Paul Nielsen : books

Hey Greg - the Canadian MVP of the month is reading your book!

Paul Nielsen — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:31:00 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/cdndevs/archive/2008/04/01/mvp-insider-q-a-with-wes-mcdonald.aspx

I couldn't imagine a better book for an MVP to read, eh?

15 shopping days left at ALFKI

Paul Nielsen — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:52:00 GMT

I'm kicking off the next round of the SQL Server Bible series for Wiley. For the past two versions I used my own custom sample databases and skipped the MSFT sample databases (even though I feel that ALFKI's a friend and I'd love to shop there someday.)

I'm also wrapping up a contract where I helped design and develop very heavy transaction, large database. It drove home for me again the truth that testing on your notebook, or even with a 9Gb test database on a dev server, isn't the same as production with 19K very busy connections and a database that's growing Gbs per hour.

So for this next book, I want a more realistic database, one that won't possibly all fit into memory. I'm playing with data downloaded from the US Census Bureau and have pushed it to about 27Gb so far, but thought, why not ask the SQLBlog gang, what would be a great sample database? What's the criteria?

Here's what I have so far as the Great Sample Database goals:

Just a handful of tables, easy to understand and query
Small sample set of data for demos and unit testing
Data generator to push the database to several Gb with a realistic distribution of data.
Full stored procedure API data abstraction layer, so the database physical design can be refactored and then retested. E.g. to test different patterns for optional data, heaps vs. clustered, surrogate vs. natural keys.
Includes lat and long for spatial data
Includes mix of data types
Ability to demo various types of joins and SQL techniques.
Easy to download and install

So I ask you, what else might you want in a great sample database?

OT: Amazon Kindle

Paul Nielsen — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:31:00 GMT

Last night on PBS Jeff Bezos was talking about his new Kindle device on the Charley Rose show. When asked if he felt more emotion about Kindle than Amazon.com, Jeff replied with an enthusiastic yes. To paraphrase, “Books are technology and every technology evolves. The book has been about the same since Gutenberg in the 1430’s, but Kindle evolves the book. Books are the cornerstone of civilization. I can’t think of anything I could do that is more significant that evolving the book.”

We’ve seen electronic book devices before, but this one may actually fly. Charley Rose likened the Kindle to the Apple iPod and the thought is that the Kindle will do for the written word what the iPod did for music. At $399, Amazon completely sold out in 5.5 hours Monday.

Jeff talked about how “books disappear” when the readers gets lost in the world of the author. (Well, I doubt my book ever disappears ;-) the plot development and characters are a bit weak, and the ending is predictable.) Jeff wanted the Kindle to have the same experience, but he said it’s hard to out book a book. So the Kindle tries to be better at what it can add to the experience.

Kindle does look pretty amazing. The Kindle holds up to 200 books and downloads books, newspapers, blogs, magazines, and Wikipedia using an internal G3 cell phone. Using the cell phone connection, you can buy any new book for $9.95 in about a minute. At launch yesterday they had 201 of the 212 NY Times best sellers and a total of 9K books available. Jeff’s goal is to have every book ever printed available for instant downloading and viewing.

A new type of screen called electronic ink is supposed to be as readable as paper. It took Amazon 3 years to develop the blank and white screen. A color version is in the labs now but won’t be available for a couple years.

It’s a version 1 and it’s already getting controversial negative comments from folks who haven’t even seen it. With Amazon and “every major publisher” behind it, if they can make enough of them and if it really is as easy to read as they say, the Kindle may fly. I’d sure like to try one.

Kalen's Magnum Opus

Paul Nielsen — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:43:00 GMT

At first glance, Inside SQL Server Query Tuning and Optimization, appears to be a multiple-author ensemble book with only 1½ chapters written by Kalen, which might be disappointing. However, the reality is that this database dream team is hand-picked by Kalen, and following Kalen’s plan the book meets the high standards Kalen is known for. The flow of the information is the right way to understand and then solve query performance issues.

Chapter 1 – A Performance Troubleshooting Methodology by Sunil Agarwal (Program Manager in the SQL Server Storage Engine Group at Microsoft.) The opening chapter introduces the many factors that influence query performance. Although it fails to connect every dot, the chapter is a comprehensive overview of SQL Server performance and a sound intro for readers without a solid background in SQL Server.

Chapter 2 – Tracing and Profiling by Adam Machanic (SQL Server MVP. Leader of the New England SQL Server User Group in Boston, and all around smart guy.) Even if you use Profiler daily, you’ll pick up some useful info in this thorough converge of SQL Server Engine Trace and the Profiler UI.

Chapter 3 – Query Execution by Craig Freedman (Microsoft SQL Server Query Execution Team.) This chapter has more beef than a 16 oz filet in Kansas City. Wow. If you enjoy reading Query execution plans, then you’ll read this chapter 3 or 4 times. There’s deep knowledge in here you won’t find anywhere else. I’ve lost sleep wondering about some of the questions answered by this chapter, and I’ve lost more sleep reading it.

Chapter 4 – Troubleshooting Query Performance by Kalen Delaney and Craig Freedman. This is the practical part two of Craig’s amazing chapter 3. Here Kalen and Craig show exactly how to diagnose and solve difficult query performance issues.

Chapter 5 – Plan Caching and Recompilation by Kalen Delaney. This is the topic Kalen presented at the 2007 PASS Summit pre-con and her depth shows in this chapter. Since query plan caching is so important to executing queries, this chapter makes perfect sense in this book.

Chapter 6 – Concurrency Problems by Ron Talmage (SQL Server MVP, and true gentleman. Ron leads the Pacific Northwest SQL Server Users Group which meets in Building 35, the SQL Server team building on the MIcrosoft Redmond campus.) In any high transaction production system, diagnosing and tuning locking and blocking is the difference between “it runs on my notebook” and “it runs with thousands of users.” Ron goes beyond the basic explanation of locks and isolation levels to explain how to resolve specific conncurency issues.

Book prerequisite: at least 2-3 years of writing SQL Server queries and a decent understanding of SQL Server.

Like Kalen’s other books, Inside SQL Server Query Tuning and Optimization, is readable, authoritative, and a requirement on every serious database developer’s desk. Buy it once and read it at least twice.