February 2, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Too Good to be True? The Story Behind SQL Search
February 3, 2010 at 3:06 am
Many thanks for the editorial I particularly enjoyed the The official story vs The unofficial story part.
This brought back memories of working for an organisation. They had a revolutionary new product which was one managers project from concept to conclusion. He was very strong technically and could unravell the product from top to bottom just from memory. He was provided with one member of staff to help him run the project.
The reason for the help soon became clear. One was the genius who could do it all in his head but poor organisation skills. The helper was a fantastic organiser. Between the two of them they guided and managed the project fantastically. Neither encroached into the others territory and it ran like a dream. People may have attributed the success to one or other of the two but for me it was the combination of the two together.
Mark.
February 3, 2010 at 6:57 am
Interesting story. What type of personalities would work well in this environment? What would prevent some team member from hanging out at the beach the whole time? I would refuse pizza and would need to have some other nourishment and what about regular exercise? What are the ages of the participants? Was anyone over 50? Or, were these all young folks who can live on pizza and Mountain Dew with little sleep?
It's only a week, though. Maybe I could stomach pizza for that long. :sick:
February 3, 2010 at 7:19 am
I think the gains in productivity are short term gains. In addition the comparison gets distorted due to the different quality controls.
I have worked long and short hours. Currently I am definately in the Pizza and all hours area. Doing regular 70 hour weeks which is not productive (not as productive as doing two 35 hour weeks), and not sustainable.
Just doing it while its there for the taking.
Mark.
February 3, 2010 at 7:29 am
An interesting journey, and good to see that expected lessons hold up. Lots of value in building a prototype, lots of value in having some kind of process to build a solid application. I'm curious if you'll launch future projects in a similiar way?
February 3, 2010 at 7:33 am
Is this Simple-Talk?
February 3, 2010 at 7:34 am
I think that the interesting part is that so much could be accomplished in such a short amount of time. Forget about the fact that it is unsustainable for now. This group took on a challenge, worked long hours, and at the end of the week were about to demonstrate a working prototype. That is pretty amazing.
Of course this kind of work week is not sustainable. We have family, friends and hobbies that take up our time.
But the fact is, during crunch time, much can be accomplished.
Scott
February 3, 2010 at 7:55 am
I'm unimpressed. I wrote a simple TSQL script to search for text strings across all tables in a database and it took a lot less than a week.
This is a large problem with most businesses. They spend time and energy convincing us that we need tools when we already have all the tools at our disposal.
February 3, 2010 at 8:29 am
chrism-787002 (2/3/2010)
This is a large problem with most businesses. They spend time and energy convincing us that we need tools when we already have all the tools at our disposal.
I don think the problem is that companys build tools that you may not need. The issue in my eyes is there weere a lot of comapnys buying tools \ software without thinking about if it could be done free or low cost or even how they could justify it financially.
Mark.
February 3, 2010 at 8:35 am
chrism-787002 (2/3/2010)
I'm unimpressed. I wrote a simple TSQL script to search for text strings across all tables in a database and it took a lot less than a week.This is a large problem with most businesses. They spend time and energy convincing us that we need tools when we already have all the tools at our disposal.
Why bother with SSMS if you can do everything from the command line? Simple, usability! Instead of having to run a script manually whenever you want to search for something, now we have a brilliant tool that allows us to quickly & easily search an entire SQL Server in mere seconds. Plus, the results are MUCH nicer to work with in the interface as opposed to a simple table of results.
All in all, I find the product very useful & WAY faster than editing a script manually to search for objects. I don't know about you, but for me, time is money & this is gold! 🙂
Congrats to the product team & thank you to Red Gate for providing this product to the community for free!
February 3, 2010 at 8:39 am
If they have a tool that can search my entire 65,000+ table PeopleSoft database in mere seconds I want to see that.
Seriously, how can their product be faster than a well written TSQL query? Have you used it yourself and if so, can you describe how you compared the two methods?
February 3, 2010 at 8:45 am
Of all the free search tools that have been provided to me today, SQL Search is by far the best.
I do want to thank Redgate for the freebies that they provide, both tools and books. Since the budget for such things that is given to me annually is, well, limited, these freebies help stretch my budget. 😀
Scott
February 3, 2010 at 8:58 am
Andy,
Yes we are considering how to make the most of this approach.
It might be a really great way to prototype and explore interesting ideas. Our next step is to give all of our technical staff a week to work on whatever they like at the end of March. They are already discussing ideas and forming teams - it's giving us all a buzz.
Simon
February 3, 2010 at 9:00 am
Obviously a database with 65,000+ tables is going to take longer than a few seconds... I don't work typically work with databases that large. Most of my work is integrating e-commerce websites & accounting software integrations, in which case both applications typically have 50-100 tables and a similar number of stored procedures and views.
For these small to medium-sized applications, I'm willing to sacrifice the negligible loss in performance for the rich UI & ability to quickly see relevant information for each item in the results. Everyone works different & given the way I work, this tool is of great value to me. I find that it boosts my productivity and since I bill hourly, that directly translates into more $! 🙂
Ultimately, this is a productivity tool designed to plugin to the another productivity tool; SQL Server Management Studio. If I had to use scripts for all of the things I do in Management Studio, I would probably have another profession...
Out of curiosity, what would impress you in a SQL application that couldn't be done by simply running scripts? Correct me if I'm wrong, but everything in SQL is actually a script running in the background....
February 3, 2010 at 9:11 am
Personally, I use scripting as often as possible, for several reasons. One is that it gives me total control over the process and two, I do it so I know what is going on "under the hood".
Dashboards impress me. Give me tools that can reveal a lot of interconnected information about performance. That's the kind of tool that I can do with scripts but is harder to implement.
A simple search tool doesn't do it for me. If a tool has a single function I can usually do it quicker with a script.
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