Does your company owe you training?

Recently I read an interesting post by Steve Jones (Blog | Twitter) on SQL Central about Personal Investments, how you invest in your career. It’s also something I’ve been thinking about lately. I agree with Steve that I’m responsible for my own education. But I feel that companies should be, to some extent, as well.

I fall into the “accidental dba” category. When a senior member of our team left I was assigned to work on maintaining and monitoring our databases, something no-one really did before that. It fell to me because I had the most knowledge about SQL Server, as opposed to just writing T-SQL statements. I learned what I could by going to all the free events I could find. I joined my local SQL User Group and attended as many meetings as possible. I bought and read many excellent SQL books and blogs. I took any free or cheap training resource that was available. Eventually I passed a number of Microsoft certification exams. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved on my own, and I will continue to further my technical education.

There’s a cost to my training, even if it’s free. There’s the hours of attending conferences and viewing webcasts. There’s the price of purchasing books, and the time it takes to read them. There’s even travel related costs, such as attending a SQL Saturday event in another state. I pay the cost gladly, and I’ve already seen the benefits.

But at what point should a company start providing training?

Now I don’t believe your company should always pay for your education. As Steve said in his post, you should make your own investment in your career, showing your managers the value of your training. You’re the one responsible for keeping your skills up to date. But it should be a partnership. Your company also needs to make an investment. They have as much to gain as you do.

This isn’t just to motivate an employee, giving you a nice job perk. Frankly, if you’re not self-motivated to get the basic skills needed to do your job maybe you should start looking for another position. But if your job suddenly requires specialized knowledge they should help you attain that knowledge.          

Let’s say, for instance, that your company has decided to use clustering for high availability. And since you’re the SQL ‘expert” they’ve come to you to set it up. You’ve read up on clustering, and you know in theory how it works. But you’ve never worked in a clustering environment, let alone design the architecture involved. Shouldn’t your company help you learn what you need to know to succeed? After all, they have more at stake in this case than you do.

I just feel that companies should also contribute to your technical education. I’m interested in how other’s feel about it.         

What I learned today – CHECKDB and database snapshots

A few days ago I was sitting in my local coffee shop, getting a little light reading done. At work we’re about to move from the Standard Edition of SQL 2005 to the Enterprise Edition and I wanted to learn more about some features of database snapshots. Snapshots are basically just a read-only copy of a database taken at a specific time. Anyway I was reading Chapter 3 – Database and Database Files in the excellent book Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals. The discussion turned to space allocated for the snapshots. That’s when I read that DBCC CHECKDB actually runs against a snapshot of the database.

That caught me by surprise. Until then I thought that the CHECKDB ran against the database itself.

Now I thought I was doing OK with protecting our databases. I faithfully run CHECKDB weekly against all databases and check for any errors. I set the CHECKSUM option and verify backups. I occasionally restore databases on a standby server to make sure there’s no problems with the backups. And I monitor database and drive space pretty closely.

But I was flying blind. I have no idea how near I came to having CHECKDB fail because of a lack of space. So I started digging a little deeper into CHECKDB. And I was able to learn a little bit more of how CHECKDB works with snapshots.

For anything concerning CHECKDB, your first resource should be Paul Randal (Blog | Twitter). Read his excellent series on CHECKDB From Every Angle to get a good understanding of what’s going on. And he also wrote Chapter 11 – DBCC Internals in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals, a great book you should read anyway.   

CHECKDB needs a consistent view of the database to work with. In SQL 7 it acquired table locks. In SQL 2000 it analyzed the transaction log. Beginning with SQL 2005 and going forward it creates a hidden snapshot on the same volume as the database – you have no control over where it’s placed. If you’re running CHECKDB at the same time that your server has a heavy workload the snapshot can run out of space and you’ll get an error showing that CHECKDB didn’t complete. If that happens you have a few options;

• Create your own database snapshot on a drive that has enough space and run CHECKDB against that snapshot. CHECKDB will know that its running against a snapshot and won’t create another one.
• Start the SQL service in single user mode.
• Put the database in read-only mode. 

Once CHECKDB has finished it will delete the snapshot if it created one.

But there are a few gotcha’s with CHECKDB creating the snapshot. First, it has to be created on an NTFS drive. Second, you can’t use the WITH TABLOCK hint. And third, you can’t run against tempdb; but why would you want to?.  

I’m sure I’m over simplifying. I still need to finish Chapter 11.

One other thing I’m wondering. If CHECKDB can create a snapshot database in SQL 2005 regardless of the edition, can the Standard Edition create one with a hidden flag?

Why I bought an iPad

Disclaimer

I bought my new iPad a week ago. I thought I’d write a post explaining why I bought one, and kind of giving it a review against other eReaders I’ve used. But I noticed that Steve Jones wrote something similar at SQL Musings a few days ago. I had almost finished my post when I read it, and I decided to go ahead and finish it with this disclaimer. But please read Steve’s post, he raises some excellent points.

Background

I read. A lot. Always have. And since I have a long daily commute I have a lot of time in which to read. My tastes range from light summer reading, books that are perfect for taking to the beach or on vacation, to heavily technical training manuals.

My problem is what to carry with me. I usually use my morning commute to study or to read the news. The afternoons are most likely spent doing research. Nights and weekends are for reading the latest novel. For instance I’m currently studying for the SQL 2008 Business Intelligence certifications so I’m going through the MS Press Training Kit for 70-448. But I’m also reading Carl Hiassen’s latest novel Star Island. And I’ve got James Lee Burke’s The Glass Rainbow on tap.

Older Devices

I’ve been reading eBooks for a while now, on any number of devices. I started by reading pdf files on my desktop computer. Then came Microsoft Reader and their .lit files. Of course Word documents and text files were included.

But the problem with using a desktop computer was that it wasn’t portable. Once I got an IT job I could justify buying a laptop computer. Even more handy were PDA devices, precursors to the smart phones of today. Each of these devices also had issues. Laptops, at least the ones I had years ago, were bulky, took a while to boot up, and generally didn’t have a lot of extra storage. And PDA screens were too small for my liking. If I made the font large enough to read comfortably then I was turning pages constantly. 

My devices now

Enter the Amazon Kindle. I know that the Sony Reader came first, but it never really tempted me. I thought the price was too high and the book selection was too small. I thought the same of the Kindle 1 when it first came out. It wasn’t until the Kindle 2 was released, with a growing number of eBooks and a cheaper price, that I got behind it.

I also had a different laptop now, an HP Pavilion TX2000 that’s a Tablet PC with a swivel screen that can run as a slate or a classic laptop. This 3 year old PC has 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive so it can run pretty much anything I want.

And as you can tell from the title of this post, I just bought an Apple iPad. I’ve got the 16 GB WiFi model, more than enough storage for my pdfs and other documents.

I should also say I’ve ruled out the Nook from Barnes and Noble as too much like the Kindle. I know it can share books, but I don’t know anyone else with a Nook and I don’t think the eBook selection is as good as Amazon.

Kindle pros and cons

I’ve been using the Kindle 2 now since it came out and I love most of it. It’s light, easy to hold in one hand while reading. It has a large enough storage capacity of 1.5 GB, free 3G Whispernet connectivity and direct connect to Amazon or other sites to download a book in 60 seconds. You can adjust the font and the number of words per line, and the readability on the Kindle is the best of my three main devices. The battery life is 2 weeks with 3G off, 4 days with it on. And you can read in direct sunlight, so I can read just about anywhere. There’s no back light, but I have a clip-on for the few times I read in bed. The last Kindle upgrade added collections, a way of grouping my books by category.

My only regret about the Kindle is that it’s not the best device to read technical books or pdfs on. Originally, I could email a pdf to a special Kindle account and it would convert it to a Kindle-formatted ebook. Later there was an update that allows me to copy a pdf directly to the Kindle. And there’s always been 3rd party tools like MobiReader and Calibre that could convert pdfs to a format that Kindles can read. However big pdfs are a problem, and converted pdfs never really convert cleanly. The 2.5 update allows zooming into pdfs and you can rotate the screen, but there’s still an uncomfortable amount of scrolling and page turning that makes reading pdfs on the Kindle very difficult, at least for me.    

Tablet PC pros and cons

I love my tablet pc. It fits my needs as a laptop computer, allowing me to run every application I want, plus it’s Wacom and touch enabled so I can take handwritten notes. Amazon and other eBook manufacturers have released a Kindle app for pcs so I can sync my Kindle books between devices. I’ve got built-in WiFi and a Sprint 3G data card so I can connect to the internet from just about anywhere. Using Adobe Reader allows me to size my pdfs to any size I need. And when I’m studying its great to have the ability to work directly in another application to try out some of the things I’m reading about in my current pdf.

But the tablet pc is the most expensive device. It’s also has the least amount of battery life, though I have more than enough for my daily commutes. It takes the longest to start up either cold or warm. It’s the bulkiest by far. And the screen is unreadable in sunlight.

iPad pros and cons

I fought getting an iPad for a while, I really did. I thought for the most part it would just duplicate what i could already do on my tablet pc. But it does have some distinct advantages. First, it’s much lighter. Not as light as my Kindle but pounds less that my tablet. It starts up almost immediately. The larger screen makes the iPad ideal for my technical documents. I can browse the web and read emails through the WiFi connection. And like my tablet, there’s a Kindle app so I can sync up my Amazon books.

Again, like the tablet, I can’t read the screen outdoors. It’s far more expensive than the Kindle ($499 vs $139 for the lowest priced models) but not as expensive as my tablet. Battery life is started at 10 hours. That’s acceptable for my commutes but I’d have to carry a charger for vacations.

My conclusions

I really want to have a single ebook reader but my perfect device isn’t out there just yet. I want a device that can easily read all formats, has great battery life, is small enough to be carried easily, can be read in all light conditions, has Internet connectivity through WiFi or 3G, and is affordable. Until that device is available I’ll be using my iPad for technical readings and my Kindle for my more causal readings.