Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Biggest Data Breech (For Now)

    I keep reading the words “the largest data breach in history” in a variety of stories. In fact, given the tremendous growth of data acquisition, I’m guessing that this headline will continue to repeat itself over and over. I think I’m getting to the point where I’d rather just see a story say that xxx million customers were affected. At least then I’d be able to easily put some scale to the loss of data.

    What’s interesting in this case involving JP Morgan is there are indictments being handed down, to at least two men that somehow participated in hacks that copied over 100million people’s data. JPMorgan admits 76 million households and 7 million small businesses were compromised, which isn’t 100, but perhaps there’s something I’m missing. However the data wasn’t just sold, but rather hackers used the information to market stocks to the individuals compromised. That’s an interesting level of sophistication, and a scary one.

    Can you start to imagine criminals using the information intelligently to not directly sell the data but to make a secondary use of the information. Perhaps they will enagage social engineering by bundling the information with other data to perform some other attack on individuals? It’s entirely possible that we will see more sophisticated uses in the future as criminals work to evade or avoid the fraud detection systems that have been put in place.

    I have no doubt that bigger data breaches are coming. Perhaps we could reduce the impact and frequency with better security frameworks and development practices, but I’m not sure that any company out there will place a high priority on security over ease of access and speed of development. I do continue to hope that market forces will drive companies to build better detection and protection mechanisms, and our vendors will build better security mechanisms into all platforms.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Visual Studio Subscriptions

    Many of us that work with SQL Server do so exclusively through SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). I find so many people really do the majority of their jobs with SSMS, Outlook, and a web browser. Even back in 2003 when I was a full time DBA, I probably spent the majority of my time in those three applications.
    However I also see more and more people using Visual Studio and other tools to accomplish their jobs. The growth of new tools, like Powershell, the expansion of our work into BI areas, and more mean that more and more people are using tools besides SSMS to work with SQL Server data.
    This past week there was an announcement that MSDN subscriptions were changing. At most of my jobs, I’ve had an MSDN subscription available to me. In fact, some of you might remember the large binders of CDs (and later DVDs) that arrived on a regular basis and contained copies of all Microsoft software. However many of you out there haven’t had MSDN available to you, or you’ve struggled to justify the yearly $1000+ cost, but you do want to work on your careers and practice with Microsoft software.
    At first I saw the yearly cost of MSDN at $799, which is a pretty large investment. However as I looked to the side, I saw a monthly subscription, no large commitment, available for $45. That’s not an extremely low cost for much of the world, but it’s very reasonable in the US. It’s also a great way to build a setup that allows you to work with a variety of Microsoft technologies at an affordable cost. What’s more, you can stop paying at any time. Or start again at any time.
    I know that it can be a struggle to invest in your own career, probably more difficult to find time than money. However this is a good way to get access to the various development and server tools for a period of time if you want to tackle a project or force yourself to learn a new skill.
    I’m glad that Microsoft has moved to a subscription model for MSDN. I expect to see this subscription growing as small companies use a small investment that scales linearly with new hires to provide their employees with tools. I can only hope that many other vendors adopt this same model and allow us to rent our tools, and upgrade, for a very reasonable cost. I just hope they all let us backup and save our settings in case we interrupt our subscription for a period of time.
    Steve Jones

  • Technical Debt

    I was speaking with one of the development teams at Redgate earlier this year. They were working on a product, and had planned out a few sprints worth of work. Each sprint, called a train, was a couple weeks long, with specific goals and ideas to be implemented. That was all good, but I noticed that there was a sprint in the middle of the list that was devoted to technical debt.

    Technical debt is a strange term. It’s one that many managers don’t understand well, often because the code may work fine. I ran across an interesting piece that looks at what the concept means, with what I think is a good explanation. We get technical debt when we sacrifice maintainability to meet another requirement. The piece also looks at the accumulation of the debt and why it becomes problematic later. Certainly the more debt that piles up, the mode difficult it can be to change code. Since we are almost always going to go back and maintain code, this becomes a problem.

    I think the ideas given to keep technical debt under control are good ones. We should make an effort to clean code as we can, though not make it such a priority that we end up causing more work with constant refactoring. We do need to get work done. However the suggestions given require a good amount of discipline and buy in from management, and I’m glad Redgate tries to keep debt under control. I think our developers like the debt trains as well.

    I thought the idea was pretty cool until I was looking for a feature to be completed and the technical debt train was running that week. I thought about complaining, but I decided to have patience and wait a week. After all, if the debt isn’t kept under control, I might be waiting much longer than a week for some fix or feature next year.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Branding Yourself for a Dream Job–Powerpoint and Questions

    I had a few people ask about the deck, and I’ve uploaded it here: Branding Yourself for a Dream Job.

    I also had a couple good questions at the end after people had left, so I thought I’d put them here.

    What about a picture on my LinkedIn/resume?

    I have had a few people ask this in the past, and I forgot to cover this in the talk. My only advice is that if you want to put one up, use a professional picture. Have someone take one.

    Other than that, it’s a hit and miss prospect. We all have prejudices, and hiring managers/HR people are no different. If you’re a women, or old, or a minority, you might have some people exclude you based on your picture.

    Personally I don’t see much benefit to adding a picture. Keep that information back until you need to disclose it.

    Does it matter how many blogs I have?

    No. However you will likely want to maintain them, so don’t tackle too much. I would suggest no more than 2, one for your career and one for something else.