Katmai's 3 Blunders

Paul Nielsen — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:44:00 GMT

an open blog post to the SQL Server product managers...

Katmai is a great release of SQL Server, new features are a clear evolution of the core product. I like Katami more than Yukon. But, I see three 'areas of opportunity':

1) Not including full support for the over clause. Composable SQL is cool (perhaps my favorite new feature), and is the natural evolution of the inserted and deleted virtual tables. Evolving the over clause would have also made sense and would have been more useful than composable SQL.

2) No T-SQL debugger in Management Studio. This was a no-brainer guys. At a well attended Denver SQL Server User Group last night where Kevin Cox (bright Microsoft guy) gave an excellent overview of Katami, one of the first questions was if the SQL Debugger was back. When he admitted it was not, everyone moaned; it was the single greatest response (positive or negative) to any point about Katmai.

The average corporate DBA does not have VS installed. They feel offended that MS wants to give the store proc debugging job to the VS developer and slighted that the DBA is not deemed worthy of developing and debugging T-SQL. It’s not a question of if there are other ways to debug, but of MS respecting the DBA.

This is a chance for the SQL Server team to “listen” and make a popular change. Throw a lot of money at it and make this nagging problem go away.

3) The Surface Area Configuration tool is gone – ok, but there’s no adequate replacement. The current answer is to use a combination of T-SQL set commands, Declarative Management Framework, and the Configuration Manager.

But, T-SQL is no UI and busy DBAs want a UI option to see these settings. DMF will be great once it’s figured out, but I find it a bit complex and daunting. DFM is no replacement for quickly viewing if the CLR is enabled or then enabling it. Configuration Manager does not expose the settings either. Take this test, go to Management Studio and without typing code try to figure out if the CLR is enabled.

This is a UI design problem that's easily fixed. Just map every old SAC property and make sure each one is exposed in Management Studio’s OE Server Properties, or at least in Configuration Manager.

If you agree (or not!) - it's open season - blast away.

Screencast: Katmai SSMS Manage Multiple Servers

Paul Nielsen — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:51:00 GMT

Katmai Management Studio has the Way Cool ability to send T-SQL to multiple servers with a single F5 Execute. Watch the Screencast (4:00).

Beyond Relational ???

Paul Nielsen — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:11:00 GMT

Dejan Sarka has a thought provoking post about Microsoft’s use of the term “beyond relational” to describe the new Katmai data types such as spatial or file stream.

from his post…

I would simply say that the people that use the "beyond relational" expression do not know exactly what they are talking about. Relational model is neither data type nor physical storage dependent. I would really appreciate if people who are talking about SQL Server would have some knowledge about relational model. Or maybe is this a fad, going beyond relational, because the relational model is "obsolete"?

I agree with Dejan - I'm guessing that when Microsoft says Beyond Relational, they really mean “beyond traditional SQL data types used in the SQL Server Relational Engine.” But it’s one more way that the database professional is being dumbed down by Microsoft.

Paul Nielsen : Katmai

Katmai's 3 Blunders

Screencast: Katmai SSMS Manage Multiple Servers

Beyond Relational ???