Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

A Busy Few Years

Last week on Twitter, a friend mentioned they were submitting to the PASS Summit and went through their previous speaking engagements. This person noted they had done over 40 talks in the last few years, which is a lot. I do more, but it’s part of my job. Ten talks a year in your spare time is quite a bit, and kudos to anyone that does that.

I have a Speaking CV page, but I decided to load a bit of data into a database, where it should be but isn’t. With time constraints, I only loaded 2015-2017 into the db, but I’ll get the rest loaded at some point.

In any case, I decided to run a few metrics and see where I stand.

It’s been a busy few years.

May 22, 2017
Listening and Taking Action

One way most of us would like to work is to have others listen to our concerns, our requests, our requirements, and then take action to help us. One of the principles of DevOps is just this. We work together and optimize the entire system, increasing the flow of work, and not just trying to ensure our particular task or part is improved. I would hope that most of us would actually take time to listen, evaluate what we hear, and then move forward in a way that is a good decision for both parties. We certainly might debate about what action makes sense, but I would hope we could some to some consensus and decision.

Microsoft is listening and responding as well. They aren’t building SQL Server based on everything we file on Connect or complain about, but certainly they are listening to some of our concerns and requests. There is a good post that look sat some of the community driven enhancements, which are being included into SQL Server 2017. These are different customer and community requests that were given some attention and added to SQL Server 2017.

These don’t seem like big changes to me, but as I read through them, a few seem to go quite deep into the engine, and I’m sure there was quite a bit of testing to get these completed. You can test them in SQL Server 2017 today, helping to ensure they work correctly in the final product. Some of these will change the way you run backups or diagnose issues, perhaps even enough to consider an upgrade.

I especially like that performance of smaller databases is addressed with backup improvements. I would still guess that most of the SQL Server databases out there are smaller than 100GB, maybe substantially smaller, and while we may consolidate and change hardware, we need these systems to perform well. The large, 100TB database changes are nice, and I know some customers need these improvements, but most of us don’t. Even though the percentage of people with 1TB systems grows regularly, it’s still a minority, so kudos to Microsoft for doing some work here.

Not every highly rated Connect item is addressed. The string or binary data truncated message isn’t changed, and that’s been highly rated for years. However, the top JSON request made it into SQL Server 2016, and there are other items in the most voted on list that haven’t been addressed. I understand, though I don’t always like the way Microsoft looks at the product. I can relate their decisions to my own when building software, realizing that the customer doesn’t always have the best view of what makes sense for commercial viability. However, I’d also like to see the platform continue to evolve and make development and administration easier for all of us.

I’ll keep voting on, and creating Connect requests as I see a need, and I’d encourage you to do the same. Think about what you are really asking for and decide if it makes sense for large numbers of people, but continue to participate and let Microsoft know what changes are needed. Your voice can make a difference, so please use it in a constructive and positive way.

Steve Jones

May 22, 2017
Security and Patching Struggles

A couple weeks ago we had a huge security issue with the WannaCry ransomware racing across the world. I was out of the office, and mostly offline, so I was a bit out of touch. However, many organizations were affected, and I’m sure many infrastructure people were scrambling to patch and protect vulnerable systems, possibly even restore affected systems. I certainly hope that most (or all) organizations didn’t pay any ransoms. For the future, my view is it’s better to lose a little data and restore systems than pay ransoms.

I can remember when we got patches at random times, as vendors wanted to provide more functionality or finally had enough bugs fixed to release a patch. Sysadmins struggled to deploy these patches, being out of practice from the infrequency and struggling with non-standardized ways of applying updates. There was also the concern about the quality of patches, many of which introduced more bugs and issues. In the Windows world, I found many companies wanting to wait until an SP2 was released before applying, or even upgrading, many systems.

That changed, with many companies moving to regular patches, and standard ways of applying, or even slipstreaming, patches easily onto machines. I welcomed the Microsoft Patch Tuesdays, as this provided a regular release, an expectation, and both admins and users became comfortable with the idea of regular patches. I haven’t loved the auto patches in Windows 10, but I find myself agreeing with Troy Hunt that we should just be patching. In an organization you may want someone to be responsible, but for home users, just patch.

And, by the way, vendors, you need to do more work, and be more responsive to any issues that come up from patches. Your quality issues lead to greater security issues.

If you want to ready about the WannaCry issue, there’s a good general post, as well as some guidance from the SQL Server perspective. If you haven’t patched, that’s something you should do ASAP, and while you’re at it, be sure you have the latest security patches for SQL Server applied. I’ve got a series of Build Lists at SQLServerCentral, one for each version. I’m still nervous about applying Cumulative Updates too quickly, but I certainly would download and have them ready, perhaps applying each a month late once once the early adopters have had a chance to report any major problems.

Patching is a reality for the modern software world. We get regular patches for applications, but our core infrastructure (including servers, desktops, and various devices) also need patches to the OS and platforms. There’s a balance between ensuring stability with known softwre versions and keeping up with patches to prevent problems. We need to find a balance, which is probably different for each organization, and re-evaluate periodically if we are updating an an appropriate level. I lean towards fewer patches when I can, but I always want to keep up with security patches. We never know when someone will take advantage of those.

Steve Jones

May 20, 2017
La La Land Speaking at SQL Saturday #640

I love LA. In many ways, it’s a fun city to visit, and I love taking a few minutes, even just a 10-20 minute walk along the boardwalk on some beach. I’ve looked forward to quite a few trips to LA in my life, and I often take advantage of offers to go back when I can. This was my last trip in 2015 to Huntington Beach.

There are a few SQL Saturday events in LA, and the latest is #640 at the Microsoft Center in LA proper. I’m honored to have been accepted and am looking forward to the trip in June.

I’ll be presenting my Continuous Integration for Databases talk, looking at how we can build a CI pipeline for our database code in an hour. We’ll go into detail with what CI means and the general process. I’ll use a few tools, but there are many ways to setup CI, so I don’t recommend one over the other.

I’m redoing this talk for another event, and I’ll end up with a subset of that work for this event, but hopefully I’ll show you a few things that will help you in your daily work and improve your database code.

There are lots of other great sessions, and this is a free day of training in LA, so pass the word and I’ll see you June 10.

May 19, 2017