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>Runner's World - My Event Ratings>
In short: The 'Real' Great South RunIn full: This is THE race to do in England's greatest city (sorry I'm biased as I was born there) and this year I stopped off to run en-route back to Germany (where I currently live and work) via Gibraltar!This race suits ckub runners and first timers and no one will be disappointed. Great organisation, cheerful volunteers and marshalls and a quality LOUD T-Shirt as the prize.The route is a little challenging but is beautiful through the Woodford Valley before turning to run back with the gorgeous Salisbury Cathedral as the backdrop for your return leg!Sadly there ramain a few moronic drivers - shame they can't be banned on a Sunday!Thanks Salisbury - can't wait to be home in a few years when the British Forces depart Germany so I can train through on my favourite route.Just do this folks and enjoy! Forget the Great South Run in Pompey - do the REAL Great South Run in Salisbury!Date of review: March 11, 2013
In short: Great New MarathonIn full: This was my 34th full marathon and the organisers have done very well so soon. I was slightly concerned to hear that some folk were cheating by jumping over the tape on the out and back sections of the course - what's the point of that? Otherwise, an excellent event so well done Brighton.Date of review: April 14, 2011
In short: Superb but tough Multi-Terrain in SalisburyIn full: 2nd year of new Multi-Terrain race in Salisbury and going partly off road around Old Sarum where there were magnificent views over the Cathedral City! Tough hills and muddy in places but well worth a run out on a cold Sunday Morning.Date of review: February 15, 2009
In short: Worth waiting 100 years for!In full: I have just emailed Eric thanking him for this superb event - it was my 29th full marathon and a joy. Not sure I'll be back in 100 years time but would if I could. Well done everyone in Hastings - a classic!Date of review: December 15, 2008
In short: Great run on Salisbury Plain including a nice 1:3 hill at 4KIn full: Wow, this was a toughie thanks to being organised brillianly by 1 Mech Bde (that's the Army to those that don't know!). Thoroughly enjojable multi-terrain 10K with the highlight/lowlight (depending on how you felt) being the killer 1:3 hill at 4K - that was fun! Hopefully, this event will grow and grow and thanks for a great challenge.Date of review: November 2, 2008
In short: Perfect in every way, despite the hill!In full: This is a tough but really good event. Forget 50,000 runners, this attracts 350-450 runners and is small and beautiful. Ludo and his team at the Fire Station and all his other helpers do a great job. It's in my home city so I'm biased but it really is worth doing depite the hill in the middle!Date of review: October 19, 2008
In short: BrutalIn full: My 28th and final marathon. I support everything Terry Earney has said about this race. A more scenic route would be a good start.Date of review: May 30, 2007
In short: A Great Day Out In full: This was my 5th GNR and I had trained specially for it whilst undertaking a 6 month tour with the MOD in Iraq. My training had gone great and on returning home I developed a stress fracture in my left foot. Being a stubborn old git I still decided to run. Prior to the injury I would have smashed 90 minutes. Sadly the pain from 8 miles was tough so I had to grit my teeth and finished in 1 hour, 37 minutes.I had a good start because I was in the Leukaemia Research Pacing Team thanks to Running Fitness Magazine. I was able to cross the start line under 10 seconds but I still came across walkers in my start pen! I don't know why the big races in UK can't adopt the same policy in the US where an official checks all the numbers before allowing you access to the correct pen.Yes, a lot of the criticism from other reviewers is fair but they get the same comments every year. With 50 thousand runners it is always going to be an organisers nightmare.Just enjoy the day being part of one amazing race.The best bit for me was finding my wife at the finish and waching the Red Arrows at the seaside at South Shields. The massage back in the hotel was dam good too but I had better not mention that here!Finally, I also was very sorry to hear about the deaths and from what I've read the 4 guys seemed fit and good runners. My thoughts are with their families.Bring on the Great South Run in a fortnight.Date of review: September 24, 2005
In short: After London, this has to be the next best marathon in the UKDate of review: August 24, 2004
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Your gift will make a difference in the lives of people who survive on less than $1 a day. Learn more.
Support World CouncilWith Amazon Smiles!
The signing took place at The 1 Credit Union Conference in Las Vegas, and brings the number of World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) partnership programs to 26 (LoneStar Leaguer July 13).
The partnership allows dialogue and the exchange of ideas and best practices between Texas credit unions and counterparts in Brazil, Ensweiler added.
"We are enthusiastic about solidifying a partnership with SICREDI," said TCUL President/CEO Dick Ensweiler. "While they are a relatively young movement, they are quite sophisticated. I'm extremely impressed with the level of cooperation that exists between SICREDI's member credit unions, and I'm confident that this will be a mutually beneficial relationship."
The partnership will kick off tomorrow, when about 25 SICREDI staff will visit Members Trust of the Southwest FCU in Stephenville, followed by a tour of a 3,300-plus head dairy farm. Agricultural cooperatives are very strong in Brazil, and many credit unions in Brazil started out serving farmers, TCUL said.
Collaboration will continue in September, with a four-week visit by 11 SICREDI staff to TCUL and its member credit unions, to get a better sense of how U.S. credit unions approach operational, marketing and member service issues.
The visits will be reciprocated at some point in the future with a visit by TCUL staff and members to SICREDI's office and operations in Brazil.
"There is always room for learning from others, and we expect there to be a lot of idea-sharing and exchanges that will make all of our credit unions even better," said Manfred Dasenbrock, chair of SICREDI and a member of WOCCU's board of directors who participated in the agreement signing. "We look forward to working with the league and Texas credit unions."
TCUL also maintains a partnership with the Jamaica Credit Union League through the WOCCU program.

subset: commoncrawl


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GIST Support International - GIST In the News
Pfizer submits application to FDA for Sutent (SU11248)
|Posted by Administrator (admin) on Mar 13 2006
|GIST In the News >>
Pfizer is seeking FDA approval for Sutent as a treatment for malignant gastrointestinal stromal tumor and metastatic renal cell carcinoma among patients whose tumors do not respond to or do not tolerate standard treatment options.
The FDA has granted Sutent fast-track status since Sutent may provide significant benefit over existing therapy for serious or life-threatening illnesses for which no therapy exists.
Sutent is an oral, multi-targeted cancer therapy that combines anti-angiogenic and anti-tumor activity to simultaneously stop the blood supply to and directly attack tumor cells. Over 2,000 patients have received Sutent as part of Pfizer's clinical trial program.
Developed by Pfizer, Sutent also is being studied alone and in combination with other medicines as a treatment for a number of other solid tumors, including breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal cancers.
Sutent is one of the first in a new class of drugs that selectively targets multiple protein receptors, called receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). Inhibition of these RTKs is believed to starve tumors of blood and nutrients needed for growth and simultaneously kill the cancer cells that make up tumors.
Pfizer is committed to advancing the scientific understanding of cancer and to bringing new medicines that address unmet medical needs to cancer patients. Oncology is a research priority for Pfizer, with a significant portion of the company's research and development investment devoted to discovering and developing innovative therapies for treating breast, colorectal and other cancers.
Last changed: Mar 13 2006 at 10:17 AMBack


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Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
versión On-line ISSN 2411-9717
versión impresa ISSN 0038-223X
GUNTNER, J y HAMMERSCHMIDT, J. Sulphating roasting of copper-cobalt concentrates. J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall. [online]. 2012, vol.112, n.6, pp.455-460. ISSN 2411-9717.
Most copper/cobalt ores from the Central African Copperbelt contain sulphidic compounds, which are not extractable in direct leaching. Roasting provides the possibility to transfer the valuable components into leachable compounds. In an operation window defined by temperature and off-gas composition it is possible to selectively oxidize iron sulphides to haematite and copper/cobalt sulphides to sulphates. Selective sulphating of the valuable minerals is an important condition for the subsequent leaching stage. The dissolved copper and cobalt are recovered by solvent extraction and electrowinning. This technology has been part of an established process for many decades. The concentrates from recent projects on the Copperbelt have lower sulphur contents, and frequently higher copper contents, than those from older projects. The paper shows the consequences of this trend for plant operation and explains useful counter actions by means of case studies. Autothermal combustion is ensured even at very low sulphur contents. Off-gas treatment has so far been based on SO2 removal through sulphuric acid production. The generated acid is used to make up acid losses in the hydrometallurgical plant section. This well-proven process combination is still the preferred route if the feed sulphur content is high enough; however, some cases may require different off-gas cleaning concepts without compromising on clean air quality. Roasting in a fluid-bed furnace remains the core of the technology. Fluid-bed roasters are easy to operate and provide an excellent control of the calcine quality. Different feeding and heat-recovery systems are used to provide a tailor-made solution for each project. Outotec built it first sulphatizing roaster in Zambia about 30 years ago. At that time, the roasting of metal sulphides was already one of the main technologies in the company. Outotec has developed roasting solutions for copper, gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, and pyrite ores. The continuously expanded and upgraded research facilities provide an excellent basis for developing sustainable, energy-efficient, and economic solutions for copper and cobalt production in Africa.
Palabras clave : sulphating roasting; copper concentrate; copper-cobalt concentrate; copper sulphate; copper-cobalt sulphate; chalcosite; chalcopyrite; Copperbelt.


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Cownose Rays
Regional Food/Cooking
Sailing Expeditions
Photographing Cozumel
Cozumel Ruins
Spanish Guide
Travel Groups
Excursions - Moderate Active
Turtle Salvation Program
Excursions - Vigorous
Cozumel Island History
Island & Reef Maps
Cozumel Excursions - Easy Relaxed
Cozumel is an exciting island that truly has something to offer every visiting traveler. There is such a wide variety of things to do here now on the island that we at INSIDER are hard pressed at times to keep up with all that is new! While some folks are looking for action packed, adrenlalin pumping adventures, others simply seek a more laid back pace while exploring the island both in water and out.
If you are a more LAID BACK traveler looking for fun things to do on Cozumel, then this page is for YOU! Here you will find a wide variety of activities, tours and excursions that involve minimal physical exertion and move at a more liesurely pace. Everyone has a different agenda when vacationing and these activities are for travelers who want to enjoy and experience Cozumel but aren't rushed trying to squeeze multiple activities into one outing in Cozumel.
These EASY, RELAXED excursions typically last 3-5 hours in total and have built in transportation and/or a minimal level of walking/standing involved. These activities typically include a combination of sightseeing, cultural experiences and shopping in addition to photo taking and learning opportunities.
Excursions - Relaxed
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Cozumel Butterfly Sanctuary Tour & PalMar SMALL Snorkel Beach Club
Visit Cozumel's only Butterfly Sanctuary! See multitudes of colors, learn about butterfly habits and the miracle of metamorphosis. Take photos and then stay to enjoy snorkeling and the other ammenities of the Beach Club. Great family fun & excellent value!
US $14 Adults / US $8 Kids Includes FREE Drinks!
Cozumel Dolphin Encounter
The Dolphin Encounter is a fun chance for the entire family to learn about the anatomy of the dolphin and about some of their very special behaviors first hand by actually being in the water with them and touching them.
US $99 Adults / US $89 Kids
Design Your Very Own Custom Mainland Tour!
Tired of visiting the sights as part of the "herd?" Cannot find an excursion that exactly fits how you'd like to spend your day on the mainland? No problem! COZUMELINSIDER can custom design a mainland excursion just for you and your group!
From US$168
Atlantis Submarines Cozumel Adventure
Don't even get wet but dive to depths of 100 feet in a REAL submarine piloted by a professional and licensed crew and experience why Cozumel remains one of the top dive destinations in the world.
US $105 Adults / US $65 Kids
Clear Lounge Cozumel Underwater Oxygen Bar
Clear Lounge® Cozumel Underwater Oxygen Bar
is the
world's first underwater oxygen bar
(patent pending)! Come join us and be some of the first people to enjoy this unique, fun and highly entertaining activity! The best part - "NO DIVING EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY"! Come join us on your next visit to Cozumel!
From US $38 to US $65 Per Person
Cozumel Island Cuisine Cooking - Tasting Session
In this "Demonstration" class, you will watch the chef/instructor prepare all the dishes and enjoy "ample samples" as you follow the recipes and ask questions along the way to ensure that you don't miss a thing!
From US $75 to US $95 Per Person
Cozumel Albatros Sunset Cruise Charters
Enjoy a relaxing evening cruise with snacks and watch a beautiful Caribbean sunset!
US $50 Per Person
Cozumel ATV Jungle Adventure Tour
Cozumel Jungle ATV Adventure will take you through specially carved out trails through Cozumel's Mayan jungles is just for you, your ATV and nobody else. Let us take you on an adrenaline pumping ATV tour to explore the exotic Mayan jungles of Cozumel Island accompanied by a fully trained and experienced guide.
From US $59 (1 Rider) to US $79 (2 Riders)
Cozumel ATV Snorkel by Boat Adventure Tour
Cozumel ATV Snorkel by Boat Adventure combines two (2) of the most popular activities here in Cozumel! You will experience first the off-roading ATV fun on the specially carved out trails through Cozumel's Mayan jungle and then will leave for a breathtaking snorkel adventure in our world-renowned coral reefs
From US $90 (1 Rider) to US $130 (2 Riders)
Cozumel Beach Bum Bikes - East Coast Bike ONLY Road Tour
Come join us for a unique bike tour experience in Cozumel. Our Beach Bum Bikes' tours will take you from the hustle and bustle of downtown to beaches and places of beauty on the island. On these Cozumel bike tours, you can ride a Pedego electric bicycle along a designated tour route that will showcase the best sights along the coast Cozumel has to offer!
US $59 Per Person
Cozumel Beach Bum Bikes - Punta Sur Eco Beach Park Tour
Come join us for a unique bike tour experience in Cozumel. Our Beach Bum Bikes' tours will take you from the hustle and bustle of downtown to beaches and places of beauty on the island. On these Cozumel bike tours, you can ride a Pedego electric bicycle along a designated tour route that will showcase the best sights along the coast Cozumel has to offer!
US $89 Per Person
Cozumel Beach Bum Bikes - Rentals
Come check out the available Beach Bum Bikes' Pedego electric bikes available for rent. The best way to tour the island and see our pristine, turquoise, Caribbean ocean with white sand beaches and stunning rock formations or just to get around town during your stay.
From US $20 to US $30 Rentals
Cozumel Beach Bum Bikes - West Coast Bike AND Snorkel Tour
Come join us for a unique bike tour experience in Cozumel. Our Beach Bum Bikes' tours will take you from the hustle and bustle of downtown to beaches and places of beauty on the island. On these Cozumel bike tours, you can ride a Pedego electric bicycle along a designated tour route that will showcase the best sights along the coast Cozumel has to offer!
US $39 Per Person
Cozumel Deep Sea Fishing Adventure Tour
Cozumel Deep Sea Fishing Adventure provides 1/2 day and Full day fishing excursions for the sport fishing enthusiast! Your captain and first mate will take you to the best fishing spots surrounding the island and with five (5) rods and reels going at the same time, you will be sure to catch "THE BIG ONE"!
From US $70 to US $90 Per Person
Cozumel Glass Bottom Boat Snorkel Adventure Tour
Cozumel Glass Bottom Boat Snorkel Adventure provides participants a visually stunning view of the world famous Cozumel coral reefs as you are boated to two (2) popular reefs, El Pariaso Reef and Chankanaab Reef. Experience the vibrant colors of our pristine Caribbean waters, the coral and the wide variety of marine life!
US $40 Per Person
Cozumel Manatee Encounter
The Manatee Encounter in Cozumel is a one of a kind adventure, the only swim with manatees program in the Caribbean. Manatees are beautiful and enormous, once thought by sailors to be mermaids, these gentle giants can grow as long as 13ft/4m and weigh up to 1300 lbs/600 kgs! Bring the family to live the experience !!
US $59 Adults / US $59 Kids
Cozumel Albatros Fishing Charters
Join the pro's at Albatros for a deep sea fishing adventure to remember!
Starting at US $445 Per Boat
Cozumel Country Club Golf
Since its opening in 2001, the Cozumel Country Club, Nicklaus Design Group 18-hole golf course has been steadily attracting more travelers to Cozumel.
T Time Rates From US $89 for 18 Holes
PalMar SMALL Snorkel Beach Club
Bring your group and spend the day at our PalMar small, private beach facility and enjoy a day of snorkeling at Cozumel's premier beach entry snorkel spot! No crowd here and gates close daily with a maximum of 50 people on site!
US $14 Adults / US $8 Kids Includes FREE Drinks!
Riviera Maya - Tulum Express
Visit this city that is icon of the Maya culture in the Mexican Caribbean and the only built facing the sea. Due to its amazing architecture and location on a cliff facing the turquoise waters of the Caribbean sea, Tulum is the third most visited prehispanic site in Mexico.
US$ 57.00 Adults / US$ 41.00 Kids
Cozumel Spanish Learning Educational Classes
Spanish Learning Educational Sessions - Single or Multiple Day Classes.
US $20 to US $30 Per Hour
Cozumel Sea Turtle Observation & Baby Liberation with FP&M
Sign up for an observation and education session about Cozumel's nesting sea turtles and the volunteer brigades that help in their conservation. Learn about these amazing creatures in the Fundacion de Paques & Museos program and help release hatching baby turtles as they make their way to the sea.
From US $43 to US $73 Per Person DONATION
Clear Lounge Cozumel Underwater Oxygen Bar
Cozumel Island Cuisine Cooking - Tasting Session
Cozumel Beach Bum Bikes - Rentals
Atlantis Submarines Cozumel Adventure
Cozumel Island Cuisine Cooking - Tasting Session
Cozumel Glass Bottom Boat Snorkel Adventure Tour
Personal Experiences
Submit Feedback
Just wanted to thank COZUMELINSIDER for getting us booked for our activities while we were in Cozumel. The dolphin swim was fantastic! I'd do it again in a minute. We didn't get to do the SNUBA diving ..... we ended up doing the Helmet dive instead for the same price. We plan on visiting Cozumel again possibly next year and will be contacting you to book some excursions prior to our vacation. We saved a significant amount of money booking the excursions through COZUMELINSIDER instead of the cruise line. Thanks again!
S.Forgette and G Wichtowski ~ Not Given
My family and I have returned to Cozumel many times - it's a favorite destination and we have watched it change over the past 20 years. The Cozumel Insider is a great publication - it's a wonderful way to keep up with the news about one of our favorite islands. We are preparing to visit again this August and the Insider has shown us some different activities to try, as well as helped to bring us up to date with local political and ecological happenings. We're delighted to see the interest in wildlife conservation throughout the area. Keep up the good work on this terrific site.
D. McClean ~ unknown
Sherri - Thanks very much for your help. I got the confirmations today for both the royal swim and dolphin encounter. I'll definitely pass the word about your great service. thanks!
The Rice Family ~ Williamsburg, VA USA
Last year we visited your Palamar beach club while on a cruise. We felt like we were in a true paradise. We are really into snorkeling so your location is tops on our list. You took the time to talk with us and tell us a bit about your self and the businesses you have. It was very good to meet and talk with you. We felt like we were visiting family and were treated as such. I am pleased to say that we are again coming in on a cruise and cant wait to return to paradise. I hope you are there so we can stop by and say hi if you are not too busy.
T. Lemons ~ Cruise Passenger
Sherri and Mauricio thanks for a great day at Palmar Beach Club. We loved the SMALL size of your Beach Club and you made us feel special. The Snorkeling was wonderful. The Snacks were perfect. We loved your swimming pool and the ability to change our clothes after swimming in the clean bathrooms. We will return!
Andy & Patti ~ USA
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In this article, Greg Sandoval writes about the "plight" of todays artist when it comes to digital music sales:
In my personal opinion, performing rights societies are starting to overstep their bounds, trying to get more from an outdated business model, instead of adapting to the new market. Let's go through this one point at a time, shall we?
"Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all. "
Collecting performance fees from retailers is absurd. They already pay the copyright administrators to carry and sell your product in their sales commission/revenue split. The fees for music included as part of films and TV shows are included in synchronization contracts, and are negotiated at that time. It is ridiculous to charge the vendor of your finished product for your manufacturing costs. That would be like the grocery store that sells Kraft cheese having to pay Kraft's dairy farmers. That is Kraft's job. iTunes should not have to pay John Williams every time Star Wars: Episode 47 is downloaded from their store — they pay Lucas Films, and Lucas Films should be responsible for paying John Williams.
"These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples."
Charging music retailers a public performance fee for previews is absurd. It would be like charging a store that sells CDs every time a customer picks up a CD off the shelf to see who is on it before they decide to buy it. Currently, 30-second previews are covered by standard digital download mechanical licenses, and are a necessary part of selling the music online. People won't buy a song unless they know what they are buying — just like I won't buy a pair of pants without trying them on first. Charging music services for this will undercut digital music distribution in general and is bad business for an already suffering retail music industry. Like another blogger wrote: …"according to ASCAP/BMI's logic Macy's should have to pay Ralph Lauren money for people to try on clothes in their store."
"But these royalty-collection groups say they're at the bottom of the music-sector food chain and aren't trying to gouge anyone. They say their livelihoods are threatened and wonder why movie studios, big recording companies, TV networks, and online retailers are allowed to profit from their work but they aren't. "
"We make 9.1 cents off a song sale and that means a whole lot of pennies have to add up before it becomes a bunch of money," said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters' Guild of America. "Yesterday, I received a check for 2 cents. I'm not kidding. People think we're making a fortune off the Web, but it's a tiny amount. We need multiple revenue streams or this isn't going to work."
Articles like this make it sound like composers aren't getting their fair share. And it is simply not true at all. Any composer who is good at what they do, and has successfully marketed their work, and intelligently structured their contracts, is making a living. And Rick Carnes?? Who has heard anything by Rick Carnes?? THAT is why he only got a check for 2 cents. HE HASN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING ANYONE LISTENS TO!!!! Look him up on ASCAP or BMI. So he's written a few hundred tunes that no one has ever heard of. SO HAVE I. So have 95% of Americans in the shower. That doesn't mean he deserves to pay his bills with his music. He simply has not met the demands of the music marketplace with his product. Sounds to me like he is asking for a bail out. Why don't we try quoting a musician who is actually making music that is in demand by the public?
I agree with Potter's position — songwriters ARE getting paid for their download — they are getting their mechanical fee, which is 9.1 cents per copy (which happens to be set by law), they are getting their sync license fee for video downloads (which is determined at contract negotiation).
"In 2005, ASCAP entered into a rate-court proceeding to set licensing fees for the music services of Yahoo, AOL, and RealNetworks. A U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York delivered a blow to composers and songwriters by ruling that downloading music from a Web store was not a music performance. On the other hand, the judge found that streaming music was subject to a performance fee.
"The songwriter gets a performance fee if the song is streamed without the video," Carnes noted. "But if it is downloaded within an audio-visual work like a movie we don't get a performance fee–same song, no money."
Carnes is manipulating terms here, making it sound like the judge's ruling was unfair. Songwriters don't get performance fees from VHS or DVD sales either. No one complains about that! That's because they get their mechanicals and sync fees, which they are (or should be) getting from downloads of those same movies. A download is a physical product sale, not a performance. Streaming is different than downloading. Streaming implies a real-time broadcast. In other words, if a download is a performance, then why am I still paying sales tax (tangible personal property tax) on a downloaded product? Artists have no right to collect a performance royalty for a product they are already being paid for. If the artists want more, they need to change the terms of the mechanical and sync payments. Change the mechanical fee to 15 cents a copy. Negotiate for better splits on sync rights. Don't take it out on the consumer who has made you popular in the first place.
The moral of the story here is that ASCAP and BMI (and others), with all their good intentions to protect the intellectual property rights of their members, are now crossing the line and are further destroying the business of retail music, blaming it on technology, rather than embracing new media distribution channels. They are diminishing product availability, which hurts the two groups that ultimately pay the songwriters' paychecks — the retailers and consumers.


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Wednesday, March 19, 2014
PremiAir, ASU to Sell Night Vision Technology in Europe
Source: PremiAir
PremiAir Aviation International of the UK has entered into a joint venture with Aviation Specialties Unlimited (ASU) of Boise, Idaho to bring innovative new night vision technologies to the U.K. and other European countries. Under the terms of the joint venture – which was signed at the recent HAI Heli-Expo – PremiAir and ASU will jointly supply, sell and support night vision products, maintenance, training and aircraft modification services in the U.K. and Continental Europe.
Related: Night Vision News


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Catalina Cottage Bed
- Overview
This solid wood bed mirrors all the fine craftsmanship that our Catalina Cottage Collection is known for – from the tongue-and-groove joinery to the rich multistep finish.
- Twin: 42" wide x 81" long x 42" high
- Full: 57" wide x 81" long x 42" high
- Expertly crafted with a solid wood frame.
- Classic ball finials, beadboard paneling and lathe-turned feet complete the look.
- Mattress platform can be raised to accommodate our trundle, or lowered to create a comfortable height for small children.
- Slat-roll foundation is designed for use with or without a box spring.
- Pair with our Classic Plush or Pillowtop Mattresses (sold separately)
- Optional trundle can be used without a mattress for extra storage.
- Our exclusive finishes are applied by hand for exceptional richness, durability and depth of color.
- Wood swatches, below, are available for $20 each. We will provide a merchandise refund for swatches if they're returned within 30 days.
- Dimensions & Care
- Rigorously tested to meet or exceed the highest industry safety standards.
- Masterfully crafted with mortise-and-tenon construction, and tongue-and-groove joinery for structural integrity.
- Built from solid wood, wood veneers and MDF, an engineered wood that lends exceptional strength and ensures structural integrity over time.
- All wood is kiln dried for added strength and lasting beauty.
- The use of veneers results in high-quality furniture with flawless surfaces and consistent color tones.
- Our finishes were developed exclusively for Pottery Barn Kids. Craftsmen carefully paint our soft White finish in layers for a smooth, opaque surface. Sun Valley pieces feature a dry-brush technique that mottles the color while it's still wet to reveal the wood's textural grain. All finishes are sealed with a final coat of lacquer for extra durability.
- In order to use the trundle (sold separately), please ensure that the mattress platform is at its highest setting.
- The Catalina Bed fits our Universal Trundle and Lullaby Trundle Mattress.
- Get tips on how to measure for furniture.
- Overall: 42" wide x 81" long x 42" high
- Footboard: 31.5" high
- Legs: 2.5" diameter
- Finials: 3" diameter, 3.5" high
- Side Rails: 75" long x 5" high x 1" thick
- Clearance Under Adjustable Side Rails (2 positions): 7.5", 9.5"
- Slats: 16
- Weight: 83 pounds
- Overall: 57" wide x 81" long x 42" high
- Footboard: 31.5" high
- Legs: 2.5" diameter
- Finials: 3"diameter, 3.5" high
- Side Rails: 75" long x 5" high x 1" thick
- Clearance Under Adjustable Side Rails (2 positions): 7.5", 9.5"
- Slats: 16
- Weight: 90 pounds
- Dust often using a soft, dry cloth.
- Protect from direct sunlight and extreme temperatures.
- Blot spills immediately with a clean, damp cloth.
- We do not recommend the use of chemical cleansers, abrasives, furniture polish or wax.
- Shipping & Return Info
This is a general shipping item.
View Our Shipping Information
Return Policy
At Pottery Barn Kids, we take great pride in the quality and craftsmanship of our products. Attention to design, materials, safety and construction is our priority. We carefully inspect your order prior to shipment; upon receipt, please inspect your purchase and notify us of any damage. We will arrange for a prompt replacement. If, within 7 days for Quick Ship upholstery and 30 days for all other products, you are dissatisfied for any reason, you may return your purchase for a refund of the merchandise value.
If your return for Merchandise Credit Cards is greater than $10,000, we will issue $10,000 in Merchandise Credit Cards to you that day, and then mail additional Merchandise Credit Card(s) for the amount in excess of $10,000 to you.
We cannot accept returns on monogrammed, personalized, special-order items, or on items damaged through normal wear and tear. We also cannot accept returns of final-sale items, which are identified by a price that ends in $0.99.
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The Hernando youth faces a long recovery after he helped a friend escape rattlesnakes after being bitten himself.
WEEKI WACHEE - Doing what came naturally to him almost cost Joseph Edward Michael "Mikey" Evans his life.
The 13-year-old seventh-grader at West Hernando Middle School was hiding behind a palmetto bush in Royal Highlands with his friend, 10-year-old Dustin Wright, eluding two boys who were chasing them.
Mikey felt a "sting" on his right ankle, just above his sneaker. He knew it was snake.
Mikey hoisted Dustin onto his back so the younger boy wouldn't be bitten. He carried his friend 60 to 70 feet out of the woods, said Mikey's dad, Joe Evans, before coming to a house and asking the residents there to call 911.
By the time Joe Evans and his wife, Lorrie, arrived at the scene, at about 8:30 p.m. July 27, paramedics had also arrived and Mikey was already hallucinating, convulsing and acting combative.
The exertion from carrying his friend pumped the venom more quickly through his body.
"He made a bad situation worse," his dad said.
At Oak Hill Hospital, Mikey received four vials of antivenin serum to treat what were determined to be four snake bites, probably from two adult and two baby rattlesnakes.
The baby snake bites are the most poisonous.
Mikey was then taken by BayFlight to All Children's Hospital, where, over three weeks, he received 68 more vials of antivenin.
"We had more than one doctor tell us we could lose him," his mother said.
Ultimately, Mikey's leg needed surgery.
"It was like a can of biscuits dough," said Joe Evans. It burst right open.
"How fast it got bad," he marveled, "but it started healing up fast, too."
Since bringing Mikey home, the Evans family has made adjustments to their lives and in their home to care for him. He uses a walker indoors and a wheelchair for longer excursions.
Joe Evans took off four weeks from his job as a merchandiser for various local firms.
While the Evans family, including daughter, Emily, 10, was able to stay at the Ronald McDonald House near All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg while Mikey was a patient, they had to pay for 12 nights in a motel while their home was being retrofitted with ramps and other accommodations for Mikey's limited mobility.
The teen is being homeschooled.
Moose Lodge 1767 on Wiscon Road, south of Brooksville, where Joe Evans is a member, will stage a fundraising all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast 9 a.m. to noon Saturday to help the family with unexpected expenses. The price is $4 per person. Lodge members are hoping for 50 hungry diners.
Also, Guy-n-Deanna's Elbow Room, along with Eagles Lodge 4497, will sponsor benefit dining at the Elbow Room from 3 p.m. Oct. 7. The restaurant is at 1365 Kass Circle in Spring Hill.
Benefits will help to cover the family's out-of-pocket expenses and future expenses for Mikey's care and convalescence.
Beth N. Gray can be contacted at email@example.com
Hernando Times headlines


text:
Mobility PackSM
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PAYware Mobile enables you to take full advantage of the comprehensive reporting capabilities of VeriFone's hosted gateway service. Transaction details, post-settlement and transaction search functions plus the ability to create custom email receipts are just part of its available online management tools.
Geo-tagging keeps everybody on track
Knowing that the ability to make transactions from anywhere increases the possibility of disputes, we've included the integrated geo-tag feature on the iPhone. The PAYware Mobile app records the exact location of every transaction and puts that geo-tag, in the form of latitude and longitude points.
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Homemade Soup: 10 Easy Slow Cooker Recipes for Soup
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"Gosh, I love coconut! My family doesn't like it at all, so I have to find an event to bake this for. Maybe a holiday function or work event. Ummm, just the thought of the smell of coconut, and of course, the taste. I have to make this!!"
"I've never thought of adding ranch dressing to potatoes. This sounds delicious! I'm always looking for ideas for side dishes, and my family loves potatoes. Can't wait to try these. I just have to figure out what to serve them with."
"lasagna made with spaghetti? How wonderful! And how interesting that it contains alfredo sauce and spaghetti sauce and pesto sauce. My family will love this. We have pasta every week, so I will be making this soon. We'll have it with salad and garlic bread."
"Oh, I love chicken and dumplings. I will leave out celery, but probably just add extra carrots. This is an all-around hearty meal, that will be a great addition to our Sunday meals. Can't wait to make it!"
"Pot roasts are always good comfort food, and isn't doesn't matter what time of year you make them, when you use your slow cooker. I wonder if the onion soup makes it taste too salty? I've never used cream of mushroom soup with my pot roast. I'm sure that will taste great with the vegetables."
Clean-Out-The-Pantry Minestrone Soup
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If you're cleaning house or want to make dinner using ingredients you already have in your pantry, a slow cooker minestrone soup recipe like this one for Clean-Out-The-Pantry Minestrone Soup is absolutely perfect. This soup recipe is super handy!
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The Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences offers, in addition to our traditional graduate programs for those seeking a Doctoral or Master's degree, many opportunities for professionals and academics to receive advanced training.
These opportunities range from the very short-term (one-day workshops and symposia offering Continuing Education Units for psychologists, such as the Claremont Symposia on Applied Social Psychology and the Stauffer Symposium Series on Applied Psychology) to more in-depth training (such as our Certificate of Advanced Study in Evaluation). The range of trainings includes both on-site events and convenient distance courses.
Beyond our M.A. and Ph.D. programs, you can profit from DBOS' resources by enrolling in our distance-learning certificate program of Advanced Study in Evaluation.
Click here.
Our annual professional development workshops allow professionals, students, and academics to hone their skills in a variety of topics in applied research. Presenters for this series include expert practitioners and academics from across North America.
Click here.
Claremont's "virtual classroom" courses have expanded in 2010-2011 thanks to a partnership with UNICEF and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Click here.
We regularly host courses for professionals to prepare to obtain a certificate from the Society for Human Resources Management. Follow the link to learn more.
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text:
Here's how RW members rated this race in the past (142 votes).
In short: See you next year guys!In full: Great race as always, some uphill challenges but lovely sense of achievement at the finish. Great organisation, atmosphere and as always beautiful countryside. See you next year guys!Date of review: September 9, 2014
Date of review: October 5, 2013
In short: Beautiful scenic run with great atmosphere and organisationIn full: Great atmosphere on the village green at the start/finish - with an open air service from the local church, barbeques, stalls, etc. Run is very scenic - main challenge is an extremely steep hill at the end, but it is right before the finish line so you can really give it everything. I've done this race twice and will definitely return. Date of review: October 5, 2013
In short: Fantastic race. Very welcoming...great village atmosphereDate of review: October 5, 2013
In short: Very hilly but worthwhileDate of review: October 2, 2013
In short: Wow the last hill goes on forever!In full: Great race, lovely village fete feel to the event. Friendly marshalls. Challenging course through woodland and on road round the glorious Kent countryside. Lots of club runners which inspired me to try and keep up! Achieved a new PB so am thrilled. Will be back next year.Date of review: October 2, 2013
In short: Great fun!In full: Great race for kids and grown-ups!Date of review: September 30, 2013
In short: Fantastic family day out!In full: We are a family of 5, youngest child 4 years old. All took part in the Fun-Run and truly enjoyed both the running, atmosphere and organisation! We all look forward to taking part next year again!Date of review: September 26, 2013
In short: Another great success!Date of review: September 24, 2013
In short: Great race, thoroughly enjoyed.In full: Really impressed with the excellent organisation. Plenty of available parking on arrival, very friendly and supportive marshalls on the course and a great touch to have Dame Kelly present the medals. Plenty of downhills on the course as well uphills!Date of review: September 22, 2013
Visit the official Runner's World page
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-T / T / +T | Comment(s)
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Bolivia Air Force Receives First EC145
Eurocopter has handed over the first of two EC145s to the Bolivian Air Force. The Air Force will use the helicopters for transport of officials, natural disaster aerial support, EMS and parapublic missions. The EC145s are part of the Air Force's fleet modernization, which includes AS350B3s.
Related: VIP/Head of State News


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Ratatouille with Red Snapper
Recipe courtesy of Ellie Krieger
- Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1 large eggplant (about 1 pound), trimmed and cut into small dice (about 3 cups)
- 1 medium onion, cut into small dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 2 cloves minced garlic (about 2 teaspoons)
- 2 medium zucchini (1 pound total), trimmed, cut into small dice (about 2 1/2 cups)
- 1 (14.5-ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon herbs de Provence (or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme and 1/4 teaspoon each dried rosemary and dried marjoram)
- 3/4 teaspoon salt, plus more for seasoning
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, plus more for garnish
- 4 (5-ounce) fillets red snapper, skin on
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons rosemary (or other herb) infused olive oil, optional
In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the eggplant and cook, stirring, until eggplant has softened but not completely lost its shape, about 5 minutes. Remove the eggplant from skillet. Heat another tablespoon of oil in the same skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and zucchini to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini is soft, about 6 to 7 minutes. Return eggplant to pan and add tomatoes, herbs de Provence, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Simmer approximately 10 minutes. Season with additional salt, to taste. Stir in basil and remove from heat.
To cook fish, preheat broiler. Sprinkle fillets with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Combine the remaining tablespoon olive oil with the lemon juice and brush on fillets. Broil until fish is cooked and firm, about 7 minutes.
Mound 1 cup ratatouille on 4 plates; top each mound with 1 fish fillet and drizzle with 1/2 teaspoon herb infused oil, if using. Garnish with additional basil.
2007 Ellie Krieger All Rights Reserved
Cooking Tips
More Recipes and Ideas
Ratatouille Skillet Eggs
Recipe courtesy of Food Network Kitchen
Roasted Summer Ratatouille
Recipe courtesy of Tyler Florence
Ratatouille with Poached Eggs and Garlic Croutons
Recipe courtesy of Rachael Ray


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RealConnections is a cloud services aggregator and IT consulting company serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the Netherlands. The company helps SMBs use cloud-based services including collaboration, internet telephony (VoIP), and enterprise applications such as customer relationship management to boost business performance, enable a mobile workforce, and reduce infrastructure costs.
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Senator John McCain called Colonel George "Bud" Day, "The bravest man I ever knew." Day (1925 -2013) was a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. A Medal of Honor recipient, Day was shot down in his F-100 Super Sabre over North Vietnam in August of 1967. Ejected from his jet and severely injured, he continued to be a thorn in the side of the North Vietnamese for the remainder of the war. Tortured ruthlessly for information, he was a leader of the organized American resistance in the Hanoi Hilton Prison.
His heroic exploits are chronicled in American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day. For an in-depth look at the kind of dangerous missions Day flew for the Air Force in Vietnam, check out Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail by Rick Newman and Don Shepperd. (more…)


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
Today's blog post comes from a Twitter thread on which @SQLSoldier, @sqlstudent144 and @SQLTaiob were discussing the internals of contained database users.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you've heard about the concept of contained users within a SQL Server database (hit the link if you have not). In this article I'd like to show you that you can, indeed, script out contained database users and recreate them on another database, as either contained users or as good old fashioned logins/server principals as well.
Why would this be useful? Well, because you would not need to know the password for the user in order to recreate it on another instance. I know there is a limited number of scenarios where this would be necessary, but nonetheless I figured I'd throw this blog post to show how it can be done.
A more obscure use case: with the password hash (which I'm about to show you how to obtain) you could also crack the password using a utility like hashcat, as highlighted on this SQLServerCentral article.
SQL Server uses System Base Tables to save the password hashes of logins and contained database users. For logins it uses sys.sysxlgns, whereas for contained database users it leverages sys.sysowners.
I'll show you what I do to figure this stuff out: I create a login/contained user, and then I immediately browse the transaction log with, for example, fn_dblog.
It's pretty obvious that only two base tables touched by the operation are sys.sysxlgns, and also sys.sysprivs – the latter is used to track permissions. If I connect to the DAC on my instance, I can query for the password hash of this login I've just created.
A few interesting things about this hash. This was taken on my laptop, and I happen to be running SQL Server 2014 RTM CU2, which is the latest public build of SQL Server 2014 as of time of writing. In 2008 R2 and prior versions (back to 2000), the password hashes would start with 0x0100. The reason why this changed is because starting with SQL Server 2012 password hashes are kept using a SHA512 algorithm, as opposed to SHA-1 (used since 2000) or Snefru (used in 6.5 and 7.0). SHA-1 is nowadays deemed unsafe and is very easy to crack.
For regular SQL logins, this information is exposed through the sys.sql_logins catalog view, so there is really no need to connect to the DAC to grab an SID/password hash pair. For contained database users, there is (currently) no method of obtaining SID or password hashes without connecting to the DAC.
If we create a contained database user, this is what we get from the transaction log:
Note that the System Base Table used in this case is sys.sysowners. sys.sysprivs is used as well, and again this is to track permissions.
To query sys.sysowners, you would have to connect to the DAC, as I mentioned previously. And this is what you would get:
There are other ways to figure out what SQL Server uses under the hood to store contained database user password hashes, like looking at the execution plan for a query to sys.dm_db_uncontained_entities (Thanks, Robert Davis!)
One of the reasons behind the existence of Contained Users was the concept of portability of databases: it is really painful to maintain Server Principals (Logins) synced across most shared-nothing SQL Server HA/DR technologies (Mirroring, Availability Groups, and Log Shipping). Often times you would need the Security Identifier (SID) of these logins to match across instances, and that meant that you had to fetch whatever SID was assigned to the login on the principal instance so you could recreate it on a secondary. With contained users you normally wouldn't care about SIDs, as the users are always available (and synced, as long as synchronization takes place) across instances.
Now you might be presented some particular requirement that might specify that SIDs synced between logins on certain instances and contained database users on other databases. How would you go about creating a contained database user with a specific SID?
The answer is that you can't do it directly, but there's a little trick that would allow you to do it.
Create a login with a specified SID and password hash, create a user for that server principal on a partially contained database, then migrate that user to contained using the system stored procedure sp_user_migrate_to_contained, then drop the login.
CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = <password_hash> HASHED, SID = <sid> ; GO USE <partially_contained_db>; GO CREATE USER <user_name> FROM LOGIN <login_name>; GO EXEC sp_migrate_user_to_contained @username = <user_name>, @rename = N'keep_name', @disablelogin = N'disable_login'; GO DROP LOGIN <login_name>; GO
CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = <password_hash> HASHED, SID = <sid> ;
USE <partially_contained_db>;
CREATE USER <user_name> FROM LOGIN <login_name>;
EXEC sp_migrate_user_to_contained @username = <user_name>, @rename = N'keep_name', @disablelogin = N'disable_login';
DROP LOGIN <login_name>;
Here's how this skeleton would look like in action:
And now I have a contained user with a specified SID and password hash. In my example above, I renamed the user after migrated it to contained so that it is, hopefully, easier to understand.
Even though way early in my career I had a SQL Server MVP as a mentor (by pure chance), it wasn't until 2008-2009 that I sort of researched a bit more about the program, and what it really meant. I was beginning to understand how powerful networking in our community really is, and how attending and participating on SQL Saturdays and other events would make all the difference in my career.
I thought having that "badge" would be cool, but I really didn't know how to get one.
I remember I asked K. Brian Kelley [twitter|blog], somebody who I consider a friend (even though I've never met him in person) how could I become a SQL Server MVP. He mentioned helping others through any vehicle (forums like MSDN's, SQL Server Central, etc.) would help, but that I really needed to ask myself what it would mean to me to be an MVP. And I often wondered, really, what it all meant. Was it just an award given to somebody who would answer questions from others relentlessly? Would it be just some award given to members of this semi-secret inner circle?
Over time I became more and more involved with the community. I started speaking, and continued helping others, mostly through #SQLHelp on Twitter (funny how a hashtag changes your life!). I was seriously turned off by forums (still am) and didn't care much about blogging very frequently. After all, other folks out there blog about just about every single topic on SQL Server, and I didn't one to be just one more guy. Yet I blogged, but it was only when I thought my post could really make a difference to somebody facing a similar situation or working with an under-documented feature.
The fact that I tweeted incessantly helped get my name out there, and I kept being accepted to speak at SQL Saturdays and even the PASS Summit. Then I got my MCM certification, which really gave my name some exposure out there.
I was really becoming influential.
I eventually delivered pre-conferences at premier events like SQLBits, spoke at massive events like DevConnections and TechEd, and started toying with the idea of helping PASS even more. Then, with the help of Robert Davis [twitter|blog], and also from K. Brian Kelley himself, we launched the Security Virtual Chapter for PASS.
I was doing all this high profile stuff, which was fantastic, but I never lost sight of my roots: volunteering and helping others. I kept signing up to help PASS as member of the Program Committee, something that I have proudly done for 3 years in a row (and I'm not going to discuss current controversy on the subject here), helped moderate Lightning Talks at the Summit even when I wasn't chosen as a speaker, spent hours talking to people at the Community Zone at the Summit and the BA Conference, moderated online web casts for the Security VC, and helped moderate online events like 24 Hours of PASS. And, all along, learning and sharing on #SQLHelp.
All the little things that not a lot of people sign up for (or avoid altogether), I happily help with.
Yet "MVPness" is not something that I feel entitled to. Not something that I demanded every quarter. I find it funny that I look forward to the MVP Summit taking place in Seattle because that means I get to hang out with that group – I have met a LOT of them along the way, and some of them I consider extremely close friends. These are people that I deeply respect. Still, I am not expecting an award by association.
I do the things I do for the SQL Server community because I love it, not because I want another three letter acronym on my resume.
Earlier on this year I was nominated for the award by several very influential folks in the community (Thank you!!). I seriously thought I wasn't going to get it, because I thought I hadn't done enough for the community to deserve it.
Today, I am _insanely_ honored to be recognized for my contributions to the community.
This is one badge I will wear with pride.
Today I was awarded the SQL Server MVP award.
And now the real work begins.
This award is yours, #SQLFamily, and also goes to the unsung heroes of this community that have been working hard for YEARS and still have not been awarded; you know who you are. Never give up, my friends. Stay true to your north.
I remember when back in 2001 my friend and former SQL Server
MVP Carlos Eduardo Rojas was busy earning his MVP street-cred in the NNTP
forums, aka Newsgroups. I always thought he was playing the Sheriff trying to
put some order in a Wild Wild West town by trying to understand what these
people were asking. He spent a lot of time doing this stuff – and I thought it
was just plain crazy. After all, he was doing it for free. What was he gaining
from all of that work?
It was not until the advent of Twitter and #SQLHelp that I realized the
real gain behind helping others. Forget about the glory and the laurels of
others thanking you (and thinking you're the best thing ever – ha!), or whatever
award with whatever three letter acronym might be given to you.
It's about what you learn in the process of helping
See, when you teach something, it's usually at a fixed date and
time, and on a specific topic. But helping others with their issues or general
questions is something that goes on 24x7, on whatever topic under the sun. Just
go look at sites like DBA.StackExchange.com, or the SQLServerCentral forums. It's
questions coming in literally non-stop from all corners or the world. And yet a
lot of people are willing to help you, regardless of who you are, where you come
from, or what time of day it is.
And in my case, this process of helping others usually leads to
me learning something new. Especially in those cases where the question isn't
really something I'm good at. The delicate part comes when you're ready to give
an answer, but you're not sure. Often times I'll try to validate with Internet
searches and what have you. Often times I'll throw in a question mark at the end
of the answer, so as not to look authoritative, but rather suggestive. But as
time passes by, you get more and more comfortable with that topic. And that's
the real gain.
I have done this for many years now on #SQLHelp, which is my
preferred vehicle for providing assistance. I cannot tell you how much I've
learned from it. By helping others, by watching others help. It's all knowledge
and experience you gain…and you might not be getting all that in your day job
today. Such thing, my dear reader, is invaluable. It's what will differentiate
yours amongst a pack of resumes. It's what will get you places. Take it from me
- a guy who, like you, knew nothing about SQL Server.
There is a classic blog series by Paul Randal [blog|twitter] called "CHECKDB From Every Angle" which is pretty much mandatory reading for anybody who's even remotely considering going for the MCM certification, or its replacement (the Microsoft Certified Solutions Master: Data Platform – makes my fingers hurt just from typing it). Of particular interest is the post "Consistency Options for a VLDB" – on it, Paul provides solid, timeless advice (I use the word "timeless" because it was written in 2007, and it all applies today!) on how to perform checks on very large databases.
Well, here I was trying to figure out how to make CHECKDB run faster on a restored copy of one of our databases, which happens to exceed 7TB in size. The whole thing was taking several days on multiple systems, regardless of the storage used – SAS, SATA or even SSD…and I actually didn't pay much attention to how long it was taking, or even bothered to look at the reasons why - as long as it was finishing okay and found no consistency errors.
Yes – I know. That was a huge mistake, as corruption found in a database several days after taking place could only allow for further spread of the corruption – and potentially large data loss.
In the last two weeks I increased my attention towards this problem, as we noticed that CHECKDB was taking EVEN LONGER on brand new all-flash storage in the SAN! I couldn't really explain it, and were almost ready to blame the storage vendor. The vendor told us that they could initially see the server driving decent I/O – around 450Mb/sec, and then it would settle at a very slow rate of 10Mb/sec or so. "Hum", I thought – "CHECKDB is just not pushing the I/O subsystem hard enough". Perfmon confirmed the vendor's observations.
What was CHECKDB doing all the time while doing so little I/O? Eating Blobs.
It turns out that CHECKDB was taking an extremely long time on one of our frankentables, which happens to be have 35 billion rows (yup, with a b) and sucks up several terabytes of space in the database. We do have a project ongoing to purge/split/partition this table, so it's just a matter of time before we deal with it.
But the reality today is that CHECKDB is coming to a screeching halt in performance when dealing with this particular table.
Checking sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_os_latch_stats showed that LATCH_EX (DBCC_OBJECT_METADATA) was by far the top wait type. I remembered hearing recently about that wait from another post that Paul Randal made, but that was related to computed-column indexes, and in fact, Paul himself reminded me of his article via twitter. But alas, our pathologic table had no non-clustered indexes on computed columns.
I knew that latches are used by the database engine to do internal synchronization – but how could I help speed this up? After all, this is stuff that doesn't have a lot of knobs to tweak.
(There's a fantastic level 500 talk by Bob Ward from Microsoft CSS [blog|twitter] called "Inside SQL Server Latches" given at PASS 2010 – and you can check it out here. DISCLAIMER: I assume no responsibility for any brain melting that might ensue from watching Bob's talk!)
Earlier on this week I flew down to Palo Alto, CA, to visit our Headquarters – and after having a great time with my Monkey peers, I was relaxing on the plane back to Seattle watching a great talk by SQL Server MVP and fellow MCM Maciej Pilecki [twitter] called "Masterclass: A Day in the Life of a Database Transaction" where he discusses many different topics related to transaction management inside SQL Server. Very good stuff, and when I got home it was a little late – that slow DBCC CHECKDB that I had been dealing with was way in the back of my head.
As I was looking at the problem at hand earlier on this week, I thought "How about I set the database to read-only?" I remembered one of the things Maciej had (jokingly) said in his talk: "if you don't want locking and blocking, set the database to read-only" (or something to that effect, pardon my loose memory). I immediately killed the CHECKDB which had been running painfully for days, and set the database to read-only mode. Then I ran DBCC CHECKDB against it. It started going really fast (even a bit faster than before), and then throttled down again to around 10Mb/sec. All sorts of expletives went through my head at the time. Sure enough, the same latching scenario was present. Oh well.
I even spent some time trying to figure out if NUMA was hurting performance. Folks on Twitter made suggestions in this regard (thanks, Lonny! [twitter])
This past Friday I was still scratching my head about the whole thing; I was ready to start profiling with XPERF to see if I could figure out which part of the engine was to blame and then get Microsoft to look at the evidence.
After getting a bunch of good news I'll blog about separately, I sat down for a figurative smack down with CHECKDB before the weekend. And then the light bulb went on.
A sparse column. I thought that I couldn't possibly be experiencing the same scenario that Paul blogged about back in March showing extreme latching with non-clustered indexes on computed columns. Did I even have a non-clustered index on my sparse column?
As it turns out, I did. I had one filtered non-clustered index – with the sparse column as the index key (and only column).
To prove that this was the problem, I went and setup a test.
The repro is very simple for this issue: I tested it on the latest public builds of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 (CU6) and SQL Server 2012 SP1 (CU4).
First, create a test database and a test table, which only needs to contain a sparse column:
CREATE DATABASE SparseColTest;
USE SparseColTest;
CREATE TABLE testTable (testCol smalldatetime SPARSE NULL);
INSERT INTO testTable (testCol)
That's 1 million rows, and even though you're inserting NULLs, that's going to take a while. In my laptop, it took 3 minutes and 31 seconds.
Next, we run DBCC CHECKDB against the database:
DBCC CHECKDB('SparseColTest') WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS;
This runs extremely fast, as least on my test rig – 198 milliseconds.
Now let's create a filtered non-clustered index on the sparse column:
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [badBadIndex]
ON testTable (testCol)
WHERE testCol IS NOT NULL;
With the index in place now, let's run DBCC CHECKDB one more time:
In my test system this statement completed in 11433 milliseconds. 11.43 full seconds. Quite the jump from 198 milliseconds.
I went ahead and dropped the filtered non-clustered indexes on the restored copy of our production database, and ran CHECKDB against that. We went down from 7+ days to 19 hours and 20 minutes.
Cue the "Argenis is not impressed" meme, please, Mr. LaRock.
My pain is your gain, folks. Go check to see if you have any of such indexes – they're likely causing your consistency checks to run very, very slow.
Happy CHECKDBing,
ps: I plan to file a Connect item for this issue – I consider it a pretty serious bug in the engine. After all, filtered indexes were invented BECAUSE of the sparse column feature – and it makes a lot of sense to use them together. Watch this space and my twitter timeline for a link.
Retaking on this blog series after an extended hiatus. I hope you will enjoy today's topic on documentation.
One of the often neglected and yet extremely important tasks of any DBA is to document his/her environment. I can certainly relate to those of you who haven't written a single page of documentation for your environment – I was there before. And I felt bad.
The good news is that documentation doesn't have to be painful. My friends at Brent Ozar Unlimited recently posted a video on documentation – you can find it in this link – and they touch on that very same subject: There ARE ways to document your environment that will leave you greatly satisfied with the results, and some of you might even enjoy the process. Your manager will love you for it – and you won't feel bad for the new guy who replaces you when it's time to move on.
Not perfect. Let's face it. Writing pages and pages of documentation for your database environment (or ANY IT environment) in Word is tiresome. Excel sheets can have tons of information and might be easy to peruse. But no matter how good your formatting is, how many pictures and Visio diagrams you throw at it, you'll always get the sense that the document you spent days working on will just end up in the SharePoint site and collect dust there. SharePoint can handle changes and versioning for you, if you use it correctly – so that's a plus. But think about ease of access to the documents – ease of editing. Discussions around it. Even automated updates! Is a SharePoint folder the way to go for that? (Or a UNC path, for those of you without SharePoint?)
You've been to WikiPedia. More than once. You know how useful it is, and how, thanks for the built-in search function and Search Engines, easy it is to find information on it.
How about using a wiki engine for your documentation? Can't picture that in your head? Hear me out: wikis are VERY easy to create, edit and collaborate on – you just click on Edit and away you go. They have built-in version control, discussion pages, categories, lists, and pretty much everything you need to have a versatile documentation site.
Picture this: a wiki page for every environment, listing all the servers that belong to it – and linking to individual wiki pages with tons of information about those servers, including former incident highlights, detailed information about the server (CPUs, RAM, OS Version, SQL Instances, patches, team(s) who own the server, escalation paths for incidents, and much more.
The best part: these pages that have lots of information can be updated via an automated process. WHAT? AUTOMATED DOCUMENTATION YOU SAY? Yes. Think scripts. Scripts that will go over your environments on a regular basis and update information on them in the wiki. Does that sound cool or what? All you need is to understand the capabilities of your wiki engine (think API), and pair it up with your favorite scripting language. For me, it's a slam-dunk: I'll use PowerShell to automate the information gathering process, and a wiki engine that runs on SQL Server – I'll show you a few options in a bit.
Now imagine that you give access to your NOC/Helpdesk to this wiki site: you don't want them to change anything on it, so you set permissions for read-only access to the site. The benefits would be great: now the NOC has easy access to information on a given server that just alerted, and if you saved notes for that type of alert for that server, instructing Operators to collect certain information before they call you, that can save precious time and help you troubleshoot the issue. You might even let the NOC track incidents on a particular section of the wiki page for that server, so you can figure out if there is a pattern that you need to address.
YMMV on your organization's needs – but this can be a very valuable tool to keep your business running efficiently. I have worked for teams that relied heavily on Wikis for documentation - and saw first hand how this greatly improves access to information for our team. How you use it in your environment and how you adapt it to your requirements is entirely up to you – I only wanted to give you a few ideas on how you might put this to your advantage.
There are TONS of wiki engines out there: WikiPedia has a page (not frequently updated, alas) that lists some of them. Being the SQL Server guy that I am, I'm naturally inclined to use something powered by SQL in the backend. The most widely used wiki engine, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, is a typical LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) application. If you have experience with Apache, PHP and MySQL, you should use that. It's updated very frequently, and it's got a large community behind it.
Now, if you have SharePoint, you may or may not know that it comes with a wiki engine as well – and that's detailed here.
Recently I used FlexWiki , which uses SQL Server as a backend. Being a SQL database on the backend, you back it up and keep it safe as the rest of your backups – just don't use the same servers you're trying to document to host the wiki engine's database. If you lose that server, you lost access to the documentation about it.
Unfortunately, FlexWiki isn't being actively maintained. But look at the list of Wiki software – you're bound to find something that fits your needs.
If you have no documentation/poor documentation. Go take care of it, now. Go create and/or reuse scripts that gather information about your environment. Be proactive about it – make sure those scripts get updated. Show your work to your peers and your boss. Feel confident that you have control of your environment, and rock on!
I'd love to hear what you're doing in your environment as far as documentation goes. Will you leave some comments below? Also, if you feel like giving some feedback on the DBA Best Practices series, I'd appreciate it.
Until next time,
If you were looking for Paul Randal's [Blog|Twitter] DR poster and couldn't
find it anywhere on the net, I have good news for you: I saved a copy on my PC
before it was taken down, and (with Paul's permission) wanted to make it
available here.
So, without further ado, enjoy the poster.
(I'm taking a break from my DBA Best Practices blog series to talk about this today – the series continues after the Holidays!)
I love to be proved wrong. Really, I do.
Recently we had a discussion in an distribution list where somebody asked whether a SQL Server 32-bit instance could address more than 4Gb of RAM when running on top of a 64-bit OS. One of the really smart guys in Microsoft SQL Server Support, Karthick P.K. [Blog|Blog|Twitter] replied "sure, just add more RAM and enable AWE – SQL will use that memory". I was much convinced that this was incorrect, so I jumped in and said that AWE does nothing under those circumstances. After all, that is what I had read in the past in many different articles. I even had some SQL Server MVPs who have been around the block forever agreeing with me.
But the good news is that I was wrong.
AWE in fact does nothing on 64-bit instances of SQL Server. But on WOW64 - Windows on Windows 64-bit, the subsystem of Windows x64 that allows you to run 32-bit processes and instances of SQL Server, AWE does allow you to address memory above 4Gb. Let me show you.
Side note: AWE is now deprecated - removed in SQL Server 2012. The last version of SQL Server that supports AWE is SQL Server 2008 R2. Because of this, a SQL Server 2012 x86 instance won't be able to enjoy over 4Gb of memory – even if running on WOW64.
I setup a vanilla VM in my lab with a 64-bit OS with 8Gb of memory. MSINFO32 looks like this on the VM:
I installed a 32-bit SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 instance on the VM. @@VERSION looked like this:
I did not enable AWE. I did grant the "Perform Volume Maintenance Tasks" and "Lock Pages in Memory" privileges using secpol.msc (not pictured!). I wanted to see what memory consumption would look like without AWE enabled.
This screenshot shows the permissions granted to the SQL Server Service Account (NETWORK SERVICE, in this case) – used "whoami /priv", a quick and dirty way to get the privileges of the service account using xp_cmdshell. Ugh, xp_cmdshell. It's okay, it's just a test.
I went ahead and created a test database with just one big table – big enough to use all the buffer pool memory on the instance when a size-of-data operation is executed on it. I did set Max Server Memory to 6Gb.
Here's the CREATE table script:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[testTable](
[id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[wideColumn] [nvarchar](4000) NULL,
[id] ASC
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[testTable] ADD DEFAULT (replicate(N'A',(4000))) FOR [wideColumn]
Next, I went ahead and inserted 1M rows on the table:
INSERT INTO [dbo].[testTable] DEFAULT VALUES
If you do the math very quickly, you will agree with me that this not so little table will be more than 6Gb in size. Let's check anyway:
Cool! The table is large enough for the purpose of this test. But how does memory utilization look like after that 1M row insert?
That's less than 4Gb. Next I turned on AWE, and restarted the instance. Then I queried the ERRORLOG to confirm that AWE was enabled:
Okay, since I had just restarted the instance my buffer pool was gone – needed to force a size of data operation on the large table. Rebuilding the clustered index did just fine (I know, that's probably overkill). Then I checked sys.dm_os_process_memory again:
And there we go! A lot more than 4Gb being used now that AWE is in play. I had set Max Server Memory to 6Gb, as I detailed earlier.
It looks like there's quite a lot of incorrect documentation regarding this, so I wanted to clear out any confusion – and learn something new along the way. Don't you love SQL Server?
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
P.S.: If you are running IA64 (Itanium) - then this doesn't apply to you. AWE does not work at all on IA64.
One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access.
As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company - and your employer trusts you with keeping them safe. Probably one of the most important of these assets are passwords. As you well know, the can be used anywhere: for service accounts, credentials, proxies, linked servers, DTS/SSIS packages, symmetrical keys, private keys, etc., etc.
Have you given some thought to what you're doing to keep these passwords safe? Are you backing them up somewhere? Who else besides you can access them?
If you have a password-protected Excel sheet for your passwords, I have bad news for you: Excel's level of encryption is good for your grandma's budget spreadsheet, not for a list of enterprise passwords.
I will try to summarize the main point of this best practice in one sentence: You should keep your passwords on an encrypted, access and version-controlled, backed-up, well-known shared location that every DBA on your team is aware of, and maintain copies of this password "database" on your DBA's workstations.
Now I have to break down that statement to you:
- Encrypted: what's the point of saving your passwords on a file that any Windows admin with enough privileges can read?
- Access controlled: This one is pretty much self-explanatory.
- Version controlled: Passwords change (and I'm really hoping you do change them) and version control would allow you to track what a previous password was if the utility you've chosen doesn't handle that for you.
- Backed-up: You want a safe copy of the password list to be kept offline, preferably in long term storage, with relative ease of restoring.
- Well-known shared location: This is critical for teams: what good is a password list if only one person in the team knows where it is?
I have seen multiple examples of this that work well. They all start with an encrypted database. Certainly you could leverage SQL Server's native encryption solutions like cell encryption for this. I have found such implementations to be impractical, for the most part.
There are a myriad of open source/free software solutions to help you here. One of my favorites is KeePass, which creates encrypted files that can be saved to a network share, Sharepoint, etc. KeePass has UIs for most operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Other solutions I've used before worth mentioning include PasswordSafe and 1Password, with the latter one being a paid solution – but wildly popular in mobile devices.
There are, of course, even more "enterprise-level" solutions available from 3rd party vendors. The truth is that most of the customers that I work with don't need that level of protection of their digital assets, and something like a KeePass database on Sharepoint suits them very well.
What are you doing to safeguard your passwords? Leave a comment below, and join the discussion!
This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject.
When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups had completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures.
Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often.
Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it.
Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here.
Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise.
The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends.
What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments.
Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for.
Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective.
The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes.
Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those?
Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks.
If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here.
Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs.
This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it's also slow!).
The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.
I had an email thread going with a prominent member of the SQL Server community today, where he confessed that he didn't attend any sessions during the PASS Summit last week. He spent all of this time networking and catching up with people.
I, personally, can relate.
This year's Summit was another incarnation of that ritual of SQL Server professionals meeting to share their knowledge, experience, and just have a wonderful time while doing so.
It's been a few days after the Summit is over, and I'm definitely dealing with withdrawal.
My name is Argenis, and I'm a #SQLFamilyHolic.
(This post is part of the T-SQL Tuesday series, a monthly series of blog posts from members of the SQL Server community – this month, Chris Yates is hosting)
After the success of the "Demystifying DBA Best Practices" Pre-Conference that my good friend Robert Davis, a.k.a. SQLSoldier [Blog|Twitter] and I delivered at multiple events, including the PASS Summit 2012, I have decided to blog about some of the topics discussed at the Pre-Con. My thanks go to Robert for agreeing to share this content with the larger SQL Server community.
This will be a rather lengthy blog series - and as in the Pre-Con, I expect a lot of interaction and feedback. Make sure you throw in your two cents in the comments section of every blog post.
First topic that I'll be discussing in this blog series: The thing of utmost importance for any Database Administrator: the data. Let's discuss the importance of backups and a solid restore strategy.
Care to share your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below?
This is something that comes up rather regularly at forums, so I decided to create a quick post to make sure that folks out there can feel better about SQL Server 2012.
If you read this Web article, "Features Supported By Editions of SQL Server 2012" as of time of writing this post, you will see that the article points out that these two features are not supported on x64 Standard Edition. This is NOT correct. It is most definitely a documentation bug – one that unfortunately has caused some customers to sit on a waiting pattern before upgrading to SQL Server 2012.
Database Mail and SMO indeed work and are fully supported on SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition x64 instances. These features work as they should.
I have contacted the documentation teams internally to make sure that this is reflected on next releases of said Web article.
Today Jeffrey Langdon (@jlangdon) posed on #SQLHelp the following questions:
So I set to answer his question, and I said to myself: "Hey, I haven't blogged in a while, how about I blog about this particular topic?". Thus, this post was born.
(If you have never heard of Ghost Records and/or the Ghost Cleanup Task, go see this blog post by Paul Randal)
If you guessed yes, you guessed right. The backup process in SQL Server takes all data as it is on disk – it doesn't crack the pages open to selectively pick which slots have actual data and which ones do not. The whole page is backed up, regardless of its contents.
Even if ghost cleanup has run and processed the ghost records, the slots are not overwritten immediately, but rather until another DML operation comes along and uses them.
As a matter of fact, all of the allocated space for a database will be included in a full backup.
So, this poses a bit of a security/compliance problem for some of you DBA folk: if you want to take a full backup of a database after you've purged sensitive data, you should rebuild all of your indexes (with FILLFACTOR set to 100%). But the empty space on your data file(s) might still contain sensitive data! A SHRINKFILE might help get rid of that (not so) empty space, but that might not be the end of your troubles. You might _STILL_ have (not so) empty space on your files!
One approach that you can follow is to export all of the data on your database to another SQL Server instance that does NOT have Instant File Initialization enabled. This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, though. So you have to weigh in your options and see what makes sense for you. Snapshot Replication is another idea that comes to mind.
The answer to this is no. The Ghost Records/Ghost Cleanup Task mechanism is alive and well on compressed tables and indexes. You can prove this running a simple script:
CREATE DATABASE GhostRecordsTest GO
USE GhostRecordsTest GO
CREATE TABLE myTable (myPrimaryKey int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, myWideColumn varchar(1000) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Default string value') ALTER TABLE myTable REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE) GO
INSERT INTO myTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 10
DELETE myTable WHERE myPrimaryKey % 2 = 0
DBCC CHECKTABLE(myTable)
TraceFlag 2514 will make DBCC CHECKTABLE give you an extra tidbit of information on its output. For the above script: "Ghost Record count = 5"
I've lost count of how many times I've heard that phrase.
Are you specialized? On something? Or anything at all? Has that been a good or a bad thing? Why?
Are you the SQL guy at work? Or the one who does everything?
Do you code? And configure wireless routers at work also?
If you had to pick one thing to specialize on, what would it be?
Over the course of my career I've worn many many hats. I always felt I was doing fine, had a stable job, but wasn't quite fond of my prospects for the future. Then a friend said that I should focus on one thing and be the best at it. And while I'm most certainly NOT the best at it, I've gotten progressively better on it, to the degree that I've been called an 'Expert' by some (hate that word!) – I'd rather be called 'knowledgeable'. My career took off like a rocket after I specialized, and certainly choosing to focus on one thing (SQL Server, in my case) has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. I've also been careful of not forgetting my roots as a SysAdmin – and always try to keep up with changes on the Windows/SAN/Networking front, but not with the same level of intensity.
So, in this installment of T-SQL Tuesday I'd like to ask you to blog about your experience. Tell us why you specialized, or why you'd like to specialize. If you don't think that specialization is a good thing, tell us why. Discuss. Argue your point(s).
I took the MCM lab a couple of weeks ago and passed. I still don't believe it - it's been quite the journey.
There have been many decisive moments in my career; one of those was back in 2010 when I decided I would work on obtaining the certification after Brent Ozar blogged rather extensively about his experience with the program. I progressively worked on aspects of SQL Server that were out of my comfort zone – and that paid off. But simply put, I have the cert - but still don't consider myself a true Master. And I probably never will.
I might be okay in certain areas of SQL, maybe even good in others - but I don't master them all. I intend on getting better on those areas, but that won't happen overnight.
SQL Server is a mammoth of a product. It's actually a suite of products – and the MCM certification focuses on only one aspect of it: the Database Engine. No SSAS, no SSIS, no SSRS.
So you might be wondering: Is it worth it then? Why work so hard on obtaining a certification that calls you "Master" when it doesn't test your skills on every single feature of SQL Server?
To me, it was. And then some.
The fact that I value most after going through the program? Knowing exactly what I don't know. In other words, looking at a problem and knowing that I won't be able to solve it right away, yet still I will have an idea of where to begin digging for information to conquer it.
You see, when I decided to go for the MCM I would have probably ranked myself a 6/10. So I went and trained myself on those areas where I felt I wasn't strong enough. I read blogs, I watched videos, I attended SQLSkills immersion events (lucky me!), I went to SQLSaturdays, and even a couple of PASS Summits – but all of that was theory, not a whole lot of practice. And when you get to the MCM Lab, you better had practiced. You better had familiarized with that particular feature you're being challenged with – at least a tiny bit. Learning from BOL on the fly during the MCM Lab is probably just going to be a waste of time – trust me on that one.
The other thing I learned along the way? The power of networking. If you are a SQL Server professional, in any function – DBA, Dev or what have you – allow yourself a couple of minutes to brag about what you do: our community is awesome. Better than anything I've seen out there. I haven't met a single person in the SQL community that's not willing to help a colleague.
And that's precisely what helped me prepare the most for the MCM: helping others. Perhaps that will help you get there as well?