When building products that interact with multiple database platforms, the complexity can be both a challenge and an opportunity. For Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), observing design decisions made without sufficient knowledge of underlying database architecture can be particularly frustrating. These moments highlight the critical need for architectural foresight and platform-specific expertise to avoid pitfalls that compromise scalability, performance, and maintainability. I’ve been managing multiple platforms for a couple decades and in recent years, building products that support the most popular enterprise and open-source databases today. I’m keenly aware of lacking documentation, either due to limited resources or hopes of directing…
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Along with presenting the keynote at SQL Saturday Oregon this weekend, I will be taking the SQL Train up to PASS Summit for the next week’s conference. I will be on the WIT panel, as well as presenting with Chris Yates in a Professional Power Hour: Journey to Management on how to transition from a technical role to management. As much as I enjoy the technical aspect of my career, it was a careful navigation for me to ensure that my neurodiverse self was fulfilled as I moved up the ladder to my current Director position at Silk. If you’re…
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I’ve been pretty busy with work and travel, but I finally got an official Silk Github repository to publish a couple new white papers and sizing assessment worksheets for customer access. These are primarily Oracle and SQL Server to Azure focused white papers, but I will be publishing ones on GCP next, to be followed by AI and other database platforms soon. White Papers The A2Z on Oracle for Azure The A2Z on SQL Server to the Cloud The slides for the session that is part of the research that went into the white paper above can be found here. …
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With my upcoming session on “Migrating Oracle Workloads to Azure IaaS” this week at PASS Virtual Summit 2020, I wanted to take some time to dig deeper onto the performance side. The last thing you want to have happen is to migrate your database to the cloud and have it just screech to a halt. The truth is, its often a combination of database and infrastructure issues that are the cause. Although many of you may want me to dig into database performance data, I’m actually going to first focus on infrastructure, as it’s the area that most aren’t privy…
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This is a 2-part blog post, the first in the series can be found on the Microsoft SQL Server blog here. The recently released SQL Server 2019 on Linux includes several updated features, including replication, support for Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator, and Change Data Capture (CDC) support. If you’re running SQL Server 2017 on Linux, these are great reasons to upgrade to SQL Server 2019 to take advantage of these updates. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 was subjected to significant testing and supported to run on several Linux distribution platforms: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and…
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So you want to run mssql-cli on Ubuntu Linux, but you received a number of errors and even if you got through some errors, you’re still stuck? I’m here to try to help you get through them and hopefully I’ve captured them all. Trust me, the Oracle DBAs have been here- our databases and tools failed for a very long time until Linux administrators came to know what we needed and started to build us the images with the correct libraries and versions we needed, so we feel your pain! The easiest scenario for many to deploy SQL Server 2019…
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In the previous blog posts, we learned how to set up the first part of a standard shell script- how to interactively set variables, including how to pass them as part of the script execution. In this next step, we’ll use those to build out Azure resources. If you’re working on-premises, you can use this type of scripting with SQL Server 2019 Linux but will need to use CLI commands and SQLCMD. I will cover this in later posts, but honestly, the cloud makes deployment quicker for any business to get what they need deployed and with the amount of…
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Azure Directory is available with Linux SQL Server 2019 in Preview and as I was setting it up in my Azure environment on a Linux Red Hat 7.3 VM, I was, as many are, happy that they list the commands for the Azure CLI to set up authentication with Azure Directory, but was concerned, that with so many new to Linux, that they didn’t describe in the steps WHY we were running certain commands or setting best practices around Linux database server design. The setup expects that you already have a Linux VM and SQL 2019 already up and running.…
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As I have seen the benefit for having a post on Oracle database vs. SQL Server architecture, let’s move onto the next frontier- High Availability…or what people think is high availability architecture in the two platforms. To RAC or Not to RAC There is a constant rumble among Oracle DBAs- either all-in for Oracle Real Application Cluster, (RAC) or a desire to use it for the tool it was technically intended for. Oracle RAC can be very enticing- complex and feature rich, its the standard for engineered systems, such as Oracle Exadata and even the Oracle Data Appliance, (ODA). Newer…
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There are a lot of DBAs that are expected to manage both Oracle and MSSQL environments. This is only going to become more common as database platforms variations with the introduction of the cloud continue. A database is a database in our management’s world and we’re expected to understand it all. Its not an easy topic, but I’m going to post on it, taking it step by step and hopefully the diagrams will help. Its also not an apple to apple comparison, so hopefully, but starting at the base and working my way into it with as similar as comparisons…
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I learned a long time ago, that the quickest way to do something was to not do it at all. A friend of mine asked me if I could review an update statement that was confounding their group looking for ways to optimize it. The table has, just short of 50 columns, a considerable number of indexes and the column in question, has a datatype set to NVarChar(8), consists of some numbers, combinations of letters and numbers, etc. The process would take 7 ½ hours to run this update, as it parses through 100K rows at a time. There is…
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So Tracy Boggiano told me about the great First Responder kit that Brent Ozar had available to use with sp_Blitz using Power BI desktop for a UI, but that it was really slow to non-responsive as data grew. As this was focused on performance data and also included my new love of Power BI, I asked to take a look at it. Tracy was kind enough to send me a copy of her database and the support files for the responder kit and I finally had time to look into it this week. We won’t discuss how I managed to…
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So I made it to PASS Summit 2018. After a flight from an airport with one gate- yes, you heard me right, one gate. No Wi-Fi, no connectivity and four employees at the airport. It was a new level of disconnect. After a number of parties last night, I’m at the bloggers table for the first keynote this morning. The first keynote started with an energized talk from PASS president and friend, Grant Fritchey. It was a gracious discussion about the dedication of those in the community and power of those involved. Keynote #1 The theme is #V20, the newest…
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I’ve been hesitant to post too much on my blog until since the hack, as there were some residual issues after the restoration of the site that took a bit to correct. I’m finally feeling confident enough to start posting on everything I’m doing currently working with Azure and the education customers for Microsoft. One of the powerful tools I’ve been taking advantage of is the Azure Cloud Shell. This cloud tool has the offering option of setting to PowerShell or Bash and I think you know which I chose. Although everything I do will require a PowerShell version in…
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Tim and I just arrived back in Colorado yesterday and just arrived- as in Grand Junction, Colorado on the western border of Utah. Hauling a 42Ft. 5th wheel means that you make some considerations on how far you can go and how far you want to go. It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks and this is what’s in the plans: Microsoft Education Data Summit I’ll be flying to Las Vegas tomorrow morning to attend and train in Las Vegas with the rest of my technical peers in the education sector of Microsoft. I look forward to these…
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I just finished teaching an 8 hour pre-con at SQL Saturday Indianapolis on Essential Linux for the DBA. The focus of the class was on what the Microsoft DBA would need to know as more SQL Server environments begin to run on Linux. The obstacles and demands of them will be a bit different than the Oracle crowd, as they may not have the Linux Admin or Unix expertise onsite for support and have to fend for themselves more than I did starting out on Linux. Some folks asked me why I chose to use Docker with the SQL Server…
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So I haven’t opened Visual Studio in….oh….let’s just say it’s been a few years…:) I had a project that I needed to run and was surprised when the Solution Explorer was missing from SSMS 2017. Its only fair to say, there was also fair warning from Microsoft. Due to this, I opened up Visual Studio to use its Solution Explorer and integration for SSIS and other features required for a large project. I was both happy with the sheer amount of features and have some constructive feedback to make it more user friendly. I love that I can navigate servers,…
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So many have asked me when I’m starting at Microsoft and the official date is Monday, June 11th now. Many also wonder what my upper limits are on how much I can handle, well folks, it looks like we’ve reached them! I was supposed to start this last Monday, but as my last day approached, it became all the more clear that there was a need to change my ending and start date. Individual deadlines had pushed out, requirements changed and I was left feeling a bit overwhelmed because as most know, I don’t do anything the easy way- major…