Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Two in Two Days

    It’s a busy week for me. I’ve got quite a few articles to review, feedback to write for Stairway Series authors, review and changes of some PowerPoint decks for later this month, and two User Group presentations.

    This is on top of a busy first week of school in the household. I feel like I’m playing catch up all week.

    Boulder

    I’ll be at the Boulder SQL Server User Group tonight. My presentation will be on Unstructured Data in SQL Server, looking at Filestream and Filetable and how they can be setup and used.

    Fortunately I’ve done this before, and a little practice this week was enough to get me ready.

    Hopefully I’ll see a few of you there as I haven’t been to Boulder in over a year.

    Denver SQL

    The Denver SQL Server User Group usually asks me do a presentation or two each year and this time I have a new one. They get to be my guinea pigs for the first delivery of this talk.

    Get Testing with tsqlt, a preview of a talk I’ll be doing at SQL in the City, is on the agenda. I’ve been going over this one a few times this week, so hopefully it goes smoothly.

  • Updating tsqlt

    I was looking to write a new test with the tsqlt framework recently. I wanted to isolate a stored procedure’s logic and planned on using the FakeFunction procedure available in tsqlt.

    I wrote my test, using a template from the Pluralsight course on tsqlt and the documentation. I tried to execute the test and get a “tsqlt.fakefunction does not exist” error.

    I was slightly confused at first, but checking my list of functions and stored procedures showed that I didn’t have the FakeFunction procedure available. It’s a relatively recent addition to tsqlt, so I needed and update.

    After downloading the framework (a zip file), I opened it up to find this:

    tsqlt_a

    A number of files there, but the tsqlt.class.sql is the important one. I double clicked it from the zip and it opened in SSMS.

    tsqlt_b

    It’s a standard T-SQL script, albeit a long one. I executed it and it ran fine. My framework was updated to the latest version and I now had the function I needed.

    tsqlt_c

    Of course, I used my test to ensure this worked as expected and I was pleased to see it work well.

  • Yet Another Attack Vector

    There’s a new movie that’s just come out in August. It looks funny, and I’m planning on going to see Let’s Be Cops. I know it’s a movie, it’s not real, but it concerns me, even with a ruling on warrant-less searches of digital devices. I’m sure you think the an arrest wouldn’t breach your digital security, but how much of a stretch is it for someone to impersonate a police officer (it happens), pull over an executive or engineer, and “search” their cell phone. It’s especially possible if most of us expect that the police have the right to look in our devices (they don’t).

    What concerns me is that this is another attack vector into our lives, and potentially, into our companies and organizations. We store more and more information, and access, in our digital devices. We use VPNs, and even authentication tokens, but we often store those on our devices because we can’t memorize everything. If someone has control on of our devices, the potentially have access to anything we do.

    How hard would it be for someone to access our mail, or some resource through our work VPN? How quickly could determined attackers perform some malicious activity, or worse, copy information that we’d never be aware was lost? It’s not likely, and perhaps it’s far-fetched, but it seems criminals are becoming more and more creative all the time.

    I worry about our data, but more importantly, I worry about the rights and privacy of our digital information. I hope we update our expectations and rights to meet the challenges of our digital future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • SQL in the City 2014

    It’s official, we have a couple 2014 SQL in the City events scheduled, covering two countries this fall. Both events are packed into a short time (less than two weeks), so Grant and I have quite a bit of travel ahead of us.
     
    Once again we’ve divided up the sessions into administration for the DBAs and development topics for the developers, but feel free to cross from one to the other. Our theme is “Ship often, ship safe” and we hope to show you how to build better software, faster. Our goal is to help you get your enhancements and patches into production so your customers can make better use of their applications.
     
    London is first, on Oct 24 at Grange St. Paul’s Hotel. The agenda is set with Grant and I delivering a few sessions and a host of Red Gate developers along with some Friends of Red Gate presenting on a variety of topics. We also have a labs you can drop into during the day to gain practical knowledge on how to solve some of your SQL Server problems.
     
    A little over a week later, on November 3, 2014, SQL in the City returns to Seattle, with an all day event the Monday before the Pass Summit. We have a similar agenda, though a few different speakers at the McCaw Hall at Seattle Center.
     
    We do hope you’ll join us at one of the events, and get a day of training on SQL Server, the Red Gate way. We’ll also have a short happy hour afterwards, and Grant and I would love to share a toast with you. Feel free to stop and chat with either of us at anytime we’re not presenting.