So SSIS or SQL Server Information Services is amazingly powerful but like most things Microsoft it takes longer to do what was a simpler task in say the older DTS. Yes you can do so much more but a simple transfer of data from one data source to another seems to take longer to set up. Remember when you could tick say 10 tables to be moved under DTS. Well this is 10 setup steps under SSIS each defined one drag and drop icon at a time. I admit that I am still at the novice stage and there may indeed be a simple way to do this but using the basic data source, data destination tasks it seems to be harder to do the easier stuff, so far at least.
It has been a busy week for me as I am working two jobs at the moment. One of them is in the Delphi SQLServer application world and the other in the more rarefied world of the Database Administrator or DBA. Like most IT tasks there are different levels to the DBA role. At its most basic the DBA or programmer level DBA sets up a database, links some tables using foreign keys and perhaps adds an index or two to the mix to make the queries go a little faster. Adding another layer of complexity are the stored procedures built on SQL statements. Moving a little higher up the chain are Maintenance Plans that are really just mini SSIS jobs including backups of databases and logs, reindexing jobs and many others that are then scheduled to run under the SQL Server Agent environment.
Moving a little higher are the job logs, the error messages and tracking down problems like blocks, locks, space and memory issues and other tuning tasks to keep everything running happily on say a Windows Server box of some kind. Finally there is the data recovery, disaster planning and so on involving off server backups, mirroring, chaining and a number of other more esoteric DBA problems at the most senior levels. Depending on the organisation the DBA role may stop at the more basic levels or involve all of them with a multi-server, multi-site environment. The latter is what I found myself dumped into the middle of recently and catch up has been an adventure.
This brings me to the issue of training courses for such roles. They suck. Sure all the subject areas are covered, sometimes in some detail. The books also cover such topics and even the occasional hint on how to clear a block. For the most part however, and this is the area where the DBA needs to be aware, they do not cover what to do when things go wrong. That role has defaulted to the boards and user groups where some bunny has faced the problem for you and somehow managed to find out a solution. The same things happens to you and it is a Google search or many of them that brings you to the answers, or something close, that you need to solve your version of the issue. All I can say is thank the powers that be for the creation of the Internet.
That brings me to the issue of managers. For the most part you are idiots. No one or even two people can know or be trained in everything you will need in an organisation as far as IT is concerned. You need programmer types, analyst types, networking bodies, database types and depending on scale even the occasional DBA. You need testers, never let the programmer be the only tester, documenters and other roles that one person cannot fill unless it is a very tiny project. Yes, in the past when things were a lot simpler one or two people could do it. These days Visual Studio or .NET development is different from SharePoint. Business Intelligence tools and multi-dimensional cubes are typically a lot different than standard relational database projects. Yes I know there is a lot of crossover but for the most they are separate worlds and paradigms that have a different focus and a different way of thinking when it comes to design and usage.
So what I am trying to say in a rather long winded manner is that the field of information technology has grown quite a bit since the first BASIC version hit the market. Game programmers are vastly different from application developers. Actually that has always been true, well since graphics progressed beyond blocks at least.
Industry News
In a recent poll by Essential Research the campaign against Australia’s National Broadband Network appears to be losing ground. The reason for this is simple the average Australian knows diddly about the NBN and the powers that be in Australia are working very hard to make sure it stays that way. As the IT savvy scoff at government presentations that should really start “see there is nothing up my sleeve” the average punter believes what they are told and make sounds of awe when told they won’t have to go to the doctors anymore once they are connected to the NBN. OF course the really fine print says something like you will be able to connect to your local GP if and only if you have purchased the highest speed package and your doctor will only be giving you basic advice, not much more than over the phone, across your new and highly expensing NBN link. The uptake has been very, very low and pricing is still double that of a regular, and sufficient for most, ADSL2+ connection.
With the current advances in wireless connectivity and more on the way the eventual $100 billion white elephant will either die or cost taxpayers in Australia a lot for a long time. That or it becomes a forced monopoly which is one possibility.
As readers know I love new technology and advances in engineering. The latest comes from the University of Melbourne where a team has built a single atom transistor and even more exciting they can duplicate the results that have removed the problem of 10nm positional uncertainties. Or more simply very tiny transistors that can be placed accurately as required. So how do they do this? Using an electron tunnelling microscope they lift one silicon atom out of a group of six and replace it with a phosphorus atom. Yes I know this makes it a six atom transistor but it is still cool. This is enough of a structure to allow connection of contacts and voltage. Oh BTW, you also need to keep it at -196 degrees Celsius to run. Will it ever be commercial probably not but who cares you have to admit that this is cool (no pun intended).
It is doubtful that people in the UK will have access to Pirate Bay for very much longer. A High Court judge has ruled that file-sharing website and its users violated the copyrights of nine record labels based in the UK. The other key part of the ruling is that the operators profited from the site making them liable as well. SO expect to see the telecoms in the UK blocking access and within a few microseconds an new, more protected and harder to bring down site will spring up in its place. The music industry being too lazy to come up with a workable model of their own will continue to attack those that have.
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