Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • A Dedicated Space

    Years ago I had a friend that was starting a consulting business. This person had worked for various organizations over the years and was ready to run a solo business. The city where this person resided was somewhat expensive, so they decided to convert a garden shed into an office space. They followed a similar process to this one, adding some interior finishing and electricity.

    This individual struggled to work alone in this space, after years of working in offices. While it provided separation from children and other home distractions, it was hard to get used to working alone the majority of the time. Eventually the moved their office back into the house.

    I was reminded of this when I saw a tweet from David Perell, noting that a good business model might be building recyclable, transportable offices. This pandemic has changed the way many people work, and while some have offices, I’ve had many of my colleagues working in bedrooms, dining rooms, and even in part of a kitchen area.

    The way we work has changed for much of the technology world and plenty of us have adapted well. People that hated being stuck at home with distractions are growing used to the idea, though I suspect that not having a permanent space of your own is likely growing old. I wonder how many people would like a shed like structure in their yard or garden, with about 100sq ft/9sq m of personal room for your desk and whatever you need for your job. There are some really small, neat designs with lots of windows, porches, even fancy designs. Interiors can be simple or designed just for you.

    Would any of you want to give up a little garden space to get a private office? With the changing world, and the chance that you might work at home for a long time, perhaps some of you would like a private space that’s just your own, perhaps even one that you could take with you if you moved to a new residence. Or maybe one that you can take to a shared space in a town. I could even see pods like this in an office park. Instead of a shared office space, maybe there would be outdoor pods near each other, where we can work near each other, but still in a safe, private way when we need to do so. Perhaps this is the next evolution of BYOD, as a Bring-Your-Own-Office.

    Steve Jones

  • Digging Into Internals

    Hugo Kornelis is a fellow Data Platform MVP and friend. He runs SQL Server Fast, and we recently put up an interesting page with this title: Debugging with debugger: investigating SQL Server’s internal structures. That’s a great title, and it is for a presentation that he is building and getting ready to present. I suspect it will be at a virtual conference soon, but we’ll see.

    Hugo digs deep into the details of how things work. If you read his blog regularly, you’ll learn a lot about the ways in which SQL Server processes queries. You should learn how to better tune your own queries and produce efficient code. At least that’s the goal.

    However, I wonder if most of you feel that way. While I see performance tuning sessions are often being the most popular topics at events, are you interested in internals? Do you actually use information from posts and presentations to dig in deeper to the way your queries are compiled and executed?

    I know Plan Explorer is a very popular tool among MVPs, and lots of people download it, but I still see so many basic questions on execution plans, I sometimes wonder if people are really using the tool to change they way they write code.

    If you want to learn more about query tuning, Hugo, Grant Fritchey, Aaron Bertrand, Paul White, Erik Darling, and many others will try to teach you. Just be sure you try and use the knowledge they impart in your daily work.

    Steve Jones

  • Changing Computer Retail

    When I was a child, there were a number of small computer stores, including quite a few that were authorized retailers for Apple, selling Apple IIs, software, dot matrix printers, and the loud 3.5″ external disk drives. I’d go and window shop, dreaming of being able to afford one. I’d walk by Radio Shack, with their TRS-80s, considering a purchase there instead since my high school used those. Over time, my window shopping evolved to flipping through the massive Computer Shopper, trying to decide which mail order retailer I might trust.

    Life has certainly changed, with online retailers dominating many computer hardware sales, though there are still some local stores in that we can visit. I’ve enjoyed wandering through Microcenter in Denver, and even taking my kids to Best Buy for their college machines. I’ve rarely visited an Apple store, though those seem to be quite popular with consumers. I have been to a Microsoft store, and saw recently that there will be fewer Microsoft stores in the future. I wonder if retail computer shopping is becoming a niche market.

    There are lots of choices these days for purchasing new hardware. Many organizations have agreements with particular retailers and lots of data professionals never get much choice in what machine they might use at work. Some companies allow limited choice, some just assign a hand me down to new employees. Relatively few give an allowance, though I wish more did.

    A computer is a tool that we use, but like any other tool, we all have preferences. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to choose most of my machines. I ask for advice, weigh different costs, options, lead time, and reviews. It’s not an efficient process, but it is a nice break from work for a few hours and usually I find myself content with the end choice. I know there are lots of form factors, choices, and even colors these days. If you have the chance to build your own machine, it’s a very satisfying experience, at least once in your life. Glenn Berry has good information on his site and advice on building machines.

    The search for computing hardware can be fun, whether you want to build a machine or purchase something ready to go, it’s one task that I think most technical professionals enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Renting Features

    The licensing, use, and ownership of software has been quite a contested topic for years. Many people have assumed they “own” the copy of Quicken or Halo that they bought, but modifying or even reselling the bits has been a contested right by many vendors. It seems that courts seem to lean towards the perpetual rental of those bits rather than ownership.

    We’ve gotten used to that in software, but what happens when this extends into the real world? There is a piece at Ars Technica about BMW looking to “unlock” features on their cars if owners want to pay for them. These are things like heated seats or perhaps sports suspension that are installed, but not activated. You could subscribe to the feature on a trial basis, and then activate it for a year or two if you wanted to pay a fee. The interesting thing here is that you could even do this with a secondhand car.

    The comments from many people are disparaging, and rightly so, since so many vendors have looked to make money with these options, often in a way that isn’t quite fair for the consumer. There is certainly concern and outrage about the cost of these features if they can be installed in every car without payment, and there are weight/fuel considerations as well. While heated seats might not use more fuel, I’d assume something like adaptive suspension or extra speakers in a sound package do reduce mileage.

    In some sense, I do understand this approach. I’ve purchased computer hardware with extra CPU and RAM that could be “rented” for a short time, or purchased. In the case of a car, I’d like to be able to “purchase” heated seats forever with a similar charge to what I’d initially pay. Or maybe a rental makes sense if this includes a warranty while the item is rented. Certainly being able to turn this on later on a secondhand car would be great. There’s also the idea that you could turn off a feature you didn’t like and stop paying.

    I also understand the cost structure here. If every car is built the same, the costs of manufacturing go down, even if there is some loss on a percentage of customers not using the feature. If too few turn this on, I’m sure BMW (and others) abandon the idea. If enough do, I expect we’ll see other features, especially the electronic ones, being added to the list of options.

    Ultimately, the use of software to lock features, and unlock them, makes sense in some cases and not in others. The devil is in the details, and certainly I think companies need to tread carefully here, ensuring they are pricing the options in a fair way. I also think they need to account for perpetual ownership as one of the options.

    Cars are notoriously modifiable, and I do think this will succeed. I’m sure there will be jailbreaks and unlock codes available all over the Internet, but I’m not sure this will stop vendors from renting features. There are ways people can modify iPhones already, though I’m not sure most consumers care.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.