Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Looking Back at the Decade

    Today is the last day of 2019, and the last day of the 2010 decade. I’m still somewhat amazed by the fact that we’re entering the 2020s and we still don’t really have flying cars. We’re well past 2001 and 2010, and still not much space exploration, though the growth in computing power and AI/ML likely accounts for the success of rockets that can take off and land and be used again. I’m still impressed by SpaceX. I’m also thrilled that I got to see the first rocket that landed successfully. Actually, we didn’t see much more than a flare light up and then go out, but my son and I were at Cape Canaveral, watching from the causeway on that historic night.

    In the last decade, we’ve seen a number of SQL Server releases. 2008 R2 was released in 2010, and since then we’ve had 5 other releases. Back in 2010, we didn’t have Availability Groups. We had clustering, Database Mirroring, and Log Shipping for HA/DR. We had no in-memory capabilities or columnstore indexes, things we assume are available now, even though not many of us use them. Maybe more surprising, the idea of SQL Server on Linux was still my most popular joke for most of this decade.

    Data became very important this decade, perhaps most notably with the passage of the GDPR in the EU. Whether you think this is a good law or not, it has changed how we view data. No longer is data something that organizations own and humans have no rights against it. I think it’s a good start, and lots of other regions are basing laws on the GDPR. We could do better, and ask for more control, responsibility, and accountability over data, but this is a good start.

    I also think that many people have started to become more data savvy and competent in how they work with database systems. While we see lots of basic and silly questions at SQLServerCentral, I see less of the completely ignorant questions being posted and more often I see complex requirements that are hard to handle in SQL.

    We’ve seen quite a rise in NoSQL database platforms. Neo4J was released in 2007 and MongoDB in 2009, but both have had a lot of growth in the last ten years. We’ve seen Apache Spark and Databricks appear and become integrated with SQL Server, which isn’t something I’d have thought about in 2010. Similarly, the evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Lake are extremely recent. Windows Azure itself was actually released in Feb 2010. Now, it’s a collection of over 600 services that many of you use everyday. AWS has had similar growth to the point where I think many of us do think cloud first for many systems these days.

    SQLServerCentral was in v3 of it’s existence back then. The original ASP site had been rewritten in ASP.NET and then nHibernate when Redgate Software purchased the site. Since then we’ve continued to grow and thrive, adding our popular Stairway Series and continuing to help you learn and solve problems every day.

    T-SQL Tuesday was just getting going, in its first year. We’ve now had 10 years of the blog party happening every month. After a long run, Adam Machanic moved on in life and I now manage the event from tsqltuesday.com. If you haven’t ever participated, it’s a good way to get started with a blog and building a brand for your career.

    Quit a bit has happened since 2010. Data growth is astounding, and continues to increase. Exabytes were surprising back then, but today we talk in terms of ZB, another order of magnitude. I think that provides lots of challenges and opportunities for us to grow as data professionals in the next decade. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are as well.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Looking Back at the Year

    Just two days left in 2019, and I thought this would be a good day to look back at the year. It’s been a busy and long year, but a great one for me. I hope many of you feel the same, but if it’s been a hard year, I hope next year is better.

    I started the year doing more learning for myself and some coaching 13 year old kids at volleyball. Those tasks kept my busy for the first third of the year, and I managed to get through a few books, learn a few skills, and enjoy some time with SQL Server. It was still busy, as I didn’t get a weekend off between Jan and April with either my daughter’s team or mine playing in a tournament.

    After April, I picked up the pace with events. I’ll close out the year with 9 SQL in the City Summits and 7 SQL Saturdays. That was most of my year traveling, apart from the pre-con days at the PASS Summit. I normally go to a few more conferences, but decided not to this year. This was not as much speaking, but a lot of travel. This was my biggest year, where I flew over 140,000 miles and spent nearly 90 nights away from home. Fortunately, about 40 of those were with my wife, which makes it much more enjoyable.

    This year saw a new release of SQL Server, one that I think is a milestone and will change the way we look at the platform. It will take a decade before most of our instances are at the 2019+ level, but this is the start of new ways to look at the platform with containers and scale out clusters. I’m excited by the possibilities and I look forward to how people will build systems in the future.

    It seems that security was less of a news item this year, though there were still plenty of incidents. I was amazed that after all the press about security issues that so many Elasticsearch servers are still out there with no password. There really is not good reason for this. I’d like to think that this is the line in the sand, and if you install a server with no password after today, you’re just terminated. Or arrested. That happened this year.

    Redgate turned 20 this year, which was amazing for me. I’ve known the company for 18 years and watched it grow and change in that time. I’ve worked there for 12 years, and hope to see 20. Next up is 20 years for SQLServerCentral, which will be just over a year away.

    I had a great year overall, and I’ll write more on my blog if you’re interested. I am looking forward to 2020, and I hope you are as well.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • The Best DBA Gifts

    It’s a few days after Christmas, which many of us celebrate, though there are certainly other holidays that people enjoy. Whatever your beliefs or tradition, this is a time of year when many of you likely received some gifts for the holiday season. Maybe you got something exciting, maybe something highly desired. Maybe you got a big joint gift for you and your partner. My wife and I used to give ourselves something nice that we’d both enjoy. In the past, we’d gotten new furniture for our bedroom or a big TV.

    The last few years, as my children have become adults, we’ve gone to a family Secret Santa. We have a limit ($40 this year), so I wasn’t expecting anything special, but I am always interested in seeing how creative others are. In the past I got a kid playing guitar and singing a song for me. I’ve also had some creative art projects in the last few years.

    There’s more to the season than gifts, but since many of us are in a slow time over the holidays, I thought I might ask what you wish you would get from work. Today, is there something that would make your job more enjoyable, interesting, exciting, or maybe just bearable in the future.

    You might want equipment, different hours, flex time, more considerate co-workers, better code written or something else. Let us know today, and then maybe think about a plan to convince someone else to help implement it at work. You might find you can get what you want if you ask for it the right way.

    I’ve got a great job, lots of benefits, and I can’t complain about anything. Perhaps the only thing that might make life a little easier next year is a few more article submissions. Maybe one of you out there wants to help me with that gift? I hope so, and I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • A Dearth of Data

    Most of us feel that our data volumes are constantly growing. A lack of data isn’t something we worry about, at least not in production. In development, far too many people use sensitive data for developers, which certainly ensures there is enough data, but at a potential increase in liability if the data is mishandled.

    If we require developers to create their own data, often there is a problem with them not having enough, or certainly not a representative set that helps ensure the software meets enough of the specifications. This is a challenge, and while random data helps, it doesn’t always work well. This problem might be hard to solve with OLTP systems, but what about an AI or ML scenario, where we might need lots of data to train a system?

    Microsoft Research is working on ways to solve this problem. They presented a paper on Icebreaker, a technique that uses minimal data to train a model. I’m not sure I completely understand how this works, but the idea is to be able to work with very little training data and somehow still train the model. I’m guessing there is some ML inside of the process itself.

    There are all sorts of downsides with using existing data to train models. Sometimes we have inherent bias, or otherwise skewed data. Allowing a model to work with less data, and perhaps then working to change, or even skew, the data to meet our goals might help. Certainly this likely requires input and feedback from a data scientist of some sort, but that might be where we take advantage of the skills and knowledge of that staff.

    There will be more use of the AI/ML technologies in the future, if for no other reason than people are very interested in how this can improve the way that systems can help analyze data. Of course, techniques like this might help us deal with the challenges of doing so when we don’t have all the data we would like to have while building the model.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.