April 13, 2010 at 7:07 am
I'm rather surprised that anyone is still surprised about this. For 30 years Microsoft has been about marketing and sales, not about technology.
April 13, 2010 at 7:14 am
Of course, I agree with you. Oracle Rdb Technical Forums do just what you want. This is a product, which Oracle bought from Digital Equipment in 1995 and it only runs on VMS. The tech forums are a kind of marketing, but the target audience is mainly techies from companies which have stuck with Rdd, despite attempts by Oracle and other salesmen to persuade them to migrate. Why would they. Uptimes between VMS reboots are measured in years - the record is about 13 years and Rdb is similarly reliable. Oracle has implemented many of Rdb's features in its own product, eg cost based optimiser, continuous maintenance of database statistics. Rdb has features which have been in the product for decades and some are not implemented in other RDBMS's including SQLserver. The most striking feature is Row Cache, which enables the DBA to pin Tables and Indexes in memory. VMS and Rdb has had clustering for over 25 years.
Check out http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/rdb/tech_forums/index.html. There will probably be forums in the US later this year and there's discussion about setting up online links.
Sorry for the marketing, but I encourage you to attend one of these forums. Attendance is free, but you have to pay for your travel. You would be very welcome. Perhaps you can get Microsoft to skip the marketing in its Tech conferences.
One thing I have noticed in my years as a dba. DBMS developers tend to be short on real world experience for their product, unless they have been to a customer site to advise and help fix a problem.
My guess is that SQLserver engineers develop the product, but leave Microsoft consultants/solution providers to fix problems at customer sites, so engineers have few opportunities to get real world examples.
You mention spatial, as an illustration of an area which is potential of little interest and certainly lacking in examples. I agree that the concepts are arcane and difficult to explain, but the possibilities of spatial implementation in the real world are extensive. Banks use spatial to work out whether their ATMs are sited optimally for use by their customers and to work out locations for additional ATMs. They know geographical locations, where their customers live, where they work, possibly where they shop, They can use this info to determine ATM locations. Same thing applies to siting new stores, warehouses etc. The possibilities of commercial implementation are many, BUT it REQUIRES concrete examples going down to code level.
April 13, 2010 at 7:25 am
I agree. I believe that we need more opportunities to find answers to questions/problems that we really can't find anywhere else. I encounter new challenges and problems everyday and have founds sites like SSC to be very valuable and I can usually get me questions answered.
April 13, 2010 at 7:32 am
I am in full agreement. The major reason I still go to the PASS conferences is that sometimes (and usually from a non-Microsoft speaker) I see/hear a demo that has real world application for the work I do.
I don't need to be sold on Microsoft SQL Server -- I'm been using it for 15 years. What I do want to hear is how I can use it to solve real business problems. I don't need white papers selling me on the product, but more (and deeper technical content) on HOW to use it better.
On a side note, but similar vein, I stopped taking the certification courses because they offerred no real world application to the actual work I was being paid for. In fact, the two instructors I had had no clue how to apply SS to real business world problems.
Mike Byrd
April 13, 2010 at 7:32 am
Ding, ding, ding...we have a winner! I feel the same way about Microsoft conferences. I went to the PDC back in 2003 or 2004 in L.A. and it was one giant marketing pitch. I sat through hours of presentations and came out with little more knowledge than what I went in with. I did come back with more shirts, demo cds and magazines than I could pack in my bag though. Outside of the free stuff, it was pretty much a waste and our company never sent anyone else to one.
I too would like to see more deep dives, more real-world examples and even some worksheets or case studies so people have something that they can take away and compare with their actual work situations. The marketing pitches will always be there and I am fine sitting through one as long as they give you more than you can get from their website too.
April 13, 2010 at 7:40 am
April 13, 2010 at 8:45 am
As a positive note I get more out of the local user group meetings than any convention. And it's sponsered by Microsoft at their facility in Irving, Tx. Very little marketing and loads of practical info.
April 13, 2010 at 9:36 am
Crrraaazzy Eddie! YES!!!
Hahaha! I haven't seen a picture of him since the 80's, but boy was he big back in the day. In fact, back in 1978 I won a college talent show with a skit I did based on him (as our college's president :-P). Heh, good times... 🙂
[font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc. [/font][font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]
April 13, 2010 at 9:47 am
Howard Perry (4/13/2010)
Of course, I agree with you. Oracle Rdb Technical Forums do just what you want. This is a product, which Oracle bought from Digital Equipment in 1995 and it only runs on VMS. The tech forums are a kind of marketing, but the target audience is mainly techies from companies which have stuck with Rdd, despite attempts by Oracle and other salesmen to persuade them to migrate. Why would they. Uptimes between VMS reboots are measured in years - the record is about 13 years and Rdb is similarly reliable. Oracle has implemented many of Rdb's features in its own product, eg cost based optimiser, continuous maintenance of database statistics. Rdb has features which have been in the product for decades and some are not implemented in other RDBMS's including SQLserver. The most striking feature is Row Cache, which enables the DBA to pin Tables and Indexes in memory. VMS and Rdb has had clustering for over 25 years.
Ah, now there's another blast from my past. VAX Rdb was my first Relational Database (c.1983) and still one of my favorites. Oracle spent over a decade unsuccessfully trying to duplicate it's Cluster locking & synchronization abilities across multiple active nodes (up to 16, as I recall). Finally, when DEC was imploding, they just bought their long-standing rival product, primarily to get (IMHO, and others') that and the Snapshot Isolation technology that SQL Server itself didn't get until 2005.
[font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc. [/font][font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]
April 13, 2010 at 10:35 am
I did not read every post but have something to add even if it has been stated before - Microsoft appears to be like many other companies that market when they should not, and do not market when they should.
There have been times we wanted them to come in a d sell the product and instead brought a technical discussion to the table, and the opposite as well.
I believe that if you insist on one thing with any vendor you will get it, if you just invite them to speak they will just speak whatever they want.
If you want tech tell them before, introduce them as such and afterwards tell them that you are disappointed if they are not on the target. There is no sin in telling them they missed it, they need to know that.
M...
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
April 13, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Great editorial Steve!!! I hope someone from Microsoft reads it. I want to go to PASS/SQL Saturday/Tech Ed etc...but I'm not the person to sale to. If you do try to pitch something it better totally blow me away if you're going to waste my time.
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April 13, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I hope they do read it! I know a few PMs that tend to read the editorials, so hopefully this is one they catch.
April 13, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I have to disagree to a point. I like a bit of fluff when I go to these things. While I enjoy watching the gurus at work, I can get all the technical examples I want online. I enjoy watching the M$ marketing machine in action. Plus, I DO like the free stuff!
Also, adoption of technology doesn't just happen from the top down - that's how IBM does business and I loathe IBM. Similarly, you don't just sell from the bottom-up; that's how Novell used to do it and....Novell who? So, Microsoft is doing the smart thing and pushing from both ends at these events. However, I will concede that often times MS is guilty of pushing new products/features before they perfect what they already have (parallelism springs to mind).
James Stover, McDBA
April 15, 2010 at 12:21 am
Lets just say that the technical content is proportional to your distance from Seattle. In smaller markets on the far side of the world real technical content is non-existent. It appears that marketing hype "forklifts" far easier than technical content
On the other hand, think of the positive for SSC. The reason you have a world-wide audience, including many non-first-language English speakers, may have a lot to do with failure of technical transfer to those markets
April 16, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Nice editorial Steve. I find that MS is usually pretty much marketting oriented, but I've been pleasantly surprised on occassion, so I know they are capable of getting it right.
tony.turner (4/15/2010)
Lets just say that the technical content is proportional to your distance from Seattle. In smaller markets on the far side of the world real technical content is non-existent. It appears that marketing hype "forklifts" far easier than technical content
It is indeed proportional to your distance from Seattle (which is what you said but apparently not what you meant to say) - I've never been to any MS event in the USA that wasn't all (except for a tiny fraction) marketing hype (haven't been to one in the USA for nearly a decade, it may be better or worse now); whereas I used to get invited regularly to events at MS London and MS Reading, and quite often that would turn out to be a good technical affair.
On the other hand, think of the positive for SSC. The reason you have a world-wide audience, including many non-first-language English speakers, may have a lot to do with failure of technical transfer to those markets
Maybe it's something to do with MSDN not being available in those languages? As far as I can see the MSDN website is available in European languages, in Hebrew, and in Arabic: no Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali, Wu, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, MinNan, Jinyu, Gujurati, Kannada, Xiang, Malayalam, Hakka or Oriya, all of which have at least 6 times as many native speakers as some languages that MSDN is available in and two of which have more native speakers than English (they are the two languages in the world with most native speakers).
Tom
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