If you haven’t attended a Pain of the Week webcast before, here’s how they work: the first 30-45 minutes, we talk about how to handle the week’s problem from a purely native point of view.  No third party tools, no add-ons, just tips and tricks.  Then a Questie (in this case, me) talks for 10-20 minutes about what Quest brings to the table to make it easier, and finally we take your questions.

These have been pretty popular because it’s basically free training, plus you get to watch a Quest tool demo without having to sit through a sales call to see the good stuff, plus you get to ask your ugliest SQL questions to guys like Michael with a lot of experience.

In this week’s webcast, my portion of the webcast will cover how to do object-level recovery with Quest LiteSpeed 5.  One of the slick things about LiteSpeed’s object-level recovery is that it works against native file backups too, plus it works against transaction logs, so you can restore right up to the moment the table was dropped or the bad update statement ran.  I’ll even demo how to run queries against your backup files, so you can quickly see what a table or object looked like before the upgrade - and maybe avoid a restore altogether.

If you’re interested, sign up for the webcast.  If the time doesn’t work for you, we’ll have a recorded version available in a week or so.

This Just In!

Looks like Fox News didn’t choose a very secure password for their Twitter account, because as I just heard through Jammus, their Twitter page looks a little, uh, odd.

Note all of the updates until 43 minutes ago came through “Perl Net::Twitter”, but this last one saying “Bill O Riley is gay” just came in via the web.  Means somebody figured out the Twitter password, and posted an update via the web.

I bet the hacker then turned around and changed the password for the FoxNews account, thereby preventing the legit owners from updating the Twitter feed and deleting the post.  That would explain why there haven’t been any automated updates since the, uh, questionable post.

Lesson for hackers: please get somebody’s name right when you defame them.  They misspelled Bill’s last name, thereby making this quite a bit less funny.  If it’d looked completely legit, maybe even linked to a pr0n site, then it would have been truly hilarious.

Lesson for users: pick a separate password for your Twitter account.  Don’t use the same one as your banking accounts or anything like that, puleeze.  It’s bad enough to be inconvenienced by a hacker mucking with your Twitter account, but to have your bank account emptied out, that’d really suck.

UPDATE: the tweet has been deleted, but check out the screenshot for posterity.

You can subscribe to the feeds at SQLServerPedia:

• MP4 (Apple) Video Feed
• WMV (Microsoft) Video Feed
• MP3 Audio-Only Feed
• Zune One-Click Subscribe for Video
• Zune One-Click Subscribe for MP3

All of the podcasts have always been (and will always be) about the SQL Server native tools, not Quest products.  I’m only covering things that you can use right away without buying anything off the shelf.  Well, except for SQL Server!

I’m also integrating every podcast into a SQLServerPedia wiki article.  If you’re sneaky, you can poke around through SQLServerPedia and you’ll notice some articles have videos that haven’t hit the podcast stream yet.  That’s because I record a bunch of videos ahead of time, and I go ahead and embed ‘em in wiki articles right away, but they trickle out through the podcast stream at the rate of two per week.

If there’s any topics you’d like to see covered, let me know.

They were relying on their RAID drive mirrors to keep their data safe, but that only protects you from hard drive failures - not from application errors or server errors or heaven forbid, malicious users who delete data.

JournalSpace Closes Up Shop

Slashdot story covering JournalSpace

In case JournalSpace takes down their page about the issue, I’ve mirrored the text in my full blog entry - hit Continue Reading to read it.

Tuesday:

Journalspace is no more.

DriveSavers called today to inform me that the data was unrecoverable.

Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it’s automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.

The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that’s gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.

But that’s not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.

The data server had only one purpose: maintaining the journalspace database. There were no other web sites or processes running on the server, and it would be impossible for a software bug in journalspace to overwrite the drives, sector by sector.

The list of potential causes for this disaster is a short one. It includes a catastrophic failure by the operating system (OS X Server, in case you’re interested), or a deliberate effort. A disgruntled member of the Lagomorphics team sabotaged some key servers several months ago after he was caught stealing from the company; as awful as the thought is, we can’t rule out the possibility of additional sabotage.

But, clearly, we failed to take the steps to prevent this from happening. And for that we are very sorry.

So, after nearly six years, journalspace is no more.

If you haven’t yet, visit Dorrie’s Fun Forum; it’s operated by a long-time journalspace member. If you’re continuing your blog elsewhere, you can post the URL there so people can keep up with you.

We’re considering releasing the journalspace source code to the open source community. We may also sell the journalspace domain and trademarks. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/jsupgrades for news.

SQL Server security and roles - Jeremiah Peschka explains each of the roles (db_owner, db_securityadmin, etc) and talks about why you would use each role in the real world.

SSMS 2008 shows missing indexes - when you’re looking at a query execution plan, SSMS shows any missing indexes right in the plan viewer.  This even works if someone exports a query plan in SSMS 2005, sends it to you, and you open it in SSMS 2008.

Reproducing deadlocks with only one table - disclaimer, I haven’t tried this code myself yet, but I foudn it so interesting that I had to repeat it here.  Normally deadlocks involve a couple of different tables in a single transaction, but Alexander Kuznetsov describes (in detail) a scenario where it’ll happen with just one table. Bookmarking that for my “ugly code for troubleshooting” demos.

Cloud Links

Nothin’ exciting during this holiday week.

The Junk Drawer

US Air Force Blogging Rules of Engagement - do you fire back when someone posts a nasty blog entry about you or your company?  Follow the Air Force’s blog combat guidelines.  (Surprisingly, this is not a joke, and it’s quite good.)

The Bloggess negotiates with Chipotle - in an effort to make money off her blog, The Bloggess emailed Chipotle about sponsoring her blog - and they responded. More than once.

Jimmy May’s 2008 recap - Jimmy talks about a couple of the challenges he had in 2008. I second his recommendation that everybody watch the movie The Bucket List. Yes, it’s absurdly unrealistic, but you too should have a Bucket List.

Adam Savage beats his dog - okay, not really, but the famed Mythbuster is now on Twitter as DontTryThis, and he had a typo that implied he beat his dog.  I corrected him, and he replied:

Adam Savage on Twitter

At the risk of sounding like a twelve year old boy, ADAM SAVAGE TWITTERED TO ME!  OMG OMG OMG!

Ahem.  Okay, carry on.

The Ozars

We had a photographer come to Dad & Caryl’s house over the holidays while we were there with my sister and her stepson, and you can check out our family portraits on Flickr.

The amazing part: this is the first actual picture of Erika (my better half) that I’ve been allowed to post online!  She’s rabidly anti-publicity and doesn’t like her photo taken, but she liked these enough to let ‘em go online.  She’s the one at the bottom left of this photo.

I know, right? She’s totally beautiful - that’s even my nickname for her - but she just doesn’t like her photos online.  So there you go - she really does exist, and yeah, she’s a cutie.

My hat, not so much.  Caryl, my stepmom (right above Erika) got us all gloves and hats for Christmas to wear for the photos.  And of course, wouldn’t you know it, she’s the only one in the photo who doesn’t have a hat on!  Didn’t notice that until just now.

Yes We Can!

Congratulations to Tom LaRock, aka SQLBatman, and Pat Wright, aka SQLAsylum, who just got into the PASS Board of Directors!  Two board members had resigned, and Pat & Tom was appointed to one of those two positions.  I’m excited because I believe these guys will make great board members, and I’m even more excited to see that the PASS Board saw that same thing.

Everybody I’ve met on the PASS Board has been enthusiastically dedicated to the community.  These people pour their heart, soul and spare time into helping SQL Server DBAs all over the world, and for every one of the directors, there’s dozens of people in the PASS volunteer organization doing the same thing.  I just can’t encourage DBAs enough to sign up for a free PASS membership and to attend the PASS Summit next year if they can.

Tom’s blog post about making the board shows that he’s also going to be a great politician.  He says:

“A very special thanks to my consigliere, Brent Ozar. His guidance as my campaign strategist was invaluable…”

Let me translate that into layman’s terms:

“If you’re looking for bad campaign ideas that will make sure you lose, talk to Brent.  His advice is worthless.”

Hahaha, I kiiiid, I kiiiid.  (Not really.)

When CSS sharpie Jeremiah Peschka read of my desire to make my site span the full width of the page, he offered to give me a hand.  Lo and behold, my web site is huge!  Ginormous, I tell you!  He made all kinds of fixes to the CSS in the template I use.  The drawback of that is I can no longer upgrade the template, but I’m probably set for a while.

I need to redo the images going across the top of the page, and I need to throw more stuff in the sidebars, but it’s a journey that never ends.  In the meantime, though, I have so much hot fresh widthness that the Enzyte guys are jealous.

If you need CSS help, ping Jeremiah or follow him on Twitter.  He’s also quick with the JQuery magic.

• Learn SQL Server Reporting Services. For years, I’ve sworn I didn’t want to learn SSRS because I didn’t want to be a report writer.  Report writers aspire to become DBAs, not the other way around.  The thing is, SSRS is just too good of a tool not to use, and I think I can prototype things that will help DBAs do their jobs better.  (Dave and I shared this goal.)
• Leverage data mining to make DBA chores easier. I keep dabbling with the SQL Server Data Mining in the Cloud plugin, and I’ve got a few ideas about how I can make DBAs’ lives easier with this tool too.  I’ve blogged about how to use it with Perfmon, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
• Get my Microsoft certifications. We DBAs give Microsoft a lot of crap because the certs are too easy to get, and at the same time, I haven’t had a cert since 1999.  If they’re so easy, I need to get up off my rear and get ‘em all.  Every time I look at Denny Cherry’s site, I get cert envy.  He’ll always have me beat, though, because I don’t have SharePoint skills.

I want my to-do list to be longer, but to be honest, my big resolution this year is to become a confident sailor.  We’re living on a lake this summer, and I’m determined to get out there every weekend and learn the ropes.

Now, let’s see who else has been active on Twitter the last couple of days - seems like most people have packed it in for the winter.  I’ll tag:

• Mike Hillwig
• Tim Ford aka SQLAgentMan
• Tim Cost aka WonkyCoder
• Tom LaRock aka SQLBatman

• Christian Bolton - he’s the Director and Database Architect at COEO and SQL Server MVP.  Here’s Christian’s blog, and he’s ChristianBolton on Twitter.
• Justin Langford - another SQL guru at COEO, a Principal Consultant, formerly a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer.  Here’s Justin’s blog.  Christian and Justin also helped write Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning.
• Cindy Gross - a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer who wrote a chapter in the book SQL Server 2005 Practical Troubleshooting: The Database Engine.  She’s CindyGross on Twitter, and she’s got links galore - SQLWomen.com, Cinister’s Thoughts, and a blog at SQLCommunity.

Our chapter outlines are due in the next week, and I’m already excited, because working with these folks is forcing me to become a better writer.  I bounced the first draft of outlines off them and Christian had a lot of good ideas on things to add.  The collaborative process of writing a book - working with other authors, editors, reviewers - forces you to focus more and work harder.  Call me a glutton for punishment, but I can’t wait to see the first set of edits come back.

That list above is how the list of authors is going to show on the cover and in the credits.  Isn’t it interesting that when it’s time for me to write a book, somehow the world conspired to pair me up with three people whose last names all start before the letter O?!?  What the heck is that all about?!?

No, as it turns out, even if my partners were Zimmerman, Zanzibar and Zoolander, I still wouldn’t be first on the cover.  (And I couldn’t care less, but I was curious about how these things work.)  The order of the author list is determined first by the number of chapters each author writes, and then alphabetically by last name.  Christian & Justin are writing a lot more chapters, and Cindy & I are each penning two.  Since G comes before O, I’m dead last.  That’s where nice guys finish, though, I keep telling myself that.

The payment process works basically the same way as the author order: the advances (and later, the royalties) are distributed by who’s writing the most chapters.  Since I’m only writing two chapters, I’m earning proportionally less money.  I found that nicely democratic.

You won’t see me buying that 911 Targa I’ve always wanted, though: the technical book process isn’t about the bucks, at least not in the low-end two-chapter-writing gig like this one.  It’s more for the love than the money.  But yes, I’m still browsing through the Porsche site on a regular basis, building my own 911.  <sigh>