Should I compress my SQL Database when backing up? - Maybe … December 29, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Other Blogs, SQL , CommentsSQL Server 2008 Backup Compression
- by Varun Dhawan, over at MSDN blogs.
It’s a useful option for saving space with backing up to disk, but I would disagree with the guy over tape backup savings.
Some tape units have built-in hardware compression which already compresses the data being stored on tape.
Which means there is no advantage in compressing data if you are going to be writing it straight to tape.
As I found when testing compressing large ISAM databases back in the 90’s. The data was already compressed so the tape drive couldn’t compress any further.
So the answer is:
Yes, if backing up to disk.
No, if backing up straight to tape.
Details on tape compression from an old Sony FAQ:
Q: What is the tape capacity of the SDT- 5000/5200 tape drive?
A: With the SDT-5000, tape capacity will vary depending on the length of the tape and whether hardware compression is enabled as follows:
| Tape | Native Capacity | Typical Capacity with Compression |
| 60m | 1.3 GB | 2.6 GB |
| 90m | 2.0 GB | 4.0 GB |
| 120m | 4.0 GB | 8.0 GB |
NOTE: The SDT-5200 supports native capacity only.
The typical performance of the compression IC in the SDT-5000 drive is shown in the following table:
| Data Type | Compression |
| Bitmaps | 6.9 to 1 |
| Database | 3.9 to 1 |
| CAD | 3.8 to 1 |
| English | 2.9 to 1 |
| Source | 2.9 to 1 |
| Spreadsheet | 2.5 to 1 |
| Desktop Pubs | 2.5 to 1 |
| Binary | 1.7 to 1 |
As the table indicates, the more random the data is, the less compression is possible. This is due to the fact that data compression operates on the principle of reducing the redundancy in the date string and random data has very little redundancy.
(Not) IT stuff seen during December 2008 December 28, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Other Blogs , CommentsTravelling to the United States of America after 11th January 2009?
Then you need to fill in an electronic Visa Waiver application here
Reference: STA Authorization Required for All Visa Waiver Program Countries Beginning January 12
The Day I Shot Myself Down
From the Ejection Site, the story of the F-14 pilot who shot himself down with a AIM-7 Sparrow missile.
mind.Depositor Index Card Template
Getting Things Done paper templates
Booko
“Booko is a site with a very simple goal - to find the cheapest place to buy books in Australia. This site started out as a personal itch and has slowly grown into a very handy site, slowly adding more shops for comparison and more features to make it easier to use. You can read more about Booko at the Blogo.”
Shopping trolley on board
”What’s the difference between a non-executive director and a shopping trolley? You can fill them both full of grog and shove them around but you can never make a shopping trolley go where you want.”
The Box O’ Truth
Question :”If we engage a bad guy (BG), we will shoot him until he STOPS what ever he is doing that threatens our life. If he continues to threaten us after being shot, what do we do?
Answer: Shoot him some more.”
The Box O’ Truth is a firearms education site.
iStockphoto.com- royalty free stock photography
IT stuff seen during December 2008 December 28, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Other Blogs , CommentsList of IT things I’ve seen over the last week* that I like:
Working with Office 2007 from the Command Line
(via Another day in the Office)
Tracking down a bug in VB6 that only shows in the compiled EXE and not from inside the IDE - Use OutputDebugString
(via Goto 100 - Development with Visual Basic)
Green IT and adding up the numbers
(via James O’Neill’s blog)
2 real case studies for lower power consumption
(via Little Miss Enviro Geek)
Cool Trick- Making Miniature Calendars
(via Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog)
Shimming Applications on Windows Vista 64-Bit
(via Chris Jackson’s Semantic Consonance)
Setting up Verbose Logging in Windows Mobile and Parsing Logs
(via Is that Windows Mobile in your pocket?)
Protecting Documents with Word 2007
(via JohnR’s TechNet Blog)
… or how to restrict document protection down to document paragraphs.
Filling up Active Directory (AD) with some test data
(via Keith Combs’ Blahg)
* a week in this case might be a bit more flexible, I’ve been clearing out my blogging folder 
“I don’t care about PLATFORMS, Dammit!” December 18, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Businesses I like, Funny Pictures, Other Blogs , CommentsMy current business card is far too busy: 
The replacement:
“Platforms don’t mean crap. It’s all about getting the customer working again, and they shouldn’t be thinking about IT at all.”
Other images which didn’t make the cut (I was tempted):
“A fact often forgotten by people who work in IT.”
“Often introduced by bungy bosses …”
“Outside of work, I don’t want to talk about tech either.”
The back? I was going to run with this quote, but decided not:
I expect to pass through this world but once;
any good thing therefore that I can do, or
any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature,
let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again.
All the artwork here, apart from the first card, is by artiste extraordinaire Hugh Macleod, over at Gapingvoid.com. You can buy his own designed business cards right here: Street Cards – Gapingvoid (bit expensive if you’re not in the UK).
Short collection of interesting things November 24, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Funny Pictures, Other Blogs, Quotations , Comments
The Three Laws Of Consulting, via Alik Levin’s MSDN BLog
- “In spite of what your client may tell you, there’s always a problem.”
- “No Matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.”
- “Never forget they’re paying you by the hour, not by the solution”.
Stop stealing my blog posts…..
There has been some discussion recently on some DL’s here at Microsoft about sites that re-post blog posts without permission. I will call it what it is which is the theft of copyrighted materials for the purpose of monetary gain. I don’t like saying copyrighted because copyrights get a bad rap these days depending on who you speak to, but from the perspective that *I* sat down and *I* wrote the blog post, the work does belong to me.
- Stop stealing my blog posts (Chris E. Avis)
This sort of thing REALLY annoys me.
I wrote about ideas theft here: “I came up with it all by myself.” - on theft of ideas in corporate life
How to get my job - the secret of becoming a professional writer, by Jerry Pournelle
Lessons from Scoble - why PodTech failed. August 10, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Business Etiquette, Other Blogs, People, Quotations , CommentsI used to think Robert Scoble SUCKED. I found his work at Microsoft Channel 9 sucked because it was all Microsoft-centric. Gee, what a surprise eh? Bloke works for Microsoft, so OF COURSE he’s going to be all "Hoo Rah Microsoft".
Glad I’ve changed my mind (ie. I was wrong) and now have him on my RSS feed list.
Saw this over at FriendFeed, and some of Robert’s learnings are worth noting. DO READ the whole feed to get the context. My comments in BLUE.
I sure learned a lot about how a company can screw up big time.
Brother, I know how you feel.
Major learning’s for me?
- Have a story.
- Have everyone on board with that story.
- If anyone goes off of that story, make sure they get on board immediately or fire them.
Other things I learned:
- Make sure people are judged by the revenues they bring in. Those that bring in revenues should get to run the place. People who don’t bring in revenues should get fewer and fewer responsibilities, not more and more.
- Work ONLY for a leader who will make the tough decisions (see above).
- Build a place where excellence is expected, allowed, and is enabled.
- Fire idiots quickly (didn’t happen at PodTech — even if you count me as one of the idiots).
Working for people incapable of making a decision SUCKS. Learn to manage your boss in that case. Or leave.
Failures of companies often happen around failures at the leadership level.
Particularly when they say one thing, and then demonstrate something else.
We never played together as a team. It is why entrepreneurs need different skills after they start their companies. It is not enough to sell people on a dream. You must coach your way to it too.
I have been thinking about what Furrier said about me not having a full picture of what went wrong. First of all I don’t think he is right, but if he is I will add one last learning: never work in a VP position when those above you don’t share a complete picture of the business with you. Especially when that business is a social media one that was pushing transparency and community values.
Never worked as a VP, but that seems right. If you can’t be informed at the VP level, there is no hope for the company.
FastCompanyTV is making our bosses happy (we’re bringing in more revenue than is being spent) but we’re a private company so we don’t discuss our finances in public. About our audience. I’d argue that I know more about our audience than any TV show does and we’re soon going to require logging into FastCompanyTV to comment. Who is making tough decisions? I have a boss and he has a boss but the community is really our ultimate boss.
Listen to your audience. Your audience is the customer and your bosses.
Some Scoble links:
scobleizer.com
Scoble’s Google Reader Shared Items
IBM unveils nano-projector based VirtuaHuman with 1TB of memory
TechNet Plus is GOOD value for money. July 27, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Businesses I like, Other Blogs, Software, Web links , CommentsParticularly if you’re in the IT industry. And the main reason I like it:
Full-version software for evaluation - without time limits – including Microsoft operating systems, servers, and Office System software.
Now when I was working for a large IT company, I got that benefit for free, via our corporate Technet / MSDN / Enterprise licensing agreement. But now I’m not, I had to find another way.
And that other way is: TechNet Plus. One of the great "secret" deals from Microsoft.
Worth every cent, as Kevin Remde explains.
(if you visit via Kevin’s site, as a new subscriber you can get a 15% discount until June 2009)
Microsoft Office Paperclip - Do not go gentle into that good night … June 18, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Funny Pictures, Humour, Other Blogs , Comments
Saw this at the Microsoft Office Offline blog. The Office Offline blog
… regularly features wry observations about Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products. The characters in the comic spend much of their time discussing how they use and misuse technology, forming the basis of the humor in the comic. Other themes include software development, marketing, management, and personal relationships. The comic also sometimes refers to philosophy and art.
The amazing thing is that is actually a blog BY Microsoft. Our friend Clippy is one of the characters featured.
I think prison inmates at least get televisions - Cube Farms June 2, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Code Cutting, Other Blogs, Stories , Comments
There are "cube farms" and there are "cube farms". I did some consulting in the late 90’s for a company which stabled it’s employees in office cubes like this.
The corporate culture was interesting, the programmers held tight control over "their" code. So when part of the team was split into a separate division, "their" code became two code bases. Fast forward a couple of years, and it was a tribal culture where neither group really talked.
And you could see it in their source code. So a project to convert their code base to a new platform just become more difficult because a) two versions of the code trying to access the same database b) the teams didn’t speak to each other.
Out of that grew my dislike of code forking. And my strong liking for source code repositories.
The Cube Farm pictured? It was a cube farm at an Intel office in the USA. There was much rejoicing when the Intel workers moved into a new building.
Update: The cool Cube Farm photo above? By Josh Bancroft. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons license, and you can see more of Josh’s photo’s right here.
Vista Performance: Is it really that bad? June 1, 2008
Posted by Dale in : Beta Testing, Other Blogs, Vista , CommentsHere is what Adam Breindel wrote: Vista Performance: It Really Is That Bad, which I saw via Robert Scoble’s shared google reader list.
My comments in reply:
Enjoyed the post, and I am going to "sit on the fence" with my reply (ie. I kind of agree with you, but don’t)
My background, spent the best part of 30 months as a Vista Beta TAP tester, and was involved in the SP1 test program.
We’ll disagree on NLA. NLA is used by Windows Firewall to determine what network you are on. If you are a member of a Domain, Windows Firewall will give you a Domain profile.
We’ll agree on Aero Glass. Think it was Corey Hynes who said something like "You’ll run it for 10 ten minutes, then shut it off".
Performance. Yes it is more resource hungry. SP1 does improve things though.
For a corporate environment, give me Vista. There are plenty of benefits to make it worth it (UAC for a start).
For a home user, Windows XP please. I’ll even settle for Windows 2000, in a pinch.My current work machine? Dual processor 3.0ghz, 2gb ram, Dell machine running Windows 2000.
The sitting on fence part? Have not noticed a whole lot of usability difference between Vista and Windows 2000.