Featured Article(s)
Re-throwing exceptions is expensive
Microsoft states, "Catching exceptions and rethrowing them is expensive, and makes it harder to debug and identify the exact source code that was responsible for the exception. Do not catch exceptions unless you specifically want to record and log the exception details, or can retry a failed operation. If you do not do anything with the exception, it is likely that you end up rethrowing the same exception." This article takes a look at why rethrowing exceptions are expensive and how to avoid them.
Manage SQL Server from Your BlackBerry
…or Windows Mobile Device. Real-time monitoring and alerts, and, my favorite, even information about how to correct issues that come up. You can start and stop jobs, agents and even reboot servers, all from your mobile device. If you’re interested, check out SQL Mobile Manager – you can give it a try for free and, from what I understand, they do have special pricing until March 31 if you decide to deploy it. Get your copy here.
Odd Virtualization Debate… I Think.
I noticed this short article over at InfoQ about database virtualization. It’s really kind of summarizing another article, which is fine. What caught my eye are the comments. It shows how much people working with databases (and other apps, sure) have to really research before making decisions. The comments on one hand suggest that a virtualization decisions revolve around security, maintenance and performance.
Sure, performance is a huge consideration. Before you put a virtual solution in place in production, there is some serious testing you need to do. We’ve covered that rather recently here – I won’t go back through it, but … maintenance? Security? Those aren’t the first things that come to mind when considering virtualization.
Another person comments that virtualization for a database server isn’t necessarily a necessity, pointing out that most major databases engines support multiple databases in a single installation/instance. In fact, they ask why virtualize (presumably in production)? For development, it’s a great sandbox technique, but for what should be stable systems, why not just set up another database?
My question to you – do you sandbox your production applications? Drop me a note – let me know how you approach this.
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