DBAinSpace Launch me into Space

This is the video of my bid to be launched into space on the Space Adventures suborbital flight with the competition from Redgate.

VOTE NOW   https://www.dbainspace.com/finalists

Hi, I’m a Senior DBA specialising in SQL Server. I’m very passionate about data and databases. I’m already very excited about the launch of SQL Server 2012 next year, seeing how cloud database services bring agility and elasticity and watching to see how the 2 universes of structured and unstructured data collide.

My name was sent to the moon on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbitar and is on route to Mars with NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover which was launched the other week.

The Redgate DBA in Space competition is an astronomical chance of a lifetime.  Please send me into space.

Exploration of Data - a Poem

When I was young, man stepped onto the moon
To view such a sight without StreamInsight
Brought meteors, stars and the sun

These spatial discoveries, fuelled man’s quest for flight
To question the data, to which we rely

So what’s to be left but to take into space,
The future, the passionate,the excited DBA.

Please send DBA Victoria Holt into space. https://www.dbainspace.com/finalists

Day 3 DBA in Space Race

Today an article was published in the Bath Chronicle entitled Victoria needs votes to win her own space race. The article is
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/Victoria-needs-votes-win-space-race/story-14082305-detail/story.html

or below




Spoke to Breeze Radio in Bath http://bath.thebreeze.com with an interview about my bid to go into space. Details to follow on their website.


To vote to send me into space with Redgate's competition go to  https://www.dbainspace.com/finalists

DBA in Space a Spatial event

Day 2 of voting for the DBA in Space competition. Please vote to say that I can go into space. The DBA with the most votes will win the astronomical prize.

 
WHY I WANT TO GO TO SPACE

My name has been sent to the moon on the lunar reconnaissance orbiter and to mars on the NASA science laboratory rover so to complete the trio to boldly go where no other database geek has gone before would be astronomical. Thanks #RedGate

MY FIRST TWEET FROM SPACE WILL BE

Space the final frontier to explore new database worlds to seek out new tools #RedGate, new sql civilizations, to go where no dba has been.

The finalists are listed here  https://www.dbainspace.com/finalists

DBA in Space Finalist

Red Gate Software has teamed up with Space Adventures to offer one lucky DBA a ticket into space. The Space Adventures flight takes you into suborbital space, 10 times higher than commercial aircraft, and a third of the way to the International Space Station.


Regate " think DBAs, the exceptional individuals who manage the smooth running of our planet's data supply, have been under-appreciated for too long. That's why we're holding DBA in Space. DBAs deserve better. Better recognition, better software tooling, better prizes." www.dbainspace.com

My brother Roger's passion for space exploration and his membership of the British Interplanetary Society has been my inspiration for all things space related. 

Voting is open to the public and you can vote once a day for the week that voting is open. Please vote for me.

SQLBits 9 Photo taken by Tobiasz J Koprowski

My 100 word short Biography
I am a senior certified MCITP Database Administrator at Eduserv . I am very passionate about data and databases. I have experience of managing a large SQL Server Estate throughout the database lifecycle. With the database landscape continually changing I proactively look at ways to improve the management of SQL Server.  Currently looking at: the adoption of SQL Server 2012, database infrastructure for the cloud (DBaaS) and architectural designs for relational and BI platforms.   Out of work activities include: part time research for a Phd for improving database management systems and involvement with the SQL community through SQLBits.

 I need the most votes to go into space.  https://www.dbainspace.com

Managing Database as a Service

Before looking at Database-as-a-Service there are 3 concepts that cloud computing traditionally utilize within the ecosystem, virtualization, standardisation and automation. The essential concepts being:

• Elasticity
• Rapid provisioning
• On demand self service
• Resource pooling
• Measurable service
• Standardised reporting

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) is in its infancy and conceptually sits within the hierarchy of service layers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). DBaaS utilizes on premise software such as SQL Server to deliver a managed database service.  The service layers are

Table: Examples of Service Offerings

IaaS- Infrastructure as a Service
PaaS – Platform as a Service
DBaaS - Database as a Service

Management of database services has now broaden with multiple owners. It is managed in the private cloud by database administrators. In the public cloud, the public create databases and provision the resources they require for scalability using services such as SQL Azure. This service framework aims to reduce total cost of ownership by reducing the hardware footprint.  This reduced number of SQL Server instances, reduces the number of servers requiring management and maintenance within the database landscape. Consolidation of database services on a shared platform reduces what was known as database server sprawl. 

DBaaS is agile as it has inbuilt processes for the quick provisioning of database services.  The elasticity of the service is provided by instantly being able to expand and collapse capacity.

In the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives (2011) chapter by Peter Ward he discusses further what he calls SQL Service as a service. There he mentions that the SQL Server topology satisfies the following: 

• Provides self-service functionality to allow end-users to request new, expand, or shrink the resources they’ve been allocated
• Proactively monitors server and database utilization and reallocates resources as required 
• Provides expand or collapse capacity, with no downtime 
• Provides self-service provisioning of new resources 
• Meters resource utilization for chargeback – a key tenet

PaaS allows SQL Server to run physical or virtual servers to provide Relational Database Management Systems or Business Intelligence systems. Database-as-a-Service is a cloud service which instigates a new model for providing database services that is a deviation from the core managed database service.

In conclusion cloud computing and Database-as-a-Service are just a new way of presenting and managing services which provide the industry with reductions in total cost of ownership. However organizations will continue to need managed database services whether they are provided through traditional, cloud or hybrid managed services.

Big Data – What is the Big Deal?

The 3rd SQL PASS Keynote was given by David J. DeWitt of the Data and Storage Platform Division. IT was a brilliant insightful session.

The session started explaining the definitions of Big Data. It is a massive collection of records. To some, “Big Data” means using a new a NoSQL system like Hadoop and Map Reduce or the old traditional parallel relational DBMS to manage the data. Data is the currency of this generation with the realization that data is too valuable to delete.

NoSQL
Not Only SQL - It's about recognizing that for some problems other storage solutions are better suited. NoSQL has a flexible data model, faster time to deliver, relaxed consistency model such as eventually consistent, the willingness to trade consistency for availability, low upfront software costs. Some data is just not worth storing in a relational databases, validating, cleansing, ETL, analyzing or controlling the quality.

There are 2 types of NoSQL:

Key/Value Stores
Examples: Mongo, CouchBase, Cassandra, Windows Azure.
This is single value retrievals based on key - Think NoSQL OLTP.

Hadoop
This is large volumes of data stored in a distributed file system - Think NoSQL data warehousing.

SQL is sometimes termed 'schema first' and NoSQL 'schema later'.

The other idea that was presented throughout the session was the idea that there are two universes in the new reality. Structured Vs Unstructured.

This is not a paradigm shift. The world has changed and the new reality is the RDBMS and NoSQL databases need to work together to address the current requirements in a complementary fashion.

The rest of the session went on to explain about Hadoop and its ecosystem and how the 2 technologies work together.

Hadoop = HDFS (file system store) + MapReduce (programing paradigm, process)

Some applications need data from both universes in the new world. Where this is the case Sqoop is used to connect the Unstructured (Hadoop) to Structured (RDBMS).