They describe the outsized impact price management has on bottom line performance compared to selling more product or cutting variable or fixed costs. Price Analytics manages what Marn and Rosiello call “transaction pricing”, namely the prices of a given transaction, as opposed to what is on the price list or pricing according to the value received. They make the point that if the vendor does not manage the price waterfall, customers will, to the vendor’s detriment. It also discusses its findings that in companies it studied, there was no correlation between discount levels and any indication of customer value. I urge you to read this article. What Price Analytics does: Price analytics looks at quotes the company issues and tracks them until either the quote is accepted or rejected or it expires. There are prebuilt adapters for EBS and Siebel as well as a universal adapter. The target audience includes pricing analysts, product managers, sales managers, and VP’s of sales, marketing, finance, and sales operations. It tracks how effective discounts have been, the win rate on quotes, how well pricing policies have been followed, customer and product profitability, and customer performance against commitments. It has the concept of price waterfall, the deal lifecycle, and price segmentation built into the product. These help product and sales managers understand their pricing and its effectiveness on driving revenue and profit. They also help understand how terms are adhered to during negotiations. They also help people understand what segments exist and how well they are adhered to. To help your company increase its profits and revenues, I urge you to look at this product. If you have questions, please contact me. Will HutchinsonMaster Principal Sales Consultant – Analytics, Oracle Corp. Will Hutchinson has worked in the business intelligence and data warehousing for over 25 years. He started building data warehouses in 1986 at Metaphor, advancing to running Metaphor UK’s sales consulting area. He also worked in A.T. Kearney’s business intelligence practice for over four years, running projects and providing training to new consultants in the IT practice. He also worked at Informatica and then Siebel, before coming to Oracle with the Siebel acquisition. He became Master Principal Sales Consultant in 2009. He has worked on developing ROI and TCO models for business intelligence for over ten years. Mr. Hutchinson has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago.

  Read the article

• Speaking in St. Louis on June 14th

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m going back to speak in St. Louis next month.  I didn’t make it last year and I’m looking forward to it.  You can find additional details on the St. Louis SQL Server user group web site.  The meeting will be held at the Microsoft office and I’ll be speaking at 1PM. I’ll be speaking on the procedure cache.  As people get better and better tuning queries this is the next major piece to understand.  We’ll talk about how and when query plans are reused.  The most common issue I see around odd query plans are stored procedures that use one query plan but the queries run completely different when you extract the SQL and hard code the parameters.  That’s just one of the common issues that I’ll address. There will be a second speaker after I’m done, then a short vendor presentation and a drawing for a netbook.

  Read the article

• Max Degree of Parallelism Server-Side Setting

  - by Tara Kizer

  Recently I opened a case with Microsoft PSS to help us through a severe performance problem on a new system.  As part of that case, the PSS engineer checked our “max degree of parallelism” server-side setting.  It is our standard to use 4 on our production systems that have 16 CPUs (2 sockets, quad-core, hyper-threaded).  The PSS engineer had me run the below query to get Microsoft’s recommended value of “max degree of parallelism” server-side setting for our 16-CPU system: select case when cpu_count / hyperthread_ratio > 8 then 8 else cpu_count / hyperthread_ratio end as optimal_maxdop_setting from sys.dm_os_sys_info; The query returned 2.  I made the change using sp_configure, and it did not resolve our issue.  We have decided to leave it in place for now.   Do you agree with this query?  What are your thoughts on this? If you decide to change your setting to reflect the output of this query, please test it first to ensure there are no negative side effects.

  Read the article

• How to elevate engineering culture at large corporations?

  - by davidk01

  One thing I have realized working at a large corporation is that it doesn't matter how smart you are because if everyone else doesn't see the value in what you are doing then you are not going to get very far. It's much harder to convince 1000 people that a certain part of the software stack should be in groovy than it is to convince 10 people of the same thing. I'm curious how people go about elevating the engineering culture at large corporations because I've been running into walls left and right and I would like to be more proactive about how I go about it. I have been advocating tech talks and tech demos along with code reviews as potential solutions. Do people have other suggestions? Note that 1000 people and groovy are just representative examples. I am not married to groovy or any other language and 1000 people is meant to indicate large scale and how to go about teaching a large group of people about best practices and engineering principles in general.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150  | Next Page >