A few days ago I had a new idea for a blog post. A post about what it really takes to be a good database administrator. I began by researching what others had done on the topic. At the end of this post you will find links to six of the posts I found that provided some insight into this question. Even after uncovering this information, I thought I could add something to the mix from my own experiences. So here we go!

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In two words: online operations. In a paragraph: Forget partitioning, row-based replication and events. The big reasons most people are going to salivate over 5.1, and probably start plans to upgrade now, are the online operations:

• online ALTER TABLE for column rename, column default value change, and adding values to the end of an ENUM/SET
• Online, table-based logging. No more need to restart your server to enable or change the general or slow query logs. You can have the standard file-based output or choose a table format…which you can query.

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It’s time again for another edition of the weekly review of database blogs, Log Buffer. Since it was a big week for SQL Server, let’s start there, shall we?

The big news — SQL Server 2008 is released, as reported by SqlServer-qa.net, in seven different versions. Aaron Bertrand introduces a new kid on the block: SQL Server 2008 Web Edition — “. . . designed for highly available Internet facing web serving environments for the next generation Windows Server,” according to MS. (I’ve heard it rains quite a lot in Seattle. I guess it also Drizzles, too.) Says Aaron, “Basically, it has higher scalability than Express or Workgroup Editions : it supports up to 4 CPUs, no artificial limit on RAM, and unlimited database size.”

(Before you crack open your server case, Tara Kizer on Ramblings of a DBA has some advice on how to get physical CPU count on a server.)

The SQL Server Express Express blog helpfully offers a table outlining the differences in the features of the differences between SQL Server 2008 Express editions.

A couple little issues with the release have already emerged. Here’s Euan Garden on SQL Server 2008 Installation Confusion, VS 2008 Sp1 and NetFx 3.5 Sp1: “SQL Server 2008 has dependencies on (and includes) VS 2008 SP1 and its components (BIDS is just VS 2008, SSMS uses components), plus NetFx 3.5sp1. SQL includes the RTM versions of both of these, HOWEVER they are not broadly released yet. There is a check in SQL Server Setup that if you have an old version (Beta, RC, whatever) it will bounce the install and ask you to upgrade to the RTM bits…which of course are not yet available independent of SQL.” Click through for the KB and some other help. Denis Gobo and his readers have some more to say about this.

In all this change, you may lose sight of an important fact or two, and you may ask yourself, how did I get here . . . what version of SQL Server am I running? A couple resources are shared by Kevin Kline.

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My parents instilled upon me many values that I keep with me today. My twin brother and I are the youngest of four children, coming from a lower-middle class background. We children had the inevitable fights over material possessions, screeching “Mine! Mine!”

My father’s response to this was to look at us and say “These toys are mine; I bought those toys with money I worked for. What’s yours is what you make with your bodies.” While the sentiment is arguably harsh, crude and bordering on vulgar, I cannot argue that he had a certain point.

If you do not truly own something, you will be left squabbling like a child when your perceived ownership is threatened. When you assumed you owned something and the truth comes to light, you will be massively insecure and have a sense of injustice.

A few points from OSCon are haunting me and getting me to think about what FLOSS means to me, and what I want from it.

— Open source is important even if you never read one line of source code or make one modification. The fact that anyone can read and write the source code is critical even if nobody besides the original engineer(s) ever does.

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Interesting results you can see from some low quality news aggregators Looking at this page you might think that I’m awarded with the Liberty Medal:

I’ve got this link while browsing the search results for RAC Attack. I guess should ask my granddad to pass my best wishes to Mr. George H.W. Bush.

It’s all over now and I can’t describe how tired I am. As I type it, my flight from Chicago is delayed by 1.5 hour so far (the third delay already, 30 minutes each). I should say that I hate Chicago airport but I digress.

Last night, I left my presentation in a good state and verified the first batch of demos — all worked fine. This morning turned into a disaster as I found out that the rest of my demos stopped working — my 11g RAC cluster on Ubuntu (I have the reason for such unusual setup) got issues with network connectivity. I should probably blame VMware Fusion 2.0 beta combined with Ubuntu but the net result was failing network connections with weird TNS errors and hanging connection requests. Obviously, I couldn’t demonstrate advanced connection management without *simple* connections working.

Well, I didn’t have any other choice but to add new slides with some demo results. Since I did it in a rush, there were some overlaps and I ended up with way too many slides. Good news that the first demo generated sufficiently enough interest about services automation and connection load balancing so we spent significant time there. Well, nothing comes for free so the rest of the presentation had to be covered too quickly but I did manage to go through the failover scenarios and failover technologies available. Run-time load balancing and load balancing advisory wasn’t left aside either so I did make it till the very last slide!

All in all, today’s session wasn’t as good as yesterday but I managed to avoid a complete failure with the demos so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

This morning I checked how the labs went on the 24th floor and I should say that labs agenda looked very impressive and it seems that lab part was probably the best feature of the event. The amount of material Jeremy Schneider prepared was huge and there would be enough labs for 2 full days, not just one. The attendees could choose the areas they are interested in most and work on different threads with their own pace. Great job Jeremy!

Back to the reality and the airport… The flight Chicago-Ottawa is 3+ hours late and they moved us to another gate. Oh… Do I hate Chicago airport! In the meantime I managed to transfer this text from my MacBook to the Blackberry and publishing it from there. The Blackberry syncronisation utility for Mac is a big shame. Can’t wait for iPhone…

To finish on a good note — I’m very glad I came to RAC Attack! What a pleasure to see old friends and make new ones. I just hope I can actually *leave* this place…

I’m pleased to announce that there will be the formal launch of Pythian Europe at the premises of the Canadian Embassy in Prague on Wednesday the 6th of August from 17:00 to 18:30. This historic event will be announced by Mrs. Sameena Qureshi, Trade Counsellor, Embassy of Canada; and Paul Vallée, President and Founder, The Pythian Group. Present will be various members from the press (IT and Business), as well as representatives from Oracle and Sun Microsystems, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Prague, and many more. We will prepare some unusual and very tasty snacks and refreshments.

We would love for readers of this blog to join us, so please consider this your special, personal invitation from me. Please come if you’re in Prague on Wednesday. If you plan to attend, please contact Dan at elbl@pythian.com.

I am traveling to Europe next week to brief major prospects in Germany (Daimler, MAN) as well as to attend to administrative matters at Pythian Europe in Prague and would love to meet any readers of this blog during this trip!

I’m especially interested in meeting:

• DBAs, Applications Administrators and Systems Administrators,
• Potential customers (IT Directors, DBA Managers, Supply Managers for IT), and
• Potential partners (IT product of service companies that could partner with Pythian to delight our mutual customers)

Here is my itinerary:

• Sunday, August: Frankfurt,
• Monday, August 4: Stuttgart,
• Tuesday, August 5: Munich, and
• Wednesday, August 6 through Saturday, August 9: Prague, Czech Republic.

Please reach out to me using vallee@pythian.com if you would like to meet!

So, the Malta MySQL User Group has had its first ever meet-up today, and it was a success! When organizing it, I had no clue how many people would show up, people have said “yes” and then changed to “no”, and vice versa.

Anyway, so the morning came, and I sent out a few confirmation emails, and it suddenly dropped down to just three of us, which was a shame. Anyway, around 5pm, I noticed that there was four more that had just said they wanted to attend. Unfortunately, one of those dropped out, but it was still a great turnout.

This is a great opportunity for us to promote MySQL use in Malta, as well as share experience and knowledge. Also just to network a bit.

So, this time, for meeting #1, we met up outside a local bank, and walked to Il-Mithna, which is a local restaurant. In this picture, there is the first core group of local user group members, all happily gathered and just about to start our discussions.

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An event truly fitting an “open world” — I will be speaking at Oracle Open World.

How does a wild-mannered MySQL DBA like me get to speak at an Oracle conference? Well, after I received the MySQL Community Award two years in a row, Dan Norris contacted me, and encouraged me to submit a proposal with him on how to contribute to the community.

Oracle has a formal program for recognizing community members at two levels: the Oracle ACE Director, and the Oracle ACE. An Oracle ACE Director is expected to make a 12-month commitment to working with the community, while an Oracle ACE is bestowed upon folks to recognize their volunteer efforts in the past. More information about the program can be found on the Oracle ACE Program FAQ.

Dan Norris is himself an Oracle ACE Director, and I think it is a good sign that he reached out to the MySQL community to help the Oracle community. As database administrators and developers, I think we all have much to learn from each other, and I hope this cross-pollination will continue.

If anyone attending Oracle OpenWorld, (or who happens to be in San Francisco from Sunday, September 21st through Thursday, September 26th) wants to meet me or have dinner with me, drop me a line!