adam machanic now blogs at http://sqlblog.com

[Editorial] Get rid of the bad apples in IT?

How many really shoddy developers have you worked with in the last five years?  People you wouldn't trust to touch a single line of code, let alone develop some core piece of software upon which the enterprise depends?

And how difficult is it to hire a qualified IT pro these days?  Anyone who has done some interviewing recently knows that there are huge masses of unqualified people out there who fake their way into the interview process.  How many resumes did you throw out before arriving at those few people that you actually wanted to talk to?  And how many of them lived up to their self-proclaimed hype?

And so I applaud Jerry Fishenden of Microsoft UK, who has suggested that a real professional body be created for the IT industry. An organization with the authority to ban people from practicing IT if they're not up to snuff. This would bring our industry in line with other important professions including medical, legal, and other forms of engineering.  Yes, the unfortunate truth is that we've all encountered less-than-capable members of these professions as well, but at least there is some semblance of a guarantee there, unlike in IT where you can buy a "certification" for a few hundred dollars to tack onto your resume and there is no clear way of authenticating it.

Such an organization would not solve all of the problems, and probably wouldn't even solve most of them, but I think it would be a big step in the right direction. IT is a professional trade, and it's time to treat it as such.

Another Webcast Thanks: Errors and Exceptions in SQL Server 2005

Thank you to everyone who attended today's webcast on Errors and Exceptions in SQL Server 2005!  There were a huge number of excellent questions and I had a really great time talking to you all about what I feel is a very important topic. The webcast is now available for offline viewing, for those who didn't catch it (for shame).

The contest for the free copy of "Expert SQL Server 2005" generated some interesting responses that I wasn't expecting--and I learned a bit about the error messages that I didn't know before!  For those who weren't there, I asked attendees to e-mail me the count of the number of exceptions in sys.messages that are at the highest level of severity.

When I asked, I expected the correct answer to be 9:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT message_id)
FROM sys.messages
WHERE
 severity =
 (
  SELECT MAX(severity)
  FROM sys.messages
 )

However, I received quite a range of answers, so I broadened the acceptable pool a bit to include any of the following:

A) 9, as covered above

B) 81, or 90, which would result from the following query run on RTM or SP2, respectively (I had no idea that the SP would change the answer here, and I was vague about whether language-specific messages should count):

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM sys.messages
WHERE
 severity =
 (
  SELECT MAX(severity)
  FROM sys.messages
 )

C) 158 or 163, if the query from (A) is run on 2005 RTM or SP2 using severity >= 20, rather than the subquery.  I mentioned in the webcast that anything >= 20 is the highest category of severities in SQL Server, so that's a valid answer--it means you were listening!

D) 1422 or 1630, if the query from (B) is run on 2005 RTM or SP2 using severity >= 20.

E) 4, if you told me that you ran the query in SQL Server 2000.

F) ?  I'm still reading through a few more responses to figure out if I want to add another acceptable answer or two.

I will write to everyone who entered tomorrow and let you know if a copy is on the way.  Thanks again for attending.

The code samples used in the session are attached to this post.

DevTeach and a Bunch of News and Links

I flew to Montreal yesterday morning for the DevTeach conference, which was pretty much a whirlwind for me--after getting to the hotel I had only a couple of hours to myself before doing two back-to-back talks (on concurrency and data access architecture), followed by a speaker dinner hosted by the conference at a great restaurant called Gibby's.  DevTeach gets my top vote for conference food! After the dinner it was back to my room to write a bit of new material for my talk this morning at 8:00 a.m.  A slightly early time slot, but I was just awake enough to not mumble too badly and I think that the audience managed to follow along even without quite enough caffeine intake. And now I'm getting ready to jump on a flight back to Boston. Quite a quick two days!

Aside from the aforementioned victuals, I only have positive praise for the rest of the conference as well.  This was my second year there (I had to miss last year due to an injury), and I was very pleasantly surprised by how much better-attended the SQL Server track was than last time I was here.  The attendees in my sessions asked some excellent questions, and I left feeling that the overall orientation towards SQL Server is much higher and better put together at DevTeach than at many other conferences that happen to include SQL Server tracks--a testament to the great work done by the conference team.

Starting this November, the conference will be going on the road to Vancouver, so if you live in that area make sure you check it out! I'm sure they'll put on another fantastic show.

In other news, Expert SQL Server 2005 Development is LIVE!!!!

It's been available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble for a couple of days, but you can now get a sample chapter and view the TOC on the Apress web site.  Go for it! 

In conjunction with the release, I did an interview with the always interesting Denis the SQL Server Menace. Check that out if you'd like a bit more information on some of the material I included in the book, as well as some other questions Denis came up with.

There is also an article online that I did for CoDe Magazine, which uses some of the same examples as the book's SQLCLR design chapter. And if you want even more, I have a book extract from the chapter on Temporal data currently live on Simple-Talk.com.  And if you're in the UK and you subscribe to VSJ, you can see a book extract from another section of the Temporal data chapter, which will be published in next month's issue.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Thank you for attending today's webcast on Authorization, Privilege, and Access Control

Thanks to everyone who attended today's MSDN webcast on Authorization, Privilege, and Access Control in SQL Server 2005. There were a lot of really great questions, and it was fun to be able to share a few insights into how to protect your data!

Several people asked for the code, so it is attached to this post.  Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions or need some help with it.

For those who did not attend the webcast, you can still view it on demand, here.

And finally, thanks to all who entered into the raffle for a free copy of "Expert SQL Server 2005 Development!"  Congrats to the winners, Kong Li, Igor Deck, and Steve Horth.  For those who did not win, no worries--I'll be doing another contest next week in my MSDN webcast on Errors and Exceptions in SQL Server 2005.  See you there!

Upcoming speaking engagements

The next two weeks are going to be extremely busy for me, with a few different speaking engagements. I'm not sure why these always seem to come in clumps rather than being spread out a bit more, but I guess at least that way I can get them all taken care of at once!

Anyway, here's what's going on:

• Wednesday, May 9: I'll be speaking at the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group in Warwick, RI. The topic of my talk is building highly concurrent database applications.
• Friday, May 11: I'll be doing an MSDN Webcast on Authorization, Privilege, and Access Control in SQL Server 2005.
• Tuesday and Wednesday, May 15 and 16: Back to Montreal for DevTeach! This year I'll be doing three sessions. The same highly concurrent database applications talk I'm doing at the SNE group on Wednesday, a talk on architecting for data access, and a talk on graphs and hierarchies.
• Friday, May 18: A second MSDN Webcast. This time the topic is Errors and Exceptions in SQL Server 2005.

All of these talks are based--at least in part--on material from my almost-released book, "Expert SQL Server 2005 Development". The book will ship on May 21. Stay tuned to this blog or any of my speaking events for information on how you can win a free copy!