I’m starting to move towards doing more videos and hope to improve my video skills, (and maybe add a dance sequence, ya know, like the hip kids…) Check out this post and please, do add comments, ask questions or just tell me what you think? Have an awesome Wednesday and no, don’t comment on my consistent need to make a strange face at the beginning of a video… 🙂
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My brain has a tendency to wake up way before everything else in the house, so I try to keep it occupied best I’m able without disturbing anyone. This may explain why so many if my plans are well flushed out, as I have a tendency to hash them out in the early morning hours as a way of letting the rest of the household sleep. This morning, on the eve of Christmas, I may have let my brain offer a Database Administrator twist to an old Christmas favorite… Yes, to the tune of “the 12 Days of Christmas “…
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So where did 2017 go?!?!? I really, really would like to know… Needless to say, it’s time to do a year in review already and I actually have time to do it this year! DBAKevlar Blog I wrote over 100 blog posts this year between DBAKevlar, Delphix and partner sites, but I’ve enjoyed sharing with the different communities. There’s significant changes going on in the IT world regarding the future of the Database Administrator. This deafening message came through when pulling together my top blog posts for 2017, with Death of the DBA, Long Live the DBA presenting itself as…
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I felt like playing with something new for the holidays and chose to investigate the Graph Database feature in SQL Server 2017. Graph Database is no simple feature, so this is going to take more than one post, but we’ll start here and see how long it takes for me to be distracted by another new feature…:) As you can only have one user graph per database, that should limit my investigation to controlled chaos. Graph databases are all about relationships- relationships between data. The output can provide insight into data that might not be apparent in a tabular fashion…
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Tomorrow Pass is sponsoring a Linux Marathon for all the SQL DBAs getting ready to go big with Linux. The schedule is jam packed with sessions on getting started with Linux, working with SQL Server on Linux and then a few sessions, including my own for essential tools that the DBA needs to work with Linux. I’m the last one on the schedule for the day, to be followed by me heading down to the south side of town for the monthly, (and very Christmas-y) SQL Server User Group meeting. If you aren’t a member of the PASS organization, it…
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We’ve all been watching numerous companies view value in bypassing the Database Administrator and other critical IT roles in an effort to get IT faster to the cloud. It may look incredibly attractive to sales, but the truth of it is, it can be like setting up land mines in your own yard. Having the right people in the right roles, doing the right tasks is essential to having a complete cloud deployment. Easy access without any checks and balances is just asking for trouble, which I am quickly realizing as I discuss this topic with more folks on my…
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I’m here for the last day of UKOUG Tech17 and it’s been an awesome event. This is my first time to this event while in Birmingham and although quite the party town on the weekends, its a great city to have an event like UKOUG’s trio of events during the week. I was welcomed to great turnouts to both my presentations and then enjoyed numerous sessions by other’s, such as Richard Foote, Jonathan Lewis, Roger MacNicol and others that one might not get a chance to see in at most US Oracle User Group events. My biggest challenge in my…
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So while finishing up my slides for the Microsoft Pass Linux Marathon webinar on Dec. 13th, Tim and I started to discuss the apples vs. oranges comparison of SQL Server on Linux process management vs. an Oracle instance. We discussed the differences one might expect to see using different tools with the two database platforms and the first question surrounded information pmap would provide. We commonly use pmap to map out processes, including child and sub-processes of a particular PID. As my current images have multiple database platforms on each of them, I quickly spun up a Docker image of…
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Its been a couple years since I presented at UKOUG. After taking last year off to prioritize some projects with Delphix, I’m back to speaking and the event committee was gracious enough to offer a goth girl a couple spots on the schedule this year. The event is in Birmingham, and although I’ve never been there, I’m told by reports, it’s rather rainy and cold this time of year, so I better prepare, (nothing like people selling you on a location…:)) I have two sessions this year, the first one is on Super Sunday: Sunday, Dec. 3rd at 4pm in the…
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As most of you know, I’m working to update all of my SQL Server knowledge, which hasn’t gone as deep as I would like since SQL Server 2012. So there are a couple things we’re going to focus on today, first of which is the top in the list which I’ve highlighted, Legacy Cardinality Estimation: By default, this value is turned off and as the optimizer is essential to database performance and in each database platform, handled differently, it’s worth starting to disect. The Database Scoped Configuration settings, which are database specific, and can be accessed via the SSMS, right…
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The support of Women in Technology at Oracle is a fine line and a careful argument. I receive between 20-30 communications in any week on the topic and I think the challenge as I speak to people is the importance of education over persecution. I’m at DOAG, (Deutschland Oracle User Group) conference this week and it’s common for someone to ask to speak to me on the topic of WIT. These valuable conversations have lead to deep reflection of what it means to offer support and how we can improve diversity in the Oracle community….then again, it may just be…
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SQL Server 2016 introduced a new security feature called Dynamic Data Masking. With the General Data Protection Regulations, (GDPR) breathing heavy down most IT in America’s neck, its good timing. “Data Masking” is a term that has a strict definition, but different results when we actually discuss the technology behind it. The main goal is to obfuscate critical data in a non-reversible process and I deem it separate from encryption technology. With SQL Server’s Dynamic Data Masking, the original data is still present in the database, with a masking rule applied to hide the data, allowing anyone with the unmask privilege…
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As I begin my education in SQL Server 2017, as well as Azure SQL Database, my attention was caught by the optimizer improvements and especially automatic tuning. Often referred to with features starting with the naming convention of “dynamic” in Oracle, many automatic features either thrill or frustrate DBAs, no matter what the platform. The frustration enters with the features introduction and often decreases as the feature matures and becomes more stable. With the introduction of the Automatic Tuning from Microsoft, there’s a sense of concern, but also some very promising ways Microsoft is introducing these features. With Automatic Tuning,…
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So this week I’m back on the other coast, Raleigh, NC at ECO17 after last week in Seattle. I’ve switched from SQL Server to Oracle and we won’t discuss how many times I had to correct myself as I said, “transaction log” instead of “archive log” and pointed west instead of east for the ocean…My expression at times was similar to Obi Wan’s- For the next month, I’ll be sticking to the Oracle side, as this is going to be a crazy month for travel. My two sessions at ECO this week were well attended and I really enjoyed talking…
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This week I had the opportunity to present at Microsoft’s Pass Summit, which was one of two events I had on my list for this year, (the other was Oracle Open World.) Although I’m still learning about all the events on the Microsoft side, unlike Oracle, where there’s one, massive event in San Francisco each fall, Microsoft has split their annual events into three to focus on each audience. In less than two months, there was MS Ignite in Florida, focused on tomorrow’s technology, IT Dev Connections, geared towards development and then this week, Pass Summit, for the Data Platform…
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Thursday started out calm, self-assured that I knew where I needed to be all day and was prepared. I tweeted happily that I had found a lovely spot to work during the keynote, (day job!) Yeah, this: At the keynote, there was a table with my name on it where I was supposed to be. Thank you so much to Brent Ozar for letting me know so I could apologize for the miscommunication with the organizers of the blogger table, (which is not the same thing as the blogger meetup- oops!!) The rest of the day was crazy busy, but…
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I’ve plenty of rest after arriving in Seattle yesterday to get my registration for Pass Summit, attended the Women in Technology Happy Hour and then received my Idera ACE! Now Wednesday morning, I spent it reworking my slides for the third time and preparing while the main keynote was going on, (my session was right after and was streamed.) After all that work, I then came to realize after adjusting my resolution, we loaded the previous deck and I had to think fast, skipping some older slides during my presentation. Lucky for me, I had an awesome audience and the…
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I travel and a seriously good amount. I will present at about 35-40 events, attend company functions/meetings and this year with a considerable amount of those outside of the Denver area, this means I’ll be on a plane around 5-6 trips per month. Women commonly pack more, but I receive a few comments per my average three day trip on how I’m able to travel with a 16 inch carry-on. I’m picking up new tricks every day, but the one thing I’ve come to learn, once you find a great travel trick, you have a tendency to look no further…