Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

Managing Risk
Are you managing risk appropriately? Or do you suppress contrary opinions?

Last year I read Team of Rivals, a book about the Lincoln Presidency in the US. It was a very interesting read, partially because of the topic and times, but mostly I was captivated by the diverse cabinet that Lincoln put together. He chose a number of rivals for positions, people that didn’t necessarily get along, and often had very different opinions about how to govern the country. It felt strange at first to think about a leader welcoming in foes and enemies into their governing committee, but Lincoln appeared to make it work, and the variety of thoughts and opinions helped the country get through the Civil War.

It’s an interesting idea, and this article on the JP Morgan trading losses reminded me of that book. It talks about the need for debate and argument in making decisions. It makes me wonder if too often in technology we make decisions and implement architectures without listening to the dissenting voices. In my experience, the loudest voices, from both technology people and customers, are often the ones that overwhelm discussions.

Do you welcome dissension in your meetings? I’ve had managers that preferred everyone to be on the same page, or be willing to make a very persuasive argument. The better managers I’ve had encouraged debate, and didn’t allow any one personality to dominate, and usually wouldn’t let the process degenerate into an argument. The better managers also knew that decisions had to be made and debate could not drag on for too long.

The process makes me wonder if the very outspoken and domineering people working with technology, either as the manager, the client, ro the technologist, cause more problems than they solve. Perhaps if they were more willing to debate and accept the information about risks and issues from the quieter people, we might have more projects completed with fewer issues.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
- Watch the Windows Media Podcast – 23.5MB WMV
- Watch the iPod Video Podcast – 18.7MB MP4
- Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast – 3.8MB MP3
June 5, 2012
Creating a Filetable
How do you create a filetable? I assume you’ve enabled Filestream and created a filegroup for your filestream and filetable data. Then you just do this:
```
-- Create a filetable
CREATE TABLE AuthorDrafts 
  AS FileTable
GO
```
The only optional part of this statement is the table name. No other options, no columns, no schema needed. The FileTable has a fixed schema, which is mostly metadata about the files that you put in it.

If I were to select from this table, I’d use this statement. I’m not showing all the columns in the results since there are a lot, but they are in the select.
```
-- check the table.
select 
   stream_id ,
          file_stream ,
          name ,
          path_locator ,
          parent_path_locator ,
          file_type ,
          cached_file_size ,
          creation_time ,
          last_write_time ,
          last_access_time ,
          is_directory ,
          is_offline ,
          is_hidden ,
          is_readonly ,
          is_archive ,
          is_system ,
          is_temporary
 from AuthorDrafts;
go
```
Most of these are really meta data about the file. If I were to drop a table in the share, I’d see results like this:

Putting files inside the table is really a drag and drop from Windows. I can get the share name for my filetable from :
```
-- check the share
select  FileTableRootPath('dbo.AuthorDrafts');
go
```
If I paste this in Explorer, I see my file:

I can drag and drop, or use any scripting commands (Powershell, VBScript, etc) to move files in and out of this share, and they will appear in my table.

It’s that easy to start working with FileTables. How you use them in your application? That’s a whole other series of posts. I’ll work on a few examples you can use over time.
June 5, 2012
New Security Holes
Geek Security Holes

One of the big advertising campaigns of 2011 was the Apple campaign that centered around Siri. This is a voice recognition feature of the iPhone 4S that allows you to manage many of your phone interactions by speaking instead of touch interactions. There are a whole series of commercials about Siri and some rather funny parodies (NSFW). I used Siri briefly on my iPhone 4 before the 4S launch and I didn’t like the interaction, but my wife loves it.

Apparently, however, IBM doesn’t like the idea of Siri being used inside of the company. IBM’s CIO has banned the use of the voice recognition because the audio and translation are not done on the phone, but rather sent to a series of servers controlled by another company. Apple is ultimately responsible, but there are other companies who a subcontracted for pieces of the whole process. There is a potential security hole, especially with a company like IBM that is involved in research and new technical products that might compete with Apple.

I have to admit this is a data security hole I never expected to encounter. It’s a valid concern, as your location, the content of your message, which might be an appointment or reminder to yourself, could be mined and used by Apple. As more companies use voice recognition, or even other types of interactions that might require data processing at a remote location.

Ultimately I think that we can’t let the market work out the way that our privacy should be handled. I don’t think companies will do a good job of protecting the individuals’ or business partners’ interests. Until there is a good framework in place, anyone that uses third party libraries for processing things like voice recognition ought to be concerned over the data security that is offered as part of the service.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
- Watch the Windows Media Podcast – 20.8MB WMV
- Watch the iPod Video Podcast – 19.6MB MP4
- Watch the MP3 Audio Podcast – 3.9MB MP3
June 4, 2012
Back to Pensacola and SQL Saturday #132

This will be my fourth trip to Pensacola for SQL Saturday #132. I’ve enjoyed going every time and I usually take a day or two off from work on the trip to spend with my daughter. Last year we both got shirts, and had a good time at the event, and at the beach.

This year I’m giving three talks, which is a lot, but they’re spread out throughout the day. I have the Early Bird morning session, at 7:30, which is really there for the people that arrive early. I’ll be talking about Unstructured Data in SQL Server, going over the Filestream and Filetable options you have for storing binary data.

At lunch I’ll be doing a Preparing for Disaster Recovery talk at the vendor session where I’ll talk about how some of the Red Gate tools can help you prepare for disaster.

In the afternoon, I’m then talking Encryption at 4:30. It’s a beginner session, but I’ll show the various options you have and how they work in SQL Server. There’s a ton to learn about encryption, and I scratch the surface, but if you want to know what’s available, come see.

If you’re anywhere near Pensacola, I’d urge you to register and come by on June 9th. This is a free day of training on all different parts of SQL Server and you get the chance to improve your career for the price of a car trip and a little time on a Saturday.

If you’re not coming, cancel so others can atttend. It’s not sold out yet, but attendance is always good at this event.

June 4, 2012