Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Do You Have ALL the YAML?

    YAML is a file format, and as with many formats, some of us love them and some of us hate them.  It seems to be better than XML in many ways, and perhaps easier to deal with the JSON. It might not be better than csv/tsv/delimited formats for large transfers but for many of us, it’s a nice format for configuration items.

    While the format felt fairly intuitive to me, and it’s not hard to write, it is quite persnickety about whitespace. This makes using some plugin, like the Red Hat YAML extension for VS Code, important to help you prevent mistakes. Even as easy as the format can be to read and understand, it’s also easy to make mistakes with the whitespace as you indent and try to add subkeys.

    I was watching an AWS talk, and there was an interesting note about using YAML for control planes and being sure that you have some sort of checksum if you do. Why? Because you aren’t sure if you have the entire file. A YAML file could be truncated in any file transfer, and it would still appear to be valid. Hearing that made me realize that those annoying closure tags in XML and JSON might have some value.

    Those of you that work with YAML, how are you sure you got the entire file? Is there something you’d program in? Do you checksum the file and pass that along? Do you include a required, closing key:value tag of some sort? I don’t, but I might think about doing so in any place where an invalid or incomplete file might cause me problems. This certainly seems like something you’d want in a control file, like one used for Kubernetes.

    In most cases, we assume if we can read a file, then we have the complete file. I don’t know of many customers that require some sort of checksum or validation for a file. Certainly, if a CSV or TSV was missing rows, the file might still appear valid to an import process. XML and JSON should have a closing tag or character, so we’d hope we could catch this, but maybe not.

    Moving around data through files, especially data used to drive processes, should include some error handling. That would mean that we have some way to detect if part of our file is missing. There are ways, but it seems that in many cases we’ve gotten lazy about implementing them in file transfers. Certainly, I don’t see people adding a checksum to their YAML files, which seems like something that we’d want to require.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 26 Jul 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

    Today’s tip is to remember a tough time during the pandemic and how you got through it.

    The pandemic seems to be easing for me the last month, so I’m definitely coping better. However, I talk with people around the world, and their experiences often remind me of how life was months ago for me.

    One of the tough times I had in the last year was last fall. I friend died from COVID, I got the disease, and Colorado locked down quite a bit more than we had before that. I couldn’t go places, visit people, and even my coaching outlet shut down for awhile. There were some days in the late fall when things felt hopeless. I knew they weren’t, but to me, I was struggling to be positive.

    One thing that helped me was talking.

    I don’t do that well, or often enough, with those close to me. I especially don’t share my struggles well, but I learned to share more with my wife, and she supported me. I talked with my kids, and a few friends, getting them to remind me of good things, to try and find ways to get me to smile, relax, and find hope.

    It worked, and many things got better in life and the world.

  • How Often Do You Patch?

    I saw two things recently. First, CU25 for SQL Server 2017 was released. I realized that I was CU8 locally, so I had work to do. Second, I noticed that SQL Server 2016 fell out of mainstream support on 13 Jul, 2021. Amazing that it’s been around for 5 years already and has moved into Extended support. We’ll still get security updates, but nothing will be fixed from that version, which it seems many people are running.

    Microsoft also announced they will put out a final Service Pack for SQL Server 2016. I am glad to see that, as I’ve often wanted to know there is a final patch that is released for each version, as I can know when I’m done patching.

    Today I’m wondering if you track this at all. Do you actively look to ensure your instances are patched? Are you on a schedule of some sort, maybe matching Microsoft’s every-other-month pace, or perhaps just a few times a year? Or is this more ad hoc?  When I go visit companies, I often find instances at all different levels, often without any reasoning as to why systems aren’t consistently patched.

    I used to try and ensure we patched every quarter, though certainly, I faced resistance from some business owners of systems over the worry that a patch might break something. Valid concerns back then, and still somewhat valid today, though if a patch gets through a few months without reports of issues, it’s probably safe for most systems. Still, make sure you test, especially for business critical workloads.

    These days, with so many hacking attempts, ransomware distribution channels, and no end to phishing, it makes sense to stay on top of patches and make sure you are up to date or at least planning to do so. Some of the high-profile hacks, like the Equifax one, have occurred on systems where patches were available but not applied. I don’t know that many of the patches are closing holes in SQL Server, but there are definitely issues with Windows where you would want to ensure your host OS was patched. Maybe that’s something you ought to check on today and ensure you have a plan to apply those updates.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 23 Jul 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

    Today’s tip is to take a break and do something for yourself.

    I’m actually taking a break tomorrow. After the world’s longest volleyball season, we said goodbye to kids in Orlando at our last tournament. It was a bit rushed, not all parents were there, and it felt a little incomplete.

    Tomorrow we set up an end of year party. This is late, especially as most kids are already on a team for next year, and back to their summer lives and involved with their high school teams. However, we’re getting together, and while I’ll do some chores, I’ll take a break and spend some time just having fun, reminiscing with everyone and closing out the 10+ months I spent with these kids every week.