The big press release hit at 1am EDT earlier this morning for distribution around the globe. Much to our chagrin, around 9am EDT our web site tanked. Too many hours later, our provider got us back online.

I guess this is what is meant by "bleeding edge". When you innovate and you do things that capture the world's attention, I suppose it is probable that you take a beating along the journey.

No matter how hard it is being a trail blazer when it comes to helping IT organizations lower their costs AND simultaneously improving business performance, we will be relentless in our pursuit of being helpful. So, please pardon our occassional imperfections. We will emerge from each growing pain a little stronger.

With best regards,
Scott ]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=77 Every once in a while, you see a movie that stimulates your brain and gets you thinking about your priorities. The Bucket List is one such movie. I laughed, I cried, and it forced me to think about some of the things that I value and would like to achieve. At the time of this blog post, I'm about 46 so I need to get busy on making some changes.

DBI's culture is critically important to me. This is a place where we work and have fun helping each other and our customers. Being helpful is our #1 core value. Being helpful isn't always easy, so the challenge is to make being helpful fun and rewarding.

A few years ago, I read about a rare company that team members simply loved working for. In many ways, this company challenged the status quo. As a bit of a rebellious rule breaker myself, I admired many of the initiatives this company had undertaken and hoped that, someday, I would be able to create a similar culture at DBI.

On my Bucket List:

• Create and sustain a team work environment that is fun and celebrates helpfulness and success
• Implement extraordinary team member benefits that reward team members for deeds well done
• Provide uncommon team member benefits that help team members recharge and sustain high levels of helpfulness

• There are about 12 national holidays throughout the year. DBI is adding 5 additional "holidays" so that each and every month (including February, March/April, June, August, and October) every team member will have a 3 day weekend. In short, EVERY MONTH has a 3 Day weekend, or more, for every team member. Customers, don't worry. These extra holidays are implemented on a staggered rotation so that DBI will be open for business on the days you expect.
• Each team member has been given several recognition coupons with varying bonus dollar denominations. Team members are now empowered to bestow cash bonuses on any other DBI team member for extr ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=76 Our story begins last Saturday, 22 December 2007, when I was celebrating my birthday at my mom and dad's house. Mom made my favorite dinner (Ham, mashed potatoes, and an amazing ham gravy), and gave me one of my favorite birthday presents--- a cookbook titled "Fat-free ITALIAN" by Anne Sheasby.

  Sunday night, 23 December, I was in the mood to try a new recipe. Soup sounded good, so on page 44 I set out to prepare "Tomato and Fresh Basil Soup" since the recipe looked fairly simple and quick.

  Let the life learning experiences begin... my father used to say "The difference between stupidity and ignorance is how many times you make the same mistake". Let me tell you about some mistakes I intend to never make again.

  After cooking the onions, tomatoes, and other tasty ingredients in a big pot for about 20 minutes, the next step was to puree the soup in a blender or food processor. I own both of these kitchen gadgets, but chose the blender for its greater capacity and speed.

  I carefully filled the blender about 2/3 full and put the top on. My right hand held a pot holder which covered the blender lid. My left hand pressed the button labeled "puree".

  Now I've got a pretty fancy blender with about 20 speeds. There's a switch labeled "low" and "high" that is supposed to switch between speeds 1-10 and 11-20.

  • Here's mistake #1: The switch was set to "high".
  • Mistake #2: I wasn't earnestly applying pressure to the lid of the blender to keep it closed.
  • Mistake #3: I had forgotten the explosive force that boiling, steaming hot liquids can produce when agitated
  The consequences of my mistakes were many!
  1. The lid blew up off the blender
  2. The blender boiling hot ingredients went flying everywh ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=73 We enlighten, equip, and empower heroes for IT performance and auditing success every day.

     Being helpful is our number one most important company value. We help each other. We help our customers. Everyone on our team is uncommonly, extraordinarily helpful. It just tickles us pink when we help someone dramatically improve the performance of a database or achieve their audit requirements.

     Just the other day we helped a customer in Illinois discover several database performance problems they were not aware of. We found an SQL statement that was using 41% of the CPU in the database - it was missing an index and scanning thousands of rows with each execution. In less than two hours, the performance of the application was dramatically improved!

     Another customer was amazed when our support staff spent four hours on the phone with him helping him tune his database. In an age when many support calls are routed to a foreign country and it is difficult to keep a support person on the phone for ten minutes, suffice it to say that we greatly exceeded this customer's expectations.

     Different people enjoy doing different things. Some like to knit socks, others like to exercise or cook, we like to help people solve database problems and improve efficiency. For us, helping a company accelerate its business is like solving a numbers puzzle - it's fun, and it feels good to help others achieve their goals.

     How can we help you? Contact DBI

     Cheers,
     Scott ]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=71 It didn't take very long until I began to see a river of dirty sink water streaming across my kitchen floor. I knew it was time for a trip down the road to my nearby Home Depot store.

     At the store, I reviewed several new disposal options and features. Back in the late 1980's, I used to put Emerson E10 or E20 units into rental properties. These lower end units got the job done, with a fair amount of noise, and a minimal warranty.

     This time, since this was my first disposal purchase in many years, and since I prefer spending my time doing things other than home repairs, I decided to go with a near top of the line Insinkerator model. The box packaging promised that the disposal would be very quiet and provide optimum chopping of food waste.

     After a bit of a struggle, I won the fight against the old disposal and freed it from my kitchen sink. Much to my surprise, the unit I pulled out was an Emerson E20 - the same model I was installing in rental properties years ago.

     The installation of the Insinkerator went smoothly. After two years of being focused on the software industry, it was refreshing and rewarding to "play plumber" and complete a home improvement on my own. I imagine you can relate to the satisfaction.

     As per the instructions, I turned on the cold water and checked for leaks. There weren't any. Next I turned on the power switch.

     Remarkable. Wonderful. Awesome.

     These words can only begin to express my joy over how quiet the new ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=68 Well, we've passed another milestone! On July 15, 2007, DBI turned 2! Today, July 16th, we've made downloads of Brother-Panther available. Brother-Panther Hunts Performance Problems with Speed and Agility - it is the best tool you can use to quickly become a Performance Hero in your organization. Good luck and have fun!

     Best regards,
     Scott]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=65 In the early 1990s, Client Server computing became popular. Organizations linked multiple smaller computers together in a network to improve speed and access to data, and to lower their costs. Data Warehouses and Data Marts were built on open systems using distributed databases. Organizations raced to acquire virtual mountains of data to improve the quality and speed of decisions. Data has been made widely available throughout organizations - it is as if some even hang neon "Hot Now" lights in their hallways to alert privileged data consumers of the availability of new data that is ready for decision analysis. The problem is, during this Information Technology race to make data widely available to privileged users and decision makers, sufficient attention wasn't paid to security and accountability. The data buffet has been opened and no one is watching what data consumers consume.

     With no one watching how valuable data is being used, changed, or accessed, this opens the door to data crimes, thefts, and malfeasance. After enough individual citizens and investors have been harmed, this is when government steps in and passes laws in an attempt to protect people. Today organizations are faced with a myriad of legislation and regulations because organizations have failed to be good stewards of their, and our, data assets. Sarbanes-Oxley, for one, in the wake of Enron, is intended to protect investors from fraudulent financial reporting - which is based on data, and which requires attestation to accuracy. HIPAA attempts to protect consumers from inappropriate use of PHI (Protected Health Information) by providing privacy protections and requiring audit trails for access to information. Other laws, regulations, and standards include GLBA, PCI, and CA/SB1386. Even the FDA has regulations requiring data accountability.

     But never mind the regulation alphabet soup. The laws and regulations exist today because organizations have faile ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=63 Have you visited DB2 Magazine online lately? They've made several improvements and enhancements to their online content. Not only can you find the current print articles, but also extra "online only" articles, plus a new community wiki, and new blogs.

     Speaking of blogs, I have become one of the contributors to the DB2 Magazine blog. In my first set of posts, I am teaching excerpts from my IDUG Education Seminar "DB2 LUW Performance Diagnostic Lab". If you're interesting in learning about DB2 LUW performance and tuning, please visit the DB2 Magazine blog.

     Want to follow along here? First you'll need to prepare for the class by collecting some performance data from your DB2 database. You can find the class preparation instructions at www.database-brothers.com/db2mag/GettingReady-IBMDB2LUW-Performance-Diagnosis-Lab.pdf.

     What type of database do you have?

     You might think you have an OLTP transactional database. Or, you might think you have a Data Warehouse database. But what does your database think? How is it, or the queries within it, really performing?

     The Average Result Set Size

     Transactional databases tend to process small result set sizes (the actual number of rows retrieved for a given SELECT statement). Data Warehouse databases tend to process large result set sizes - often returning hundreds or thousands of rows for any given SELECT statement. My rule of thumb, or the tipping point between OLTP and Data Warehouse, is an average result set size (ARSS) of 10. If ARSS is less than or equal to 10, then the database is behaving like an OLTP database. If the ARSS is greater than 10, then your database is behaving like a Data Warehouse database. If the ARSS is just a little bit greater than 10, then you may have an OLTP database w ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=62 Back in January, I was pleased to complete 3.1 miles in a little under 40 minutes. Heck, just making it to my virtual finish line was a thrill. I understand that improving performance is a process of continuous, disciplined improvement, so I kept at it. Some weeks I ran 3-4 miles two to three times per week, and other weeks I completed much longer runs of 6-10 miles during a single DVD movie (yes, I've got a DVD LCD TV in front of my treadmill). By mid-April, I had my 5K time down to about 34 minutes.

     On April 28th, I participated in the Texas Round Up 5K/10K race in Austin. Wow, what a thrill that was. To see all of those runners and feel all of the energy was simply awesome. It took a whole minute just to get across the starting line, and then I was off! The first 1K was easy - it was on a slight grade downhill. What goes down, must come up - or something like that, so the last half of the race definitely challenged my willpower and perseverance. I am pleased to report that I crossed the finish line with a time of 32 minutes and 15 seconds - my personal best this year!

     And so it is, too, with the challenge of continuously improving response times and performance of our business databases. It is an iterative process that requires skills, tools, and perseverance over time.

     Next week is the 19th Annual IDUG North American Conference. Remarkably, I have been to them all, and been a speaker since 1996. I look forward to renewing and refreshing old friendships and making new friends. This year DBI is unveiling some new distributed database performance solutions that will have features and capabilities unlike DBAs have ever ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=61 Delta from Louisville KY to Las Vegas NV via a stop in Atlanta GA. At some magical moment between Atlanta and Las Vegas, Delta's flight records indicate that I have successfully flown more than 1,000,000 miles. For this great achievement, which, they say, "fewer than 1% of our frequent fliers ever achieve", I received a congratulatory letter, spiffy new luggage tags, lifetime silver medallion status, and my choice of a new piece of luggage. I am pleased to report that, as of 1,019,680 miles, this new luggage hasn't be lost yet - not even once.

     1,000,000 miles seems like a good time to reflect upon one's life. At an average of 2,500 miles per trip, this suggests I've taken maybe 400 trips. With an average ticket price of $500 (certainly some have been much higher and others have been lower), perhaps I've put $200,000 into Delta's bank account. It is a nice piece of Hartman luggage which incidentally fits into the Size Wise carry-on tester...

     Next month, in San Jose California, I will participate in my 19th consecutive IDUG North America conference. I've contributed to IDUG as a speaker every year since 1997 - making 10 years of presentations. Fortunately, I enjoy teaching and writing. And, of course, I'm flying Delta to get to SJC.

     With so much travel, I'll tell you I'm struggling with Waist Management. The life of a road warrior can be very difficult on one's diet. I started the year at 205 LBS with a goal of dropping to 180 by year's end. Despite running three to four miles 3-5 times per week and "eating better" (when possible), today's weight is 198. I have more work to do. Interestingly, back when I flew my first mile with Delta, I probably weighed 160 LBS. Unfortunately, I can't blame the 40 LB gain entirely on airplane peanuts. There are simply just too many awesome restaurants across America and around the globe. ..]]> http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/Scott_Hayes.php?id=49