I attended a course from Edward Tufte a few years ago on Data Visualization, and while I learned some neat things, I never was able to implement them well. I think part of it is a complete lack of an art gene in my person, but I do keep it in mind sometimes and would like to actually implement some of the ideas in his books.
Today someone at Red Gate posted a link to this very cool data visualization on wind. It shows the wind speeds on days for the entire US, but in a very visual way. This is what it looks like, but if you go to the site, you’ll see it animated.
There’s also a gallery of some days in the past to view.
It’s neat because unlike a chart, or a static picture, you can easily see where wind is flowing, and the intensity for a large area. You can zoom in to see what the speeds are in a particular area.
I hope I’m still working with technology at this age.
I’ve been working with computers and software for most of my life, but it’s been a career for a couple of decades now. I don’t do as much technical work as I used to, mostly testing and experimenting, but my job is related to SQL Server and software, and I anticipate that’s what I’ll be doing for the next two decades.
However that’s not necessarily the plan for everyone that works in the technology business. I know plenty of people that would like to move into management, or even move into some other career field if they can afford to do so. In the responses to many editorials in the past, I read that quite a few people think the technology business isn’t a great choice and wouldn’t encourage their children to enter this field.
I disagree, and think that this business has been very good to me, overall I’ve enjoyed it, and I think it would make a good career for any of my kids. However this Friday I wanted to ask the rest of you what you think.
Do you expect to work in the technology field until you retire?
I know many of you will change your focus in technology, perhaps moving to develop from DBA, vice versa, or moving into another field. I know most of you will change companies before you retire, but I’m curious about whether you think you will remain a technology worker for the rest of the time you work.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
We’ve known about SQL Injection for years, we’ve known about the issues with high privilege admin accounts for decades, and poor configuration has been an issue ever since we first started networking two computing devices together. Yet these supposedly well known issues are still problems for databases in many companies.
We have a lot of work to do in the database with regards to security. Auditing, tracking, configuring security, these are all challenges, and while SQL Server is getting better with the enhancements they have in SQL Server 2012, there is still work to do on the platform. I do think that Microsoft needs some help and guidance from us here as well, as we implement new features, find problems with using, scaling, or just understanding them, and I hope you will try out the new features and then submit feedback on Connect and write about your experiences.
However the security implemented in the database is often circumvented by poor practices outside the database. There’s little excuse for developers not to understand SQL Injection and code around it. There’s no excuse for frameworks and sample code to show code that allows SQL Injection. As far as privileged accounts go, that’s a bit of laziness on the part of admins. The modern OSs go a good job of allowing you to elevate from a non-privileged account. So even if you want to be lazy and give more access to developers or non-admins, give them an audited, second account that can be used to track activity. I’d prefer that we educate admins more and work closer with each other to ensure work gets done quickly, but maintaining a separation of duties, if for no other reason than to have a second pair of eyes examine changes for issues.
As far as networking issues go, we have to demand more education from networking people. The days of connecting machines to a hub and worrying about IP addressing and the correct gateways are gone. Networking is much more complicated, and firewall administrators need to better understand their systems.
Education is the key to making the systems work better, as it is in so many parts of life. Demand (if you can) or ask (if you can’t demand) that your fellow workers learn to work with their platforms better and improve the security throughout your entire system.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.
It’s been a long time, almost a year since Andy Warren and I kicked off The Mentoring Experiment. We had a successful cycle 1, and are not in the process of looking for mentors for cycle 2. Once we get an idea of how many people are willing to be mentors, we’ll start taking applications for mentees.
If you are interested in helping out a fellow SQL Server professional, apply today.
Cycle 1 worked out well, and I know a few people expressed interests in cycle 2 late last year and earlier this year. My apologies for the delays in getting started. Both Andy and I have been busy and this was one of the projects we were working on that suffered. We hope to get things moving a little more quickly and smoothly in the future, so subscribe and watch for more announcements on the Mentoring Experiment Blog.
Voice of the DBA 