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October 2005 Entries
New MS Certifications (and more acronyms to learn)
Microsoft recently published changes to their certifications. The entire program has been revamped, though if you are already certified, your credentials are still considered valid. New products (e.g. SQL Server 2005) will follow the new framework for certification.

The first step for DBAs/DB Developers is MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist): SQL Server 2005. To get this credential, you need to pass one exam: "Exam 70–431: TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Implementation and Maintenance". The next credential available is MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional). These come in three flavors: Database Developer, Database Administrator and Business Intelligence Developer. Each of these requires you to pass two more exams. There's no overlap between these, so if you are an overachiever and want lots of letters behind your name, you can take a total of seven SQL Server-related tests.

Current MCDBAs are offered an upgrade path to MCITP DBA. They are still required to take the first level exam (70-431). This is followed by "Exam 70–447: UPGRADE: MCDBA Skills to MCITP Database Administrator by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005."

All of the test are supposed to be available in "early 2006." Likewise most of the courses and study materials won't be available until next year either. The beta for 70-431 is scheduled to be released in November.
posted @ Sunday, October 30, 2005 9:35 PM | Feedback (1)
Women in Tech @ PASS
One of the highlights of the PASS Summit for me the past few years has been the Women in Technology lunch and panel discussion. As a female member of PASS and woman working in IT, I'm encouraged that this event is included as part of the Summit. Each year it seems that more women attend the conference; attendance has certainly improved since my first PASS in 2002.

This year I had the opportunity to help coordinate the WIT event. The discussion this time focused on the challenges that face women working in IT. Our starting point was a recent study conducted by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) which concluded that "the percentage of women in the IT workforce declined from a high of 41 percent in 1996 to 32.4 percent in 2004." The panelists offered their ideas about why this is the case, and what it takes for women to succeed in tech.

We got to hear from five women with a wide breadth of experience it IT who offered the audience some insight into how they have been able to build careers in IT. The panel included Nancy Hidy-Wilson (Shell), Alice Klemashevich (Intuit), Cheryl Fesh (Microsoft), Dania Jones (Mattel) and Marge Namdar (Texas Instruments).

While discussing their own experiences, a couple of the panelists spoke of being inspired by mothers or aunts, who taught them to think that they could do whatever they wanted when they grew up. Another talked about the importance having a supportive manager, and seeing women in leadership positions at work.

One of the panelists talked about the importance of encouraging girls in math and science as key to increasing the number of women working in technology. She added that it would help if kids who excelled academically got as much attention and resources as star athletes. Others raised the importance of mentoring girls, and participating in activities like "Take Your Child to Work Day."

Work-life balance was raised as another important factor for women to succeed in IT (and any other career). Corporate culture, supportive managers and the ability to work flexible hours are all key to this. It was mentioned that some companies have women's networks that are another source of support and mentoring for female employees.

I've mentioned only some of the ideas and challenges that were discussed during the event. It was a rich discussion that didn't end with the start of the next session. And, as in previous years, it was a great opportunity to network with other female PASS members.
posted @ Sunday, October 23, 2005 9:34 PM | Feedback (1)
The Interrupt Driven Life
Last week someone asked me if I was easily distracted at work. I told him that I thought the modern workplace made it impossible not to be easily distracted. Email, IM, over-the-cubicle conversations, the day is often just a string of interruptions that keep real work from being done. Except, of course, that the interruptions themselves often are "real work". What they prevent is any concentrated work, any focused work, from being done.

It's easy to blame technology for this multi-tasking run amok, but that's only part of the story. We allow it to happen; many of us even thrive on the constant stimulation. (Don't we all know at least one person who clicks "send" then instantly appears at our door asking "did you get my email?") And there's often an expectation (real or perceived) that we're all plugged in, all available, all the time.

The New York Times Magazine ran a fascinating article on this subject yesterday. It describes our interrupt-driven workplaces and work styles (I recognized myself a couple of times.) The author interviews several researchers and computer scientists who study how we work and goes on to discuss some low- and high-tech ways our daily dose of information (and interruptions) can be better managed.

posted @ Monday, October 17, 2005 9:53 PM | Feedback (3)
Worth the price of admission
This year I attended the PASS Community Summit for the 4th time. Every year, there is at least one session, or one moment in a session when I think "that alone was worth the price of admission." That happened a couple of times this year. The first was when Ken Henderson demonstrated the Read80Trace tool. Apparently this tool, formerly used internally only, was made available to the world last year. But it was never on my radar, which is too bad, because it is a big timesaver.

It is a tool that reads sql trace files into database tables normalizes the queries in the textdata column and aggregates the results. This may not sound like much, unless you are someone who has spent hours trying to get substring and charindex statements to do this. I happen to be one of those someones, so I was very happy to see this tool in action.

After processing the data, the tool spits out a web page that makes it easy to identify the worst-performing queries. The only canned result it doesn't have is a count of how many times each normalized query is run. But it was easy to write my own query to get this information from the database tables created by the tool.

It's also packaged with a tool called ostress that will basically replay the commands processed by read80trace as fast as possible, to generate load on a database.

Both of these tools are discussed here in SQL Server Magazine and here in the knowledge base. Finally, they are available for download here.
posted @ Saturday, October 15, 2005 5:27 PM | Feedback (1)
Databases as a force for good
One year during a keynote address at a PASS conference, Bill Baker (GM for SQL Server Business Intelligence) talked about the "goodness of databases." The idea appealed to me; as DBAs a big part of our job is to do our best to guarantee the accuracy of the data we manage. If the data is accurate, it's useful and it helps people do their jobs, or manage their lives.

The goodness of databases was magnified a thousand times in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Accurate and available information became crucial to allowing families to be reunited. In the initial days after the storm, many sites were used to connect people. Existing sites (craigslist, yahoo boards) were utilized, and seemingly every news organization hosted a message board for people searching for loved ones.

There was lots of information, but it was decentralized. An evacuee in the Astrodome might have 20 sites to visit to look for a lost spouse or sibling. Seeing a need for coordination and centralization, two projects emerged: Katrinalist.net and Katrinasafe.com. Katrinalist is an open source project run by volunteers, managed using a wiki and listserves. Its goal was to aggregate the data from dozens of sources into a central repository. There were two main subprojects; one was to design and publish a standard for data interchange to allow bulk data loads. The other was to scrape sites prepare chunks of data that could be hand entered into the katrinalist database. A huge number of volunteers stepped up to do the data entry. The Katrinasafe project was a joint effort between Microsoft in collaboration with the Red Cross to centralize all the information about evacuees collected at Red Cross shelters.

There were other efforts to centralize information, and my point is not to do an exhaustive review of all the efforts. But they hall have one thing in common: they illustrate the "goodness of databases". The availability of accurate information was critical to thousands of people trying to put their families back together.
posted @ Saturday, October 08, 2005 11:38 AM | Feedback (1)
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