Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Costing Cool Projects

    I ran across this article on how accounting can kill innovation, basically talking about the issues of applying our standard accounting rules and ROI calculations to innovative ideas. When an idea is too new, or too different, applying estimates of returns and value are often wildly incorrect.

    A study showed that when strict financial controls were not applied at the beginning, but rather decisions were made along the way to continue investing in projects, there were more likely to be positive  returns from the project.

    This approach seems to be one that could be useful in many BI type projects, and to a large extent, seems to be a good use of Powerpivot as a way to prototype projects. Assemble some data by hand, making a limited investment, and then determine if further investment is warranted.

    Companies often follow similar paths, with similar software and the differentiators between can turn out to be the innovation of the people inside the company. Making a case for innovation, with limited investment and small prototypes can be a great way to work on something interesting while potentially making yourself a very valuable employee to keep around.

    Steve Jones

  • T-SQL Tuesday #13 – What the Business Says Is Not What the Business Wants

    TSQL2sDay150x150It’s time to wrap up T-SQL Tuesday for the year 2010 and I was invited to host his month’s blog party by Adam Machanic (Blog | Twitter).

    What’s T-SQL Tuesday?

    This monthly event is the brainchild of Adam, and you can read about the inspiration in his very first T-SQL Tuesday post. Adam Machanic , a long time SQL Server MVP came up with an excellent idea of improving community involvement around blogging where bloggers around the world post their views on a same topic chosen by the host on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. If you are interested in hosting an event like this and then send a note to Adam.

    What are the rules?

    1. Since this is a global event, your post should go live between 2010/12/14 00:00:00.000 GMT (2nd Tuesday) and 2010/12/15 00:00:00.000 GMT. Since those of us in the US as sometimes date challenged, that’s sometime during Dec 14, 2010 using GMT time.
    2. Your blog post has to link back to the hosting blog, and the link must be anchored from the logo (found above) which must also appear at the top of the post.
    3. If trackbacks won’t work properly then please leave a comment below so that your post is accounted for in the roundup.

    Nice Things To Do

    1. Include a reference to T-SQL Tuesday in the title of your post. (The more we bloggers advertise T-SQL Tuesday, the more we bloggers get T-SQL Tuesday readers)
    2. Tweet using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay to follow links and other relevant conversations.
    3. consider hosting T-SQL Tuesday yourself. If you’re interested let Adam Machanic Know. If you’ve participated in two T-SQL Tuesdays previously and you don’t let your blog go stale (blog once a month for the last six months) then he’ll put you in the rotation.

    The Topic

    I was giving a presentation recently and someone in the audience started to ask about why I recommended against a certain technique. Without getting into it, this person kept saying that she had to implement things her way since the “business” said they needed it done that way. However a little digging showed that the business didn’t really understand the technology. They were asking for a result, and she took them literally in how she implemented a process. A classic impedance mismatch.

    I think we’ve all had situations that are similar. The business, the client, the customer, is asking for something, but they don’t know how to ask those of us building the technology. Or they don’t understand the implications of asking for something like “absolutely zero data loss” to be implemented.

    The official topic this month is:

    What issues have you had in interacting with the business to get your job done.

    Post your answer on Dec 14, 2010, based on GMT time, make sure a trackback or link appears in the comments for this blog, and I’ll look forward to reading what issues you have had to work through.

  • 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.