Lace Up Your Boots
A friend of mine is working on a RFP for her company and was supposed to use the Verbiage that her predecessor used. This person used to be the Assistant Manager at a T.G.I Fridays before she got into information technology. She often referred to herself as an 'architect' and had quite a bit of influence for a while on design decisions. Design decisions as in desiging tables and objects. This is her description of Sql Server's BackUp and Recovery functionality (and specifically, Point in Time Restores). The objective here was to describe the difference between Sql Server's back and recovery power as opposed to Access or other systems without Point in Time Restore. Remember as your reading this, This is the description of Point in Time Restore functionality in general, and Sql Server's in particular. Then I want you to answer, how big of a Bong would it take before you could actually write something like this? [You see, I have a theory that idiocy and ignorance alone can't make a really big mess. They can make a mess, but REAL F-ups are always caused by someone who really thinks they are smart and too frigging arrogant to admit it when they are in over their head. Stupid people will accidentally get a few things right, but it takes a real arrogant sh1thead to make real messes. And unfortunately, Software and IT has a disproportionate share of those types of people]. And I swear - this is copied directly from a RFP. Not a word was changed and you have the entire section here.
Point in Time Recovery:
“Microsoft SQL Server utilizes the transactional method of data recovery. Transaction recovery is data recovery at the level of specific transactions. In this context, a transaction is defined as a set of related operations that, when grouped together, define a logical unit within an application. Traditional recovery techniques imply recovery of portions of a database (such as a tablespace or an index). Transaction recovery, on the other hand, enables recovery based on criteria that you define. The important point is that a transaction is defined from the user's point of view, as opposed to a transaction (or unit of recovery) as defined to the database. Such activity is handled within SQL server and can be examined using the standard monitoring tools (such as Performance Monitor) that come with the product, or can be enhanced even more with a variety of third-party monitoring tools.”