Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Learning Choice

    I advocate learning constantly for those of us in technology. This might be especially important for data professionals as we are at the nexus of so muc activity these days. Data is important, our systems are under scrutiny for security, there is an every growing set of applications that want to connect, and we often struggle to keep up in a fast-paced, DevOps world. It feels like my plate is overflowing with the need to understand PowerShell, JSON, the cloud, Hadoop and its myriad of related technologies on the Microsoft Stack, machine learning, data science, statistics, and when I have time, make sure I’m up to date with SQL.

    Recently I’ve run across a few pieces that ask the question about where to spend time. There’s a blog on R v Python (I’ve seen quite a few of these) and a thread on deciding if ML skills are something a database developer should learn. These are just a few of the ones I’ve seen in the last month, as I guess lots of people are thinking and writing about New Year resolutions and goals.

    We have a limited amount of time for learning each day, week, month, or year. We might be able to increase that for a short time, perhaps months, but all of us need some balance in life. Given that there’s a limited amount of time, and that we need some focus and practice over time to absorb skills, where do you spend your effort in learning?

    Jeff Moden is an advocate of you sharpening your T-SQL skills with deep learning, as he sees this as one of the main reasons that applications perform poorly (and people post in our forums). Others lean towards adding new skills, perhaps adding SSIS proficiency or transitioning your analysis skills to Extended Events. Still others might seek to become more generally rounded by spending time on C# or Python.

    There are also other views, such as focusing on the skills you need in your current position. If you’re not happy, maybe you want to devote learning effort to get a job in an area where you’re passionate. Or maybe you just want to make more money, and are willing to spend time in those technologies that are paying more.

    The choice is up to you, and I can’t give you the answer that suits your path. You must find a balance between work and the rest of life, and make the choices that best fits you. I don’t want to imply this is easy. Thinking about the things that really matter to you and affect how you approach each day is a difficult exercise. My advice is that you go in one of two ways. If your career is something that you feel passionate about, focus your learning in a way that will help you find a job that brings you purpose. If you just need a job to pay the bills, learn things that increase your earnings, but ensure that you have family, faith, hobbies, or some other endeavor outside of work that brings purpose and fulfillment to you.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Influence the Program

    When I first started going to the PASS Summit, I was enthralled with the speakers, no matter what the topic. Meeting Kalen Delaney at the first Summit was a milestone in my career. In those early years, there weren’t many speakers, and they submitted the talks they were interested in giving. The program committee made their decisions, and many of us went to watch whatever was available. The surface area of SQL Server was much smaller, so we could probably guess many of the topics, and that worked out well.

    As SQL Server has grown, some of us have questioned the makeup of the sessions over time. At one point it seemed we were very light on BI, almost as if the conference hadn’t kept pace with the changes in the platform. It seemed that the next conference was based on ratings and attendance from the previous Summit, but that’s a slowly changing way to pick talks.

    Things changed, and for a number of years PASS has been trying to understand what content you’d like to see. There have been surveys and polls to understand not only what worked last year, but what changes should happen this year. Last year’s tracks were set not by technology, but by the Analyze/Build/Design/etc. monikers. I’m not sure I loved that, but it was a worthy experiment.

    There’s a survey open from PASS from now until Feb 14, trying to understand what you’d like to see. Once again, they are asking what you’d like to see. I’d encourage all of you to fill it out, as you can truly influence the balance of sessions that will be presented. Do you want more ML/AI/bots, and other advanced topics? Do you need more beginning content for your junior DBAs? Is the core engine still important for you, or are you looking for SSIS, SSRS, or other content. Power BI on your radar?

    Speakers often have preferences, and I see no shortage of conferences that just pick talks from what they get. This can make a disjointed event at times. I like the idea of having submissions in areas that I might not consider as an organizer, but I also think that inviting speakers to talk on specific topics is good. I’m glad PASS does a mix of these things, inviting some speakers, asking for topics, and also taking community submissions. Many of us that present are happy to slightly tailor our talks if we know that’s what the audience wants.

    So take the survey, with a chance to win a Summit admission. Tell the committee if DevOps and testing are important (they are), or if you want to see more SSAS content (are there that many of you using this?). Even if you aren’t going, it’s useful for us as a community to learn what’s of interest to everyone. I’d also request that you ask PASS to release the data, which will help SQL Saturdays and other events better plan their schedules.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Finding the Right Data

    For a couple years, Big Data was heavily hyped, and Hadoop became incredibly popular. In fact, so popular that Microsoft build HDInsight and Polybase to allow us to take advantage of these technologies and integrate them into our own systems. While the year has seen less hype on “big data” specifically, more and more of us are dealing with large amounts of data every day. There isn’t a good definition of Big Data I’ve seen, but whatever you thought it meant five years ago has surely changed to mean larger volumes today.

    One of the important things that many organizations are learning is that they don’t necessarily need more bits and bytes of all their data. They’re increasingly learning that they need more of the right data, which is the data that is useful to them. Often this is the data that lets them make decisions that improve their revenue, profits, efficiency, etc. As we move to GDPR this spring, it might also me more auditing data that prevents problems or satisfies regulators.

    I ran across an interesting article that talks about companies needing the right data, which can often mean unstructured data outside of their traditional OLTP databases when dealing with customers. The article focuses on NLP (natural language processing) and social media data, but it could just as easily mean audio/video data from customer calls (or emails) or even sensor data from systems that are managed and track the ability of customers to use your product or service.

    As the world of computing advances, many of us know that we need to find new and better ways to provide value to our employers. This might be with managing and gathering or tracking a wider variety of data, perhaps meaning that some of us need to keep some of those tweets or posts inside our systems. It could be that we need to provide new ways of analyzing data, maybe with some sort of ML (Machine Learning) or AI (Artificial Intelligence) processing. Perhaps it’s that we need to collate and collect detailed auditing information we can produce on demand to ensure our organization complies with legal requirements.

    Perhaps there’s some other way that our work as data profressionals will change, but I’m sure it will continue to change and evolve across the next decade. I’m also sure this means lots of new and different data opportunities for us, if we’re willing to grab them with the right data.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • We Do Need To Upgrade

    I advocate that we should get a long life from our database platforms. In fact, I like to think about a 7-10 year lifetime for many of my database instances. That means I’ll get beyond the 5 year lifetime that Microsoft provides and move into the extended support. Actually, for most of my career, I’ve run instances without support and haven’t had issues. We invest a lot in databases, and I want companies to invest a lot because they are important. That means I need a good payback.

    Microsoft should provide security patches for products throughout the Extended Support period, which means that I should be able to run SQL Server and Windows securely for 10 years. that probably stretches the lifetime, but certainly that gives me time after five years to begin planning and prepping for an upgrade.

    The problems for many customers come when other vendors don’t bother to keep supporting older software and providing patches. Even if Microsoft releases a security fix for your OS, the vendor that makes software you run on top of Windows or SQL Server might not. That’s an issue, and it’s one that will become more of an issue as companies become reluctant to change software that works well.

    This article shows that older ATM machines running XP and Windows 7 are having issues. Some of this is physical access, but some is related to issues in the OS. While Windows 7 should be getting patches, Windows XP is not and needs to be upgraded. In fact, I’d argue that any losses here should be born by ATM owners and not covered by insurance for not having upgraded their systems.

    While I like to get as much time as I can from a system, it’s irresponsible to expect software to run without security patches being actively applied, which includes any upgrades from vendors. In some cases, this might be negligent by the companies doing so, especially for embedded systems. I don’t know that I want governments to force vendors to provide patches, but I’d like companies to write contracts that ensure that patches will exist for come lifetime of the products. In the event the company can’t provide patches (or certification), then they’d need to release their code as open source so that someone can provide a patch.

    The world becomes more intertwined and dependent on computing, from things like convenience services or core systems. We can’t have those systems becoming more vulnerable because companies are unwilling to upgrade and vendors abandon older software. Some sort of compromise is needed to ensure that computer systems are protected from known vulnerabilities.

    Steve Jones