Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Doing Your Job

    I wish this were the mantra of all people, but certainly those in technology:

    job

  • SQL Saturday #175–Fargo

    One of the goals early on with SQL Saturday was to spread them far and wide. Andy Warren and I used to chat about how long it would be before we had 12 events in a year, or one event a month, or an event in every state. Karla Landrum (b | t) has made many of those milestones come true and is working hard to try and get an event in every state in the US, as well as in as many countries around the world as possible.

    SQL Saturday #175 comes to Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday, April 27, 2013. The first event in this state, and also my first time visiting the state. I’ll be heading out Friday morning, and seeing what Fargo has to offer that day before talking on Saturday. I may just have to see the Wood Chipper.

    My talk is The Encryption Primer, but there are some other great choices if you’re looking to increase your SQL Server knowledge. The schedule is up and includes these:

    • Aaron King giving you a complete BI solution in an hour.
    • Powershell from Jim Dorame
    • Dimentional Modeling from Jason Horner
    • Indexing from Jes Borland
    • T-SQL from Kathi Kellenberger
    • and more

    Lots of great sessions, and it should be fun.

    If you’re close to Fargo, consider registering and joining us at the first North Dakota SQL Saturday.

  • Asking for Interview Questions

    Recently someone posted a question on SQLServerCentral asking for potential interview questions. A few people were annoyed by this and their annoyance showed in their replies. I completely understand that feeling, with fewer jobs than candidates, people looking for jobs do not want anyone with less knowledge to get any help.

    However there are other sides to this question, and I’m torn as to how I feel. If you haven’t interviewed in awhile, or if this is your first interview for a database job, wouldn’t you want to get an idea of what somoen might ask you? I wouldn’t want anyone to misrepresent their skills, but I’d also want them to be able to talk about the skills they have had. Perhaps realizing that they should think about their experience in T-SQL more than their experience with replication might be valuable information.

    There’s another side to this. Plenty of managers, developers, and even DBAs that are tasked with interviewing candidates for a position don’t necessarily realize what questions might help them evaluate a candidate’s skills. This is especially true when you have a staff of people trying to find a senior level person because their only talented person resigned. Hiring someone to interview for you, especially for the first or second interview, just isn’t cost effective.

    Many of us work in companies, and as much as we’d like to think we are gaining new knowledge and experience every year, it’s very, very easy to get caught up in our daily work and accumulate many years of similar experience. Without an effort to branch out, take on new responsibilities, and try new technologies, it’s easy to become very specialized in the skills needed for our job, even if those aren’t a broad range of skills.

    I am highly torn on how to handle requests and content on interview questions, but ultimately I think that putting more information out there is the best way to handle things and allow people looking for jobs, as well as those hiring, to educate themselves.

    Steve Jones

  • The Patch Wild, Wild West

    The wild, wild west, immortalized in so many movies, was very chaotic. Not what I want in a patching process.
    The wild, wild west, immortalized in so many movies, was very chaotic. Not what I want in a patching process.

    I’ve had various iOS devices over the last few years and one thing that’s annoyed me is the patching process. I have very little control over which patches I install, and I can’t roll back patches if I get a new version of an application that doesn’t seem to work well. As a result, I’m glad I have control over when I patch particular apps, and patch them rarely. This isn’t the best security process, but it provides stability, which is usually more important to me on my devices.

    It seems to have worked well for Apple, which has sold billions of applications across their devices. It works so well that Microsoft seems to have adopted a new process for the “Metro” style applications for devices and Windows 8. According to this article, the “Black Tuesday” for patches might be going away. All of the things I don’t like about the iOS patch system seem to be coming to Metro apps. I wouldn’t care, but since Windows Server 2012 has some of the Windows 8 characteristics, I’m a little concerned. Are we doomed to get more “Metro” style interfaces for Windows features and potentially third party applications that will send patches mixed in with enhancements? Will we get stuck “upgrading” systems with new features in order to get security patches?

    Consumers want things to work, and I can understand Microsoft’s desire to simplify the patch process, but removing the ability to roll back and not warning users of patches could backfire with companies that end up using these same devices. This most assuredly makes the process of publishing and distributing patches easier for Microsoft, but it’s a big step backward for companies, and it’s one that I’m sure will upset, anger, and frustrate both users and IT departments.

    The world continues to abstract away from particular platforms for any purpose. Those of us using SQL Server are stuck with Windows, but many of the applications we use are increasingly being released on multiple platforms. If Microsoft is having issues with Windows 8, Windows phone, and Windows RT adoption, this is a sure way to continue the problems. Other ecosystems might not be any better, but if that’s the case, then wouldn’t you consider iOS, Android or something else?

    Steve Jones

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