Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Understanding Security

    We have to learn to use better encryption than this.

    SQL Server has become a very complicated product, with so many subsystems and features that I don’t know anyone that is an expert in all of them. There are lots of people that become somewhat familiar with many features, and learn to understand enough to use them competently. However there is one area that seems to confuse many people, but is one area that is also quite important to a secure SQL Server: encryption.

    It seems that the idea of encryption is easy, but once we get into the actual practice of managing keys, indexing encrypted columns, and dealing with disaster recovery techniques, encryption quickly becomes complex. If the technical people managing servers struggle to deal with encryption, what hope does the average user have to implement encryption? Likely little to no hope of doing it well, which is a problem as many end users will have data on their machines. TDE is supposed to make this easy, but it solves only certain problems and isn’t available in all editions.

    I ran across a very interesting article in the Economist on what a general understanding of what encryption means in a practical sense. The article is somewhat based on the Dropbox issues I wrote about recently, but also speaks to the general misunderstanding many people have about what encryption actually means.

    I’ve always been hesitant to implement encryption widely, mostly because of the problems of managing keys. Keeping track of them, ensuring they are safe, in multiple places, and easily deployed in a DR situation, is a complex task, and making a mistake can have permanent consequences.

    I don’t know how to both maintain security, and also implement enough safety to ensure access to encrypted data is available, but I do know that this is a task data professionals need to learn to accomplish.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Speaking at the 2011 PASS Summit

    PASS_2011_SpeakingButton_180x180-blackI submitted three sessions to the 2011 Summit for consideration and I heard today that two of them were accepted, with the third being an alternate.

    It’s nice to be accepted, especially as there is always a lot of competition for people to speak and there are tons of submissions each year. I don’t know the total this year, but I’m sure it was over 500 for 160 or so slots.

    My two sessions are:

    Branding Yourself for a Dream Job -The Modern Resume – Everyone wants a dream job that they enjoy going to each week. However finding that job, and getting yourself hired can be hard for most people. Steve Jones will give you practical tips and suggestions in this session that show you how to better market yourself, how to get the attention of employers, and help improve the chances that the job you want will get offered to you. Learn about networking, blogging, writing, speaking , and more from Steve Jones, who has successfully used these techniques to find his dream job.

    (in the Professional Development Track, level 100)

    The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need – Come learn the ten most important skills that every accidental DBA, developer, or even manager should be able to do in SQL server. If you want to know where to start working with SQL server or which 10 things will get you through most of your days, some see Steve Jones show you how to accomplish these ten important tasks and explain why they are important. These ten skills represent the 80/20 rule in action; if you can do these ten things, you can successfully get through most of your days at work.

    (In Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment, level 100)

    No idea on which days they’ll be there, but come join me if you’re interested.

  • The 2012 Rally

    In case you hadn’t heard, the 2012 SQL Rally will be in Dallas. Andy Warren talks about the process for picking the city, and some of the challenges involved. There was supposed to be an open submission process and then votes from the community, but that didn’t work out. For the record, I completely understand the decision and would like to congratulate Sri, Tim, Sean, and the rest of the Dallas crew that put together a great application for their city. With the defending NBA champs in Dallas and the Rangers nearby, I’m looking forward to going to the Rally next year.

    Denver submitted an application, which I wasn’t a part of, but I was contacted by a group of people that wanted to get the Rally in Denver and we were looking to come  up with a way to market the city, get some votes, and get people excited.

    That’s done for now, but we won’t give up. Look for us to do some work and try to get the 2013 Rally in late spring, hopefully in time for a few of you to join us in some spring skiing.

  • Etiquette

    There is no book for modern etiquette

    The world has changed a lot in my lifetime in the way we communicate with others. I am sure that when the telephone was first invented, or live news broadcasts were available, people felt a similar shift, but the way that technology has allowed us to keep in touch with each other, instantaneously, almost anywhere on the globe, is amazing. I grew up with one phone in the house, with an extra long cord, and now have a Smartphone that gives me not only voice communication, but incredible amounts of data on a regular basis. I find myself communicating with text (Twitter), voice (phone), and even with myself (Evernote) almost every day.

    The shifts have also occurred very rapidly, which has brought with it challenges, and occasionally problems. This Intel survey highlights a few issues, and this PSA shows one that many of us are probably affected by at different times.

    In technology we have to deal with interruptions, and sometimes urgent situations that require immediate attention. We have to respond like a doctor on call for emergency room situations, but the reality is that most of our “alerts” aren’t that critical and no one, or no business, will die if we are a few minutes late. There are exceptions but for in most cases these events aren’t extremely time sensitive.

    As you build monitoring and alerting systems, include a little etiquette . Don’t unnecessarily page people, or alert them for situations that don’t need immediate attention. Bring visibility to problems, but don’t overwhelm someone with a large amount of data, and please, don’t alert people that things are working correctly. At this point in computing, automated systems ought to triage out most of the minor issues without involving humans.

    Our world has changed rapidly, with the speed and accessibility of communications growing quicker than our ability to deal with it. In some sense, I think that the deluge of data that we now have will bring new problems to our world, especially as more and more businesses look to analyze data in real time. We will face challenges that would have seemed like science fiction a decade ago.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts