Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Back to Basics

    This week I saw a post from Randolph West that covers binary and hexadecimal. It seemed basic and simple to me, but I’m old. I started learning about binary and hex in high school, where we used to tap our fingers to count in binary. Up was “0”, and down was “1”, and with one hand, you count to 31 (from zero). At the time, I thought it was important to know binary and hex to work with computers.

    These days, I’ve rarely had to deal with binary and hex. They aren’t useless in programming, but they are much less used in these days of GB of memory and large data structures. We don’t encode things as often as we used to. Usually now hex just means I’m dealing with varbinary and need to cast it (or render it in some other way).

    During the last few years, I’ve seen some efforts to get back to basics and publish more information that helps people get started or fill in gaps for areas that someone might have missed. Years ago Ed Leighton-Dick started the SQLNewBlogger challenge. I participated, and continue to write some basic posts every week or two. Grant had his database fundamentals series, and SQLServerCentral has published the Stairway Series for some time, giving people a way to get started in some new area of the data platform.

    I think it’s important that we continue to cover the basics in all aspects of the data platform, as well as other areas. The world of technology is so wide, and new people are always starting their journey in their industry. Even for those of us that have worked with SQL Server or some other area for a long time don’t know everything about the platform. We often have as need to learn more about some niche and need some basics to help us. I think Azure Data Factory as a perfect example of this. Many people who worked with SSIS for years might need a few primers on the differences with ADF to understand a slightly new paradigm. Much of cloud computing needs basics, and constant updates to those pieces.

    I know that the basics are always popular at SQL Saturdays and other conferences. The basics often get the most reads as articles, and I am hopeful that we will continue to see those with knowledge remembering that the basics are often the most important part of learning to build better software and systems for the future.

    Steve Jones

  • Should You Learn R or Python?

    I’ve been working on various skills over the last few years, trying to solve some simple problems in Python and PowerShell, in addition to T-SQL, to continue to improve my skills. It’s an interesting challenge at times, especially when I need to use new features or functions to which I haven’t had exposure in the past.

    I also work with R lightly, as I need to build some Questions of the Day for SQLServerCentral and I try to alternate Python and R questions every week. This has caused me to dig in and try to learn more about the language and how to manipulate data.

    Recently I was reading an essay from a consultant that works with clients using both R and Python. The piece talks about the differences and how these work to solve business problems. If you don’t want to read the entire thing, the comparison starts with the simple “you need both”, though there is more to the story.

    The most interesting part of this for me was that the author notes that while these are good languages in different ways for data analysis, they aren’t great for data preparation and SQL is still required. Either a database like SQL Server or a platform like Apache Spark. Part of the reason is that R and Python aren’t very efficient, and as we work with more data and larger workloads, efficiency matters.

    The other part of the piece I liked was the note that we need to collaborate and our work needs to be reproducible for others. I love having git for moving code around and keeping configuration files in a repository of some sort. It has certainly helped me take advantage of bits that others have written and easily reproduce their work on my system.

    While some of us work with just SQL, I expect that we will get involved with other parts of projects and may need to help troubleshoot or improve code. I find both of these languages interesting and a nice complement to each other. I’ve also learned there are places where I much prefer one over the other, especially with some of the Advent of Code problems. Some are simple in SQL, but others are much more suited to Python. I haven’t tried them in R, but I bet some of them would be well suited to that environment.

    If you have tried either, or have a preference, let us know. What are the advantages or disadvantages of each when you are working in a business?

    Steve Jones

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

  • Hostage Data

    Ransomware continues to surprise me in different ways. Recently there was an incident where data was not only encrypted, but also copied back to the criminals. In this case, Apple was the target through a supplier with the ransom note saying that without a payment, the data would be auctioned off.

    That’s crazy. Not only might you have business issues where you can’t access data, but now you have the stress of the data possibly being released or sold. While not many of us work in organizations where our data would be worth $50mm, it might be worth a significant amount, especially if the data were customer data. This alone might be a good reason to ensure that you have local data already encrypted without the keys present. At least then the criminals couldn’t read your data.

    This doesn’t help with SQL Server and TDE. In that case, the certificate would be inside the local master database, and if someone could attach it and get access to the master database, they could read your databases. If you have an SMK and a DMK, perhaps this might offer some protection, but I don’t think so. This does mean that Always Encrypted might help, unless you have lots of servers or other machines on your network with the certificates, in which case someone might be able to piece together the keys and read data.

    Attacks are becoming more numerous and creative. Having backups might have protected you against some ransomware, but not if copies of your files are sent to criminals. Perhaps the access from servers to the outside world needs to be more reigned in. Not much fun for administrators, but this might be the future of protecting systems.

    The arms race between sysadmins that protect infrastructure and criminals seems to have taken a leap forward here, and I’m not looking forward to the next step.

    Steve Jones

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

  • A Work Conference

    I like the idea of a work conference. We’re actually having one at Redgate this week, though it’s all virtual. I’d like an in person one, and it sounds like that will happen at Atlassian four times a year when they require employees to be in the office. That’s it.

    Four times a year.

    They are going all in on work from home, allowing employees to be in any place that Atlassian has a legal presence for work. As someone that’s dealt with this, it is a hassle for a company doesn’t have any setup for an employee in a new locale, especially in the US. So I understand them limiting employees to places where the company has a corporate entity. Still, that’s a lot of places for Atlassian.

    Many Atlassian employees do expect to go to offices about half the time, but they won’t be required to do so. I think there are lots of their staff that want to be able to go to an office, at least some time.  I do wonder how they will handle meetings and collaboration with people being able to move their schedule around and be in or out of the office. At Redgate we’ve said remote first, but sitting at my desk for a meeting with one person that’s at their desk in the same room and one person that is remote feels strange.

    Getting everyone in a region together a few times a year is a really interesting idea. It will feel like a SQL Saturday or other event when you know everyone will show up. I can see this generating some excitement. Especially if those days are different from normal workdays.

    It’s something I think I’d be interested in, and perhaps excited by. I think I’ll suggest each Redgate office have a few days a year, and then see if I can get invited to each office on those days. Fingers crossed that it happens.

    Steve Jones

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