Provides DBA services for Production, test, and development databases
Administers and maintains the production, test, and development databases.
Performs SQL code releases
Reviews application designs for compliance with production acceptance requirements.
Complies with IT policies and procedures, especially those for quality and productivity standards
Complies with Information Security policies and procedures. Verifies deliverables meet Information Security requirements.
Participates in special projects and performs other related duties as assigned.
Operations are 24 x 7. May be required to be on call, work beyond normal business hours

Position Requirements

B.S. in computer science
2 to 3 years experience
Strong written and oral communication skills.
Strong analysis and problem solving skills.
Working knowledge of the following DBA practices and concepts: database backup & recovery, database performance & tuning, database monitoring, and maintenance.
Working knowledge of Visual Source Safe
Strong knowledge of database design and administration
Stored procedure and view development and troubleshooting
Database size management (includes volume/disk mgmt., file and filegroup allocations.)
Basic understanding of Microsoft Clustering technology
Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite
Entry level knowledge of networking
Entry level skill set of database performance tuning/indexing
SSRS, SSIS, and scripting experience a plus.

Interested? (say I referred you on the application form)

Install ActiveState Perl from http://www.activestate.com (free) and install DBI if it isn’t already installed.  It should be but you never know…

1. Start -> ActiveState Perl -> Perl Package Manager
2. install DBI
3. exit

Now, the easy part.  Install the DBD::Sybase 1.09.01 PPM:

1. download DBD::Sybase 1.09.01 PPM
2. extract zip file to temporary directory (e.g. c:\test)
3. Start -> Run -> cmd.exe (as Administrator if Vista or Windows 7)
4. cd \test
5. ppm install DBD-Sybase.ppd
6. exit

That’s it

It should automatically install the DBD::Sybase for Perl 5.8 or 5.10 depending on which version of Active State Perl you have installed.

Assuming that you installed Sybase OpenClient 15.5 from the 15.5 PC Client:

Install ActiveState Perl from http://www.activestate.com (free) and install DBI if it isn’t already installed.  It should be but you never know…

1. Start -> ActiveState Perl -> Perl Package Manager
2. install DBI
3. exit

Now, the easy part.  Install the DBD::Sybase 1.09 PPM:

1. download DBD::Sybase 1.09 PPM
2. extract zip file to temporary directory (e.g. c:\test)
3. Start -> Run -> cmd.exe (as Administrator if Vista or Windows 7)
4. cd \test
5. ppm install DBD-Sybase.ppd
6. exit

That’s it

Sybase

• Pull the hard drive from the laptop.  On my Dell Latitude, it was simply unscrewing the two screws on the bottom of the laptop marked with the hard drive simble
• Attach the drive to a SATA to USB connector and plug it in to your Linux box
• If you don’t have VirtualBox installed, do so now using apt-get, rpm, or whatever you use to install software
• Follow How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox but make sure you specify the entire drive (i.e. /dev/sdh) and not individual partitions else you will miss the hidden partitions that Vista and Windows 7 create

You should have a working Windows 7 Virtual Machine.  You’ll notice that you probably have a huge vdi file.  Let’s shrink that down:

• Within Windows
  • download and install sdelete from Microsoft
  • download and install PowerDefragmenter
  • Run PowerDefragmenter on your c: drive (as administrator)
  • Run “sdelete -c c:” from a cmd window (as administrator)
  • shutdown windows
• On the host
  • run “VBoxManage modifyvdi my_disk.vdi compact” replacing “my_disk.vdi” with the name of your vdi file you created earlier
  • Note that if you get a “Shrink hard disk operation is not implemented” error, then you’ve hit bug #2833 and you will want to download the latest VirtualBox to fix it.

Years ago PowerBuilder was king.  No one could touch it.  It was relatively inexpensive.  Microsoft’s Visual Basic matured and the Pascal based Borland’s Delphi was released.  Then it fell and fall it did.

Sybase

As it was falling from the throne Sybase purchased Powersoft, makers of PowerBuilder.  As the the market share continued to shrink, PowerBuilder developers had more difficulty in finding new projects.  Most new development was written in Visual Basic or Java.

Years went by with marketing of PowerBuilder little more than the occasional road show, TechWave presentations and the ISUG Technical Journal ads catered towards existing customers.  Little to no effort was put forth by Sybase to gain new PowerBuilder customers.

During this week’s Sybase TechWave, PowerBuilder version 12 was released.  It has all the whistles and kitchen sinks you could ask for.   An amazing tool for development!  Too bad no one outside of the die hard PowerBuilder programmers will use it.

Blasphemy!  Heretic!

Consider this:

Sybase owns PowerBuilder.  It owns the PowerBuilder software, PowerBuilder language, PowerScript, the PowerBuilder vm, and everything PowerBuilder.

No problem right?

What will happen to PowerBuilder when Sybase is bought out by another company?  Products with tiny market share like PowerBuilder would likely be killed or in a state of limbo for several years.  Anyone remember what happened when IBM bought Informix?

Do you really want to bet your career and business on a software development tool that is locked to a single smallish vendor?

Maybe, perhaps, if Sybase were to release the PowerBuilder 4GL language and PowerScript to the world like Microsoft did with the C# and Visual Basic languages and Sun with Java…   Perhaps if Sybase would allow 3rd parties to develop tools based around the PowerBuilder language royalty free…

Sybase:  PLEASE FREE THE POWERBUILDER 4GL LANGUAGE!

I mean, really, what benefit could Sybase have to cripple the PowerBuilder developers?

QweryBuilder uses innovative ideas to provide developers with the ability to easily insert, extract and modify data from a variety of databases.

The goal of QweryBuilder is to increase a database developer’s productivity. It contains many time saving features.

SQL Editor

QweryBuilder - SQL Editor

• Script auto complete
• Custom auto complete lists
• Code Templates
• Display column list for tables and views in editor
• Display procedure parameters in editor
• Keyboard shortcut to open procedures
• Generate and insert new GUIDs
• Syntax folding
• Auto indenting

Criteria Query

QweryBuilder - Criteria Query

• Form view criteria screen for easy data retrieval
• Updateable result set
  • Insert nulls, GUID’s, and computed values into results
  • Insert, delete and update data rows
  • Generate insert statements from results
  • Create graphs from result data

Graphic Query

QweryBuilder - Graphic Query

• Create queries graphically
• Cross table querying without writing SQL

Other Features

• Support for Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase ASE, SQL Anywhere and Oracle
• DDL Browser
• Database Search
• Visual Difference
• Code Formatter
• Getting Started Window
  • Displays last used connections, files and database objects
  • Easily navigate to the last thing you were working on
• Clipboard Saver
• File Browser
• Object Browser

The issues tend to be simple ones such as, “select * from my_table limit 10″ to retrieve the first 10 rows not working.  Using “select top 10 col1,col2,….coln from my_table” will.

So how can you help?  Very easily!   The CakePHP website shows us how:

Bug 306975:  Evolution: Exchange-Connector-setup 2.24.2 unable to log in to exchange

If you are running into this problem, please let it be known on the bug page!

upstream said the bug is fixed with evolution 2.24, could you please
comment on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375727 if you still get the issue or confirm that it’s fixed? thanks in advance.

** Changed in: evolution-exchange (Ubuntu)
Status: Triaged => Incomplete

–
evolution-exchange: unable to setup exchange account: e2k_properties_get_prop: assertion `props != NULL’ failed https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/25106

Image courtesy of VMware

Dell has a demonstration using Microsoft SQL Server where they move the live SQL Server from one blade to another with no outage:

It is the most installed embedded database on the planet hands down.  Don’t believe me?  You know that Firefox web browser, Thunderbird newsreader, most Adobe products, Miro, etc all have it embedded?  – reference http://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html

We use it extensively at work as:

1. staging for mass data imports/exports/conversions
2. local application ‘cache’ for large data sets
3. projects that don’t require all the features of Sybase ASE (or Oracle for that matter)

One of the best features is that the database itself in platform independent… copy the db on to AIX from your Windows box … then on to your old Amiga … then on to your windows mobile device.  Getting the point? 

I really wish Sybase would make it so that the Sybase ASE databases were truly platform and character set/sort order independent… but that is in another dream

Not a blurb in the PowerDesigner/PowerBuilder manuals or anything

…. “ODF has clearly won,” said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft’s recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format. ….

read more at InfoWorld

I don’t know about you but I’m not holding my breath that Microsoft will actually do this…  they be sneaky

The goal of the Flourish Conference is to promote the use and adoption of Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) by demonstrating the practical applications of FLOSS in the business and academic world. While everyone is familiar with businesses that focus on creating non-free proprietary software, the same cannot be said for those who specialize in developing and supporting FLOSS software, and an Open Culture.

I missed a part of Bruce Perens’ Innovation Goes Public presentation due to Chicago’s closing several sidewalks that go over or under the tristate. I’m not quite sure I agree with him that the road a head for open source is all rosey. Perhaps I misunderstood him but it seemed to me that the idea of simply giving the source of an application to the public would allow the programmers to still be paid via the support/service agreements.  This may work for some applications, but for others there wouldn’t be a sufficient number of support contracts to financially support the programmers Personally, I prefer open source but I will also pay for commercial proprietary software. I use what works.

The company I work for, Sungard Investment Systems, uses open source for many internal projects. One such product uses VMware and Linux for a portable monitoring system so I was highly interested in rBuilder Online from rPath. I attended the Appliance Development and Conary session presented by Stephanie Watson from rPath. I’m currently investigating on how well and easy it is to make a VMware appliance that would house a Sybase ASE server (DBMS) with no unnecessary os files. If the testing turns out well, I will ask my fellow Sybase ASE DBAs whether Sybase need certify it or whether we are ‘on our own’. The monitoring machine itself really doesn’t need Sybase ASE on it but since we have the license….

Dr. John Waclawsky, from Motorolla, gave a feel good presentation about the state of communication between wireless gadgets. The Revolution at the Edge of the Network Abstract. Short version: things are going to get very interesting in the next year

James Gray, from IBM, presented IBM’s Open Source Strategy – Turning Threat into Opportunity. While essentially a case study of how IBM has interacted as a semi-liason between the business executives and the open source community. IBM, to me, has seemed to be stuck in a love/hate relationship with open source and a dislike/hate relationship with the Free Software Foundation. That being said, it is necessary to give IBM credit giving credence to the open source community with the business executives. The IT folks no longer had to quietly use open source in the business but were free to use it extensively in many places. Linux, in particular, is no longer the wild west in many CTOs’ eyes but a integral part of their business.

I met Tony Wong in the Chicago Perl Mongers ‘booth’. We discussed the upcoming Yet Another Perl Conference (YAPC::NA 2008) that is being held in Chicago and the horrible documentation of the Catalyst MVC web framework. I informed him that the only way to learn Catalyst was the new book Catalyst by Jonathan Rockway (ISBN: 978-1-847190-95-6). I also warned him that the book should have gone through another round of proofreading prior to being published due to excessive example code errors, etc. I playfully suggested that Joshua McAdams be tormented because he wasn’t able to make it Friday morning.

The panel discussion on Friday afternoon was highly entertaining and a bit of a kangaroo court for Bobby Moore of Microsoft. I do not believe Mr. Moore was expecting Bruce Perens to repeatedly ask very pointed and informed questions. Moore did an excellent job of remaining cool and listening with an open mind to the criticism of Microsoft as a company. He explained that, yes, Microsoft did some not so nice things in the past but they are attempting to work with the open source community. Bruce Perens, Jon “Maddog” Hall, and James Bottomley brought up the pending MS Office OpenXML standard format issue where much of the format is proprietary and the published format won’t actually be used by Microsoft. Moore conceded that it was unlikely that Microsoft would use the published format as-is but the Office developers would likely base the actually used format off of the published format. Perens, Hall, Bottomley and James Gray all expressed their opinions that this was very typical of Microsoft. (side note: Microsoft has been accused of having the attitude of Embrace, Extend, Eliminate when it comes to industry standards.)

Perens, Hall and James Bottomley, as well as members of the audience, pummeled both James Gray of IBM and Bobby Moore of Microsoft for their companies’ approach and support of software patents.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the first day as my mother was in town from North Dakota to visit my three month old daughter (and the rest of us). If only I could have cloned myself… Don’t forget to check out the Flickr photo group for the Flourish 2008 Conference in Chicago!

Very likely, clicking on the icon will prompt you to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista.  I’m only installing it on one machine right now to see if I run into any issues before putting in on the rest of my Vista boxes.

Wish me luck!

What *I* personally would like to see is:

1. step by step online tutorials to create a multitude of projects – from simple ‘hello world’ applications to database connected applications to .NET to AJAX enabled .NET web apps
2. online videos for the new and experienced developers rather than just feature highlights
3. more books… from the “Beginning PowerBuilder 11″ (perhaps a ‘for Dummies’ series type book) to super advanced PB11
4. more podcasts ( take a look at Meet the Gimp for example format )
5. PowerBuilder gallery of open source and commercial PB applications (please don’t just point to the abomination known as codexchange) and online pb communities
6. A better tiered licensing model: Free version (take a look at Microsoft’s VB Express for a model of what should be included for free), Student (K-university) edition, Professional / Small Business, Enterprise. There should be NO feature differences between the student and enterprise editions – the only difference should be in what PB can be used for (licensing).
7. Open source & hobby-ist development should be actively promoted to help rebuild the PB community

Can anyone think of anything else to help new developers learn PowerBuilder?