Becoming A Better Programmer In 6 Months: The First 20 days

Here is an update of what I accomplished in the first 20 days

Read the book lifehacker
Read the book Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Read the book Extending SSIS 2005 with Script
Read 1 chapter of Learning Python, Second Edition
Played around with the July CTP of SQL Server 2008

So in the first 20 days I have read 3 books however two books are very thin. I will need that time later when I start on much thicker books like Code Complete and Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying

I will also make a small change to the list instead of Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services I will read Core Python Programming

I also started tinkering with Python, those guys are a bunch of jokers. if you type "import this" in a Python command line window you get this output

win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
>>>

So that is one of the easter eggs hidden in Python.

In the past week I also played around with the new date data types in SQl server 2008, I have filed a bug/typo which I found in Books On Line.This week I will concentrate on the book Learning Python, Second Edition during weekends and lunch hours, in the evening I will read Practices of an Agile Developer

This is it for the update. The original post can be found here: http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2007/07/become-better-developer-in-6-months.html

A more detailed post about the first 10 days can be found here: http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/2007/07/becoming-better-programmer-in-6-months.html

I am also glad to say that most of the people I tagged in the original post have responded

Summer SQL Teaser #11 NULLIF

Here is a fun teaser. NULLIF will return a null value if the two specified expressions are equivalent.
So to give an example

DECLARE @v varchar
SET @v = ' '

SELECT NULLIF(@v,' ')

That returned NULL because @v and ' ' are the same


Now run this first

CREATE TABLE #j (n varchar(15))


DECLARE @a int
SET @a = 1
WHILE @a <= 1000 BEGIN
INSERT #j
SELECT NULLIF(REPLICATE('1', RAND()*2) , ' ')
SET @a = @a + 1
END


Then without running try to guess if the following query will return any rows

SELECT * FROM #j WHERE n = ' '

SQL Server 2008 Has Nanosecond Precision?

It looks like SQL Server 2008 has nanosecond + microseconds precision for the time datatype
If you run the following

[edit]I just looked at BOL and yes nanoseconds = ns, microsecond = mcs when used in dateadd[/edit]

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t ='0:0'
SELECT @t AS Time1,DATEADD(ms,1,@t) AS TimeMilli,
DATEADD(ns,10000,@t) AS TimeNano1,DATEADD(ns,100,@t) AS TimeNano2


Time1 00:00:00.0000000
TimeMilli 00:00:00.0010000
TimeNano1 00:00:00.0000100
TimeNano2 00:00:00.0000001

Another interesting thing is that you can not use 0,'0' or ' ' to assign a value

These 3 will all fail

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t =' '

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t ='0'


DECLARE @t time
SELECT @t =0

But this will succeed

DECLARE @t time
SELECT @ =''

SQL Server Notification Services Removed from SQL Server 2008

From the last section (5.0 Deprecated Features) in the read me file

5.0 Deprecated Features
This section covers SQL Server 2005 features that are no longer included with SQL Server 2008.

5.1 SQL Server Notification Services Removed from SQL Server 2008
SQL Server Notification Services will not be included as a component of SQL Server 2008, but will continue to be supported as part of the SQL Server 2005 product support life-cycle. Moving forward, support for key notification scenarios will be incorporated into SQL Server Reporting Services. Existing Reporting Services functionality, such as data driven subscriptions, addresses some of the notification requirements. Features to support additional notification scenarios may be expected in future releases.

There you have it, no more Notification Services

SQL Server 2008 July CTP Has Been Released, The 10 New Features

Download it here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395

What is new?

Enterprise Reporting Engine
Improvements represent the two major infrastructure changes for Reporting Services. Reporting Services enhances the processing engine and rendering extensions to enable new functionality, such as Tablix support, and scalability as well as remove the dependency on IIS. Additionally, new report designer and configuration tool are provided that improve usability and workflow for RS customers.

Analysis Services Time Series
This improvement adds a new time series forecasting algorithm (ARIMA: Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) to the data mining algorithm suite that provides more stable long term predictions.

T-SQL Improvements
Object Dependencies: The object dependencies improvement provides reliable discovery of dependencies between objects through newly introduced catalog view and dynamic management functions. Dependency information is always up-to-date for both schema-bound and non-schema-bound objects. Dependencies are tracked for stored procedures, tables, views, functions, triggers, user-defined types, XML schema-collections, and more.


Performance Data Collection
Collect data from various sources in SQL Server and OS to help with performance troubleshooting and server maintenance. With this improvement, organizations improve their analysis of common performance issues:
· Define what data is collected and organize the collection into collection sets
· Start/stop/manipulate collection sets programmatically (T-SQL and .NET API)
· Define where data is stored (relational database)
· View data through reports in SQL Server Management Studio.
· Provide platform to plug in more data collectors in the future.


Extended Events
SQL Server Extended Events is a general event-handling system for server systems. The Extended Events infrastructure supports the correlation of data from SQL Server, and under certain conditions, the correlation of data from the operating system and database applications. In the latter case, Extended Events output must be directed to Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) in order to correlate the event data with operating system or application event data.


Database Mirroring Enhancements
SQL Server 2008 builds upon the momentum of SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform with enhanced database mirroring:

Automatic bad page repair – allows the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the corrupted page from the mirroring partner.

Log stream compression – compression of the outgoing log stream in order to minimize the network bandwidth used by database mirroring.

Miscellaneous performance enhancements:
using asynchronous log write requests on the mirror in order to shorten the log write time and thus speed-up the commit acknowledgement.

better utilization of the mirroring log send buffers in order to pack multiple smaller log blocks into a single network send.

Supportability and diagnosability improvements:
additional performance counters to allow for more granular accounting of the time spent across the different stages of the DBM log processing.

new DMVs and extensions of existing views in order to expose additional information about the mirroring sessions.


ORDPATH Improvement
ORDPATH improvement provides an important new functionality to our customers who use hierarchical data. It provides a superior way of modeling hierarchies in SQL Server by introducing the HierarchyID system data type and corresponding built-in methods which are designed to make it easier to store, query and operate hierarchical data. HierarchyID is also optimized for representing trees, the most common type of hierarchical data.


Large User-Defined Types Improvement
Large user-defined types allows users to expand the size of defined data types by eliminating the 8‑KB limit.

DATE/TIME Data Types
SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types. The new data types enable applications to have separate date and time types, larger year ranges for date value, larger fractional seconds precision for time value, time-zone offset aware datetime type that containing date, time and time zone offset portion, user defined option on fractional seconds precision of time related types and datetime2 and datetimeoffset provide standards conformant semantics. Along with the T-SQL support on the new types, both native (ODBC, OLEDB) and managed (SqlClient) providers also provide the full support through the client driver APIs.


Improved XML Support
To leverages the new date and time types, SQL Server’s XML Schema collection now provides full support for the xs:date, xs:time and xs:dateTime data types. Support for union types is also enhanced by returning correct results for “instance of” queries when union types are involved, and adding support for lists of unions and unions of lists constructs in XML Schemas.

Say Hello To My New Boss

Yes it looks like it is a done deal: News Corp. Appears to Have
Enough Votes to Clinch Deal Bancroft family members owning 32% of Dow Jones & Co.'s overall votes have agreed to support News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, according to people familiar with the matter.

That level of support is likely more than enough to guarantee News Corp. enough votes to clinch the deal.

Let's see what happens next, maybe I will get some new toys (64 CPU SQL boxes) to play with. I'll happily take the outdated MySpace equipment also ;-)

Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation.

You set up your linked server, you write a query which joins two tables, you execute the query and the error message is this
Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation


What does this mean? This mean that the collation on the two tables is different

Let's look at an example. Le's create two tables, onme with Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI collation and one with the default. The default collation for me is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.


CREATE TABLE #Foo (SomeCol varchar(50) COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI)
CREATE TABLE #Foo2 (SomeCol varchar(50))


INSERT #Foo VALUES ('AAA')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('BBB')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('CCC')
INSERT #Foo VALUES ('DDD')

INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('AAA')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('BBB')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('CCC')
INSERT #Foo2 VALUES ('DDD')

Now run this query and you will get the error message

SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol = f2.SomeCol


Server: Msg 446, Level 16, State 9, Line 1
Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation.

Now add COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI to #Foo2 SomeCol

SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol = f2.SomeCol COLLATE Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI

That works, if you add COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS to #Foo SomeCol that will work also


SELECT * FROM #Foo F1
JOIN #Foo2 f2 ON f1.SomeCol COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS = f2.SomeCol


If you want to know what these collations mean then run the following query (yes that is not a typo it is indeed ::).

SELECT *
FROM ::fn_helpcollations()
WHERE name in('SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS','Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI')

Traditional_Spanish_CI_AI
Traditional-Spanish,
case-insensitive,
accent-insensitive,
kanatype-insensitive,
width-insensitive

SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Latin1-General,
case-insensitive,
accent-sensitive,
kanatype-insensitive,
width-insensitive for Unicode Data,
SQL Server Sort Order 52 on Code Page 1252 for non-Unicode Data

Have You Seen 300?

Tomorrow 300 is coming out on DVD. Have you seen 300? Are you going to buy it or rent it? I did not see it but I ordered the
Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition. I heard from several people I have talked to that they loved it when they saw in the movie theater and they can’t wait to watch it again.
I do have the special edition of Sin City which is Frank Miller’s first movie. I watched that several times. If you have that once make sure you watch the green screen fast forward version.
So what is 300 about? Spartan King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fight to the last man against Persian King Xerxes and his army of over one million soldiers, while in Sparta, Queen Gorgo attempts to rally support for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios. Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy.

So what are you going to do?
A) Buy the regular version
B) Buy the Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition
C) Buy the HD-DVD version
D) Buy the Blu-Ray version
E) Rent it
F) Wait for Cable
G) Wait for Network TV
H) Not watch it at all

Obviously my pick is B

Summer SQL Teaser #10 ROLLBACK

This one is not so much a teaser but it will show you what you can do in case you want to insert data in a logging table after a rollback occurs
Without running this try to guess what the counts of the three tables will be after the rollback


CREATE TABLE Test (id int)
CREATE TABLE #Test (id int)
DECLARE @Test table (id int)



BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO @Test VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO Test VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO #Test VALUES(1)
ROLLBACK TRAN


SELECT '@test',COUNT(*) FROM @Test
SELECT ' test',COUNT(*) FROM Test
SELECT '#test',COUNT(*) FROM #Test


DROP TABLE Test,#Test

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Released!

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
MSDN Library provides access to essential programming information, including technical reference documentations, white papers, software development kits and code samples necessary to develop web services and applications. This is an updated version of the MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the next-generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 Professional (self-extracting install)
Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 Team Foundation Server (VPC)
Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Becoming A Better Programmer In 6 Months: The First 10 days

Here is an update of what I accomplished in the first 10 days

Read the book lifehacker
Read the book Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Read 126 pages of Extending SSIS 2005 with Script
Installed PostgreSQL, Python, Eclipse and Django.

Now you may ask yourself how I could have read all these things in 10 days. This is because I have to convert a whole bunch of packages from DTS to SSIS. So I did read a lot at work about SSIS. As you can see I sneaked the Extending SSIS 2005 with Script book in there which was not on my original list. I actually did all the example in that book. SSIS is pretty cool, the only thing which was frustrating (at first) was that you cannot modify a connection string with script like in DTS. However you can use Package Configurations to do that. This is important if you have to import a daily Excel file with a different filename every day. So as your first step in your package you just update the configuration table. Here is a small example

DECLARE @i char(8)
SELECT @i = CONVERT(CHAR(8),GETDATE()-1,112)

UPDATE dbo.[SSIS_Configurations]
SET ConfiguredValue = 'E:\SSISExcel\ida' + @i + '.csv'
WHERE ConfigurationFilter ='CSV'
AND PackagePath ='\Package.Connections[FlatFileCSV].Properties[ConnectionString]'

I will write a blogpost with more details and screenshots within the next couple of days.

I though the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services book was pretty good. I saw some mixed reviews on Amazon but I do not agree with that at all. The book is well organized, easy to read and the examples are easy to follow. I recommend this book to anyone who has to learn SSIS.

Another book I read is lifehacker, this books shows hacks that you can use to improve your technical life. One of the hacks that I have implemented is the JunkDraw hack. You create a folder called JunkDraw, this is where you save all your downloaded content. Then there is the VB Script which is scheduled to run once a day and deletes all the files which are older than 2 weeks from this folder. So if you downloaded something and you did not move it from the folder it will be gone. How many files/apps/trial/beta apps have you downloaded, moved to a folder and never looked at again? Exactly this will prevent that kind of clutter.

I mentioned that I would like to learn a new language, so I went a little overboard because in addition to a new language I have also chosen a new database and a framework. The language is Python which was created by Guido van Rossum. Python is a scripting language and pretty popular among the FLOSS guys/girls. This of course will prepare me to play around with IronPython and the DLR once that is finalized. The DB I picked is PostgreSQL, I have chosen PostgreSQL instead of MySQL because I just can’t install a DB where you can enter invalid days. Another reason is that PostgreSQL is recommended with the framework that I picked. I picked Django over TurboGears and Ruby on Rails because I have heard some good things about it, one of them being performance. So last Sunday 5AM I installed PostgreSQL, Django, Python, Eclipse and the Eclipse Python plugin Pydev on a windows box and got the initial setup to work.

I will keep you posted on my progress once every 10 days but so far it is going good ;-)

Here is the link to the original Become a Better Developer... in 6 months article

This has to be one of the worst planned projects in recent Database history

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1391668&page=1

here is the question
I have a situation where a person can have more then one item ordered. I need to layout the information as follows:

Person      Item Ordered      Item Description
----------------------------------------------
1            1 of 2           Item1
1            2 of 2           Item2
2            1 of 1           Item1
3            1 of 3           Item3
3            2 of 3           Item2
3            3 of 3           Item1
.
.

The information is in the same table and Item Ordered is in relationship to Person instead of Item Description.

I posted this same question on the Oracle forum, because the project is being done using two databases. Sql Server for development and Oracle for Production. I would like to get the SQL Server version of how to implement the select statement.

It gets better
Yes, it is crazy that two database are being used to develop the system, but the people who make the decisions claimed that in the preliminary stages Oracle was causing problems.
So, they switched to SQL Server as the development database. Of course the end result it that the customer expects to implement Oracle. I suspect that someone was just too lazy to learn Oracle.

And better
I asked my manager why Oracle and SQL Server and she stated that they were having load balancing issues (whatever that means). And when errors occured they were not sure how to fix them and it took too much time. At the beginning of the project there may not have been enough Oracle talent to tackle the problems. The Oracle talent available has been here for about 4 years before the project started. So, I wonder how much knowlege they DO have. I feel that an consultant should have been invested in. So, right now when stuff is put into testing for production we have to flip-flop between SQL Server and Oracle.


What? Who came up with that reason? This is just incredible. What do you think?

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Service Release 1 Is Here

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals Service Release 1 has been Released

Overview
This service release addresses the top issues that were found through feedback from customers and partners. This release includes the following features:

• Cross-database references

Support is improved to enable you to reference objects in different databases by using database project references or referencing a database metafile (.dbmeta). This support will reduce or eliminate the cross database reference warnings within a database project.

• Improved file support within SQL Server file groups

You may define files within file groups as database project properties instead of having to create files and file groups within the pre-deployment storage script.

• Variables

A Variables page is added to the database properties. This new page enables you to define setvar variables for use in the deployment scripts. Additionally, SR1 supports the latest service pack release from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SP2). The SR1 also supports the Windows Vista operating system.



The knowledge base (KB) article describing this service release is here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936612/

The actual download is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9810808c-9248-41a5-bdc1-d8210a06ed87&displaylang=en

Summer SQL Teaser #9 @@TRANCOUNT

Here is another quick teaser. What will be the values of the print statements? Try to guess it before running this code

SET ANSI_DEFAULTS ON

PRINT '#1 == ' + LTRIM(STR(@@TRANCOUNT))

BEGIN TRANSACTION

PRINT '#2 == ' + LTRIM(STR(@@TRANCOUNT))

ROLLBACK

Summer SQL Teaser #8 Comments And Go

Without running the following two blocks of code what do you think will the output be?


/* code 1

SELECT GETDATE()

GO */

SELECT GETDATE()



/* code 2

SELECT GETDATE()

GO

*/

SELECT GETDATE()

Some Pics

I have uploaded some pics on Flickr that I took a while back.

There is Paris, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Croatia and New York. Two of them you can see below. To see the NYC and Amsterdam night shots visit this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/tags/nightshot/

Amsterdam


New York city

The Internet has Crashed

Don't worry they got it back to work, watch the video here: http://www.scaryideas.com/video/3017/

Non-Technical: Happy Birthday Twins

HTML Source EditorWord wrap

Today my twins are one year old. It is supposed to be a little easier from now on (until they hit 2 that is). Here is one picture.

If you want to see more you can go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/

This is the last non technical post I will make for a while, My next post will be about Scrum and planning poker.

I see that Hugo Kornelis and Adam Machanic responded to my tagging. Good, three slackers people left.

Become a Better Developer... in 6 months

I just listened to the latest Hanselminutes podcast: Be a Better Developer in Six Months
Scott Hanselman asks “what are you going to do in the next 6 months to become a better developer”?
He suggest reading books, nerd dinners, having lunches together with other non competitive companies, watch webcasts together during lunch and code reading.

Here is what I am going to do for the next 6 months

I am going to read a technical book every 10 days and review every single book

That should be possible now that my twins are one year old (tomorrow). I have a bit more free time at night to read. Here is the list of books, some of them I have read, some I have partially read.

Code Complete (reread)
I think this is one of those books that you should read once a year.

Practices of an Agile Developer
Some good stuff in here, in ordered it a couple of months ago but did not read it yet.

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: T-SQL Querying (partial reread)
I read several chapters but did not read the whole book.

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine (reread)
I have read parts of this one; I have read the 2000 edition several times.

Refactoring (reread)
I was thinking Design Patterns (GOF) or this one. As you can see I have chosen Refactoring.

Prefactoring
Why refactor when you can prefactor? I just skimmed through it in the book store and it looks promising.

Open Sources 2.0
Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Sources: Voices from the Revolution.

Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
New edition.

Building the Data Warehouse (reread)
Read this one several years ago, will read it again

Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Will read this together with the one below at work; have to convert about 60 DTS packages to SSIS.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services

Beautiful Code
In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes.

Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization (reread)
Read this will read it again

The Art of SQL
Heard some good stuff about this book.

Getting Things Done
We all need some help with organizing our lives.

Lifehacker (reread)
Getting ThingsDone for the computer person, very useful stuff inside.

Framework Design Guidelines (reread)
Very nice book, you will learn why something was done a certain way. Good tips on what to avoid and what should be done.


New language Book probably Python or Ruby( you decide)

Here is a pic of the books I have at home, the others I have at work or I still have to purchase them.





I will watch 2 web casts a week during lunch time and review those also.

I will look at high quality source code from open source projects and also from the book Beautiful Code. I will go to CodePlex to download a couple of open source projects and will study the source code

I will learn a new language (I actually got this from Ken Henderson who suggests to learn a new language every year) and rewrite one of the current applications in that language. This way I don’t have to worry about logic problems and design, I just have to translate the code.

I will learn a new technology. I am thinking either WCF or WPF


I will keep updates on Pownce (sorry folks no invites left) everyday The reason I am doing this is so that someone can call me out in case I don’t keep my promise. This is similar to stopping smoking but not telling anyone, if you do that then who knows you stopped so that they can confront you?

I know this is cheesy but I will do it anyway, I will tag 5 people I (kind of) know and I want them to tell us their plans.
Adam Machanic
Louis Davisdson
Peter DeBetta
Mladen Prajdic
Hugo Kornelis

And I will tag 5 people whose blogs I read but I don’t know them
Jeff Smith
Jason Gaylord
Jeff Altwood
Matija Lah
Ward Pond


And you the reader, what will you do in the next 6 months to become a better developer?


Cross posted from here: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2007/07/16/1746.aspx

Best Practice: Backups

What if I told you to take your latest production backup, restore it on a different machine and try using the database? Are you comfortable with that task? Do you think it will work? When was the last time you tested your backups?

Do you even have a backup?
Why am I asking all these things? Because your data is as good as your last good backup. Is your data backed up regularly? You will say “Of course it is we use [Insert expensive backup solution here] for all our enterprise backups”. Prove it, go to work on Monday and ask them to give you the latest backup. I bet out of a 100 people who ask this question to their backup team there will be several people without a backup file.
Here is another problem: three years ago the backups were taking about 1 hour. The backup started at 12 it would be done at 1, at 1:30 a job from another machine would ftp the file down. Two years later the backup takes 2 hours to complete, you didn’t realize this. Can you guess what will happen if you try to restore once of those backup that were moved by FTP? I will tell you it won’t work. What if there is no backup and you do a FTP? Oh yes the 0kb file will be created.

Where do you keep your backups?
Are you backups in the same building? If you would say yes then you have a big problem. Let me tell you a little story. I worked for a company in New York City between 2001 and 2005. This company had their office in WTC tower one. To be safe they kept their backups in WTC tower two. Well I don’t have to tell you what happened with the backup. If you do store your backup offsite (and why wouldn’t you?) make sure it is at least 100 miles away. If you don’t want to go that far from your current location then pick a location which is safe from floods, fires and not worthy to attack.

Where is your Source Code?
Do you backup your source code? Most people will say they keep it in Subversion or Visual Source Safe. But does that get backed up? What happens if your building goes up in flames? What we do is we have a full source code backup every day. In addition to that we also have differential backups every n revisions. We have jobs that create these backups and then FTP them to 3 different locations. If you have 20 developers and you lose 6 hours of work then you have lost 120 * $$ (you do the math). This is the best case scenarios. If the backup was in the building together with all the workstations then you got a lot bigger problem to deal with.
SQL developers are notorious for not using source control. They will tell you that the database backup is their source control. A source control system does not have to be expensive; we use Subversion (which is free and better than VSS). You can either use Tortoise or the plugin for Visual Studio to do your check ins.