Entries for the 'editorial' Category

SQL Backup Cleanups(or Did your Moneybags Make it to Tape?)

Posted by Jason Massie on Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 12:13 PM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, editorial, syndicate
1378 Views | 3 Comments |

I have long hated maintenance plans. First was because of the cryptic error messages when they fail. However, DBAs before me clued me into the fact they clean up files whether or not they make it to tape. The cleanup process is oblivious to the tape backup. This is really important. It can be catastrophic for this to happen. How many days do you keep on disk? One, two, three, seven days? Do you manage the tape backup as well? What if you have to restore from tape longer than that but the windows\backup admin was out on vacation while the tape backup was failing? I submit to you that it is better to fill up the backup and log drives before you delete non-archived backups.

There are several ways you can guarantee backups make it to tape before you delete them. First, you could check the archive bit.

For example:

del /a-a *.trn *.bak *.dff

Of course, you may wish to do it from powershell, vbscript or xp_cmdshell so you can only delete files older than a certain date. You may want additional logic if you need to keep a weekly full, a nightly diff and 24 hours of tlogs ON DISK.

Most backup software also allows you to run a post job script where you could clean up backups. I can think of horrific scenarios where it would still delete the “money bags” so I would stick with the windows file system attribute. If there is a bug there, it will be SEV A and lot of people will run into it.

Call for Speakers and Abstract Tips

Posted by Jason Massie on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 8:11 AM to Professional Development, PASS, editorial, syndicate
1583 Views | 1 Comments |

I have now been on both ends of the process. Submitting abstracts for conferences and selecting them in this year’s SQL PASS process.

First, I would like to applaud PASS for taking a huge step forward in two areas. First is marketing. They have grow the submissions,  sessions and attendees at an exponential pace. I guess they will beat TECHED this year. They also introduced a social element to the process. Once you submitted an abstract, it was open to others to view. This creates a crowdsourcing element. It makes the community to step it up a notch. The result is a better conference for the participants due to competition.

Here are a few tips from my experience on both sides of the isle.

• Get a proof reader. Word can spell check but it does not pick up on everything especially punctuation and grammar errors. I suck at this too. If you read a blog post from me with no grammar errors, it probably means the wife proofed it. I saw this a lot with foreign submissions. Some of these sessions, I am sure the speaker would do a good job but I have to take points because of this.
• Use vivid action verbs. Do not use have, be , was, were etc. However, go beyond action verbs like “learn” and tell us what attendees will “consume”, "be inundated with”, “be bombarded  with” etc.
• Use as many characters as possible. There were a few short abstracts that I found short but good. However, at first glance, I was hesitant until I realized the abstract was very, very concise. In general, it is better to use more words than necessary than too few. If you have the gift of conciseness, good for you. Otherwise, use words!
• Submit as many abstracts as possible. This should be a “duh” bullet but I see MVP’s and authors submitting a single abstract on topics with lots of competitions like virtualization, SAN, and performance. Max out your submissions. Some conferences will not select you unless you are selected for at least 3 sessions.
• Start out and end with a BANG! This includes the session title, the first sentence and the last sentence. If your abstract is two sentences, keep working.
• Especially if you are new, look for topics that are not covered every conference several times like performance, consolidation, SANs etc. However…
• Do not submit niche topics. A heath care or financial industry related topic might be compelling but spin it as a compliance topic that could be applied to a lot of industries.

Anyway, I would be happy to review your abstract in the future and provide constructive criticism. Feel free to drop me a note.

No News is Bad News

Posted by Jason Massie on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 7:57 PM to Boohoo, editorial
1204 Views | 0 Comments |

It means I have been getting my a$$ handed to me at work. It is a good thing. I like action but I like blogging too. Anyway I have a few topics queued up but until then I will post a few links.

The company I work for was awarded by VMWare as Service Provider of the Year.

SQLChicken(WWW, RSS, Twitter) posted on ESX 4.0 aka vSphere from a DBA’s perspective.

The MySQL founder talks about the Oracle\SUN acquisition.

Tony Bain’s Twitter feed has some interesting links\commentary regarding Oracle and MySQL.

There is also an article on the Oracle\SUN deal means to MSFT. I don’t agree 100% though.

RE: Dear #SQLPASS, Don’t BI us to Death

Posted by Jason Massie on Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 4:49 PM to PASS, editorial, syndicate
1090 Views | 0 Comments |

Last week, I wrote an editorial that I tried to keep fact based and my opinion out of. Wait, is that still an editorial? Anyway, I was happy to see this post by Bill Graziano(RSS, Twitter) today. BTW, have you subscribed to the SQLPASS blog?

I was concerned that the BI track would be taking away from the other tracks even though it didn’t look to be justified based on the survey. My concerns have been alleviated.

Here are a few quotes:

• We also increased the total number of sessions at the conference to 168.
• First, we're going to have more OLTP sessions than we've ever had before.
• Second, the combination of the Application Development track and DBA track is now larger than the entire conference was in 2006.
• We think our overall mix of roughly two-thirds OLTP and one-third BI will meet the needs of our conference attendees.

Again the full post can be found here.

Dear PASS, Don’t BI us to Death

Posted by Jason Massie on Friday, April 10, 2009 at 5:38 PM to PASS, editorial, syndicate
1192 Views | 4 Comments |

I hope I do not offend my BI brethren. I am just stating the facts from the survey and the fact that that the abstract submission deadline has been extended due to fact that the BI conference has been canceled.

My request is that the number of sessions per track reflect the survey results. I hope that the BI track is not inflated to the point that it cuts out sessions from other tracks.

Here are some fact from the survey which can be found here.

• 89% of the people surveyed are DBA’s or DBD’s
• 27% of the people surveyed are BI professionals.
• 69% of the people surveyed answered the questions on the DBA track. 58% want advanced topics.
• 68% of the people surveyed answered the questions on the database dev track. 59% want advanced topics.
• 54% of the people surveyed answered the questions on the BI track. 56% of those want intermediate sessions.
• 60% of the people surveyed answered the questions on the Professional Development track.

Based on the survey DBA and Database Dev tracks should have the most sessions. The Professional Development and BI tracks should have close to an equal number. In the past, it seems like the BI sessions doubled or tripled the Professional Development session.

I am trying to keep opinion out of this post so I leave it an this. Am I misinterpreting the numbers? What are your thoughts?

Disclosure: I am team lead on the DBA abstract selection team and I have submitting a single ProDev abstract.

Mixed Workloads Part 3

Posted by Jason Massie on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 8:17 AM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, SQL performance tuning, tsql, Indexes, consolidation, editorial, syndicate
1625 Views | 0 Comments |

In part 1, I talk about what I consider feeble attempts at implementing a reporting server through log shipping, mirroring\snapshots and, to a lesser extent, replication. Unless you invest in a real ETL solution, I argued that it is better to run a mixed workload. I talked about the architectural advantages of running mixed workloads in part 2. In a nutshell, doubling the hardware and cutting the data in half.

In this final post, we will talk about new features in SQL Server 2008 and some features that have been around a while that can help with mixed workloads.There are also some bad practices that could be the right answer that we won’t  talk about but let us mention triggers, table valued functions, 20 table outer joins, some correlated subqueries and table variables. These are options but usually not good ones. In the right circumstances, they could be right like an end of year report.

Here are the main tools in your arsenal:

• Resource governor
• Covering filtered Indexes
• Indexed views
• Partitioning + data compression
• Persisted computed columns
• Archiving on the same server
• After hours denormalization(indexes views with deferred updates)

Resource Governor

Chances are you do not want to limit throughput of your OLTP queries. The resource governor does not do a good job with these queries anyway because their duration is usually so short. However, let’s say you have reports that run by executives. You can put them in a workload group that gives them as much resources as possible without affecting OLTP traffic. You may also have a less important group of reports from the marketing or sales teams that you can limit further. One caveat to the resource governor is it cannot limit, disk IO so if that is your bottleneck, this will not help much.

Covering Filtered indexes

Filtered indexes are a great new feature in SQL Server 2008. When optimizing for reporting queries on your OLTP system, you are probably going to be touching a lot of rows so covering the query is important. For example, the order fulfillment team works off a report of unfulfilled orders that pulls in order data, customer data, shipping data etc. In this case, you would add covering filtering indexes on each of those tables. The filtered indexes reduce write overhead on your OLTP writes and reduces read overhead of your reporting.

Indexed Views

Indexed views take filtered indexed view a step further. You can create indexes on multiple tables. Think of it as denormalization alongside your OLTP optimized schema. In the previous order fulfillment example, we can basically persist that report and have it updated in real time. There is more overhead to your OLTP transactions so weigh the pro’s and con’s. Test if possible.Unfortunately, you cannot defer changes to your indexed views but I believe there is a feature request for this on Connect and I will tell you about a workaround shortly.

Partitioning and Compression

This is the dynamic duo when mixing workloads. Unfortunately, the nitty gritty details would require their own post. For example, one mixed workload may benefit from compression on the hottest partition while the older data should be uncompressed. However, another workload may benefit from the opposite. The key here is really understanding your workload, data and hardware limitations. Most importantly, plan then TEST, TEST, TEST! Once you partition, you loose online operations so if you do it wrong, you are stuck.

 Persisted Computed Columns

This is an easy one. It is a simple trade off. Writes take a little more CPU and space in exchange for reduced CPU time when you report. Take your orders table, for example. You could calculate and save shipping costs when you insert the rows. If it adds a few milliseconds to the insert but shaves seconds off the hourly open orders report that the execs are looking at, it may be an easy decision.

Archival

This might not always be possible depending on your data. It may not be necessary if you have finely tuned indexes. However, it could make a night and day difference. If you need the data, UNION ALL’ing the production table with the archive table has little overhead. I do suggest you keep the archive database on the same server unless it will rarely be accessed. Trying to do this with linked servers is bad.

After hours denormalization

This is basically precreating reports during off hours. Think of it as indexed view with deferred updates. You can UNION with the OLTP tables if you need realtime data in your report. In an ideal world, touching less rows in the OLTP table and then UNIONing with the denormalized data will result in the best of both worlds if you need real time data.

The final word

As the concurrency and size of data scales, both a pseudo reporting database and a mixed work load scenario will not meet business requirements. A business requirement of real time data may dictate a mixed workload. There may be plenty of workloads where scaling out and scaling up both meet performance demands. I just wanted to play devil’s advocate and  let you know there is another option when planning reporting.

Nail in the Coffin for AMD?

Posted by Jason Massie on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 9:54 PM to Virtualization, hardware, editorial, syndicate
1944 Views | 2 Comments |

Intel released the Nehalem processor family. The Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 series family. This could be the nail in the coffin for AMD. I hope not. Without competition, Intel can rest on its laurels.

Lets look at the goodies. On Glenn Berry’s blog, he points out the SQL specific benchmarks. This comes from the Anandtech benchmarks. This is what caught my eye from that review.

The memory controller has up to three channels. A dual CPU configuration has access to 35GB/s of memory bandwidth (measured with stream) if you use DDR3-1333. The latest dual Opteron achieves 19.4GB/s with DDR2-800

Think about it. If you have a SQL box with 32GB of RAM and a VLDB, you could theoretically churn the buffer pool once every second. Of course, you will probably hit a disk bottleneck first. In addition the the proc specific improvements, DDR3 with NUMA support in a server is a huge leap.

Today, HP also introduced the DL3X0 G6. Here is a link to the the DL 360 G6 specs. I am speculating but I bet  it would beat a dual socket 6 core DL 580 G5. Most definitely on IO bound workloads like a database server. Hopefully, the DL580 G6’s are coming soon. Maybe an 8 socket DL 780 G6. :)

Mix that with VMWare ESX 4.0 that is in RC and virtualization of the database server may have come of age.

The Opteron 1up’ed Intel in 2004. Now the ball is back in AMD’s court. I am rooting for you!

Mixed Workloads Part 2

Posted by Jason Massie on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 7:56 PM to SQL Server 2008, SQL performance tuning, hardware, editorial
1289 Views | 2 Comments |

I am presenting at the Ft. Worth SQL Server Users Group in April. Details forthcoming but it is basically going to be on running mixed workloads(OLTP and DSS) on the same server. This is part two of what I will be pulling into the presentation. Click here for part one.

In this part we will look at the typical hardware configurations used in part one(logshipping, mirroring, replication etc.). and what a better configuration would be especially if you leverage some new features in SQL Server 2008 to run mixed workloads.

Unless you invest the time to create a real reporting solution with an ETL, you end up with the following solutions based off of the methods described in part one.I see it all the time. On top of that, I see reporting queries still running on the production server because there is a need for real time data.

So what do we get with this solution? Most reporting queries are offloaded from production. However, there are a lot of con’s. The schema usually is not optimized for reporting. There is overhead in getting the data to the reporting server. The data is stored twice on disk and more importantly, memory. Finally, resource utilization is usually lopsided. For example, first thing in the morning the reporting server may be hammered while production traffic is just ramping up. During peak production traffic, the reporting server can be underutilized.

I submit to you that combing reporting and production is a better configuration if you do not invest in an ETL solution that creates a real reporting database. In the next post, we will talk about features to optimize this configuration but lets talk about what we gain just by using this architecture.

• The hardware is doubled and the amount of data is cut in half.
• In the configurations that this would replace, the memory gain is huge. Unless the reporting database is optimized for reporting, the data pages in memory are going to be the same. This allows the same page in memory to satisfy both OLTP and reporting traffic.
• This configuration gives more cores for parallel plans that are common in reporting.
• Most of all, it make available hardware that could otherwise be idle.

 

Note: I use direct attached storage(DAS) in these examples because that is where the biggest gains are to be had. However, the same benefits apply if you are on an enterprise level SAN with some caveats.

Note 2: This series is generalized and your mileage may vary based on your particular environment, business requirements and workload.

In part three, we will talk about features that will help optimize a mixed workload on a single instance with feature in SQL Server 2008.

Mixed Workloads Part 1

Posted by Jason Massie on Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 11:54 AM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005, editorial, syndicate
1200 Views | 0 Comments |

I am presenting at the Ft. Worth SQL Server Users Group in April. Details forthcoming but it is basically going to be on running mixed workloads(OLTP and DSS) on the same server. This is part one of what I will be pulling into the presentation.

What is NOT a Reporting Server

Log Shipping

A log shipped copy is not a reporting database. It is the same database that should be optimized for OLTP. You have no control to add supporting indexes. No denormalization. No persisted computed columns. No indexed views. Disconnects can happen midquery. More hardware. However, this is often the easiest solution,

Database Mirroring with Snapshots

This configuration suffers all the limitations of logshipping. However, you must run Enterprise Edition. You can get around the disconnects with creative coding.

Nightly Backups\Restore

Just like log shipping but the data is behind which may be ok based on business requirements. You can get around the limitations of logshiping like indexing etc. However, not practical for VLDB.

Snapshot Replication

This is ok for smaller databases plus you can filter tables and columns if they are not needed. You can get around some of the limitations of log shipping and mirroring but data is stale.

Others

Offline the database, robocopy, attach. DTS\SSIS the whole db. SAN Replication. Transactions replication with no reporting modifications.

The problem

You double your hardware and storage with no real reporting gains in most scenarios. This might be acceptable if the reporting environment duals as DR. However, there are better solutions.

What is next?

Moving forward, we will talk about doubling the hardware on OTLP and using SQL 2008 feature to run reporting and OLTP on the same server.

The Death of JOIN

Posted by Jason Massie on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 11:49 PM to SQL Server 2008, SQL Shorts, SQL Server 2005, azure, The Cloud, SQL Data Services, editorial
1934 Views | 4 Comments |

The core of a relational database is normalization. The reduction of data duplication is what it is all about. Less data means less IO. SDS removes database design from the equation. This is why sparse columns and filtered indexes where implemented in SQL Server 2008. Here are a few posts on how this is handled in SDS.

The End of of JOINs?

The End of JOINs Part 2?

Yah yah, it doesn’t apply to your job, business, sector. Adam may call me out on FUD again. I hope it is true since this is hopeware so far.

However, I want to point out one company who have found a cloud non-relational database to meet their business requirements. They state their limitations and it makes sense as to why they took this route. If you are not up to speed, Simpledb is Amazon’s cloud db. Big table is Google’s cloud db. You are here because you already know about MSFT.

Glue chooses  SimpleDB.

This is what we need to keep an eye on.

Is 80/20 a 90’s Estimate?

Posted by Jason Massie on Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:08 PM to SQL Shorts, SQL Server 2005, Indexes, editorial
1776 Views | 15 Comments |

It has often been said that even the most write intensive OLTP databases have an average of 80% reads and 20% writes. I am thinking interactivity has increased in applications because technology has allowed it to get more write intensive but I am just guessing.

Run this on your OLTP Crown Jewels and post the results. While not very scientific, it will give us some anecdotal data. The query could also be useful when sizing new hardware.

I came up with 97/3, 74/26 and 60/40 on three high volume databases.

 

--This query has minimal impact.

--Looks at index metadata to determine read\write ratio since the last restart of the instance.
SELECT  
CAST(SUM(user_seeks+user_scans+user_lookups) AS decimal)/CAST(SUM(user_updates)+SUM(user_seeks+user_scans+user_lookups) AS decimal)
AS ReadPercent
, CAST(SUM(user_updates) AS decimal)/CAST(SUM(user_updates) + SUM(user_seeks + user_scans + user_lookups) AS decimal) 
AS WriteRatio
FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

Post your results!

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A MySQL WTF?

Posted by Jason Massie on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 7:41 PM to Rumor mill, editorial
881 Views | 0 Comments |

I read this post and was like Wow. However, then I read about the author and my jaw dropped. It came from the founder, original dev and CTO of MySQL.

 

About Me

Michael Widenius

Founder and original developer of MySQL

View my complete profile

 

If nothing else, read the “So what went wrong with MySQL 5.1 ?” section. Imagine Mark Souza coming out with something like that about SQL Server or Larry Ellison bashing 11G.

Open source is definitely “open”

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My O Face

Posted by Jason Massie on Tuesday, December 09, 2008 at 8:14 AM to editorial
1339 Views | 4 Comments |

Oracle. So I spend a good chunk of my weekend installing Oracle 10G on RHEL5 for several reasons.

• In my new job role, I get to manage Oracle DBA’s and have the opportunity to get as hands on with it as I want. At a minimum, I need to know enough talk with my team and customers but I want to get deeper.
• Diversity is good. Learning Oracle diversifies my portfolio. 
• I like to learn new stuff. MySQL is next.
• Microsoft is killing the DBA. ;)

Jimmy May(Twitter, RSS) responded to my linux n00b installation woes with this tweet:

aspiringgeek @statisticsio However, I *heart* SQL Server. I don't get how Oracle can thrive, except as matter of infrastructure or bigotry Mon, Dec 08 12:49:54 from web

 

I wanted to respond in greater depth than char(140). I used to think the same way. With the pricing and ease of use alone, I totally thought that SQL Server tastes better than Oracle. So why is Oracle still the leader in a lot of metrics? After a little thought, I have 3 theories.

Disclaimer: No numbers to back this up. Just observations so take it with a grain of salt.

Oracle bought upstream

Oracle has snatched up tons of ISV’s. Big ones like Peoplesoft, Siebel, and many others. These are in addition to their stout Oracle Apps offerings. Some can still run on MSSQL but the sales people and consultants are going to be pushing Oracle.

Hardware vendors may push Oracle more than SQL Server

Huh? Think about it a second. Why wouldn’t they push Oracle on AIX(if DB2 loses out), HPUX, or Solaris over MSSQL\Windows? OEM’s probably make a little through Microsoft licensing but a lot of companies buy servers without Windows because get it through their enterprise agreement or other arrangement.

Microsoft is still catching up

There I said it and I can’t take it back. My experience is SQL Server became enterprise ready in SQL Server 2005. Of course, a lot of enterprises ran SQL 6.5\7.0\2000 and still do. However, the engine came of age in SQL Server 2005(especially sp2 :) ) and they greatly extended it in SQL Server 2008(especially Enterprise Edition :) ) However, a lot of the new features in SQL Server 2008 like spatial data, file stream, compression and data collectors were already in Oracle. Of course, Oracle charges extra for spatial and grid control.

I’m just sayin’

I think SQL Server has removed most of the technical reasons for going with Oracle at substantial discount. Assuming that is the case and that can and probably will be argued, what are the other roadblocks to adoption that I am missing?

Note: To my oracle homeboys, I am now database agnostic. I am not saying MSSQL should be taking over the world but from the CTO’s perspective, it seems like the obvious choice from the price\feature perspective. After a couple more versions, MySQL may be in the same spot.

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The Death of the DBA Part 2

Posted by Jason Massie on Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 11:42 AM to azure, The Cloud, SQL Data Services, editorial
1921 Views | 3 Comments |

 Awhile back I wrote about the Death of the DBA. After digesting, the Windows Azure PDC announcements it clear that the only thing SQL about SQL data services is the backend managed by Microsoft. In all reality, it is simply an ORM for the cloud(ORM WIKI). Call a spade a spade. A lot of us have had to support databases for ORM based applications. Most of us didn’t like it but at least we had a database to manage. Our cries for real SQL development fell mostly when deaf ears when managers could forgo a SQL developer head count while shipping faster and app devs could stay in the object realm.

From the manager’s perspective

Assuming that Microsoft delivers a high quality, full featured product with the Azure platform, there are a lot of compelling reasons for an IT decision maker to use this platform. No CapEX. No sysadmins. No SQL Dev’s\DBA’s. No patch or backup management. On demand scaling. The early adopters will be startups that where the CEO is also the developer but as some of the companies succeed more established companies will follow.

The false downsides

Security is the big one. This will be solved. In the 90’s, everybody had a server closet or data center. IT folks didn’t want to give it up due to physical security. Today, colo and hosting has become the norm except for the largest environments. It is because a colo\data center companies\hosting providers can provide higher uptime, faster connectivity, greater redundancy for a much lower cost. Nowadays, some companies outsource everything IT from help desk to Exchange admin to the CTO. A good chunk of HP’s growth this quarter was from the division that was previously EDS. The cloud just takes it a step further.

Functionality is coming. This first release might be “SQL 6.5” like but you can bet that MSFT will listen and respond to customer needs. They have gotten much more agile at this. They are throwing a lot of resources at the cloud to make this happen.

3rd party ISV’s will respond. You may manage a SQL system that powers SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft etc. These company will have to respond to the market. They will release azure versions or their own web based hosted solution. If they don’t, they may get left behind by competitors. Look at how well SalesForce.com is doing.

The real downsides

You have to rewrite your app. I am not a .Net developer so I am not sure how big of deal it would be to port an existing app. I am not sure if many do as new as this stuff is but there will be at least some work effort. If I had to guess, it is considerable.

The biggest downside is the fact that this will be the only game in town for your app once it is written. If you are not happy with the service or prices are raised, you are stuck. How many of you have been unhappy with your web host and moved your web site? *Raises hand* You can’t do that once you are on Azure without a rewrite.

So what does this mean?

I really do not see a career path for a DBA or even a SQL developer to evolve into a role in an Azure based environment unless you want to become a .Net developer. It is pretty cut and dry as far as I see it. However, I do not think that Azure is going to take over the world and be the end of shipping SQL Server on a DVD. There will be SQL 2000 boxes out there 10 years from now because they work and there is no business need to upgrade. Features will exist in on premise SQL Server installations that just can’t happen in the cloud. Big news at PDC was blob support for in SDS. Hello and welcome to Access 97.

There will be hybrid solutions where part of the app is in the cloud while the VLDB is on premise. For example, the product catalog, TodaysOrders and CustomerLogin entities are in the cloud while the Orders, OrdersHistory and Customer databases are local.

Here is Microsoft’s vision:

 

SQL jobs

If everything works out for Microsoft, there will be less SQL and sysadmin jobs. The question is when and how many? I suspect Azure will RTM with Visual Studio 2010. That should be in about 2011 ;) How quickly are enterprises going to jump on that? The first apps to go will be the ones where the developer\sysadmin is also "the DBA". That won’t effect us and I would venture to guess that would be the typical azure installation for a few years. Providing Azure is a solid platform and given the development cycle, the enterprise may begin to move around 2015. I would say we are good until 2025 just with “legacy SQL” in the worst case scenario.  If there are 25% less DBA jobs by 2020, how bad is that going to hurt? I don’t know about you. Hiring and keeping a top notch SR. SQL person is really tough in my part of the country.

The crystal ball

Keep in mind that this is an editorial with a sprinkling of known facts and lots of forward looking guesses. I think SQL Server professional career path is safe for at least the next 10 years. If it is not, the writing will be on the wall in bold ms sans serif with plenty of time to evolve.

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