Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Technology and Privacy

    There can be a big divide among tech professionals on how they view data privacy. Some don’t worry too much, and some are very upset about the lack of data privacy and poor data handling practices from many organizations. Most people are probably in the middLe. I do know that every time I post about a Tesla, there are many people who mention the incredible amount of data Tesla collects, and how that makes them nervous.

    Tesla discloses that they collect, and I get copies of my data with my own logger. I find the data interesting and I glance at it over time to look for trends. I’m still happy that my top destination in the last year (after home) is the gym 😉

    Other car companies collect data on you and GM is in trouble in Texas. I suspect other companies do this, likely to learn more about how to build better cars, but also to get data they may be able to sell. The same thing likely happens with most of your data. Certainly, mobile phone companies collect lots of data, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of your rentals/purchases/visits are being captured and sold to others from all sorts of vendors. Some of you might even be capturing usage data in your software that your customers might not like.

    I don’t know how I feel about this. I do think disclosure is important but not in the form of some EULA or a contract that people have to click through. I think there ought to be choice of what data is being collected and how it’s used. Or if it can be used. While I often just accept or dismiss cookie banners, I do appreciate that I can refuse cookies and still use more websites. I ought to be able to easily opt out from most data collection from most companies. It really should be optional.

    The world isn’t going back to analog devices and actions. Digital technology, with software invading most parts of your life, is here. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out most new appliances have a phone home feature that captures data and sends it back through unsecured wi-fi. A good reason to put a password on all your networks.

    In portions of the world, there are restrictions on data and privacy. They could be stronger, and the laws could limit more of what companies can do. Many companies still make money or run fine.

    They will be fine. Organizations always find ways to work within whatever system exists.

    I think that would be a good thing for most of us if more data privacy restrictions were in place. However, I don’t know how most of us would even go about helping enact them.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Monday Monitor Tips–Finding CUs for My Instance

    How can I quickly get a CU patch for a system that’s out of date? I’ll discuss that situation.

    You might think you get to patch every instance every few months, and you may be able to. But most of us have laggards in any decent-sized estate. Someone always wants to avoid patching, or skip patching on the day you’ve scheduled every other system.

    This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts

    Tracking Versions

    The Estate page in Redgate Monitor contains quite a few different views of your entire estate. This section is designed to aggregate data across all the systems you are monitoring. If I look at https://monitor.red-gate.com/Estate/Versions, I see this as a default.

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    This gives me an overview of what SQL Server versions I’m monitoring. As you can see, our test estate has a mix of versions, from 2008R2 through 2022 and one Managed Instance. The counts are in the pie chart, and we can see how many are up to date in the bars to the right of each version. As you can see, lots of our estate needs patching.

    I can also see at a glance for each version that the latest update is and its release date. The download link is a quick way to download the latest patch from Microsoft. We maintain this list and Redgate Monitor will update it on a regular basis.

    When I scroll down, I see the details of individual instances. These are grouped, though I can change that with the toggle in the upper left. For each instance, I have the name and the major version,

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    The current status and the latest patch are listed next to each other, with an icon and color coding that let’s me know I need to upgrade (yellow up arrow) or I’m patched (green checkmark). I once again have the latest patch, linked to the MS article as well as text that let’s me know how out of date I am.  You can see these patches are a month old. Auditors are potentially OK with that.

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    However, for my 2012 instances, I’m way out of date. No excuse for that. We keep these firewalled and protected, and they are available here only for demonstration purposes.

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    To the right of this we have our support dates. If a date is past, we mark it with a triangle to let you know that you have unsupported versions. That may or may not be an issue for your organization.

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    Summary

    This section of the Estate tab isn’t something I expect DBAs or sysadmins to check often, but I would schedule a reminder to do this quarterly. Knowing the state of our patching process is important, especially when there are security updates being released. We have had a few in the last year for SQL Server, and it is important to patch and apply those.

    Seeing not only the status, but having an easy download link makes this a very handy tab that I wish I’d have had in quite a few jobs during the 90s and early 2000s. If you haven’t checked your estate tab in Redgate Monitor, you might do that today.

    Redgate Monitor is a world class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.

  • AI Sings the Blues

    Quite a few of you aren’t thrilled or enamored by GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) with things like ChatGPT or CoPilot. Some of you love it or find it fascinating. My guess is many of you are like me and you’re not quite sure how useful this is with a healthy dose of skepticism.

    No matter how you feel, I find this piece on AI Blues fascinating to read. It talks about some of the problems with AI and how people are becoming less tolerant of the small errors that AIs make. I think people might be upset with some of the issues, but I also think these are types of things we might see in a colleague as well, and we might tolerate them for much longer than we think.

    The thing in the piece that really caught my eye is that training models to make less errors might make them less creative. I don’t think they are very creative, but I do think part of the idea is that they might do something better than we could do, at least for those of us working in a space where we’re a beginner to intermediate (or advanced beginner). In many cases, we’d expect better output from a model.

    The note about training not being often or in-depth enough as well is interesting. Perhaps some of the models ought to be trained separately, with some having a more specific focus, like learning Python and producing very few errors, or learning Python to produce interesting solutions to large scale problems even if there are some errors in the code.

    I could see similarly more tightly trained models for other areas, such as marketing email or legal issues. Maybe we need a lot of different models tailored for different jobs. Of course, if companies are struggling to generate revenue on AI already (and I think they are), then can they afford to train and retrain specific models focused for smaller audiences?

    Maybe, and maybe Moore’s law will help bail out some AI experiments, but I’m not sure. For now, I continue to experiment, and I think skilled tech people ought to do the same. I don’t think it will replace us, but I do think it can be a useful tool in many ways to help us become more productive.

    Steve Jones

  • A Simple Solution

    In general, I like simple solutions to problems (and simple songs). They can take work, but a simple solution means it’s easy to explain to others, easy for others to refactor/modify, and we limit the amount of effort required to ensure others can use the solution. Sometimes I see very clever engineering solutions, but they become cumbersome to implement and maintain, or worse, no one other than the author understands how they work.

    In any size organization, that’s a piece of technical debt that can cause problems over time.

    When I see a simple solution, I feel a bit of joy. I got that recently with a blog post from Microsoft on how to transfer your CLR code to Azure SQL Managed Instance. While moving CLR code can be a pain, as you are moving a binary object, this post suggested using MI Link. This is a feature designed to replicate between a local SQL Server and MI, which isn’t something I think a lot of people want, but some do. I don’t know if I’d want this permanently set up, but as a way to move code around, this is very simple and easy way to move this code in a one-time shot. Perhaps as a way to set up a test from a local instance to the cloud.

    This isn’t my ideal way to move code around, as I prefer to have a specific pipeline dedicated to deploying code. However, I also think that this is a nice simple solution that might be easier in some situations. I like ease, and I like effectiveness, as long as I’m not sacrificing something more important, like performance.

    I see lots of creative solutions built by customers, often built by some smart people. However, they become quickly complex, and they are hard to explain to others in the organization. It can be difficult to trust anyone other than the author(s) to maintain the solution across time. It can be even more challenging when new staff onboard and never get an explanation of how or why something works.

    I aim for simple solutions, and those that I can easily explain, and others can easily pick up and understand. I’m curious today if you’ve seen complex solutions that were overkill, or ingeniously simple ones you admired.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.