After today’s bombshell announcement that a subset of SQL Server functionality will run on Linux, I got curious and went dumpster diving. I hopped a flight over to Seattle, rummaged through the dumpster in Redmond, and found a shredded set of meeting notes. It took a long time to piece together, but here we go:
Manager: (raps table) “Alright, let’s call this meeting to order. We need to raise the market share of SQL Server. This is the new Microsoft, people. Anything is possible. Let’s think about the truly new and unique. What can we do?”
Rand: “People have complained about core-based pricing ever since we brought it out. Let’s switch back to socket-based pricing.”
Manager: “HAHAHA, Rand, you’re such a joker, that’s what I love about you.”
Rand: “Uh, okay, we could cut pricing?”
Manager: “Come on, Rand, quit screwing around. I’m being serious.”
Rand: “How about we do a single version, cut out the confusing Express/Standard/BI/Enterprise stuff? Just one version, all the features included, just priced based on hardware size?”
Manager: “DAMMIT, RAND, GET OUT. I don’t know why the hell we invite you to these meetings. Out. Seriously. Alright, who else has ideas?”
Carly: “Let’s put a space between Always and On. I think people haven’t been adopting Availability Groups because they can’t get AlwaysOn past the spell checker. We can fix that with a simple space, and that’ll raise adoption rates.”
Manager: “Genius! See, that’s exactly the kind of thinking we need around here! Who else?”
Jeb: “We could go through the highly-voted Connect bug reports, especially the ones around incorrect results, and – ”
Manager: “IS RAND EMAILING YOU? I swear to God, if Rand is emailing you that idea, Jeb, you’re fired.”
Jeb: “Forget it. Next idea.”
Marco: “People complain about SSMS not showing any signs of trouble. Let’s give them a newer, easy-to-use Management Studio that will actually involve management, and help them troubleshoot outages by – ”
Manager: “No, out of the question. What about cloud? People seem to love that cloud thing.”
Ted: “Sure, how about we let them log ship or mirror or AG over to Azure SQL DB? They could use the cloud as a low-cost DR option without hassling with virtual machines.”
Manager: “Hmm, I like it, but…what about replication?”
Ted: “What? No, we’ve been discouraging people from – ”
Manager: “No no, wait – one-way replication. They’ll be able to replicate their data in, but not back out. That way we’ve got ’em locked in, and they can never fail back!”
Ted: “That’s absolutely ignor – ”
Manager: “If you can get it done by November 15th, I’ll give you a good annual review.”
Ted: “I’m on it.”
Manager: “Anything else? Think, people, think.”
Donald: “We could run SQL Server on Linux.”
Manager: “I’m listening.”
Donald: “I know this guy who says he won’t run SQL Server unless it’s on Linux.”
Carly: “So he’s racist against Windows?”
Donald: “I didn’t say that. I don’t actually know. But I wouldn’t disavow him if he wants to buy a few copies of SQL Server.”
Manager: “Brilliant. Let’s devote dev resources to that.”
- Totally not the secret meeting minutes. This is humor. But for the record, Linus won.