Log Buffer #120: A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs

Previously on Log Buffer: Log Buffer #119.

And now.

Welcome to Log Buffer #120. My name is Warner, and I’m a SQL Server DBA at The Pythian Group. This is my first time on Log Buffer duties ever, so here’s hoping I can give everyone a fair and unbiased look at this week in the database blogging world (and related).

I admit I had no idea of the community or state of the PostgreSQL RDBMS, and so I definitely learned some new stuff this week. First off, over on “The Scale-out Blog” Robert Hodges invites us all to get our shoephone and get smart about the new world of PostgreSQL replication.

Moving over to “ad’s corner”, Andreas Scherbaum gives us a glimpse of the glitz and glam of PGDay opening. Then he entices us with the title, “Party in the evening” just to horrify us by revealing that—you’d better sit down—by the end of the event half of the beer was still untouched. Next time Andreas, who you gonna call?

“Everything is a DNS problem,” is my new voicemail message, and also the title for Kris Buytaert’s blog, where we go deep into uncovering once again the 10 month-old enigma of why did Sun buy MySQL.

Next up, I will speak to you, Mr. (or Ms.) Cross-Platform DBA. You think you know all of Oracle’s exp command-line switches? All of SQL Server’s bcp formats? And all of the things you can do with . . .  whatever you use with DB2? Well, I bet you can still learn something from Eric Bergen and the different locking behaviors you can get out of mysqldump.

I take my hat off to Schlomo Priymak for contributing to our dream of cross-platform love by helping us uninstall before upgrading the MySQL Connector for .NET. Because both platforms can benefit from each other and people like him keep our dream strong.

On Sunday, I was data charmed by Giuseppe Maxia with this warning post about handling MySQL relay slaves when changing the replication format. After reading that I had to put on my 3-D glasses, having discovered Julian Cash’s Photo Gallery of MySQL DBAs including some very psychedelic shots of Pythian’s very own Sheeri K. Cabral.

Let’s jump right over to Oracle. Pete Finnigan’s Oracle security weblog pointed out a new paper going by the incendiary title “Assault on Oracle PL/SQL – Injection” by a hacker called AELPHAEIS MANGARAE. N.B.: If your kids are the kind that like to read DB security documentation, be aware that there are some four letter words on the document.

If you are a Tom Kyte Fan (look who I found on the front page, none other than Mr. Don Seiler) then you have to head over right now to the Oracle Scratchpad where Jonathan Lewis has posted the dates for Tom’s events in Europe.

Moving to current world trends, Gints Plivna shows us how to calculate our mortgages using the Oracle MODEL clause. Time is running out, in case you haven’t noticed, and there are Only Four Left…. Or so says John Piwowar, showing us how to run oidadmin on Mac.

Now, join me where the air is warm and the food is plentiful.

I call all my fellow SQL Server DBAs to gather for a road trip to Redmond, Boston, Seattle, and Montreal, as we follow Adam Machanic’s trail through the world of SQL Server conferencing. Adam, how about we pitch the reality show to Microsoft? (Suggestions for the show’s title on the Comments section, thank you).

I’m bringing myself up-to-date on SQL 2008 and Tibor Karaszi gave me a nice heads-up on what to expect with resource governor behavior on multiple CPUs. And just so we don’t forget to keep working on the fundamentals, Andrew Calvett gives us a clear look at the overhead of non-unique clustered indexes with the help of Danny Gould’s really cool Internals Viewer for SQL Server.

SQL injection is running rampant on all platforms, so over on SSQA.net, SQL Master (yes, that’s his real name) recommends us some tools to help secure your SQL Server environment to plug all those holes before it’s too late.

There are few things more embarrassing for a DBA than getting locked out of their own databases. If that ever happens to you though, don’t say you were not warned by Mohammed Mawla as he shows us how to properly use logon triggers or save some face with the SQL 2005 DAC connection.

And in case you are on the fence about upgrading to SQL Server 2008, Chris Miller will convince you with the reasons why he is loving the new SQL Server 2008 Management Studio: ” . . . it actually does suck 85% less than SQL Server Management Studio 2005″. Nuff said!

Okay, I’m winding down now, but I cannot go before letting you know that you might want to break the piggy bank for the $1.4 million Leon Katsnelson tells us you will need to recreate IBM’s DB2 TPC-C Benchmark on an x86-64 PC server.

And last but not least, I would like to close it out with two database-agnostic posts.

First Ken Downs, the Database Programmer, goes into our everlasting philosophical dilemma of normalization and denormalization. Second, Craig Mullins gives some food for thought in the form if his DBA rules of thumb. My personal favorite is #4: “Don’t Panic”.

I hope you enjoyed this 120th episode (that’s as long as The Muppet Show’s original run and the 1960’s Batman!). Until next time.