A developer suggested to me recently that the life of the DBA was, surely, a dull one. My first reaction was indignation, but quickly followed by the thought that for many people excitement isn’t necessarily the most desirable aspect of their job. It’s true that some aspects of the DBA role seem guaranteed to quieten … Read more
When it was announced, I confess was somewhat surprised by the striking new “Metro” User Interface for Windows 8, based on Swiss typography, Bauhaus design, tiles, touches and gestures, and the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) API on which Metro apps were to be built. It all seemed to have come out of nowhere, like field … Read more
I once wrote an editorial, multi-core mania, on the conundrum of ever-increasing numbers of processor cores, but without the concurrent programming techniques to get anywhere near exploiting their performance potential. I came to the.controversial.conclusion that, while the problem loomed for all procedural languages, it was not a big issue for the vast majority of programmers. … Read more
A heartwarming tale of dogged perseverance and Community collaboration to solve some SQL Server string-related headaches. Michael J Swart posted a blog this week that had me smiling in recognition and agreement, describing how an inquisitive Developer or DBA deals with a problem. It’s a three-step process, starting with discomfort and anxiety; a feeling that … Read more
Many developers, including Troy Hunt, here on Simple-Talk, have argued persuasively that each database developer in a team needs to work as sole user of a dedicated database-development environment whilst creating or updating databases. Troy makes a good case, listing several shortcomings of the shared development model: developers are no longer free to experiment and … Read more
Even DBAs have devoted aunts. They are probably also oblivious to the mental anguish they cause to their relatives in the run-up to Christmas. What would be a suitable gift for someone so deeply in the grip of technophilia that they can tell you the difference between ten apparently identical brands of Smartphone, and have … Read more
It is almost seven years since Microsoft announced the sensational news that, with their new SQL Server 2005, you could do data manipulation in Visual Basic or C# as well as SQL. The marketing people got overexcited, stabbing out clichés from their keyboards such as “new era”, and “revolutionary”. However, they had run off barking … Read more
Developers, by every natural instinct and training, strive to make their code reusable and generic. Dissuading them from doing so, in certain circumstances, is akin to trying to persuade a dog not to fetch a stick. However, when Gail Shaw commented on Twitter last week that “For the record, code reuse in SQL.is not always … Read more
There is a saying amongst welfare agencies that one can tell how well a family is functioning by looking at their dog. If the dog is neurotic, neglected or maltreated, one fears for the welfare of the children. Likewise, you can tell a lot about the skills of a team of DBAs and developers by … Read more
There are good reasons for the management of the release of applications. Businesses see it as a safety-net to ensure the success of software deployment. This is a process that requires a different mind-set and set of disciplines to development, and is best handled by small specialist teams that are responsible for getting software delivered … Read more
Bug metrics are a notoriously erratic way to judge the performance of a development team and project, but despite this almost all software projects use them. There is a lot of data you can get from an electronic bug-tracking system, from bugs per lines of code, bugs per component, to defect trend graphs and bug … Read more
Does it strike you odd that, despite the outage of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Elastic Block Storage on April 21 2011, many of the customers who were affected are still so keen on the service? It puzzled me until I considered the huge diversity of applications out there. If these customers had been … Read more
Where’s Oracle VM 3, and why should you be waiting for it? Here lies a puzzling story. On May 13, 2009, in the course of developing Oracle VM 3, Oracle acquired Virtual Iron Software Inc and with it, their rather good VM product Virtual Iron. In June 30th 2009, scarcely a month later, they had … Read more
The ideal Agile application developer welcomes changing requirements, even late in development. The DBA or Database Developer doesn’t. Why is that? You can’t create complex databases in the Agile way, by breaking tasks into small increments, with minimal planning. Building a database that will perform quickly, reliably and securely over time, as it grows, is … Read more
How many people, when their car shows signs of wear and tear, would consider upgrading the engine and keeping the shell? Even if you’re cash-strapped, you’ll soon work out the subtlety of the economics, the cost of sudden breakdowns, the precious time lost coping with the hassle, and the low ‘book value’. You’ll generally buy … Read more
One of the more difficult tasks, when virtualizing a server, is to determine the amount of memory that Hypervisor should assign to the virtual machine. This requires accurate monitoring and, because of the consequences of setting the value too low, there is a great temptation to err on the side of over-provisioning. This results in … Read more
Nokia’s alliance with Microsoft is likely to be good news for anyone using Microsoft technologies, and particularly for .NET developers. Before the announcement, the future wasn’t looking so bright for the ‘mobile’ version of Windows, Windows Phone. Microsoft currently has only 3.1% of the Smartphone market, even though it has been involved in it for … Read more
We’re just past the second anniversary of the launch of Windows Azure. A couple of years’ experience with Azure in the industry has provided some obvious success stories, but has deflated some of the initial marketing hyperbole. As a general principle, Azure seems to work well in providing a Service-Oriented Architecture for services in enterprises … Read more
Surely the next radical step in the development of User-interface design is for applications to react appropriately to the rising tide of bewilderment, frustration or antipathy of the users. When an application understands that rapport is lost, it should respond accordingly. When we, for example, become confused by an unforgiving interface, shouldn’t there be a … Read more
Despite it being such an obvious security problem, developers still use the sa login, or assign sysadmin privileges to their Windows login, during their development work. Some take rather belligerent stance on this (“it’s my server; it’s not exposed to the outside world. What’s your problem?!”), but it seems to me that the majority are … Read more
