Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

    MC Escher
    There’s always more than one way to get things done.

    This editorial was originally published on Feb 13, 2008. It is being re-run as Steve is returning from the PASS Summit.

    I have come competition here with my daily editorial. If any of you get the SQL Server Performance newsletter, you might have noticed that Peter Ward is now writing daily over there. He’s a nice bloke from down under, a fellow MVP, and he has some interesting things to say. He’s a bit more focused than I am and if you have the chance to hear him speak, it’s worth it. He gives some nice presentations.

    I noticed the other day that he was talking about how he uses ALT-X to execute SQL queries, while most other people click “Execute” or click CTRL-E. I can’t help but think even more highly of Peter since I’ve used ALT-X for over a decade and know it’s the best way to do this. 🙂

    His discusion wasn’t on executing queries, but on the fact that there are many ways to accomplish tasks in SQL Server. For example, you could audit by placing triggers on every table, capturing the inserted/deleted information, and storing it in a table. Or you could run Profiler forever and ever, making sure you have a system in place to manage those files. Or you could rewrite your code to use the OUTPUT clause. Or wait for Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008.

    All of these are valid, and there might be good reasons why you’d pick one over the others in your environment, but which one should you look to? What about many of the other possible ways of doing things in SQL Server? Should you look to rebuild or reorganize indexes by default? There are any number of tasks you need to accomplish and, often for people less experienced in one area, it seems either of a few ways is acceptable.

    I certainly wouldn’t want to remove options and limit a DBA to developer to one way to do things in most cases. I think the richness of SQL Server, which is always growing, allows it to scale and handle a wider variety of tasks than ever before.

    However I think that often the overwhelming number of choices can lead to a paralysis of choice for some people. Or confusion about what to do or what makes sense. Present my daughter with 2 candy machines and she can pick the one she wants in an instance. Take her into a 7-11 with an aisle of candy and I’m still standing there 15 minutes later waiting on a decision if I haven’t forced the issue.

    I think that one area of improvement that could really help with many of the possible choices for completing a task is to have some strong guidance from Microsoft (based on customer pilot testing and the reasons for implementing a feature) that would explain what the defaults should be. And would have those defaults set up as the default choices or actions for the product.

    Those of us with reasons to make changes can, and will do so. But those that don’t know what to do would have more guidance right out of the box.

    Steve Jones

    BTW – No offense intended to the cat-people out there.

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are now available at sqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    Overall RSS Feed: or now on iTunes!

    Today’s 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.

  • Speaking at the Denver SQL Server User Group – November

    I’m scheduled to give “The Encryption Primer” at the Denver SQL Server Users Group on the November 15 meeting. It’s a basic look at the encryption features in SQL Server, updated for SQL Server 2012. The meeting is in the Denver Tech Center and we usually have a drink after.

    The local user group is a great way to meet people in the business, network, and learn a few things. It’s worth a night out of your life every month or two, so come on by.

  • Savvy Managers

    ETL
    A good manager knows a bit about what you do, but not necessarily the details.

    Today’s editorial was originally released on Nov 27, 2007. It is being re-run as Steve is at the PASS Summit.

    My guess is that most of you out there wouldn’t necessarily classify your managers as “savvy”, especially as it relates to data. I know that when I hear managers talking about “data quality”, “data integrity”, “ETL”, or any other acronyms, I tend to cringe, expecting more work, with poor requirements, and likely unreasonable estimates.

    But not all managers are that bad and when I attended the Micosoft BI Conference earlier this year, I was surprised to see so many business people, especially managers, there and talking about how much value they got from BI because it gave then more insights into their data.

    And they almost universally talked about how important a strong data warehouse with high data quality is to the success of a project.

    Data quality is important, but it takes an effort to ensure that you can achieve a high level of quality in your data, meaning that the data is accurate and represents what you think it represents. I caught this interesting article about 10 data quality habits for successful managers. It probably should be for successful organizations and not just managers, but it’s a good guide for managers to be aware of. Without reading the article, I’d bet you could guess at what some of the items should be. They’re mainly common sense, but they bear repeating and it’s good to see them listed in together in a short article.

    Data quality takes effort and just like programming, the earlier you can introduce checks and catch errors, the less expensive it is to maintain. However that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should go all the way to the source. Putting in a huge amount of checks and filters in the input client might not be in your best interest.

    Consider a salesman, trying to make a sale, entering data and constantly getting pop-ups and errors that force data entry to be exact. Can you imagine how frustrating this would be? And possibly how this might impact data quality? Can you guess at what percentage of people might get names entered as initials instead of misspelled names? Does someone need to be slowed down because they typed “Bbo?”

    Enforcing data quality at the source might be better served with suggestions or filters that try to fix common mistakes or even batch up confirmations of suspected errors for someone to examine later. There are any number of ways to make this an easier process and still ensure data quality.

    My advice is that you should tackle data quality as an ongoing part of your job. Make constant, continuous, and small improvements, build in checks and balances, and be sure you work with other groups and users to ensure the load is shared, and more importantly, easily integrated into the way they already do business.

    And maybe I’ll see you featured at one of the next BI events as a SQL Server success!

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are now available atsqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    The RSS Feed:  or now on iTunes! 

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo atwww.everydayjones.com.

    I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don’t like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you’d like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.

  • Speaking at the Boulder SQL Server Users Group – November

    I’m scheduled to give “The Encryption Primer” at the Boulder SQL Server Users Group on the November 13 meeting. It’s a basic look at the encryption features in SQL Server, updated for SQL Server 2012. This meeting is at the Confio office and will have a short presentation by Mike Fal as well.

    The local user group is a great way to meet people in the business, network, and learn a few things. It’s worth a night out of your life every month or two, so come on by.