Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Rating Bugs

    Is this a big deal? Michigan is the wrong shape, reported on Connect as a problem with the Report Builder 3.0. I guess is depends on whether or not you are showing Michigan in one of your reports. If you are, it’s probably a big deal, and no matter what data is on the report, plenty of people will never get beyond the incorrect shape.

    Is this a critical bug? Is it a must fix for SP1? Does it deserve a high level of priority?

    Triaging bugs like this and assigning a priority has to be extremely hard. On one hand this should be a simple fix, but after the maintenance plan fiasco in SQL Server 2005 SP2, I’ve heard a few SQL Server developers say there are no “simple fixes.” However this bug is not critical to most people; it won’t cause downtime or data loss. For those people that need it, however, it could be extremely critical. It also a little embarrassing for any report that has the wrong shape visible in a map control.

    Should this be fixed before bugs that cause downtime? What if this takes 2 days and those bugs take 2 weeks? Or two months? You could easily get into the situation where a low priority bug keeps getting pushed back because there are more important issues to deal with. I’m not specifically talking about this bug, but rather using it as an example of an annoying, but otherwise non-critical issue.

    As companies work on software, I’m sure there’s some developer on every team that finds items like this one to be very annoying bugs, and would probably just fix it if they had time. Or permission. To me, this is a great reason why you ought to give developers some free time to work on things that they find interesting. My guess is many little bugs like this that can be fixed quickly, would get worked into the schedule.

    Developers like fixing things, and they like easy wins. Give them a chance to work on them.

    Steve Jones

  • Security Panics

    I went to host the Red Gate SQL Source Control webinar recently and had a snag. I downloaded the GoToWebinar software (why must I download this every time?) and when I ran it, I got an error.

    First it was a FireFox, “This security certificate is invalid” and I had to click the “I understand the risks” button to move forward. But then I got a dialog that said

    “This security certificate has been revoked”

    Now, a smart guy would click “cancel” because perhaps there’s some phishing or malicious behavior going on. Being in a hurry, I clicked “OK, move forward anyway, I don’t need no stinking certificates.” Maybe not smart, but it failed, so no big deal.

    Fortunately I had been trying to connect 30 minutes early, so I had time. I called Citrix, and they attempted a remote desktop session, which failed for the same reasons. We chatted for a few minutes and the tech support guy said that the certificate didn’t expire for years, and could I try another machine.

    I went out and was about to do so when I noticed that my clock said “8/19/2039”. It hadn’t registered before, but that time it did. 2039 is likely past the end of the Citrix security certificate’s lifetime.

    I reset my clock, and things went well.

    I’m not sure what happened. I used my machine early in the morning, took kids to school, and then came back to a machine that wouldn’t come out of suspend. I rebooted, and when it responded (some Java error on the screen, figures), things seemed to work. Except that the webinar didn’t.

    I don’t know what causes a clock to slide, but this actually happened last year one time as well. This is a Win 7, x64 machine, and it surprised me that I got this much drift, if 29 years is “drift”, but it did.

    On the bright side, the Win 7 year-changing dialog is kind of cool. You might play with it.

  • Personal Investments

    I’ve written a lot on various aspects of your career, and I mention training often. I try to encourage you to seek training dollars from your employer to go to things like the PASS Summit or SQL Connections.  I think that your boss out to invest in you and that it will pay him or her back over time with better quality work overall.

    I know there are plenty of managers that don’t have a budget for training, or they are resistant to just spend it on requests from employees without some sort of guarantee. There are no guarantees in life, and managers should get used to that, but you can help them gain some confidence that money spent on you is not money wasted.

    There are a couple ways to do this, one of which is to make your own investment. I think that you ought to be spending some time on building your skills on your own. Document those efforts, and then show your manager that you are trying to learn more when you ask for money. So for this Friday’s poll, I wanted to see who might be doing that. This week I’m asking:

    What are the investments that you are making in your career?

    Right now, what tangible things can you list that you have done in the last year that show you are making an effort to improve in your job. I realize that some of you might not want to post directly, or too specifically, but if you can write something, perhaps you can inspire others.

    For my own career, which is only somewhat technical, I’ve been making an effort to improve my skills by working more with the new aspects of SQL Server, blogging about them, and then building additional presentations that I can give at events. That is a way that I’m looking to improve my own skills, as well as gain additional exposure for my company. Hopefully that pays them back and it means it’s worth investing in me by sending me to more events, or even a few training classes.

    Hopefully you’ve done something in the last year that shows an investment in your own career. My own investment has been mostly limited to time, but I have purchased a few books to help me learn. Let us know this Friday what you’ve done on your own. And be sure to let your boss know as well.

    Steve Jones

  • Beyond Automation

    Are there some processes in an organization that are beyond automation? In this blog, the author talks about how some processes might be so embedded, or so complex that you could not automate, or change them. I think that example gets a little off track as it examines left hand driving v right hand driving, but it’s still something to consider.

    In my experience, there are many ways to use automation to assist people with work, and reduce the load needed, but ultimately we always need a human in the loop. Someone should be available to check that the calculation or the change in process is the correct one. Someone also has to be able deviate from what seems to be the rule for some process and override it.

    I’ve seen this in the past in a few places. Once where I worked with a chef trying to automate his ordering process. He was sure that he could input recipes, make guesses about usage, and then inventory constantly, adjusting his predictions and a well designed inventory system would calculate purchase orders for him. I don’t know if his predictions were poor, or if the logic wasn’t correct, but he didn’t ever seem to have as good a hand on his inventory as he needed. I used that as a basis for a liquor inventory system when I was bartending, but took the “recommendations” from the system and adjusted them based on intuition. That seemed to work out much better.

    Real life if messy, and often I think we try to simplify it so much with our models that we don’t build a system that really works well. I’m of the opinion that technology is here to assist us, not do the work for us, and we need to keep that in mind as we design software. Allow for the experienced professional to override things and use their experience to make the final decision.

    Steve Jones