Welcome!

Thanks for subscribing to the first of many weekly newsletters from Brent Ozar PLF. This is a curated list of things that we've found interesting from around the web. Some of it is technology, some of it isn't, but it's all interesting. Enjoy!

Brent's Links

"I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak"

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, bashes a programmer for a bad bug fix. We love this line, and it motivates us to do a better job of root cause analysis. Read it!

Using DDL Triggers to Track Table Changes

Denis Gobo shows how to implement a low-impact method of keeping an eye on your developers (and yourself).  We've used a similar technique for years, and it's saved our bacon time and again. Whenever you wonder what changed recently in a database, just check your change tracking table. Read it!

Defining the Good Data Model

Microsoft rockstar Thomas Kejser has started blogging again, and he's already got a few winners out. We like this one which explains the four most important things for a data warehouse design. Read it!

Virtualization Shoot-Out

Infoworld compares Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat, and VMware and names VMware the winner, but the competitors are really pretty similar these days.  You might be surprised at how much Hyper-V has improved. Read it!

Jeremiah's Links

Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions on Amazon R&D

Jeff Bezos outlines why Amazon spends increasingly large sums of money on R&D. While Amazon's size demands new approaches, I think it's important for companies to ask "Is this technology right for me? Is there something better? Can we build something that's better?" The answer is might be "no", but it's always worth asking. Read it!

Why how is boring and how why is awesome

Benjamin Pollack reveals the secret of great communication: focus on the why. People can figure out how to do something for themselves, telling the audience why your ideas can solve their problems will enage them and give them a reason to learn more. Read it!

Kendra's Links

Gear up For Columnstore Indexes

Let's gear up for columnstore indexes in SQL Server! This new technology will be available in a Denali preview coming soon-- to get you prepped, Benjamin Nevarez covers the basics of columnstore, and links  you up to a whitepaper with all the details. Read it!

Scale Out Sharding: A Relational Story

Here's a detailed look at how Emma.com's team uses sharding to distribute load for relational databases across multiple physical servers. This is a great scale-out story which includes methods the team originally considered, what they decided to implement, and a few thoughts in hindsight. Read it!

Notes from Tim

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

This week I attended KalamazooX, a conference primarily focused on Developers, though I can easily see this expanded to all Technology Professionals, to focus on those soft skills so many of us lack. One topic was embracing failure and not expecting to succeed the first time. No one story explemplifies this idea more than Sir Earnest Shackleton and his 1914-1916 Antarctic journey. There is now a Kindle version of the book I remember reading on this journey of survival almost 15 years ago. Buy it!

Boundaries and Relationships

Continuing with the ideas that formed during KalamazooX is the concept of relationships. Yes, my links this week are turning into an 0prahz Book Club menagerie this week, are they not? Charles Whitman, MD came up as a trending topic in one of the discussions quite frequently. His book on relationships was the most frequent source mentioned.  Buy it!

Don't Disable the Guest Account in MSDB

Finally, one link that doesn't try to sell you a book, but it's a topic that always seems to crop up in an audit and I've been working with one for the last couple weeks.  It concerns the guest account and disabling it in user and system databases.  This link came to my attention thanks to Aaron Bertrand of SQL Sentry who will be joining us on our Alaskan SQL Cruise later this month.  Read it!