Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The End of 2017

    This is it. Today ends 2017 for most of us at work and when we come back on Tuesday, it will be a new year. It’s kind of amazing to think another year has gone by, though it’s been a long year for me. I can barely remember last New Years, though I know I was skiing this time last year with my daughter. Maybe I’ll get the chance to do that again this weekend.

    This has been a busy year, full of SQL Server and database changes. We got a new version of SQL Server, and a new platform with the release of SQL Server on Linux. This has been in the works for quite some time, and I’m glad it’s come out. I keep seeing more people interested in working on the Linux platform, so I expect this will be more popular than I might have guessed. We also got the addition of Python as a languge inside SQL Server, which is cool. I like it better than R, and I expect we’ll see more and more Python code inside the platform over time. Add to that the addition of graph capabilities, and SQL Server is becoming a more well rounded platform.

    As is the case most years, security issues continue to haunt us. More data breaches, including a wide reaching set of lost data with the Equifax issues. I had hoped this would stir the US to move towards something like GDPR, but so far nothing has been done. We’ll see how GDPR affects things, though I see plenty of Redgate customers asking for features and support that will ensure they are compliant. We’re hard at work, as are many other vendors. I hope you are as well. This reminds me of the year 2000 efforts, though at a smaller scale. Now we don’t have an unknown issue as far as technology goes, but we might still have business problems if our organizations violate GDPR. I expect late 2018 and 2019 to be boom years for European solicitors.

    What seemed like a set of niche technologies, AI, ML, and bots, seem to be growing more and more important all the time. I’m somewhat amazed at how often I see talks on these topics, from both consultants and vendors, who are building systems. As I’ve looked into these areas, I’m surprised at how widespread the use of machines is already, doing work that I thought humans were doing. What’s more, the demand for data has grown tremendously in order to feed and train the systems that people are building. FWIW, supplying training data has become a big business, and I’m sure we’ll start to see yet more data about us being sold and compromised as companies seek to build more helpful systems. Helpful to their business, perhaps not to us as individuals.

    In any case, I see more and more posts and experimentation from data professionals that are using the R language, Power BI, and other tools to better analyze data. While writing reports and creating queries has been something many of us do, I think some of our colleagues have found that producing more complex data visualizations is a way of adding more value to the skills they bring to an employer. With lots of deeper analysis in the news, I think that the management in many companies appreciates this and may expect it from future employees. Something to keep in mind.

    There has been plenty of technological change, but overall the year seems to have focused on many soft skill matters. With the awareness and outrage over various behaviors by those in power, I wonder if we will start to see changes in our industry. I’ve been proud of the Women in Technology efforts from PASS and others across the last few years, and I hope we continue to grow and evolve to treat each other as the capable professionals we are. I also am glad to see more and more tech companies and events embracing a more professional, less bro-grammar culture.

    It’s been a long year, and an interesting one as DevOps continues to dominate the world of software development. I hope to see that continue, especially as my employer has devoted a lot of work to help include databases any DevOps culture. However, as I heard recently at SQL in the City, DevOps isn’t an excuse to ship more crappy software to customers. That include databases, so as you move forward, perhaps at a quick pace, don’t forget to evolve your database in line with well known and well documented database design principles.

    2017 has been a good year, and I look forward to 2018. Happy New Year, have a safe holiday, and I’ll see you in 2018.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.8MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Back From Vacation and Ready To Go

    It’s been a good holiday for me. I had a week’s vacation with just my wife, a nice holiday with kids, and a relaxing week where I’m trying to get a few things done. I’ve been away from my home office for two weeks, and it often takes a few days to get used to focusing again at the computer, but I’m getting there. It doesn’t help that the office, err, house is full of people with my kids away from school.

    The year is coming to a close, and it’s a slow week, as I noted yesterday. However, I’m refreshed and recharged. Getting away on an adventure, without a computer to spent time on was great. I did no work and just enjoyed the time away. That’s how a vacation should go, and it’s the type of trip I need to take more often.

    Now it’s time to move forward again. As I wrote about in my goals post, I’m planning on spending some time thinking how to achieve my learning goals in 2018. Today is that day, with an hour set aside to do a little research for resources and attempting to build some sort of calendar with milestones that will help me move forward. Those are the personal items for my career, tangential to my work.

    The other part of today is really digging into where I want SQLServerCentral to go next year. We need to be mobile friendly moving forward (thanks for the push, Google) and that means some code changes. I want to be more involved here, along with upgrade plans to get us onto more modern platforms. The old SQL2008/WS2003 system works, but it’s not ideal, and we can’t take advantage of newer technologies and opportunities that Microsoft has released. My thought is to add new content and new sections to the site, including some better quiz/test/assessment ways for people to check their skills and work towards their own goals. If you have ideas, let me know.

    It’s been a great year at SQLServerCentral, and I hope you feel the same way. Now, on to 2018 and let’s see where we can go.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The Slow Week

    This is usually a very slow week for most organizations. Staff is on vacation, customers aren’t demanding much, and it’s entirely possible if you’re in the office today that you’re a bit grumpy as Monday was Christmas and many of us haven’t had quite enough of a holiday this year. With many employees in the same situation, and another holiday coming next week, it’s likely that everything in your shop is moving a bit slow. Certainly there are no shortage of people that might be on vacation this week. Usually it’s a ski week for me, but not this year.

    Some of you might be just as motivated to get things done this week as any other. In fact, with less people around, you might even be more productive and perhaps are taking advantage of the time. Others of you might be trying to mosey along through your workday, enjoying a relaxed pace of work.

    I find that this is a good week in the office for me to catch up on some work that might not get a priority the rest of the year. Perhaps there are some processes that I’ve been wanting to automate, but never found the time. Perhaps my automation isn’t quite as robust or resilient as I’d like. These are the times when I can actually make a few changes and try to improve a system for the next year. If I finish early, then I’ll often use this as a chance to learn something or tackle some POC that’s on my list.

    That hasn’t always been the case. My first exposure to SQL Server was with a system that went live on Dec 31 at midnight. In the week leading up to the launch, I was working with various other employees and contractors to get a plan in place for the cutover, including new equipment installed and all the various networking and security changes that were required. It was a busy week for me, and one that sticks in my mind. Despite all the prep work and testing, after turning the new system on we found that it couldn’t handle the load. Rollback wasn’t an option, so my 5pm-2am shift didn’t go as planned. I worked through the next day and into the early evening before being relieved.

    If you have a slower week, consider taking advantage of the time to do something interesting at work and have some fun in a way that might benefit you and your employer down the road with a new script, a stronger skill, or even a better way to handle some task. There are still a few days this week that you can use to try something.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Making Choices

    I wrote about shutting down some travel for the foreseeable future. Its been a long couple of years for me. If you look at my speaking schedule, I’ve presented at an average of 20+ events for the last few years. This year was a few less, but I’ve had more travel outside of that. By the end of the year, I’ll have spent 9 weeks outside of the US. While some of that is vacation, it’s a lot of time away from home. In addition to the events, I’ve had other travel for work that doesn’t appear there, as well as some vacation time for volleyball (my daughter competes) and family time.

    Lately I’ve been seeing all the tweets and posts about SQL Bits 2018. I won’t be going, which is sad for me. I love the event, it’s my favorite and my wife would love to go with me sometime, maybe in 2018. As I see speakers submitting and the excitement building, it feels like I should just send in a session, but I realize I need to stick with my decision.

    Making choices is hard. For a couple years I’ve been saying  I need to travel a bit less, but I haven’t done a good job of slowing down my travel. I find that I’ve done that with other work demands in the past (and personal ones), and I see plenty of other people doing the same thing. This fall I made the commitment that I’d limit travel next year, and I talked to my manager as well. We agreed on a plan, and she’s holding me to the plan, even when I get a bit excited about new events.

    My current job allows me some flexibility in how I work, but in past jobs I’ve had similar ways that I could change my job, if I made the effort do so. Your employer will ask a lot of you, and often keep asking. I’ve certainly had some bosses that were unreasonable and demanded too much, but most were willing to work with me. It took me a number of years to learn to push back and say no, as well as learn to make choices among different situations. I find if I don’t make choices, I’ll tend to over commit and under deliver, while being disappointed in myself that I couldn’t make it all work. Or I become a little burned out, spending too much time trying to keep all the balls in the air and running myself ragged.

    Balance is important, not only between work and life, but also within work. I find that the more I make choices and stick with them, the better adjusted I am in all of my life. I’m a little sad that I won’t speak at as many events next year, but I’ll pick and choose a few, and hopefully get some things done at work that I’ve been putting off. I’m also hoping that life will seem less chaotic and busy in general, with a little more time to relax and smell the sawdust.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.