Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Elections

    In the last few elections in the US, there has been concern over the validity of votes. As more and more electronic machines are being used to record votes, and often being built with very little security, how can we be sure that the data is being collected, tabulated, and securely stored for our elections? It’s an issue that most countries face, and will continue to face as they deal with larger and larger elections.

    Developing a secure way to collect, store, and verify data is hard. We struggle with that on a regular basis, and I think we often tend to ping across both ends of the spectrum on how to handle this. We tightly control all access and storage of data,  keeping access as limited as possible, and we still have regular problems with data loss and breaches. Or we may open up our systems to large groups of users, essentially ignoring security. Is there any hope for voting data?

    I came across this idea from David Bismark that explains a fairly simple, and reliable method of both allowing access to data, while also keeping the secrecy necessary for each person’s vote.  It’s in a TED Talk that discusses the idea in a few minutes, and it’s rather amazing.

    I don’t know if there’s something we can learn here to apply to other data issues, but I would guess that any area that needs to distribute data while protecting privacy could use something similar.

    Steve Jones

  • Moving Windows in Windows 7

    I had my laptop connected to a projector recently, and for some reason a few windows got moved off screen, like Twhirl. That was strange, so I did what I have done in the past and right clicked the icon. However that got me this:

    twhirl;

    I was expecting something more like this:

    twhirl2

    How did I get that? First I googled and found this link from Ask Leo. He explains the same issue I had and notes that I Windows 7 you have to hold down SHIFT and then right click.

    Sure enough, that works and you can select “Move”. From there I use the arrow keys to move things back on screen for me.

  • Consolidation

    I’m about to go down one laptop, which is good. I have had too many for some time. Right now I’ve got:

    • Dell 17” Inspiron which is in need of retirement. This is about 8 years old, the wireless radio is whacked, and my son has filled the 30GB HDD.
    • HP Netbook – Essentially my wife’s now as she uses it to blog. Too slow for me.
    • Toshiba Qosmio F45 – Been dead for awhile with a CMOS issue. However after 6 months perhaps it’s dead enough I can restart it and give it to a kid
    • Lenovo W510 – My primary machine, about to lose the DVD drive and get an SSD as a second drive.
    • Acer 1420P – PDC laptop, which I just sold and need to clean up.
    • iPad – Testing/demo’ing SQL Monitor from Red Gate. My second travel machine when my little girl doesn’t have ahold of it.

    That’s a lot of hardware, in addition to a quad core, 8GB desktop. So I’ll go down a machine, and maybe two if I can get the Toshiba working and send it to my son. Someone else can make do with the Dell.

  • Speed

    We are always improving our computer hardware. It used to be that our CPUs increased their clock speed regularly. Then we started to add additional cores. Along with large increases of memory and disk technology, there has been this quest to lower the response time of our systems. However many of our computers don’t seem to actually be moving quicker.

    Are our database systems responding quicker? We have better search and join algorithms, hardware that transfers data quicker, and more knowledge about how to index our tables. I know all that information might not always be used in many systems, but we can strive to use the DMVs and DMFs to learn more about our databases and tune them better.

    But do they respond quicker? In many cases they don’t, and part of this is the continual growth of data. It seems we accumulate more and more data, at faster rates each year. There is also the ever-increasing level of overhead we seem to add to each piece of software we use. The bloat of software, often with frameworks designed to make the developer’s job easier, result in systems that aren’t any more responsive than they have been in the past.

    I do wish software responded quicker, but I also love the richness of so many applications and web sites that I see. I think overall we’ve improved the experience of working with software by adding new features and capabilities over the years, especially in SQL Server.

    Steve Jones