Brian Lockwood's Software etc Blog

Joe Chang, the performance expert who advised imceda and then quest on tuning Lite Speed publicly comments on Red-Gates' Backup "Benchmark".

As an interesting follow up to my post "The pernicious effect of industry sponsored research", here is a link to a lively discussion on the topic of the "benchmark's" veracity.

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17315

Normally I would say to read it quick before it's deleted but it's on sql-server-performance so the thread should be safe ;)

if you want a keeper quote ....

"I did not say Tolly was not impartial,
I said either they were not impartial or they are incompetent,
I can not make definite conclusions"

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Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 8:09 AM 0 comments

"Supported" by Red-Gate

In case you've missed the latest Public Relations fiasco by Red-Gate, the SQLServerCentral community has protested the deliberately misleading ownership "disclaimer" of "Supported by Red-Gate" and forced it to be changed. Another small win for truth and honesty, fought every inch by Red-Gate.

Here is the thread

When Red-Gate bought SQLServerCentral they had enough time to write me a letter indicating my contract would be cancelled and that existing ads would be subject to (undisclosed) new standards. They had time post and flame on my blog, crow about the marketing coup on their blog etc

But they didn't actually have time to make it official and prominent in the form of a honest public disclaimer that they indeed did now own the site. In fact, a lot of people who missed the initial announcement found out about it only from my blog! ;) Of course, from a public relations standpoint continuing the illusion that the site was independent (despite kicking off all ads except theirs!) was good for business.

Some copyrights at the bottom of the page (that nobody notices) slowly began to change but the logo still remained unchanged. There was some grumbling from the community on this topic - which, in fact, I wasn't real invested in. (I had enough other topics on this to blog about). So Red-Gate finally updates the logo fixing the problem right? wrong.

"Supported" by Red-Gate

The change they made wasn't to "Red-Gate Software", "Owned by Red-Gate Software", "SQLServerCental is a service from Red-Gate software" (exactly like they have on simple-talk) or anything else that resembled the reality of the true nature of the relationship between SQLServerCentral but "Supported by Red-Gate Software"! This was eerily consistent with the disclaimers in the Red-Gate infomercials that now dominate the SQLServerCentral newsletters - "Sponsored by SQL Compare", "Sponsored by SQL Packager" etc. Sponsered?

The illusion is supposed to convince people everything at SQLServerCentral was the same as before except all the other advertisers decided to go away (all at the same time) and Red-Gate is the lone advertiser "supporting" and "sponsoring" the site. Unless you read the fine print in 5 pt font (or my blog) you might not suspect anything had fundamentally changed at all.

A community service from Red-Gate

When a few people challenged this the feedback was casually discounted. "I don't see the problem" - really? Finally, the word was it would be "debated". Let's weigh the pro's and con's of telling the truth! And finally, (and I imagine with much consternation) the site logo was changed to ... "a community service from Red-Gate" - with a helpful link to Red-Gate's home page (not About page or a disclaimer) so you can buy their "toolkit" when you click the link to see who owns the site. How helpful! Another great "service" ;)

Someone emailed me and likened this whole Red-Gate / SQLServerCentral boondoggle to a "train wreck". Actually, train wrecks are sudden, violent events - this is a slow, painful saga that is guaranteed to play out for months and months. By running SQLServerCentral as a business while trying to maintain the pretense that they are generous benefactors of the sql server community, and fighting any attempt to admit otherwise, we can guarantee this story will be live for many more months. Red-Gate wants to have their crumpets and eat them too.

SQL Community 1984

"a community service from Red-Gate" is also inaccurate in that it falsely implies Red-Gate is doing the community a service - vs using it as a captive community to force feed infomercials to. A community service is like donating computers to schools, volunteering time with kids etc. I suppose the soda machines in schools are a "community service" by Pepsi! But to jump on the new trend of Orwellian speak I have updated my blog "SQL Tools Straight Talk - A "community service" by ApexSQL ;)".

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 2:57 PM 0 comments

SQLServerCentral nothing but a "Sales Tool"

Funny, for awhile I thought we had a "community"

If you want to understand how Red-Gate perceives the world - it's simple. Just read what they say. This quote sums it up perfectly - written ironically under the title Why Editorial Freedom is worth fighting for

"On the day Red-Gate released the news that they had bought out SQLServerCentral, a small number of advertisers queried the company's motives. What did Red Gate seek to gain from buying a community site? Were they trying to brainwash the community? Censor all opposing opinion? How could it be a community site if it banned all advertisements for rival software? It was almost as if they were unable to see how SQLServerCentral could be anything other than a sales tool."

Those accustomed to reading Shill Factor, posts and flames from Red-Gate owners and "Editors" have come to learn the distain to which this company holds the technical free press and editorial independence. But this article effectively puts the cherry on the top. Thx bro! ;)

A few more honest op eds like this and I can retire from ranting - my elucidation really isn't needed with this level of full disclosure from Red-Gate itself.

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 10:40 AM 2 comments

The Smoking Gun

Red-Gate is trumpeting a bogus benchmark with the tagline "Download a copy of the report Quest tried to ban, and find out the truth about backup performance." Indicating that they were potential victims of censorship from Quest.

All the while Red-Gate are themselves perpetrating a multi-year, systematic campaign to suppress any and all information about it's competitors from getting out to the sql community. Red-Gate offers no proof of Quest's "ban" but I do offer proof of Red-Gate's anti-competitive practices - the proverbial "smoking gun".

I scanned a page from my contract on one popular sql website - the clause says I can't run ads that compete with [Red-Gate] SQL Compare or SQL Data Compare. Pretty clear isn't it?

The Smoking Gun (click to enlarge)

Note: I have myself censored the name of the website and the $ amount of the contract (monthly and in total).

But it begs the questions

1) if Red-Gate products are so good why do they need to suppress information about competitors?
2) Should a company that is engaged in such practices be trusted to run a sql server "community" like SQLServerCentral?
3) Should community members be aware of the fact that information they are receiving via banners, newsletter ads etc is censored etc.

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Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 5:44 PM 0 comments

The pernicious effect of industry sponsored research

Boston Children's Hospital has released a study today indicating that scientific research sponsored by the food industry was 4-8 times more likely to yield results favorable to companies. For example, research sponsored by Gerber (maker of baby food) concluded that drinking large amounts of fruit juice DIDN'T make kids shorter and fatter (as other studies had concluded) ... hmmmm.

Isolated incident/study? - not hardly. A similar study concluded that for-profit research was also statistically skewed Drug related studies in favor of corporate "sponsors".

How does this relate to our industry?

Red-Gate has sponsored (aka paid for) a study by the Tolly Group, indicating that their database product is the fastest vs Quest and Idera. Database Underground has posted an article with some concerns about the validity of this study and the methodology that resulted in the Red-Gate "win".

Here is an excerpt

"So what does the report say that I find suspect? Well, for starters, they tried to make up for their lack of multi-threading by writing to 3 files while pinning LiteSpeed and Idera to 1 file. It's certainly interesting from a performance tuning perspective, but it reads more like a report on how to make Red-Gate perform in the same league with the others by overcoming its limitations. I was curious about whether just adding 3 files would be a fair multi-threading comparison, so I put LiteSpeed in my lab last night and ran a couple quick backups. I backed up a 200GB DB with a single file, and then ran the job again with 3 files. Oddly enough, I saw just over a 20% increase in performance by striping... and yes, to the same RAID array. So it appears that even though you can make Red-Gate perform better than expected, a single-threaded application simply can't compete with a mulit-threaded one. It just can't. It should be just as easy to add a striped backup to the Tolly results, and I'm really curious why they didn't do striped backups with LiteSpeed and Idera to show what the difference would have been. If it truly doesn't add that much to the equation, then they should have shown that. So I'm thinking that it clearly makes a difference."

This study, coupled Red-Gate's historical pattern of media manipulation (anti-competitive ad clauses, purchasing community sites under false pretenses, etc) it begins to form a disturbing pattern.

It would be interesting to hear a public explanation from Red-Gate or Tolly on the concerns raised by Sean McCown.

Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 9:20 AM 0 comments

Shill Factor on the Hijacking of SQLServerCentral

Shill Factor on the Hijacking of SQLServerCentral

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 9:54 PM 0 comments

Brian Kelly's "Mixed Feelings about the SQL Server Central Sale to Red Gate"

More commentary on Red-Gate purchase of SQLServerCentral - I guess it's just another "disgruntled advertiser" ;)

Mixed Feelings about the SQL Server Central Sale to Red Gate

Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 6:40 AM

The "Coding Cossack" on SQLServerCentral

The "Coding Cossack" on SQLServerCentral

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 9:58 PM 0 comments

More DB Underground on Red-Gate Takeover of SQLServerCental

More DB Underground on Red-Gate Takeover of SQLServerCental

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 9:56 PM 0 comments

Red-Gate says SQLServerCentral Served the community very poorly

I got an interesting comment emailed to me that I said SQLServerCentral Reviews were worthless (and this was from a guy writing the review).

Actually, *I* never said this. Simon Galbraith of Red-Gate did on a comment to Ivan's post on Freedom - my separating the text (my comments from Galbraith's original quotes) based on Italics only might have led to the confusion so I have re-done it in bold.

Here are Simon's exact comments:

"SQL Server Central has relatively few reviews, those that are there are valueless."

"Those reviews that do exist are all 4-5 stars irrespective of the quality of the product reviewed. Those reviews serve the SQL Server community very poorly."

Here is my blog post where I comment fully on the spin doctor's comments

Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 5:02 AM

Out Foxed!

For anyone wondering about the sinister implications of agenda interests owning independent media you have to check out Out Foxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Don't forget to watch the trailer - tragic ... but funny!

Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 7:02 PM

Response to Red-Gate's Shill Factor

This is a cross post to ApexSQL Blog on my reply to Red-Gate's anonymous mouth piece Shill Factor

Shill factor on Red-Gate's hijacking of SQLServerCentral

this spun off any angry reaction from one Red-Gate insider.

Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 4:05 PM

Red-Gate will soon start reviewing itself!

If you thought this couldn't get any better, Red-Gate has announced plans to start writing reviews of it's own products on it's own website - great! I wonder if they think their own products are good or not (although I won't hold my breath) ;)
Does anyone besides me think this is crazy? actually there are quite a few

... And they also will review competitor products! Hmmm ... I wonder if my rear guard action against the hijacking of independent media will be forgetten by then! ;) Don't count on it.

Ivan has gotten a reply to his excellent Blog post "Freedom" from the guy behind this bogus deal - Simple Simon Galbraith of Red-Gate. Simon has never attempted to contact me :(

Comments in Bold are from Simon Galbraith
Thanks for your comments on our purchase of SQL Server Central. I'd like a chance to respond to your concerns about the purchase.

I'll summarise our intentions here and explain in more depth below:
1. SQL Server Central will publish fair reviews of Red Gate products using publicly available verifiable sources.
Fair according to who? Red-Gate?
2. SQL Server Central will review other vendors products fairly, if they let us do so.
Great - so Red-Gate will fairly review Quest and ApexSQL products too - maybe written by the same guys flaming my blog!. This is incredible arrogance and hubris thinking that people will accept this with only the most superficial explanations (pulled out like teeth by guys like Ivan and myself)
3. We aren't running the site to generate money from advertising any more so won't accept other people's adverts.
But Red-Gate IS going to retain their own "adverts" by continuing to run newsletter ads. It is only OTHER adverts in the newsletter that will be kicked off.

this also directly conflicts the new Simple-Talk "Editor"'s (Tony Davis) comments

===============================
Tony Davis Says:
"Buying SSC was a business decision and Red Gate is looking to make a return on that investment. It's true that, in the SSC newsletter, you will no longer see competitor advertising but will continue to see Red Gate tools. How big of a downside that is will be for the community to decide. Isn't the reality, though, that any site that is run on a commercial basis is only as unbiased as its most lucrative advertisers allow it to be? "
===============================

More Simon
To explain in more depth:

SQL Server Central has relatively few reviews, those that are there are valueless. According to Andy, Steve and Brian they stopped doing these because they were more hassle than they were worth (that hassle was from advertisers seeking to influence the outcome of the review).
What Simon doesn't tell you is the hassle came from Red-Gate! Who was CONTSTANTLY nagging SQLServerCentral for reviews and ensuring they got 5/5 and in some cases 6/5. When myself and some other advertisers like, Alex Realtov of AdeptSQL, began to complain about Red-Gate's undue influence, SQLServerCentral just threw in the towel (I'm going to blog on this incident as well - trying to find the email trail now). Thanks Red-Gate for wrecking reviews for everyone in your relentless drive to control information access about your products (and now others). Now we are supposed to trust them to write them themselves and *this* time do it right! It's outrageous.

Those reviews that do exist are all 4-5 stars irrespective of the quality of the product reviewed. Those reviews serve the SQL Server community very poorly. Although there are legal concerns, to do with the restrictive EULAs that most vendors insert to prevent unbiased reviews, we are investigating having an expanded vendor section of the site.

Now in fairness, to date Red-Gate has bended the truth. Bent, twisted into a pretzel, created straw man arguments and were consistently disingenous and intellectually dishonest but never outright lied. Well - now that threshold has been crossed. Most vendors DON'T have restrictive EULAs with anti-competive practices regarding reviews or anything else. Red-Gate does! I will scan my contract that Red-Gate inserted clauses in that I can't compete with them as proof soon. Stay tuned.

Although none of this is set in stone (mainly due to those legal concerns) we considering having forums about all 3rd party tools and having paid for reviews by respected MVPs and others. No one will be allowed to change anything in a review but will be able to put their comments in after it.
I think it would be impossible for an MVP to write for Red-Gate and remain "respected". From what I hear the best MVPs are looking to form a new, truly independent sql community and if it doesn't exist - build it.

I'd be interested on knowing what we could do to make this work for you and what we would need to do to reassure you about the editorial process we would go through.

Thanks for bringing this up,
well you could ask me! ;)

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Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 6:17 AM

Comments on Red-Gate Acquisition of SQLServerCentral

Feedback on my open letter on the SQLServerCentral takeover has been great. I've gotten a lot of phone calls, emails and comments on the BLOG.

The comment tag just says "Post a comment" so you can't see if there are comments or not (we're working on that). So I started to add a post with them and wound up collecting quite a few others as well.

From the Open Letter on Red-Gate Acquisition

Daz Fuller
"I truly cannot believe it, I've been signed up with SqlServerCentral for years now and loved them because they were independent.

Oh well time to go and find another resource :("

=================

Anonymous
"couldn't have said it better by self.

Time to move on and use another site. "

==================

Loren
"There goes the whole farm. Red Gate has nothing to offer.."

==================

Anonymous
"I was totally unaware of the implications of this sale. Thanks for trying to set the record straight. "

==================

Anonymous
"I will wait and see ... hope for the best and expect the worst ... "

From email

"I read the open letter post A Sad day for the SQL Server Community - the
loss of SQLServerCentral
tm> .

Thanks you for revealing Red-Gates true position. I will never look at the
SSC site again with the same eyes.

I have, as-of-now and from this time forward book-marked ApexSQL as a daily
stop to read up on what's happening. Thank you Brian Lookwood."

==================

From Red-Gate blog announcement

"Wow, less advertising. Although that would sound great, I'm guessing that it will less non-Red-Gate advertising?

Although I do use some Red-Gate tools (specifically ANTS Profiler and on occassion the packager tool), I also use some of their cometitor's products (some of which are in my opinion better, some not so much). However, I have a wait and see attitude to see if I will continue to visit SSC since I think the site will become definitely biased towards RG."

===================

"And of course the editorial content will not be biased !!!!!!!!!!!!

Or should we just be honest and call it advertorial as in many industry magazines who won't publish unless someone pays?"

From SQLServerCentral Announcement

Jurgen Beck
"I just found out about the Red-Gate purchase of SQLservercentral.com. I have not had the time to go through all the comments. So please forgive me if some of my comments have been voiced before.

While I truly believe in the free market powers of doing business, a takeover of a public site by a company or firm leaves an impression of an attempt to corner the market, especially when it involves a site like SQLservercentral.com.

It's been said elsewhere that this has multiple remifications, but most of all throttles the effectiveness of everything that goes into SQLservercentral.com from now on. The fact that the site is now owned by a corporation makes it an extension of that entity and by definition a place that is less geared toward a free community.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out. I for one will most likely start looking for other sources of unbiased oppinions about SQL Server tools and will start viewing SQLservercentral.com as a 'support forum' for Red-Gate products.

We have lost something valuable and I'm not so sure the public has been done a service with this aquisition."

=====================

Henrik Schütze
"...
Good bye SSC. It was a nice time with you. You brings nice and good informations. The qualtity was superb. But i dont use a redgate tool at this time and so i dont need an redgate support and help site."

mark baekdal, DBGhost
" ... So, we’re sorry to see that go the same way as SQLServerPerformance.com where we are also excluded due to the new owners of SQLServerCentral.com. "

Blogs

Database Underground
"...
Now, I haven't gotten a chance to talk to Red-gate yet to see what they plan to do with the site, but I was involved in a group discussion where the general impression was that a community site being run by a vendor is bad news.
...
Because can you really have a community site run by a vendor?"

Database Underground
"Red-Gate says they intend to keep it as a community site and grow it as much as they can. However, they also plan to use the membership list. I didn't ask for what purpose, because why would I? We all know they're talking about marketing. And I suppose that's their right because they bought the site, but I know they're going to lose a lot of users over it. People don't want to be cold called by anyone. Without exception, everyone I talked to said that they're worried about how things will change with a vendor in charge."

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Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 8:07 PM

Stop Whining that Red-Gate made a smarter purchase than you did?

Just got a comment on my BLOG from a Red-Gate insider that is very interesting. I guess they are outraged anyone would question their hijacking of SQLServerCentral! ;)

This was posted as a comment to my Blog Post Shill Factor on the Hijacking of SQLServerCentral

The comment is in italics and I have helpfully commented inline!

Phil doesn't even work for Red Gate.
Red-Gate insider status established - thanks!

Did you ever consider that your tirades might not be very good for business? Perhaps you should concentrate less on Red Gate ... and more on Apex [sic]. This isn't even a recent thing for you! What is it, six months now, that I've been seeing your "alternative to Red Gate" ads?
Actually this 6 mos. estimate is pretty close - almost exact (you must have been watching us very closely!). We launched this almost immedietly after Red-Gate launched a pretty cheesy competitive upgrade plan targeting all the vulnerable smaller vendors. Red-Gate's "mistake". We decided to introduce this competitive upgrade program in response and it was so successful we just kept running with it.

Talk about a big mistake; anyone who doesn't know what Red Gate is is now asking themselves, "what's this Red Gate thing, and why do I want an alternative?" ... and anyone else is simply thinking, "why do I want an alternative?"
well, where can I begin? ... too frequent forced upgrade costs, excessive price increases, charging for things nobody has ever charged for before like Command Line Interfaces, etc, etc, etc. A lot of Red-Gate customers are just plain fed up - which is one reason why we convert so many of them! This competitive upgrade plan has been very successful. The Toad conversions are slowing down a bit but the Red-Gate conversions come in pretty steadily.

Hint: Make more interesting products that aren't already done by everyone else in the marketplace,
ahhh ... like documentation products that there are about 10 of and Red-Gate is about to release an 11th? Or back-up tools? Or Log Reading tools? (hint: this hostility goes back years to my decision to release a Diff tool because the market was being underserved (and overbilled) by Red-Gate's SQL Compare 1.x series)

stop whining because Red Gate made a smarter purchase than you did, and perhaps your company will start doing well enough that you won't have to engage in these nonsense anti-tactics.
The "smarter purchase" comment is interesting. Not ethical, good for the community, "helping us" (like the public "talking points") but "smart" which is the real sentiment behind this. I really wish you would post such things publicly (well, yourself I mean).

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Labels: Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 1:34 PM

More bad press on the Loss of SQLServerCentral

More bad press on the Loss of SQLServerCentral

Labels: Industry News, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 9:52 PM 0 comments

They do it for their "mums"

at Red-Gate they ain't doin' it for the hood. they're doin' it for their "mums"!

Simon Says. "We want something to show our mums."

want more on the mums? ... we got it

"We have a two year plan to reach sales of $2 million a month, and it looks fairly likely to happen," says Simon, who insists he is still trying to appease his mum, who questioned his leaving Shell."

Labels: Humor, Red-Gate

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posted by Brian Lockwood on 8:10 PM