Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Are you a Data Scientist?

    It seems that there’s no shortage of re-branding attempts being made in all industries and by all types of people. I still remember when most of us were called computer programmers instead of developers. Not many people writing C# or Java code would want to be called “programmers” today.

    One of the latest fads is the call for more data scientists to work on big data, another equally, poorly defined term. However it seems that he definition of what a data scientist is has been so ill defined that almost anyone that can write a query using aggregates might define themselves as a data scientist.

    A good thing if you are looking for a job. Many of you might find opportunities (and raises) if you convince a hiring manager that you are a data scientist. However I’d be wary of living on just the new brand without growing your skills. If your company comes to expect more, especially with regards to advanced statistical analysis, you might find yourself in a bind.

    I ran across a piece that looks at the skills that a data scientist might actually need. I don’t know how many managers might understand the difference between simple discrete rules engines and more subtle, complex, multi variable, adaptive algorithms, but there can be a big difference in how well the system actually performs for your company.

    No matter what you choose for your carer, I’d certainly encourage you to continue to learn more about how to work with data. Whether you want to learn more about statistics, pick up R, or improve your visualization skills. Keep Learning. Keep your brain active and work to improve before you find yourself without a job and in need of training. Every little bit you learn helps and the practice of continuous improvement builds a habit that will serve you well over time.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Congrats to Jen, Tim, Ryan, and Argenis

    Last week we received the results of the PASS Board of Directors elections for 2015. Jen Stirrup and Tim Ford were re-elected to new terms. They’ve served for the past few years as members of the BOD. Ryan Adams was elected for the first time, and I supported his candidacy, so I’m glad he won.

    Argenis Fernandez didn’t get elected, but I still applaud his decision to run. He was one of only four out of the thousands of PASS members that did so. However in reading Andy Warren’s notes, perhaps Argenis will end up being on the board anyway.

    If that’s the case, I’m glad. I think Argenis brings a fresh, new, different view, which is needed.

    In any case, I’ll publicly thank them here, and in person when I see them, as their volunteerism should be appreciated and acknowledged.

  • No Time for Testing

    There is a bit of a rant from John Welch on testing your data manipulation that I like. I think some of the impact is lost because the end shows an advertisement for a product that helps here, but the points made are good. We all want to test, we think it’s hard, we don’t have time, and our businesses live with the issues from limited testing.

    I’m not a fan of Test Driven Development, as John is. Usually this is because I’m not always 100% sure of the results I want or have been given. I’ve often been given a request to do x and as I get involved, I find that the requirements might be incomplete, or even wrong, and they’ll change. As a result, I like to write a little code, get some idea of what I want to return or change, and then write a test that verifies what I’ve done is correct.

    It’s a subtle difference, and maybe I’m doing TDD in the wrong order, but I like to get code, test it, then think about potential issues (which I might find as I write code) and write a few tests for the things that I’ve missed.

    However I do believe we need to test our code. We all do test our code, even if it’s with a few before/after queries. What I don’t get is why we don’t just mock up a quick test that we can run in an automated fashion. It’s not much more work, and then we can more easily re-run the test later to ensure any refactoring or optimizations we make continue to work as expected.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

  • Exercism

    I’ve been looking to work on my programming skills a bit and try some new languages. I’d like to grow my career in a few different ways, as well as investigate where some of the new languages and platforms might be useful for data analysis. As I’ve talked to some developers and been looking around, someone recommended Exercism.io.

    Exercism.io is a site that allows you to practice coding exercises and get feedback from others. When you visit the site, it’s an interesting look, and invites you to log in through GitHub. If you’re not a member of GitHub, and you’re a developer, you probably are making some sort of mistake.

    2015-09-14 11_36_06-exercism.io

    Once you log in, you really need to download the command line client and execute it. Once you do, you can configure it to connect and download exercises. Each of these is placed in a folder, as shown:

    2015-09-14 12_41_27-Exercises

    For each of these languages, you get an exercise that you need to complete in that language. I’ve been playing with Python, and I had a first exercise of hello-world. In the python folder, were my exercises (you can see I’ve moved on).

    2015-09-14 12_41_38-python

    The hello-world folder had a read me and a test file (it’s since gotten my program in there). The Readme has instructions and the test file is a set of tests that can be executed to check your program.

    2015-09-14 12_46_15-hello-world

    When you pass the tests, you submit your solution from the command line client. The submissions appear on the website and people can comment on your code. I am in no way commenting on any else’s Python code at this point, but I did get a comment on my leap year calculation.

    2015-09-14 12_46_26-exercism.io

    I looked over the comment and then changed some code. I had to futz with the command line to get this to resubmit, but as you can see, I ended up getting a second iteration in there. No comments on that one, but we’ll see.

    It’s an interesting idea to share code and get comments. I think mostly this is a way to formally practice some exercises and get comments from experienced users, but the volume means that potentially you won’t get comments on your solutions. I know many of the SQL users may, or may not, comment on solutions.

    I think this is interesting, and I’m tempted to try to do something like this for SQLServerCentral. The hard part of putting together enough questions that others can practice in an organized fashion.