Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • PCI and Encryption

    It surprises me how often I see people posting questions about what type of encryption to implement for credit card data. If you are processing credit cards yourself, and storing the data, you need to comply with the PIC regulations that exist. Here’s a good place to get started: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/.
    Actually the place you need to start is with your bank or processing company. They should be able to guide you in what requirements need to be met for safe data storage.
    However if you’re running some service and perhaps trying to store a credit card for a customer to make it easy to charge them over and over, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to comply. You are holding financial information about a customer and if something happens to the data, you’re at fault. Your company could be liable, and possibly even you personally if you make the recommendation to build something yourself.
    Good security isn’t magical, and it isn’t secret. It involves you using well known algorithms, protecting the keys, and following best practices. There are some great encryption technologies in SQL Server 2005/SQL Server 2008, but don’t just implement them without learning a few things about what best practices are and how these technologies work.

  • New York funding Great Lakes Wind Power?

    According to this C|Net report, New York state wants someone to build wind farms in the great lakes and purchase all the power if they’re built. That’s nice to hear, but it’s not a great PR move after their attempt to build them off Long Island generated so much controversy. I’d like to see more Wind Farms in New York as well, especially since they have lots of sailing water on the East side of the state.

    I did find it interested that wind farms offshore cost about double as onshore ones. That shouldn’t be surprising with all the below water anchoring needed, but it is for me. I somehow was thinking they’d be comparable since you have to anchor both to handle stresses.

    The payback might be better since water has more wind across it, the temperature changes more rapidly and so more power can be generated. Of course maintenance might be higher, not just with the windmill, but also with the cabling that crosses the water. Salt water is incredibly corrosive, so that can be an issue.

  • Netbook Replacing a Laptop

    My laptop died recently, actually died completely, unable to boot. The hard drive was fine, and I managed to stick it in my desktop and recover my files. The critical stuff (writing) was backed up with Live Mesh and had moved to the desktop already, but hadn’t been on the netbook as it hadn’t been powered on in about a week or two. So I fired it up to ensure that I had 2 copies of the critical stuff.

    Once things had moved across, I was hoping to actually get some work done away from my desk. About two-thirds of more of my writing takes place away from my desk. I lie in bed, or work in a coffee shop, before karate, etc. It’s more inspirational to me, and I depend on it.

    However the netbook really slowed me down. I’ve written before that I run many things on here, Office, SQL Server, I blog, write, etc. and it works well. It does work well once I’m doing something like writing, but switching applications, getting started, it’s slow. In fact so slow that I was frustrated getting the browser started and OneNote fired up.

    I traced some of this to a full drive, with over 15.8GB of stuff on my 16GB drive, and had to clean that out.

    Once that was done, things improved, but it was still slow to get started. When you try to switch applications, things take time and you have to be prepared for that. When I’m just writing, this is OK as I’m moving at a slower pace, I need to think, etc.

    However when I’m doing other work, editing, checking on the site, moving between aplications, it’s very, very frustrating. So much so that I know that this netbook isn’t a possible full-time replacement for a laptop. I’d considered one for the kids, especially my oldest, but it’s not going to work. He’ll need a real laptop for college, not a netbook.

    I still like the form factor, and times like this, where I’m catching up on blogging or writing while waiting for the kids at karate or tutoring it’s much nicer. The form factor works well. I can do email, browse, or write on it. But trying to really work, or get multiple things done doesn’t work so well.

  • Building Questions

    I haven’t had to write a Question of the Day in a few months now and I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand it’s a nice break to not have to come up with things to ask. On the other hand I have to check and edit questions submitted by other people. And that can sometimes be more work than just writing my own.

    Coming up with a good question can be tough. We had one recently on datetime values and time zones that sparked quite a debate.

    That one alone I think shows that the way one person views a question isn’t the way others do. I try to view them objectively, and simply, not reading too far into them, but that’s not how everyone does it. It can be tricky trying to phrase things to guide people to an answer without just giving them the answer. I think we do a pretty good job overall, but I know we miss a few.

    Even if you can properly phrase something, or some up with a good question, it can be hard to build an explanation of why things work. I have submissions that show just a URL, sometimes just repeat the answer, or even say “I don’t know why this works”. Those are tough because sometimes I don’t know either! I hate rejecting things, and try to send them back to the author with a note that asks for some details, but sometimes I have to just let them go.

    I got 14 submitted for November, which was a short month with the various conferences and holidays. I’m still working my way through them since it can take me 30 minutes to review one, check code, get a reference, reformat, etc. A bit of a time sink, especially when I can probably knock one out in 15 minutes if I’m doing a batch. I tend to pick a topic, say log shipping, and then write 8 or 10 questions on that subject, scheduling them out over 3-4 months. That way we don’t get too many on one topic in a short period of time.

    I like getting the submissions, but the variety of quality and topics makes it a time sink. I tend to put these off sometimes for a week, especially now that I have questions scheduled out through Feb 2 as of today. So if I haven’t reviewed your question, have some patience.

    A few notes on submitting a question:

    • Don’t get too cute, keep your code and the question simple.
    • Specify the version if you use something that might be version specific
    • Get a reference, preferably from Books Online, that explains and documents what happened. If you don’t know, post a note in a forum and see if someone can help you understand why things happen.
    • Use BOL online, not the ms-help:// local reference.
    • If you want people to choose more than one answer, say that.
    • Use a spell/grammar checker.