Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Chief Data Officer

    I don’t know if I’d be a chief, but I am glad that more companies are recognizing that data is one of the most valuable assets in most companies and starting to hire Chief Data Officers (CDO) to manage governance and security projects, as well as oversee data quality and management. With Chief Information Officers (CIO) and Chief Technology Officers (CTO), it appears that technology is becoming a force in the executive ranks.

    Most of the companies I’ve worked for only had one chief-anything to do with technology. It seemed that anything to do with computing fell under that individual. Adding a CIO and, now, a CDO shows that there there is a complexity in working with computer systems. The infrastructure and architectures of systems are important, but how we capitalize on information is crucial. I see a CIO as more of a business role than a technology one.

    The CDO seems to be a specialist that owns the data and ensures that it is well cared for, protected, and more importantly, managed appropriately. That would include knowing what data we have, how it is classified, how data should be protected, when to dispose of it, and how to assess the risk of keeping data around. It seems like a mix of strategic and tactical areas that a CTO or CIO might be tempted to consider low priority issues.

    I think data is one of the most important assets in many companies. We are always searching for ways to better understand our environment and make decisions that improve the way our organization works. We depend on data, and these days data is often something we lean on heavily. We need to protect it, especially as more regulations appear all the time that require us to change how we use and handle data.

    I don’t know how many of you have a CDO in your organization, or how quickly this will become common. I do know that the growing importance of the functions of this role are impacting more and more people who deal with data. While they might feel like a pain to adjust to, the more that we pay attention to how data is handled, the better off we all will be.

    Steve Jones

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

  • The Challenges of Changing Software Tools

    Years ago I set up an email account for my son using Gmail, periodically forwarding things I thought he might find interesting. One day I was with him at his PC and asked if he’d seen something from me. He said he hadn’t and opened his mail. He had dozens of emails, many of them marketing. I asked him why he didn’t delete some of the obvious marketing ones that he didn’t care about. He pointed to the sidebar, where the usage of his account was listed. It showed a few percent of the 10GB he was assigned in use. He said if the usage got too high, he would. For now, he would rely on search to find things.

    That was fascinating to me. I’d grown up with limited space, used folders for organization, and pruned out anything old or useless. It was an eye-opening conversation to me on the difference in how generations looked at computing. That same thing is happening on a larger scale. As this piece shows, newer generations are approaching the way they use computers in a completely new way. They don’t even necessarily know how to find items on their computer by browsing, which is strange for older users. It’s a trend that vendors embrace. In Windows, Microsoft surfaces “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Music”, etc., and I find many people have no idea where those folders actually are in the file system.

    I used to worry that we were losing skills that were needed. However, now I’m not so sure. The scale of items we might save has grown. In many ways, why would we care where they are on a system. Really, we need a way to access them, and linkages, search, and other techniques might be better than relying on our memories of how we’ve filed things. As I think about it, many of the problems of deploying software over the years have been because of incorrect paths. Why should developers manage that? Why don’t projects and compilers just sort this out for us? How many times have I had to add an entry to my PATH variable? Shouldn’t executable software solve that for me?

    Certainly someone needs to care about locations and security and various other details, but for most people using a system, these are unnecessary details. I don’t know “where” stored procedures or functions reside. SQL Server ensures they exist somewhere and the various Object Explorers in tools put them in a place I can find.

    I embrace these types of changes and encourage our industry to make installing and using software, as well as the management of files and other items easier and more autonomous.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Republish: IoT Pros and Cons

    I’m at SQL Bits today, the last day of the conference. I need to write an update to this one, but you can re-read IoT Pros and Cons for now.

  • Republish: The (Former) Complexity of PowerShell

    I’m at SQL Bits today, teaching a pre-con with Grant, so I’m republishing The (Former) Complexity of PowerShell