Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Lobbying for Change

    I ran across a note recently on Twitter from Adam Machanic. He wrote:  Just spent most of the day working through a subtle PK issue – 1 bad row out of 18M. Would have killed for this. The item in question was a Connect item, one with almost 500 votes. It’s a good one, and I’d encourage you to vote for it. I know that it seems many of these items are never worked on, but some changes make it into the product, so I’d ask you to continue to vote for change.

    When Connect was first introduced, Andy Warren and I debated the value of the platform. On one hand it made good sense to directly feed information back to developers, but on the other hand, it was likely that those items that got more notoriety or votes might get fixed, even if they weren’t necessarily good ideas. The popularity of an item doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one that should be fixed in the product first. We also worried about one of the big problems of the platform and that is that a tremendous amount of noise of entered and it becomes hard to triage the submissions.

    As I watch Connect evolve, I can’t help but think that it’s been mostly a failure from my perspective, with a few notable successes, like Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005. There’s too much noise and too many items ignored. However I also do think that those items that get lots of vots do get more consideration from Microsoft. More votes doesn’t mean that the feature will get fixed, but I do believe the item gets talked about. (As an aside, please vote for more, final Service Packs)

    Personally, I think that raising awareness of possible suggestions or problems is a good idea. I’d love to see a top 10 list of Connect items from MS for consideration every month. Having them highliht some items they’re considering from the list might help focus attention from customers. I don’t think that’s likely, but I wonder if highly debated suggestions might be worth highlighting at SQLServerCentral. Would you like to see a Connect item of the week? Something you could vote on or even debate as a good idea? I would, and I’d consider adding them as a way to help improve the platform that I enjoy working on the most.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . 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.

  • One week to SQL Intersection

    You still have time to grab the boss and convince him to invest in you. Show what you’ve learned in the last year. Tell him or her how some training you’ve taken, perhaps at a SQL Saturday, helped you at work. Make a good case to attend, and perhaps I’ll get to see you next week at SQL Intersection.

    It should be a good show, with Windows 8.1 changes, the release of SQL Server 2014 and Visual Studio 2013 recently, and lots of amazing speakers. I still can’t believe that I’ve been accepted to go sometimes because there are some great presentations to see.

    I’ve got three, Continuous Integration, High Performance Encryption, and Filestream, but I don’t know how many people I’ll actually present to when Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Brent Ozar, Bob Ward, Kevin Kline, Aaron Bertrand, Grant Fritchey, Andy Kelly, and more are going to be speaking at the same time. That’s without talking about all the great sessions to see in the other tracks.

    It’s spring time, the weather will be great, and I’m looking forward to a few days in Orlando. If you get the chance to come, I’d love to shake your hand.

  • Data Security Policies

    Does your organization have some policy around data security on mobile devices? Do your fellow employees care about data security? A new study says that most organizations don’t, and potentially that’s an issue.

    Many of us are data professionals, and we might have no idea how much data a user can access using today’s modern mobile devices. Potentially we can help them understand that the $500 smartphone they use can actually contain and access much more than $500 worth of data. If their device is the cause of a data breach, the cost could easily be much closer to $50,000 than $500.

    Security is always a big gamble, and rather than the old models of controlling all devices and limiting access, we need to learn to educate users, work with them to secure their devices and report losses quickly. The survey shows that most employees don’t even know how to report the loss of a device that might cause a data breach. At the very least, we can establish some procedures that will allow an account to be quickly turned off. And to ensure productivity doesn’t suffer, we need a procedure that also engages a new account for a user quickly.

    My guess is a lot of security issues could be handled quicker if we ensured that users were aware of issues and penalized for ignoring them, but made sure those penalties were balanced with an understanding that there it is inevitable people will make mistakes and accidents. Forgive mistakes and ask for reports of potential issues quickly.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.8MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . 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.

  • Don’t Be an Arse

    In deference to my British employers, I’ll use their word.

    It constantly strikes me how rude, stupid, and unfriendly people can be on the Internet. I’ve been trying to avoid even reading comments on many places, including Facebook because I’m struck by how people behave. I haven’t completely succeeded and things still strike me at times.

    Like today, I saw this tweet.

    phil_a

    I read part of the article and then scrolled down to see the comments. This was what I saw:

    dbadetect2

    I get that you might not like the format. Personally I didn’t love it and didn’t read the entire article. However I also recognize that this was a story and designed to present information in a new style. Even the opening leads one, or at least me, to understand this is a story, not a quick technical article.

    dbadetect

    I suspect that bad behavior is often because of the anonymous nature of comments. Or maybe it’s because the writers are so far removed from others they feel no social contract to mind their manners. Perhaps it’s the ease with which one can toss off their first thought and condemn the rest of us to suffer through it.

    If you don’t like something, that’s fine. You get to pick and choose which pieces you want to read and which ones you like. However it’s also easy to just click away to something else and not leave a comment. I’ll paraphrase a few lyricists here (Jay-Z and Salt n Pepa),

    If you don’t like the writing, you can click back, close the tab, or turn away from the computer.

    Disclosure: I work for Red Gate, and we do want to sell software. That’s how we pay the bills and keep Simple Talk and SQLServerCentral running. We also are a part of the community. We want to teach you. We want you to get better at your jobs, and yes, we want to entertain you.

    Please let us know what you like and don’t like, but there’s no nefarious purpose to trick you. If you like our tools, or those of our competitors, and they are worth the price, we hope you buy them.