Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Securing Test and Dev Environments at the SQL Privacy Summit

    Redgate Software is putting on a one day SQL Privacy  Summit on May 18 in London at the Grange Tower Bridge. This is a chance to see how you can ensure compliance with the GDPR while keeping up the modern pace of DevOps software development. Our goal is to educate you one the ways of protecting data and minimizing impact to business processes.

    Use the code “Steve” when you register to save 25% off the standard rate tickets. I’ll be there, along with some of the sharp minds from Redgate and some local consultancies to talk about the topics of data privacy and protection.

    We’ve designed the Summit to be for both technical and managerial staff that are working to ensure compliance with the GDPR. Our schedule is designed to help ensure that you lean from our research and experience to implement three key principles:

    • Map and maintain a living data catalogue of your data estate
    • Reduce your surface attack area by protecting data in dev and test environments
    • Implement ongoing monitoring to ensure your data is protected.

    It’s a great schedule of sessions delivered by some experienced speakers and a panel that will cover these topics and more. We even have a couple workshops to help you discuss concepts and best practices with peers.

    Register today (use the code “Steve”) and I’ll see you in London next month.

  • Cloud Snake Oil

    I’m sure that those of you reading this have a variety of opinions about the “cloud”. Actually, I’d guess that many of us have different definitions of what the cloud actually means. That’s fine, since it’s really an amorphous, marketing term that encompasses quite a bit of different technologies, services, and products from many different companies. Some of you might use the cloud, and if you do, then perhaps this will ring true to you.

    I was reading Dr. Greg Low’s blog, and he asked the question in a post about what a managed service was. In this case, Dr. Low was looking to host his blog on some service, and apparently the definition of a managed service varied from provider to provider. His first provider didn’t tell him that backups were being run, with each file being counted against the space that he’d contracted for. When he asked for them to be deleted, he was told it would take a day or two as there wasn’t anyone to provide the service.

    He continues looking at how other providers define service, which does vary, but the interesting thing to me is that many of these companies aren’t really providing management of systems. They’re selling you a product, which has some capabilities, but they aren’t really managing anything. At least, that is my impression. I know if someone asked me to manage a system, I’d expect to deliver some level of service that would be useful for the client.

    In the cloud, it’s really a wild west version of computing, where companies want to sell you some service, often touting various management aspects, but they may not necessarily provide the level of service you expect. Cloud vendors, even worse than other computing vendors I’ve dealt with, want to work at scale, and they want to standardize how things work as much as possible. They don’t want to engage in person to person communications if possible. I learned this lesson with Google and their products, few of which had any way for a user to contact a help desk.

    Apart from that, what I’ve seen too often in the cloud is that a company wants to offer some service or capability, but they don’t often have the tooling available for end users. This is especially true for new services, where it seems the purchase process works flawlessly, but the configuration or cancellation process doesn’t work, or might not even exist.

    The one piece of advice I’d pass on from my cloud experiences is that anyone using services needs to reconcile their bills regularly. We can add resources easily, but removing them is hard, and often a customer service person promising removal doesn’t follow through. I’ve had people in the support centers not even be sure of what resource I was referring to when requesting removal or credit. It’s a frustratrating experience that has led me to adopt another habit. I grow resources very slowly, ensuring that I know what the billing is and that I really need the service. That seems like the opposite of what the “cloud” is supposed to offer.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Watching the Sands of Suggestion in #SQLPrompt

    I enjoy themes, and when I ran across the SQL Prompt Treasure Island, I had to take a few minutes and go through it. I wrote about Code Snippet Code recently, and this post continues to move across the map.

    Incredible Suggestions

    The first thing that most people notice after they install SQL Prompt is the suggestions that pop up as you type SQL code. This was one of the first things that captivated my interest after I started using the product. Seeing lists of tables, of columns, of valid syntax, pop up as I type is so useful that I struggle when I don’t get the suggestion box. By default, this appears quickly, and one of my customizations is that I have slowed it slightly so that quick typos don’t pop the box if I get rid of them immediately.

    However, as the Treasure Map shows, it’s not just suggestions, but also the fact that I can hover over a suggestion and get more data, like the code that defines a table, view, or procedure. This is especially handy when using views, as I’ll look to see if I’m starting to nest views in queries.

    I do find that CTRL+Shift+D is one of the shortcuts that I often need. I may create a table or run some code in another tab, and I don’t get refreshed suggestions automatically. There is an experimental feature to auto refresh suggestions, but this means more polling of the database, and I try to avoid adding more load to processes that are running. The shortcut works well for me.

    The Dependencies Tip

    SQL Prompt has lots of features, and plenty that I don’t use. A few I don’t use because I don’t know about them. The dependencies tip is one of these. I didn’t know about it until I read the Treasure Map post, but now I think that’s a really cool features. If I’m looking to alter my schema, one of the important things to know is what dependencies I have. Certainly I could use SQL Search, but being able to quickly decide what objects I need to consider, or where I need to make other changes, is great.

    The Treasure Map describes this, but I had to experiment a bit to understand how this works. I’ve added a short animation to show this.

    dependencies

    Now that I know this, I’ll get the list, copy it, and use it as a TODO list of things to alter in this same commit. I’ll also know where to test changes before I actually commit this code to a shared repo where others will see it.

    There are plenty of other small features in this list, and you ought to experiment with these if you write a lot of T-SQL. You’ll find them to be helpful and handy.

  • New IT Departments

    I had a friend that used to run an Exchange system. Actually, he was part of a team of four that managed a 50,000+ mailbox system for a very large company. In 2000 or 2001, he told me that his job would be done by computers in a few years and he had decided to leave the industry. Over the last 15 years, he’s worked in another field.

    I have no idea if those Exchange systems are still around, and I would concede that mail is better purchased as a service for most organizations than managed in-house. However, I think my friend made a mistake. There are still plenty of people working in technology infrastructure in companies, making a good salary in good working conditions. I’ve spent my career in IT in one way or another, either as a developer, Operations staff, or manager. I see no sign of this going away quickly, though certainly many menial, simple tasks like checking logs and backups are being increasingly handled by automated systems.

    When I see articles like this one (Why IT as you know it is dead), I’m not sure what to think. One one hand, I do think IT is changing, especially in larger organizations, where there is pressure to reduce costs (often labor) as well as increase the speed of output. DevOps is one way that we try to improve our systems, though the cultural change is very hard. Often this means that developers produce work in smaller chunks, and may release more often, but don’t get more work done. This is because the cultural change is hard, and most of us don’t want to change our habits.

    On the other hand, I also think that in many ways IT is the same. We can’t respond as quickly as business analysts or customers come up with ideas. I know most of those ideas probably aren’t great, and IT doesn’t want to waste resources on something that will not prove to be valuable. Just as happened 30 years ago, departments will create their own POC applications. This used to happen in Lotus 1-2-3, then Access and Excel, now it may happen with low-code development tools, whatever those are.

    I don’t really worry about this, as I’ll find ways to make things better. If someone wants an Access or Power BI application, let them build it. If it’s really useful, and others need access, we can upgrade and invest in a better system. I’ll go along and get along, working to build the things that the organization finds useful. I just realize that my time is limited, and if someone else can prove a concept is valid, perhaps that means I should spend time ensuring that works or gets rebuilt in a better way. I also know many of those ideas and concepts won’t prove themselves, so it’s fine if there’s some sort of citizen development (or shadow IT) in an organization.

    To me, the key is that we enforce security for our data. If anyone wants to build software, that’s fine. They just need to ensure that they use the same security and authentication mechanisms that other systems use. We need to protect the data, no matter what application is going to be used to view, analyze, or manipulate it.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.