Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • A Summit Just North of The Big Easy

    I’m off today, traveling down to The Big Easy, New Orleans for a beignet. Well, not just a beignet, but also because I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #628 in Baton Rouge tomorrow. It’s easier, and more fun, to fly into New Orleans, so I’ll do that, have a quick snack at Cafe Dumonde and then drive up to Baton Rouge. It’s an easy, relaxing drive, and a nice (albeit warm) part of the country.  Hopefully I’ll arrive in time for a quick jog around University Lake.

    This is the 9th SQL Saturday for Baton Rouge, one of the oldest (they started with #17) and this is my fifth time going. I always enjoy the people and crowds down there and this is one of the largest SQL Saturday events in the country. The schedule has 12 tracks, and with over 500 people coming, they need that many to keep from having every room overcrowded. I have two sessions, and I’m looking forward to seeing quite a few others from other speakers, learning a bit more about SQL Server.

    I think it’s great that this event includes lots of developers from the area and covers a huge variety of topics. People come from all over the area, from Texas to West Florida, and sometimes from Arkansas and Tennesee. There is a wide variety of data related, and a few developer, sessions, as well as a nice career track. There is a huge thirst for knowledge, and for some reason SQL Saturday Baton Rouge on the campus of LSU attracts many people from all over.

    It’s great that we have people in our community that will put together a large event to help others improve their careers and get excited about databases and software. Holding an event like this takes a lot of work, and my hat is off to the organizers. They do a fantastic job and really put on a great event for everyone. I’m glad we have large events like this, and I also am glad we have people putting on smaller events all over the world. We have a fantastic SQL Server community, and it’s always a treat to get accepted to present. I hope to see some of you tomorrow and many more in the future.

    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.

  • Who’s Smarter? Humans or AI Systems?

    I used to watch science fiction movies and imagine we’d have these incredible machines that could interact with humans in amazing ways. I always believed more in the helpful and useful AI in Star Wars than the dangerous systems of movies like The Terminator or The Matrix. I could even imagine a time when we have sentient systems, though I’m not sure they are coming anytime soon.

    I used to assume the Asimov’s Laws of Robotics would be implemented without any issue. After all, doesn’t everyone worry about security? These days I’m more cynical, and I wonder if anyone would actually bother to program limitations in a system. I expect more people would assume we’ll add in the laws later, once we know the other features are working.

    I do think we will get more and more systems like IBM’s Watson, that are designed to handle many tasks. When I read pieces like this one from HBR, I actually get a little worried. Not because machines will destroy humans, but they will greatly impact and change our society, potentially in disruptive ways for society. While we’ve seen issues with manufacturing over the years, there are still humans involved, and we have learned to find other jobs over time.

    The AI revolution, if that’s what’s happening, will occur quicker, and if the HBR piece is correct, will impact many more people, across a shorter period of time. Our economies and workforce may not adapt as quickly, which has a variety of economic implications for all of us, even those of us that might be secure in our positions. If we can teach systems to accomplish tasks at a level even close to what the average human can do, we might find ourselves either out of a job or working with some sort of robot.

    I don’t know how quickly we’ll advance, or even how far we will go, but I do find that the leverage offered by implementing advanced technology is certainly increasing in a way that worries me.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Advancing Security

    One of the topics that is very important to many technology professionals is security. Security also might be one of the least understood aspects of our jobs. It’s an area that requires regular learning, monitoring, reactions, and vigilance. A healthy dose of paranoia makes a good security mindset, but this an easily devolve into greater stress and worry than might be appropriate, or the feeling that one should throw their hands in the air because of all the potential issues, attacks, and vulnerabilities.

    I think as individuals our part is to learn to write better code and scripts with security in mind, perhaps implementing best practices, but really the ways we will get better security is when vendors and platforms develop better ways to implement their security for us. They need people that study the issues and build fixes applicable to protect systems. This means we need good interfaces and basic contracts that ensure we can build software on top of platforms, but we will need to outsource this part of our security.

    Microsoft is one company that has been working to help us implement better security through defense in depth, through partnerships with other firms, and is making a difference. They’re not perfect, and there are still flaws in their software, but they are addressing and fixing them quicker and quicker. The world is changing, and Microsoft is a very different company than the one that build SQL Server 2008 R2, or even SQL Server 2012. They are maturing and becoming more responsive, and to me, more responsible about their place in the technology industry. They are striving to produce higher quality products, and when there are issues, they look to fix their mistakes quickly.

    Many of us that have struggled to believe in this new Microsoft and apply patches in a more timely manner. I’ll admit that I still rarely apply CUs unless I have a need for a fix, but mostly that’s because I don’t want any unexpected issues to crop up when I’m presenting and I don’t have time to test that regularly. Like you, I have multiple versions of SQL Server. I do catch up periodically, and I certainly try to apply Service Packs within a few weeks of release, if not sooner. As much as Windows updates can be annoying, this is more a matter of timing than concern over quality, and I do try to keep up with these.

    Will Microsoft and other vendors make mistakes with updates? Sure, sometimes there will be a patch that causes a problem with some, maybe many systems. However, we do need to grow and advance the security of our systems, which will always have vulnerabilities. Therefore, we need good quality updates from vendors like Microsoft, which I do think has happened. However, we also need customers to apply those patches. You can be slow and conservative, but don’t be negligent and try to avoid them completely. That makes the security situation worse for all of us.

    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.

  • The Financial DBA

    I’ve got an Azure subscription. At least, I think I have just one. I know I have a few Microsoft accounts, across 4 (or more) different email addresses, that I use for various VSTS development purposes, but only one should have any Azure resources. When  I check each of them, I find that I do only have resources (and charges) for one. However, I also found a strange charge on my credit card statement from Microsoft Azure. It was just a couple dollars, but as I started digging through the various statements, I couldn’t determine where the charge was from, or what it was for. As of now, I’ve opened a support case with Microsoft to track down my usage.

    This has me thinking of the future of many data professionals, some of whom will certainly have a few assets in a cloud based environment. I have a small subscription, but plenty of resources, and keeping track of which items belong to which resources and what I need isn’t always easy. It’s quite the challenge, especially when billing and finance aren’t my job. In an organization like Redgate, I’d guess we have lots resources, some of which developer provision, need, and then might forget about. Who reconciles this and ensures the assets we have are those we need?

    As we move to a world where services are used as often as assets, perhaps interchangeably, I expect that many of us will need to be accountable for not only the usage, but tracking why we’ve engaged that service. Over time, we need to retire and get rid of assets, but ensuring we remember exactly what we’re using and why can be hard over time. With a little employee movement, many of us might find ourselves in charge of services that we don’t understand, and might not be sure are necessary. We also might not be sure these services can just be discarded. The last thing we want is some uptime disruption because we terminated some service contract.

    A whole new dimension to our job is likely coming, and for many of us, this will test our documentation and organizational skills. I wouldn’t be surprised to find many DBAs or lead developers having a standing monthly meeting with someone in finance to be sure we aren’t wasting money.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.