Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Salaries in Job Ads

    Hiring at Basecamp is interesting. I caught this interview and think it’s a good look at a process most of us have gone through, but perhaps not thought about. Maybe we ought to try and not start out our relationship as employer/employee with a “I got one over on you”.

    Of course, many companies are not interested in treating employees well and just assume they’ll hire/fire/turnover often. Makes sense in some places (McDonalds type work), but less sense in our industry.

    I do think that we hide salaries too much in our industry. Certainly this aids in favoritism and entitlement for works with seniority. I’d really prefer to see salary ranges published for jobs, both internally and in the description. And not some huge range, but put something like a junior DBA from US$35,000-50,000. Or whatever range you think is appropriate.

    This would do a few things for me. First, it ensures that candidates that want to work for that range will apply. It also ensures you don’t waste time with a developer that wants to move to DBA work, but really needs $70,000 for their financial commitments. This also helps you determine if you’re range is correct for the market.

    I am a big proponent of disclosing more info up front and finding a good match between employer and employee.

  • The 2019 Home Lab

    Many of us won’t grow and expand our career completely at our jobs. While some employers will provide training in the form of funds to buy books, take a class, or learn in some other way. I think most employers will understand that you are learning at work and need time to experiment and practice some skills. That isn’t necessarily going to be enough time for you to learn and practice everything at work. Many of us end up doing some normal work at home, and we’ll likely need to do some career growth at home as well.

    That means some sort of resources that are available to work with the data platform. These days I’d recommend a lab of some sort in Azure or AWS, but I know many of you are worried about costs and uncomfortable with building a lab on a service that might require a monthly charge. I think you can easily get away with a minimal or zero monthly charge, but I do understand your concerns.

    That means a home lab, and I wanted to ask this week what you have and need in your lab. I’ve asked in the past, but it’s 2019, so let’s revisit the question. I wrote about this at Quora, but what would you do today if you were starting? Or what is your current lab?

    For me, I have a desktop machine at home that really powers my lab. I run VMWare, but if I were more cost conscious, I’d just use Hyper-V or Virtual Box for full machine work. I think containers are the future and I’d suggest you start learning about them, but for now, have a virtualization method of setting up a machine and installing SQL Server. There are evaluation versions you can run for Windows, but certainly you can also just install SQL Server on your system. Developer edition is free, so no excuses here.

    While some might want complex setups for HA, DR, and other testing, for most of us, a developer edition, a little disk space, and some time will provide a lab where we can get things done. There are lots of Stairway series here at SQLServerCentral, tons of articles here and at Simple Talk that you can follow along with, and many questions in our forums that you might read the first post and try to answer on your own.

    If you have a lab, let us know how you set it up today. If you don’t, maybe this is a good weekend to start thinking about how to set one up.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Timing is Everything

    We know that the online world is dangerous, with the number and variety of threats constantly increasing. For years, phishing with email has been a favorite tactic of hackers. Most of these emails are poorly written, and IT professionals often spot the fake ones, but there are times when the creativity of nefarious individuals is quite surprising.

    There was an attack on utility companies recently, which targeted engineers and purported to have some results for professional examinations. Since there is likely always someone taking an engineering exam as a professional at a utility company, this attack has a chance of succeeding. A Word doc included had a number of macros that installed a trojan for the employee. Hopefully few people allowed macro execution, but I’m sure someone was distracted, busy, and perhaps stressed about their exam results and didn’t think. Or clicked too fast.

    What is scary here is that the attack is suspected to be the work of a nation-state, which could mean substantial resources went into the attack. There are certainly potential issues if someone gets access to a privileged workstation, which is always a concern. This is why few people should have privileged access, and a privileged account should never be used for email software. A low-access account is the best way to work through emails and attachments.

    Many of us have privileged accounts, but imagine that someone gets a trojan on our laptop. When we use sudo or runas, we might find our credentials compromised. Think it can’t happen? What if all your IT staff got a note about an MS examination result? Or what if they got a free offer to take a certification test? I’m sure someone would click on it, and it only takes one.

    Security is hard, with education and caution being the most important tools at our disposal. Spread the word about stories like this and ensure all your staff, especially junior staff, is especially cautious about how and where they open any potential email attachments, click links, or even allow pictures. Security remains a challenge for all our organizations and we need to continually work at maintaining a vigilant environment.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #117 Invitation – When Have You Used MOT Tables?

    When Memory-Optimized Tables (MOT) were announced for SQL Server, there was a lot of excitement about the technology. After this was released on SQL Server 2014, feelings waned with a lot of restrictions and limitations for using the technology. I remember a panel at a conference years ago where most of the MVPs and experts recommended against using the technology for most users.

    Today there have been improvements (2017, 2016) in the MOT features, restrictions have been removed, and all editions can use MOT tables. That’s not to say that this is suitable for every table or situation where a DBA or developer suspects performance issues.

    This month I want to ask you about when you’ve made that decision. This can be to use MOT tables or NOT to use MOT tables. This could be a simple thought, a POC, or actual testing of the feature.

    Some ideas for you to write about:

    • Performance analysis of MOT tables that affected a decision
    • Reading the limitations and knowing this would prevent their use
    • A scenario where MOT tables improved performance
    • A successful implementation of MOT tables and what needed to change in your app
    • A failed attempt at trying MOT tables

    There might be other things that are related to MOT technology, but let us know this month what you think of the technology and how it has (or has not) impacted your application.

    The Rules

    Here are the rules as set out for the T-SQL Tuesday blog party.

    1. Your post should be published on Tuesday, Aug 13, 2019 between midnight UTC and 11:59:59 UTC.
    2. Include the T-SQL Tuesday logo in your post.
    3. Link back to this invitation.
    4. Include a comment on the invitation post or a trackback link.
    5. Enjoy the chance to be creative and share some knowledge.