Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Intrinsic or Extrinsic

    I was listening to an interview recently that talked about life and why many of us do what we do. It was a piece that also discussed some of the problems with modern US society and some of the potential unexpected consequences of the way that we have evolved in this country. As the discussion between the individuals proceeded, there was one question that stood out to me.

    The question was about intrinsic v extrinsic motivators. One example given was playing the piano. If you sit down at home and choose to play because you enjoy it or it relaxes you, that’s an intrinsic motivation. There could be all sorts of reasons why, but essentially you’ve made a choice to participate because you want to do so. If you go play at a bar because you need to make money, or your parents force/push you to play, or something other reason that pressures you, those are extrinsic motivators.

    To be clear, one isn’t necessarily better or worse than the other, but they both affect you, as a person, differently. There are also likely a variety of different intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that you have for many of your actions. The world and life isn’t as simple as choices being the result of one of the other. Often our decisions are a blend of both.

    Today, I wanted to ask you to think about the reason you’re in your career. I assume most of you are working in technology, and you have various reasons for entering this work, some of which may not be valid anymore. Perhaps you’ve found new reasons to continue to work with data. You don’t have to publicly answer, but think about this.

    Why do you work with computers? Because you have to or you want to?

    I’m sure this is a blend of factors for you as it is for me. I started with computers because I wanted to. I didn’t have to work with them in school because we didn’t have them at first. Even through much of my university work, computers were not ubiquitous and certainly were not required for most of my classes. I chose to work with computers and technology because I really enjoyed it. Even later, since I needed a career, I chose to work with technology instead of other industries and picked databases, which weren’t my initial choice. I did move to databases primarily for money, though I’d done some development work and enjoyed the database aspect of it.

    Today, I do need to work, so I have some extrinsic motivation to continue on this path, but I also do enjoy technology, and I’d like to think that I’d continue to do this type of work even if I could make enough money in another area. My wife is different, and without money pressure, she likely won’t ever come back to technology.

    Think about your motivations and pressures today. I’d be interested in how you feel if you’re willing to share. Whether you are or not, take a moment and consider how you really feel about your career.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Reasons to Upgrade

    I ran across a good article from Glenn Berry about reasons to upgrade to SQL Server 2017. In the piece, Glenn talks about the fact that SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will fall out of Extended Support in 2019. That’s about the time that SQL Server 2014 falls out of mainstream support, which is the support that most of us have. SQL Server 2012 has fallen out of mainstream support already. While I don’t worry too much about support, some of you may, especially if you are in a regulated industry. Or you’re in the EU, in which case the lack of support might be an issue if there is ever some security breach.

    The upgrade question is one that most of us ask ourselves constantly. Many of us use plenty of different software packages, and regularly need to decide if we want to pay for a new version of Windows, Office, SQL, SAP, Dynamics, etc. In some cases we may find valid reasons that will give us a nice ROI and are worth the cost. In others, we may wonder if we really need some new feature? I certainly find that in some software, there isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade to every new version.

    These days so much software is being released at a rapid pace that we regularly have to make decisions. I get a new version of Visual Studio Code, Evernote and TweetDuck, etc. every few weeks. Often I skip these upgrades because of convenience, and only upgrade rarely to prevent being too far behind. That’s a concern because if your software is too old, sometimes the upgrade is painful.

    At Redgate, we release patches and enhancements every few weeks, though we don’t expect many customers to necessarily upgrade more than once a quarter. There are monthly releases of SSMS and SQL Operations Studio, which I may or may not apply. Often I don’t because they’re an interruption to my work. Some of us rent software, like visualstudio.com, and we get upgrades whether we want them or not, though often we can use an older version for some period of time.

    Many of these decisions aren’t that impactful to our work as they are minor changes with little or no cost. Some aren’t, and these are the ones that many technical professionals will make recommendations on whether to proceed or not. The database platform is certainly a significant decision as the costs often can significantly impact a budget. This can be especially true for mission critical applications that might require more than one server to meet HA requirements.

    Do you tend to lean towards or away from upgrades? I’ve tended to lean away, with my default answer being I don’t want to upgrade. That’s if I don’t have a compelling reason. If things are roughly equal, I’ll stick with what works. That doesn’t mean that I don’t evaluate the new version and spend some time trying to determine what features or functions might be valuable. Certainly if any of Glenn’s features are useful, you might consider moving to SQL Server 2017. If you’re coming from SQL Server 2014 or earlier, than you ought to really look at the changes in SQL Server 2016, which are significant as well.

    We recently moved SQLServerCentral to SQL Server 2017. We had been on an older OS, with limited .NET support, and when we made the decision, we decided to go ahead and choose the latest version. That’s certainly a decision I do endorse. If I’m leaving 2012, 2008, or some earlier version, why stop at  SQL Server 2014 or 2016. Go ahead and get to the latest version, which means you might delay your next upgrade just a bit longer.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Would You Move to Linux for Price?

    Running software on Linux is supposed to be cheaper than Windows. After all, you don’t need to pay for an OS license, right? I’m not sure I think the price of the OS is a determining factor, since it’s a relatively low amount compared to the cost of the database license. I’m sure some of your feel differently, and I’d be happy to listen to your argument as to why the Linux is better on price.

    In any case, Microsoft is looking to push the Linux version of SQL Server. For a limited time (until June 30, 2018), you can get 30% off the cost of a SQL Server license. They’ve also gotten the cost of SUSE Enterprise Server down to $0 for a year if you are a qualified customer. This does require an annual subscription, which I assume means Software Assurance. There’s not a lot of information available on their page, and I assume you’d need to call Microsoft and go through the sales process.

    It’s an interesting offer. I wonder if this would really make a difference for some of you. For the purpose of a discussion, let’s say you run an older version of SQL Server on Windows, like SQL 2000 or 2005. You want to upgrade, but your boss has been worried about costs. Now you see a 30% savings on Linux. Do you consider moving to a Linux OS instead of Windows? Let’s assume you have some Linux resources inside the company, and so there isn’t a large learning curve. Does 30% make enough of a difference do change the underlying platform? After all, for the post part, SQL Server is SQL Server.

    What if you are a Linux shop already, and you have Oracle or DB2 in house. You’re looking to move some software to a new system, or maybe develop new applications and SQL Server is being considered for cost savings. You’ve avoided it because it has required Windows in the past. Do you now consider SQL Server a more viable candidate as a relational database inside your environment?

    Would you move to Linux for a better price?

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Auto-Deleting Data

    Email has been a part of my life for well over nearly thirty years. It’s kind of amazing to think of a time back in high school when there weren’t electronic communications. That seems foreign now, as we don’t have to send physical objects or converse with voice to communicate. The world of communications have changed dramatically.

    These days email is still a preferred method of communication for many people. Even if we use sites like Facebook, NextDoor, or SQLServerCentral to communicate with others, we often get notifications of changes through email. If you’re like me, many of you might keep far too many emails in your mailbox, rarely removing unnecessary ones. In the era where we measure storage in dozens or hundreds of GB, or even in TB, do we bother to even manage text communications?

    Some firms do require this, often for legal reasons. With the GDPR, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more organizations starting to set retention policies that ensure that communications don’t live forever. There are some systems that do this now, but the practice isn’t ubiquitous, but maybe it will be soon. Google is redesigning Gmail, which will include Confidential Mode. Not only will there be limits on these emails, but one of the more interesting is the ability to expire an email and have it automatically deleted.

    I don’t love the idea of having communications disappearing, but that might be because of the way I’ve grown up. I don’t like using Snapchat with my kids, because I don’t want pictures I take to disappear. However, younger generations don’t feel this way. As I wonder why I try to hold onto old communications and records, I start to wonder if the idea of expiring data is something that we should be embracing as data professionals. Do we really need sales records from a decade ago? Are recordings of web traffic valuable from the early days of SQLServerCentral? Is there really any point to holding onto much of the data we generate?

    I know that there are corporations that hold onto decades of paper records. I worked at one that had nearly a 100 years of old records, most of which might never be examined again. Likely plenty of them aren’t even legible or useful at this point. They’re being stored for, well, I’m not sure why. I’m sure there are plenty of writers that might come up with a detective story that requires old paper records, but I’m not sure there’s practical use for this data.

    I expect that we’ll start to see organizations changing their record retention policies as we look to avoid more liability and risk from data breaches. Every old record, every piece of PII data that we no longer use probably needs to go. Even records for existing customers might need to be removed. I don’t necessarily need to ever access the record of my first Amazon order from 1998. I’m really sure that Amazon having liability for holding my old address, which potentially could be used to validate identity, is a bad idea for both them and me.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.