Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • A Speaker’s Dilemma

    I read Eddie Wuerch’s post on cross-submissions for SQL Saturdays and found it hitting close to home. It provoked a few thoughts, and I wanted to write a little bit about what I think since it’s something I think more and more people will deal with over time.

    The idea behind SQL Saturday was to get more local events, more local speakers, and improve our industry at a grass roots level. That was Andy Warren’s vision, and it was something we strived for as we grew the SQL Saturday framework. Over time it’s evolved into something we never expected, with many speakers traveling from remote locations to talk.

    It’s also grown so much that many of the weekends of the year have multiple events. This year we have 58 events (completed or scheduled) and we have multiple collisions, including

    • 3 on Apr 21, Apr 28, Aug 4, Sept 15, and Sept 29,
    • 5 on Apr 14

    There are also plenty of weekends with two events.

    As a speaker, I like attending these events. I’ve been to quite a few, and I turn many more down because of scheduling conflicts. I try to get to 4-5 a year, and meet a lot of people. These are fun events, and I’d like to do more, but travel is hard and it takes away from other things in my life.

    When I decide to submit to a SQL Saturday, I usually start making plans to attend. I don’t book travel, but I free up my schedule, and I don’t submit to events on consecutive weeks. Traveling two weeks in a row, while it might not seem like much, is a big impact to my family, and to me.

    My method for dealing with multiple events and choices is to contact the organizers of my first choice. I don’t ask them for a favor, but I do ask if they would like me to submit and attend. I’ll give him an idea of what I am prepared to talk about and let them know that I don’t want to submit if I’m not being chosen, only because I would like to attend some event that weekend. If they decline, and I have had some decline, I thank them and contact my second choice.

    I don’t like the idea of adding in more rules, or restrictions, or even asking the organizers to work out among the various events who will get speaker X. I think it’s the burden on the speakers to make as little an impact on the organizer’s workload.

  • After X Years

     

    Dave Winer
    Dave Winer has the right views on programming.

    Dave Winer has been programming a long time. He’s not done, not ready to be done, and he has more creative work to be done in his career. After 37 years programming, it’s refreshing to see someone still excited about building software and looking forward to doing it for years to come.

    Dave also sees himself as an a movie director, but one that people don’t believe it. He makes an analogy to other directors, who are older, who have had success and failure, but are still encouraged to make more movies. If we have developers and programmers that have had success and failure, why wouldn’t we encourage them to keep making more software? It’s a great question, and one that I with more people would think about. Managers should consider it, but we should consider it ourselves. Why do we think that older programmers aren’t as valuable as younger ones?

    I like the analogies that Dave makes later in the post. He stops to admire his work, he thinks about it more, and he’s not in a rush anymore. Too often I think younger programmers, and immature managers, want to rush into producing actual work. They want to get code written and something executing on the screen rather than stopping to spend a little time architecting and planning.

    I heard a great quote recently from Abraham Lincoln that I think applies. He said “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening the ax.” We should stop and consider problems when we encounter them, and think about all the tools and techniques we’ve learned in the past, bringing our experience to bear before embarking on a solution. The wise developers I know tend to do this, knowing they have time to write the code and will make fewer mistakes if they think a little before they start typing.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • We Need to Learn Encryption

    encryption
    We need better encryption and better tools for the future.

    More than learning encryption, we need to demand better encryption tools inside SQL Server. After reading about the issues from the STUXNET worm, it makes me worried that we will see more disruptive attacks, not just from hackers and criminals, but from the virtual vandals and bored teenagers that have more time than morals or sense. The issues from the STUXNET worm spread far beyond any territorial or national issues, and run into all sorts of industrial control systems that may receive more attention from hackers in the future. With some of the brightest hackers in the US and Israeli governments providing a template for compromising those system, I’m sure there will be no shortage of future attacks.

    That doesn’t necessarily mean there are going to be more and more database attacks in the near future, but I’m sure there is research going on into new ways to attack database or applications, either from governments, criminals, or even graduate students. At some point there will be new attacks that come out, and these vulnerabilities may result in zero-day, or even forever-day vulnerabilities.

    We can’t change the way SQL Server, or other vendor technologies, work at a base level, but we can reduce the amount of damage that’s done by not being the easy prey for attackers. In my mind, that means we should be securing our data as best we can, including encrypting communications and limiting access rights, as well as encrypting the actual data we store.

    I’m hoping that Microsoft makes PKI much easier when they release the updated Certificate Services in Windows 2012, and that we also find better private solutions for individuals that allows us to better secure our systems and make it difficult for the casual attacker to compromise our systems. I don’t know if we’ll see viable products and solutions soon, but as we distribute our systems, data, and backups to wider and wider systems, including tablets and mobile devices, we need better security more than ever.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • SQL Saturday #132 Files

    Uploaded here if you need them. These are the PPT deck and the code.

    UnstructuredData.zip

    EncryptionPrimer.zip