Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • NetFlix and Null

    There are some progressive companies out there, and I think they are doing some very interesting things with how they treat employees and work with them. One thing that Netflix does, and I’ve seen others do, is eliminate the tracking of vacation time. They hold people responsible for getting work done, and if you don’t do the work, you get to move on to another place of employment.

    That got me thinking after following the debate about logic, mathematics and NULL in the SQLServerCentral forums. It’s a fascinating view in how some people look at NULL in databases, and worth reading.

    I started to wonder what the proper value would be for these fields?

    • Netflix.VacationHoursAccrued
    • Netflix.VacationHoursUsed

    Would you set them to 0? Or inifinity, maybe marked by something like 99999?

    Or would you use NULL? With the idea that you don’t know, and more importantly to me, you don’t care? I think that the proper design would depend on what you plan to do with the data. It’s not being used, so my opinion is that NULL works fine, and the NULL bitmap could potentially use less space.

  • Connectify

    It’s a wired world. You’d think by this point, most major hotels, at least those costing upwards of $100/night, would have good wired, or wireless connections for their guests. I’d like it to be free, but I’d settle for good quality.
    However I hate the way that most hotels manage connectivity. It’s not by the connection, or room, but often by the MAC. So that people with one device are fine, but those of us that are techies, with more than one device, can’t connect them all. At least not cheaply.
    connectify[1]
    I usually carry two laptops, a iPhone, and sometimes my wife’s got a laptop and phone as well. I’ve debated carrying a router and using that, but it’s one more thing to carry. Instead I decided to try Connectify.
    It’s a wireless hotspot that runs on Windows 7 and allows your laptop to share it’s connection. You install it, no reboot needed, and then you create a hotspot name and password.
    That’s it.
    Once it’s up and running, in a few minutes, your other devices can connect to your personal hotspot. You have a local LAN and you can easily share files and access the Internet from all your devices.
    A very cool tool. I have it on both of my Win7 laptops to run hotspots, separate names, so whichever one is connected can be my router and allow me high speed access for all my devices on one connection.
    If my Internet connection works in the hotel.

  • Individual Contributions

    “Never underestimate what you can bring to the table.” – Rob Cooper, on StackOverflow.

    I read that and immediately went back to a time earlier in my career.  I worked in a large team of IT workers, with a variety of skills and experiences. Each of us had an area we specialized in (databases for me), but we had to cross train and handle calls and issues in other areas at times.  Being a diverse team of about 20 people, we all had noticeable strengths and weaknesses. Some people were talented in almost all areas and could figure things out. Some struggled and sought out the experts in areas outside their own constantly.

    We had one person in particular that was fairly low down on the skill level, and was in charge of a number of administrative-type tasks for the IT infrastructure. Things like basic group/user security, handling simpler AD tasks, things that you usually task to a junior level individual. I often heard others complaining that this person could not carry their own weight, or didn’t do enough work.

    However when this person went on vacation, and someone else had to fill in, I’d hear more complaints about having to do basic tasks, like managing groups or setting permissions.  I couldn’t  imagine the way a team would work if it was filled with highly talented, highly capable superstars; we’d never get any work done because of the constant complaining.

    We all have a role to fill at times in our lives. Sometimes it’s a high level role, and at times it’s a low level role. Each of us brings value for the work we do, and none of us is any “better” at life than any other. The lead developer might seem like they are more important than the secretary or the cleaning crew, but those other contributions are important as well. They’re valuable, and they should be appreciated.

    Steve Jones

  • SQL Saturday #28 – Keynote

    I was honored to be asked to do the keynote for SQL Saturday #28 in Baton Rouge recently. It’s taken me longer than expected to process this and upload it, but here is my keynote speech from a couple weeks ago:

    Part 1: The first 14 minutes or so with some introductory comments.

     

     

    I shot this with my Flip camera on a stand near the stage since there wasn’t a good place to put it. A large auditorium and I wandered out of sight quite a bit. I realize that I also need a better way to grab audio for various events like this, so I’m looking at a separate audio mic and recorder.