You might have noticed that Microsoft has recently launched a cool set of Trust Services for Azure.  This is an application-level encryption framework that can be used to protect sensitive data stored on the Windows Azure Platform.

One of the hindrances to adoption of Azure that I keep hearing about is trust and security.  If you want to learn more about protecting your data in the cloud you can read up HERE.  I'm not pushing you to get into Azure (even though you should), nor am I subtly trying to make you feel guilty for ignoring the cloud in general nor Azure specifically (subtle, ain't I?).  But you really should consider learning a few things about database applications running in the cloud.  Our reticence to learn about cloud computing is rough analogous to data processing professionals in the 1980's who thought the microcomputers where a passing fad.  They weren't.  And neither is cloud.

Let me know what you think ... after you've read about  Trust Services for Azure.  Enjoy,

-Kev

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Speaking at a recent SQL Saturday, an attendee in one of my sessions wanted to know how they could more flexibly react to locks on their application than to wait for blocks to occur and then kill the SPID at the head of the blocking chain.  They were also interested in some alternatives to using the  SQL Server syntax like the WITH (NOLOCK) hint, since that might have unintended consequences due to allowing reads on uncommitted data.

One alternative I suggested is the SET LOCK_TIMEOUT n statement.  Since most of the attendees hadn't heard of this statement, I figured it'd make a good blog post.  

When using the statement, you can set this context for the connection, for a batch of code (such as a function or stored procedure), or for a single SQL statement (excluding a few DDL statements such as CREATE/ALTER DATABASE).  By passing a numeric value with the set statement, you specify the number of milliseconds that the statement will wait for a lock to be released before returning a locking error.  0 means don't wait at all and -1, the default, means wait forever.  Once changed, the new setting stays in effect for the remainder of the connection.  So you might want to set it back to the default if you want it to apply to only one statement, say a SELECT, in a big batch of statements.

You can also get the same behavior by using the READPAST locking hint.

Hope this helps with those troublesome locking situations!  Enjoy,

-Kev

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Steve Balmer very publicly pronounced that Microsoft was “all in” for cloud computing and Windows Azure.  So that means Microsoft is using cloud for its internal IT as well as building products to utilize the cloud.  If you want to learn how Microsoft IT is using Windows Azure to move existing applications to the cloud and creating new applications for the cloud, click here: IT Showcase on Windows Azure.

Let me know what you think.  Accurate and informative? Or marketing fluff?

Thanks,

-Kevin

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I was recently chatting with Megan Keller, my long-time editor for the Tool Time column and Executive Editor at SQL Server Pro,DevProConnections, and SharePoint Pro.

I've subscribed to SQLMag ever since it was first put to print back in the late 1990's.  (That's a pic of me, on the right, in the shirt given my by SQLMag's first publisher way back in the day).  I have many bookshelves in my office, but SQLMag consumes more than half of the shelf closest to my desk.  It's that good.  Some of my personal favorites and perpetual must-read content are the columns SQL Server Questions Answered by Paul Randal & Kimberly Tripp as well as the always excellent columns Puzzled by T-SQL by Itzik Ben-Gan and all of the great content by Kalen Delaney.

Megan recently told me about the exciting changes afoot there.  For starts, SQL Server Magazine’s has new name—SQL Server Pro.  This name, as you can tell from its sister publications listed at the top of the blog post, puts all of the Penton Media properties on an equal and consistent footing.

Please take some time to check out hands-on, how-to content from SQL Server experts at sqlmag.com. The on-line magazine features the same great expert advice and writers as before.  And you can access my articles on sqlmag.com just as you have in the past.

Suggestions for the Tool Time Column?

And while we're at it, let me know if there are any SQL Server related tools you'd like to see in the Tool Time column!  My requirements are that the tool must be free, must be supported, and of course must be relevant to SQL Server professionals.

Enjoy,

-Kev

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One last reminder -  If you're interested in learning more about troubleshooting and optimizing SQL Server performance, please consider coming to the full-day seminar I'll be giving this Friday.  Full details are here: http://sqlperftuning.eventbrite.com/.  We'll be working some exercises, so bring your laptop with an instance of SQL Server 2008 (or later) running on it.  It'll be fun!

I also encourage you to come on down to SQL Saturday 130  the following day - whether there's an official registration for you or not.  (But don't tell 'em I said that).  :^)

Come by the booth for a visit.  I'll be hanging out most of the day and have some nice swag to give away.  

Enjoy,

-Kev

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This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life. I’m tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I’m also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project.

Swag on hand? I’ve got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip:

SQL Server Training on DMVs

Performance Monitor and Wait Events

Plus, I’ll have a few posters, stickers, and other goodies. Come see me!

SQL Saturday 105; Dublin, Ireland; March 24

My maternal grandmother was first generation Irish-American and, somehow, going to Ireland feels a lot like going home to grandmom’s house. And all my Irish friends make it feel like I’m going home to see the extended family – cousins and ‘once-removed’ family types. And on top of that, we get to talk about SQL Server at SQL Saturday #105! I’ll be doing a session called “Top 10 Things Every Developer Should Know”. I’ll also be hanging out at the Quest Software booth much of the day and, just for fun, I plan on doing a completely unscripted lightning talk.

SQL Server User Group; Maidenhead, UK; March 27

From Dublin, I head over to the lovely town of Maidenhead, UK. I’ll be spending a couple days in the Quest Software office there in Maidenhead, whose SQL Server User Group is lead by fellow Questie Richard Douglas (blog | twitter). I’ll be presenting after Business Intelligence impresario Jen Stirrup (blog | twitter). Space is limited, but there are still some seats left.

I’ve already heard from other twitterati that some great Microsoft SQL Server MVPs will be attending, like Tobiasz Koprowski (Blog | Twitter). If you live in south, central England, then this is your chance! Register here: http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/events/386/Maidenhead-UG-meeting-SQLBits-Preview-Speakers-include-MVPs-Kevin-Kline-and-Jen-Stirrup.aspx.

SQLBits; London, UK; March 29 – 31

This is the official launch event for SQL Server 2012! This is your chance to get the best and biggest dose of SQL Server 2012 training for quite some time. The free training day event is sold out. However, some of the training day seminars have open seats, including my seminar Leadership Skills for the Database Professional. This seminar distills the years of formal training and hard-won experience I’ve accumulated throughout my career starting as a developer leading a small team, through the founding and early startup years of PASS, into my later years leading a large, multi-national development organization. You’ll learn all the skills that are crucial for you to make the leap (and it’s a big one) from full-time technologist to a leader and manager of people.

And we’ll be hosting our popular SQL trivia quize and IT Horror Stories sessions as well. So be sure to plan on grabbing your lunch and heading into our fun lunch-time sessions!

I hope to see you at one of these upcoming events! Cheers,

-Kevin

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Here's an evergreen question. It's a question that never completely goes away. But lately, I've been getting it a few times per week. So I thought it's time to readdress the question, which usually takes some form of the following:

I can't really do effective development on my little dev laptop because our production SQL Server database is 15 gazillionbytes, way too big for my workstation. What's a uber-nerd to do?

Well, maybe they didn't use the word "uber-nerd". But you get my drift, right? The production database is really, really big - unmanageably big for keeping a local copy. So that means the dev either has to create a metadata-only version of the database, which won't produce realistic query plans, or somehow crush their laptop under 15 gazillionbytes of MDF and LDF files.

Actually, you have a better alternative - a clone database, sometimes called a shell database. Here's how I described a cloned database a few years ago here in my Tool Time column for SQL Server Pro Magazine:

In effect, a cloned database includes all of the schema objects of the database (e.g., tables, views, stored procedures), as well as the statistics and histograms (the so-called "statistics blob"). This metadata is quite small by volume but can tell you what estimated query plans look like outside of a large production environment and how those estimated query plans might change when SQL Server is upgraded. Cloned databases are especially useful when the data is confidential, classified, or subject to privacy laws.

The article gives you all the detail you need to effectively and quickly create a small version of a big, ol' production database that produces the same query execution plans as you'd get on the prod server.

If you're struggling with doing development on a big SQL Server database, learn the ropes on cloned databases asap! You'll be glad you did.

Enjoy!

-Kev

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I'm being a little bit incendiary with that title. Many IT pros grow into very good managers. But it almost never comes naturally. It takes hard work and many hard won lessons before most of us ever achieve a degree of skill and comfort with managing other people. Thinking about moving into management? Help is here!

I've been spending the past several years turning the lessons I've learned as a manager into a set of courses for IT professionals who want to make the leap in to management. I'll be presenting some of these lessons as full-day seminars. I hope you can join me! Details below:

• March 29, SQLBits in London
• May 8, SQLRally in Dallas
• May 26-June 2, SQLCruise - Seattle to Alaska
• July 20, SQLSaturday in Louisville

Some of them I learned (fortunately) through reading, training, and extensive coursework before I ever experienced them in person. Some of the lessons, I learned through a kindly mentor who helped me see problems coming just over the horizon. And some of the lessons I've simply learned the hard way. Maybe your career path is headed in the same direction as mine...

An Oft-repeated Career Path...

Here's how mine went, and it's a rather common refrain among IT pros. It goes like this - you're outstanding at your IT job. You excel. You have a lot of credibility. Every few years, you get a promotion. But eventual, your boss (or your boss' boss) tells you that you've topped out as a technologist. They simply can't give you any more raises. And there are no higher level technology jobs you can get promoted to. You couldn't even get a better job at another company. Ah, but there's more to the corporate ladder than just IT. There are all of those juicy management positions that =DO= offer potential for more raises. So you say to yourself "Why don't I just jump over to the management track? I excel as an IT guru. I can do that management stuff easily. In fact, I'll be better than any of my bosses ever were!"

...Leads To Oft-repeated Mistakes

But if you're like many IT pros, it starts to sink in that all of those skills which made you 'the awesome' as an technologist are =NOT= transferrable to the management work you've now got on your plate. Successful IT people, by their very nature, often succeed because they enjoy "the machine" more than personal interactions - and that's what good management is all about.

Here are some common behaviors I've seen from IT people once they get into management that can cause lots of problems.

• Answering a simple question via email, Twitter, or IM when the person asking the question is in the cube a couple strides away.
• Spinning up a long back-n-forth email thread when a phone call could settle the issue in 10-20 minutes.
• Spending many hours on research to justify a recommendation for an important decision, sharing the research with other stakeholders (via email, usually), and then being surprised that no one supports the recommendation.
• Failing to convince the boss into spending money on important ideas, like training or tools, or increasing headcount.
• Even after extensive interviewing, hiring someone whose a poor fit for the team.
• Thinking "We're way behind on our projects, so I'll just spend today hip deep in the technology helping the team get back on track."
• Puzzling over why team members are demotivated and unproductive, or that they are motivated and productive but to their own purposes.

Can you name a few more? Add a comment!

But Why?

Problems like these are simple issues of human nature. We all, naturally, try to do things according to our preferences and experiences. But their two very consistent built-in preferences of IT pros that these mistakes keep happening again and again are:

1. Choosing the computer interface over the human interface: We got into IT because we like computers. We thought of them as at least a little bit cool. As we spent a bigger percentage of our day clacking on keyboards, clacking on the keyboard became our preferred way to interact with other people. In fact, as IT people, the computer is our work. But when we become managers, the computer is, at best, only a tool for our work of managing people and, at worst, an outright impediment and obstacle to our work. Many problems in leading teams have their origins in choosing a computer-based method of communication when another form of interperson communication would be quicker, yield better results, and improve team interaction.
2. Smart is as smart does: A very common element of human nature is for people who are successful and smart to believe that success and smart applies to pretty much everything they do. In my own family, I recall family reunions where one of the more successful cousins, who was in the insurance business, enjoyed giving everyone else advice about personal finance, stock and investing, politics, religion, parenting, animal husbandry, and who-knows-what else. He basically believed that because he'd done well in other areas of his life that he was right about everything he had an opinion about. Ah, but pride comes before the fall, does it not? And of course, he was tripped up several times by his own limitations. We see this same sort of pattern repeated when the IT Pro begins to manage a team in the same way s/he managed her IT resources. The only problem is that machines deterministic. They yield consistent results when provided consistent inputs. People, well, we could say that people are non-deterministic, but it might be more accurate to say that people are plain ol' chaotic.

Of course, I've just touched the tip of the iceberg with these two points. I'll be talking a lot more about these problems and fixes for them in future posts.

Comments? Thoughts? Experiences?

I'd love to hear your own experiences either as the IT pro seeking or working in a management role, or as an employee watching another IT person learn the management ropes. Add a comment here or drop me an email.

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-Kev