Search results matching tag 'Rant'

Conducting Effective Web Meetings

BuckWoody — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:51:56 GMT

There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting.

(This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind)

Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web:

100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time

It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM.

I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries.

I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after.

Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them.

Be Clear About the Goal

This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know.

This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better.

There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite.

Understand the Technology

There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading.

Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use) ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting.

Use a WebCam

I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on.

Set Up Early

Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive.

Mute When Not Talking

No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group.

Share Collateral

If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day.

Set Actions At the Meeting

A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary.

So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

Elephant in the room: TPC-E

Linchi Shea — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:21:44 GMT

Over the past few months in several semi-formal occasions, I ran into folks from your well-known vendors (minus Microsoft). Some of the folks were from the vendors’ performance labs and were involved in conducting benchmark tests and publishing benchmark results. So naturally they were very happy and eager to talk about performance, I mean any database performance, until the topic of TPC-E came up. They might not be squirming. But it’s hard to be mistaken that they really didn’t want to talk about it or go anywhere near it, especially not on any sort of record.

That just felt weird!

On one hand, you have this industry standard database OLTP benchmark that all these firms were on board the Transaction Processing Performance Council in its official approval and release in February 2007. And it was supposed to eventually replace TPC-C. On the other hand, for all these years Microsoft has been the only database platform vendor in releasing any TPC-E benchmark results.

It has been four years since the benchmark’s release, and I don’t think everyone can still claim they are evaluating it and trying to work out the wrinkles. So there must be very solid reasons for the other DBMS vendors to not touch it. And yet no one wanted to discuss those reasons publicly. Sure, you hear things through the grapevine. But the silence from the official channels is just deafening!

Or have I missed something really obvious?

Creating features for 1% of the users

Linchi Shea — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:50:00 GMT

While at PASS Summit 2011 in Seattle, I had a conversation with an attendee from one of the largest US companies. As expected and like any of the largest US companies, this company has multiple DBMS platforms.

The conversation then turned to how SQL Server was being used, and the attendee told me that they target SQL Server primarily for their second tier applications and Oracle is the platform of choice for the more critical tier 1 applications. The key reason, according to this person, is that SQL Server does not support active-active clustering and therefore when a server fails, there can be significant down time to fail over all the connections, a situation not acceptable to some critical applications.

Although it is arguable (1) how much a down time a SQL Server failover may incur, (2) to what extent that may not be acceptable, and (3) to what extent an active-active cluster may reduce the down time, the attendee was not the first one expressing this view (or bias if you will) and this did remind me of the comments that I constantly hear from the SQL Server community that Microsoft should not focus too much on creating features just for the largest enterprise customers that probably account for only 1% of its customer base (although revenue wise the percentage is probably much much higher).

I have always thought the comments on creating SQL Server features for only 1% of the customers to be very misleading and not helpful.

I don’t see Microsoft focusing too much on the largest enterprise customers, not to the extent that is detrimental to its smaller customers. In fact, I think Microsoft needs to focus more on the large enterprise customers in terms creating features they want. These features may not be needed by smaller customers today. But they lead the way, and the same customers very often will find their requirements change and start to use more higher-end enterprise features.

More importantly, these features are a must to narrow the gap between SQL Server and more established DBMS platforms, neutralizing any argument against its adoption on critical applications in large enterprise data centers.

Most importantly, these high-end and more challenging enterprise features (such as the aforementioned active-active clustering for a single instance) help make SQL Server a better product over all. After all, if it can meet the more stringent challenges of largest enterprises, it should have no problem serving easily as a platform for smaller customers.

I hope that in not too distant future when this same attendee reviews his DBMS platform strategy, he’ll still use not-having-active-active-clustering as the key differentiating factor between a tier 1 DBMS platform and a tier 2 DBMS platform except that he can’t no longer classify SQL Server as a tier 2 DBMS platform.

Session Evaluations

BuckWoody — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:42:00 GMT

I do a lot of public speaking. I write, teach, present and communicate at many levels. I love to do those things. And I love to get better at them. And one of the ways you get better at something is to get feedback on how you did.

That being said, I have to confess that I really despise the “evaluations” I get at most venues. From college to technical events to other locations, at Microsoft and points in between, I find these things to be just shy of damaging, and most certainly useless. And it’s not always your fault.

Ouch. That seems harsh.

But let me ask you one question – and be as honest as you can with the answer – think about it first:

“What is the point of a session evaluation?”

I’m not saying there isn’t one. In fact, I think there’s a really important reason for them. In my mind, it’s really this: To make the speaker / next session better.

Now, if you look at that, you can see right away that most session evals don’t accomplish this goal – not even a little. No, the way that they are worded and the way you (and I) fill them out, it’s more like the implied goal is this: Tell us how you liked this speaker / session. The current ones are for you, not for the speaker or the next person. It’s a popularity contest.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to you have a good time. I want you to learn. I want (desperately, oh, please oh please) for you to like me. But in fact, that’s probably not why you went to the session / took the class / read that post. No, you want to learn, and to learn for a particular reason. Remember, I’m talking about college classes, sessions and other class environments here, not a general public event.

Most – OK, all – session evaluations make you answer the second goal, not the first. Let’s see how:

First, they don’t ask you why you’re there. They don’t ask you if you’re even qualified to evaluate the session or speaker. They don’t ask you how to make it better or keep it great. They use odd numeric scales that are meaningless. For instance, can someone really tell me the difference between a 100-level session and a 200-level one? Between a 400-level and a 500? Is it “internals” (whatever that means) or detail, or length or code, or what? I once heard a great description: A 100-level session makes me say, “wow - I’m smart.” A 500-level session makes me say “wow – that presenter is smart.”

And just what is the difference between a 6 and a 7 answer on this question:

How well did the speaker know the material? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Oh. My. Gosh. How does that make the next session better, or the speaker? And what criteria did you use to answer? And is a “10” better than a “1” (not always clear, and various cultures answer this differently). When it’s all said and done, a speaker basically finds out one thing from the current session evals:

“They liked me. They really really liked me.”

Or, “Wow. I think I may need to schedule some counseling for the depression I’m about to go into.”

You may not think that’s what the speaker hears, but trust me, they do. Those are the only two reactions to the current feedback sheets they get. Either they keep doing what they are doing, or they get their feelings hurt. They just can’t use the information provided to do better. Sorry, but there it is.

Keep in mind I do want your feedback. I want to get better. I want you to get your money and time’s worth, probably as much as any speaker alive. But I want those evaluations to be accurate, specific and actionable. I want to know if you had a good time, sure, but I also want to know if I did the right things, and if not, if I can do something different or better.

And so, for your consideration, here is the evaluation form I would LOVE for you to use. Feel free to copy it and mail it to me any time. I’m going to put some questions here, and then I’ll even include why they are there. Notice that the form asks you a subjective question right away, and then makes you explain why. That’s work on your part.

Notice also that it separates the room and the coffee and the lights and the LiveMeeting from the presenter. So many presenters are faced with circumstances beyond their control, and yet are rated high or low personally on those things. This form helps tease those apart.

It’s not numeric. Numbers are easier for the scoring committees but are useless for you and me. So I don’t have any numbers. We’re actually going to have to read these things, not put them in a machine. Hey, if you put in the work to write stuff down, the least we could do is take the time to read it.

It’s not anonymous. If you’ve got something to say, say it, and own up to it. People are not “more honest” when they are anonymous, they are less honest. So put your name on it. In fact – this is radical – I posit that these evaluations should be publicly available. Forever. Just like replies to a blog post. Hey, if I’m an organizer, I would LOVE to be able to have access to specific, actionable information on the attendees and the speakers. So if you want mine to be public, go for it. I’ll take the good and the bad.

Enjoy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Session Evaluation – Date, Time, Location, Topic

Thanks for giving us your time today. We know that’s valuable, and we hope you learned something you can use from the session. If you can answer these questions as completely as you can, it will help the next person who attends a session here.

Your Name:

What you do for a living:
(We Need your background to evaluate your evaluation)

How long you have been doing that:
(Again, we need your background to evaluate your evaluation)

Paste Session Description Here:
(This is what I said I would talk about)

Did you like the session? No Meh Yes
(General subjective question – overall “feeling”. You’ll tell us why in a minute.)

Tell us about the venue. Temperature, lights, coffee, or the online sound, performance, anything other than the speaker and the material.
(Helps the logistics to be better or as good for the next person)

1. What did you expect to learn in this session?
(How did you interpret that extract – did you have expectations that I should work towards for the next person?)

2. Did you learn what you expected to learn? Why? Be very specific.
(This is the most important question there is. It tells us how to make the session better for someone like you.)

3. If you were giving this presentation, would you have done anything differently? What?
(Helps us to gauge you, the listener, and might give us a great idea on how to do something better. Thanks!)

4. What will you do with the information you got?
(Every presenter wants you to learn, and learn something useful. This will help us do that as well or better)

Computer books are dead. Well, some of them, anyway.

BuckWoody — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:58:23 GMT

I read a lot. I mean a LOT. It seems that computer professionals have much in common with medical professionals – we have to read in order to stay on top of our game. For me, this used to mean web sites, magazines, and other print medium, and of course lots of books. I’ve even written several computer books myself and had them published.

Whenever I teach a class, do a presentation, or hold an architectural design session on a new (or new to that person) technology, they usually follow up with “what’s a good book for learning X technology?” This happens so often that I have a list I keep of the titles I like for a particular subject – you probably have similar book lists.

Windows, SQL Server, and other Microsoft products change on an average of around three or four year cycles. That’s enough time to play with a beta product, wait until it releases, and write a solid book about it, and have that in a decent market for sales, and allow people to read and recommend it.

Enter “the Cloud” – Distributed Computing.

Windows Azure and SQL Azure don’t release every three years. Changes – some of them dramatic – release every three or four months. You can’t even write a book that fast, much less update it that quickly and re-sell it. So what is a technical professional to do?

Well, although I really like a couple of books I’ve read so far (especially this one, print and e-book version here), they are out of date almost by the time they publish. Instead, I rely on blogs, the web, documentation from the vendor and how-to articles published online. Many of these, ironically, are stored, hosted or delivered using – wait for it – Windows Azure. That’s interesting because it’s a medium that describes itself – “reflection”, anyone?

This brings up an interesting conundrum. Books have a version, are arranged, thought-out and categorized. Since I’m now getting information off of the web, it’s difficult to figure out whether that material is correct at the time, what level it’s aimed at – and forget about any coherent structure. It’s topic-by-topic.

So, like most of you, I use links and favorites to arrange things. And I found myself making “virtual books” by essentially creating my own Table-Of-Contents. I’ve shared some of those, such as my Windows and SQL Azure Learning Plan. The key is that I have to update that to ensure that the latest information is there – otherwise it becomes an organized list that is not authoritative.

Don’t get me wrong – I still have tons of (e-book format) books, especially on “conceptual” topics like development paradigms and so on. But when it comes to specifics and how-to’s – electronic medium is best for me. It’s more current, adaptable, searchable, interactive and immersive than books. But how long will I retain regular print-type books? We’ll see. Times, they are a changing – fast.

iPad Update and Answering Ray Ozzie

BuckWoody — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 13:27:55 GMT

This is an odd post – I’ll say that from the outset. It really combines two topics, and both have to do with the cloud, at least a little.

Some time ago I posted that I bought an iPad to demonstrate a cloud application. True, anything that runs a web browser is “cloud-ready” – Azure is a platform, and any web browser will display a well-constructed application. I got it because I wanted the pure “shock value” of a Microsoft employee demonstrating our platform on a product we don’t make. Simple as that. It’s been fun watching people’s faces as I drag it out and run an Azure-backed application on it.

I was asked by a friend to comment on how the experiment with it is going – how I like it. And then, in a seemingly unrelated event, our Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie left Microsoft. He also published a blog entry, from which many news organizations are trumpeting the comments he made for Microsoft to “move on past the PC”. While my iPad experience and this comment might seem disparate, they are linked, at least for me.

First – let me address the comments made by Mr. Ozzie. He’s a very intelligent person – Bill Gates regarded him as one of the premier developers of our age – and of course he knows Microsoft much better than I do. I think the comments he’s made are true, but I don’t view them as a rebuke – not at all. In fact, I think they are both cautionary and encouraging. You see, we’ve adopted many of the concepts he espoused. We’re in the cloud – and that’s not marketing-speak. We have properties in almost every avenue of our business that are either completely on the web or positioned to be both web and on-premise. From systems in the cloud like Hyper-V and System Center to software in the cloud like Office 365 and many other properties, all the way to Windows Azure.

In fact, we’re moving so fast to the cloud that many people are still trying to learn to code not just local systems, but in Windows Azure – not worrying about controlling the operating system or delivery mechanism. If anything, we’re moving too fast for some people away from the PC. And that’s why I think Ray’s statements are encouraging – and I agree with them. I think we’re headed the right way, and I think at some point we will all worry more about what the code does than in the platform that supports it. It’s a device-independent strategy, and I’ve bet my career on it.

However….

I’ve owned LOTS of tablet PC’s, from some of the earliest model. I still have a (broken) HPT1100 sitting somewhere around here, and I loved it. Used it on the bus to work my first couple of years here. And I do like the iPad. I’ve downloaded lots of apps, mostly book readers and financial news channels, and of course it’s primary role is as a TED player J. I got games for my kid to play with on it, and my wife looks up things in the yellow pages and keeps lists on it. I bought my very first pay-for app last night, an outlining tool for the writing and teaching I do.

But I wouldn’t replace it if it broke.

For one thing, it’s just too expensive. It really is. Without the gift card I had to get it, I wouldn’t have paid that amount of money for it. I could have gotten a laptop for that price. And it’s way too “closed”. I can only get apps from Apple, and only the ones they want me to have. It’s a brilliant model, and I congratulate them on it. But I don’t like it. And the coup-de-grace is, well, I can do everything on the web that I can do on the iPad. All of it. The only difference is the experience - the buttons are larger, and I can work offline (on some apps). Fix those things for a web site, and I really only need a web-browsing device. That’s it. Then the form factor (tablet, phone, laptop, TV, whatever) doesn’t matter. Build in a standard web browser to a device, and the “cloud” becomes the back-end – where it should be. And that’s Windows Azure.

So how do the two tie in? Well, I still need a laptop to do my job. I still need to code. I still need a keyboard. I still need an offline experience. So while Microsoft (in my opinion) is leading the way to the post-PC world, we’re not there yet. We’ll get there. But in the meantime, I like the ability to have both. I like my iPad just fine, but I need my laptop to make money to eat. Simple as that.

Who out there writes perfect code?

James Luetkehoelter — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:28:00 GMT

Recently I've been working with a lot of code, TSQL, .NET, report design, etc. that has just made me scratch my head and say to myself "what were you thinking". Well, after reviewing my own work in the last five years, I feel like a schmuck. The farther back I go through the thing I've done, the more I think "who wrote this mess" - with at least some aspect of it.

It's easy to analyze or critique someone else's work. The reason its easy is that you're looking that work out of context. And by context I mean all of the other little things that drastically affect the work we do:

1) Dictated requirements: This has been discussed before on this blog, but really one of the worst things that make you cringe at your own code years later are requirements established by someone that has no idea what the requirements should be. One of my first questions when undertaking anything (even just designing a report) is to ask the business sponser "What business question/problem are you trying to answer/solve with this [report|tool|glob of code|process]." For those of you that ask that question, you know it isn't easy to get an answer. Often any tenacity you show on this front gets shut down by some personal or political agenda. You end up writing something you aren't happy with. That's life in the real world I guess.

2) "Patterns": Every organization does thing a little differently. Every so often a design or programming pattern gets established that really isn't the best approach, but it remains in place because it is the "standard". That pattern or standard continues on with a life of its own, surviving employees and managers. Before you know it you have a code base that new arrivals shake their head at, but its not so easy to just "undo". So the new person gets sucked into the bad patterns, and they live on.

3) "Habit": I'm guilty of this one. People will get into coding habits. Maybe they're use to writing queries using temp tables and never took to table-level variables or CTEs. Maybe the use IN where they should really be using EXISTS. Believe it or not these habits can be very hard to break. People are reluctant to try new things when they have a technique that works; convinces others to use a more efficient technique can be even more difficult.

4) "Deadlines": I'm sure we've all been burned by this. A deadline for a project is put in place regardless of what timeline is appropriate, and we end up cutting corners and writing code we swore we'd never write, just because some has decreed "It must be complete". Yes, this is silliness, but its reality.

So while there are legitimate times to ask "what were you thinking?", try to take it with a grain of salt. Try to understand what context whatever "piece" you're looking at existed in. If you find no logical reason why something should be written "oddly", go ahead and say "what were you thinking". But make sure you take the time to learn the context...

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

BuckWoody — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:16:19 GMT

I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.

(No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)

I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea! No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.

Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.

Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.”

Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”

Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.

The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”

The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.

Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.

OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount.

I think I’ve finally made it in life. I have a Bobblehead.

BuckWoody — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:33:21 GMT

I have no idea why the Marketing group at Microsoft made me into a Bobblehead. Other than this is awesome!

I think I’ll call him “Lil Buck”.

What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?

BuckWoody — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:28:54 GMT

I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Paul Randal. It’s a high-tech way of making someone else do what you want, but since it’s Paul, well, I guess I’m OK with that. He’s asked in his recent blog entry “What five things would you get rid of in SQL Server if you were in charge?”

This is, of course, a delicate issue. After all, I work at Microsoft, so anything I say here might be taken as a criticism that would require action – but of course it really doesn’t. Interestingly, you may have more to do with what goes in to SQL Server than I did even as a Program Manager where I “owned” a feature. Unlike many places I’ve worked, Microsoft really does drive its products by what its users want – not every time, and not every user request, mind you, but overall I think we hit the mark pretty well.

So, with all of that said, and of course the obligatory statement of “these are my own opinions, and have nothing to do with any official Microsoft position in any way, and do not reflect the opinions of other Microsoft employees or management”, here goes.

1. Get rid of SQL Server Management Studio
Does that surprise you? After all, when I was a Program Manager, I actually owned the general architecture for SSMS. But those on my team probably would have been able to guess this one for you. I think that SSMS is a fine development tool. But I think that it does less of a good job for managing a system. It’s based on Visual Studio, probably one of the best development IDE’s around. And when I develop code, I really like it. But for a monitoring/management tool, I prefer a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I know, the old one (prior to 3.0) was kludgy, difficult to use and program in. But that’s changed. Of course, when I bring this up, you’ll probably immediately say “But I don’t have that in XP.” And that’s one of the reasons we didn’t go there. (But I still don’t like SSMS for management.)

2. ShrinkDB
I think this discussion has been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that.

3. SQL Server Agent
Does that one surprise you as well? In my mind, since we ALWAYS ride on Windows, just use the task scheduler there, along with PowerShell. You could log the results in Windows logs, files, back into SQL Server, whatever. It’s just a complexity we don’t need in SQL Server.

4. SQL Server Error Logs
We have a full logging setup in Windows. They’re well done, easy to understand and ubiquitous. We should just use that.

5. Several SKU’s
I won’t say which, but we have a few SKU’s of SQL Server that need to go. And we need to figure out how to help you understand clearly where you need to go to Enterprise or Data Center. Most folks are trying to push Standard edition to do things it isn’t designed to do, and then they think SQL Server won’t scale. I think we can do a better job of showing you where Standard Edition will hit the wall, and I think with fewer choices it would be pretty simple for you to pick the right one.

Well, once again I’ve probably puzzled some folks and angered others. I think my work here is done. :) Back to you, Paul.