Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Data Sovereignty in the Cloud

    I remember the court case years ago when the US government wanted to access data in Azure that was physically stored in Ireland. I wrote lightly about this and linked to the article back in 2020. This has typically been more of a concern for the EU (and other countries) than the US, but I’m sure there are organizations in the US that use the cloud and don’t want their data accessed by other countries’ governments.

    Recently, a Microsoft executive was asked about this in the French Senate. The Microsoft response was that they  (Microsoft) cannot guarantee data sovereignty for French customers. If the US government served a warrant under the Cloud Act, a US corporation would have to turn over the data.

    While the Internet is fantastic in many ways, especially the ability to communicate and collaborate with others all around the world, we still have physical countries and governments. The rules, regulations, and more vary across different countries, but apparently, those rules aren’t going to be enforced if the company doing business is based in the US.

    This might be good for the US, but not for customers in other countries. In my mind, it’s somewhat amazing that many other countries haven’t had organizations build clouds that work inside their borders. I’m especially surprised the EU hasn’t subsidized or assisted a company in growing as a cloud provider, though likely any organization that grew to a significant size was purchased by Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.

    This access apparently hasn’t happened to date, at least not in a way that is disclosed publicly. Proponents point out that this access would only be allowed with some level of evidence of a crime and a probable cause to access the data in question. That might be true, but we know from the past that a lot of government access to information is kept secret from public disclosure.

    The longer I work with data, the more I find that few organizations truly care about data privacy and protection. They give lip service to the idea, and despite employees sometimes wanting to treat data with care, profit (or other) motivations often override other considerations. I’ve mostly given up on worrying about strong data protections and accepted a significant amount of my data is likely being used by more organizations than I’d like.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Ghostworkers

    Ghostworking is pretending to be busy at work. According to this article, it’s on the rise with a number of people looking for other remote opportunities at other organizations. Some employees might be just wasting time at the office, though I suspect there is a minority that are actually working at another (second) job. Maybe they are growing a side hustle or maybe they’ve even accepted another job, and they’re spending part of there day on those tasks.

    This might be part of the reason that many managers want to get people back into the office. I think that’s flawed as a)  most managers aren’t great at their jobs and b) people still ghost work in the office. I’ve had numerous “clipboard carriers” alongside me in my career who spend an inordinate amount of time at the water cooler, coffee machine, or walking from place to place and are happy to engage in hallway chats. I’ve seen plenty of managers also not know how to hold people accountable for their work (or lack thereof). Especially technical people who find many reasons why problems are hard to solve.

    I wonder sometimes if we’ve created a culture of looking busy. Many employees schedule lots of meetings, often with managers, to provide updates or create discussions about what to do or how to do it. Often the meetings seem reasonable. However, a lot of those meetings, updates, or decisions could be cut short, and more actual work could be finished. The number of people engaged in meetings all day is crazy. That happens to me when I come to Redgate offices, but I am there for meetings, and I try to have substantive discussions. I also know I can’t do have that many meetings every week because I do need to actually get something done that helps the company.

    This quote in the article is disturbing: “The workforce is currently under immense pressure to appear productive, even when it’s counterintuitive to actual productivity…”. I wonder how many people feel this way in the modern world, and if this is a reaction to concerns about layoffs/AI replacement/something else or is it just slacking off?

    My career has been successful in part because I’ve always worked hard. I might not be a good example for many of you, as I likely work too hard, but I can say that being efficient and effective, getting tasks done on time or sooner, and not just agreeing to more work to please others has helped me. I agree to timelines that I can meet, and I work hard to get things done on time. I would say that constantly learning, finding better ways (and quicker ones) to do your job, will help ensure you have a good career. Especially if you work on things that the organization finds important, rather than those you want to tackle.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Your Favorite Improvement

    SQL Server 2025 is out in preview form. CTP 2.0 is available for you to test, and there are quite a few changes that have been added to the platform. Some of these are already in the cloud, but this is your chance to test them in your environment.

    This is version 17.x, though I don’t know we’ve really had 17 versions to work with. In any case, there have been a lot of versions in my career. I’ve connected to and worked on all of these: 4.2, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022. No 2025 yet (other than install and a few basic queries), but that’s coming.

    In that time, I’ve seen this platform evolve significantly, incorporating new features, capabilities, language changes, and more. SQL Server has been a very capable database platform for millions of users around the world. Many of you reading this have probably based a good portion of your career, if not all of it, on Microsoft SQL Server. I know I have, and it’s been a good career.

    With that in mind, and trying to be positive, what is your favorite feature/improvement/change in SQL Server over the years? What has made a big difference in your career or job? Maybe this made your customers happy, maybe something made your job easier, or maybe there’s a change that just reduced your stress.

    If you’re looking for a list of changes, there are some at Wikipedia, though this isn’t an exhaustive list. Brent wrote about his top 6 things, all of which are good changes. I certainly think that the DMVs are amazing when I look at other platforms and the lack of information they surface.

    If I think about the things that have made a huge difference for my positions, I’d say that 2005 with CTEs and DMVs were huge. However, for me, the addition of the OVER() clause and Window functions are incredible. That is one of the language changes I have used a lot over the years to simplify aggregate queries that were much harder with GROUP BY structures.

    The other feature that I think is amazing is the automatic seeding in Availability Groups. That alone makes it easy to add nodes, consider upgrades, and more without requiring long, slow backup copies. While I’ve rarely used it, I can think of many times in the past when it would have made my life much easier.

    What is your favorite improvement to the platform over the years? Let me know which thing has made your job much easier, more efficient, or maybe more enjoyable.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Can You Ask for a Raise?

    I mean, you can ask for a raise. It’s always an option, but is now the time to ask for a raise in this economic climate, where businesses can be unsettled and there are a lot of tech workers looking for jobs. I even saw a piece that noted many computer science graduates are struggling to get hired at the top tech firms. While that’s not where most people work, it seems that often other CIOs/CTOs look to the big tech firms for guidance, and they may choose to hire fewer new staffers as well.

    This is on my mind at work after reading an article on asking for a raise that I added to the newsletter. It’s a response in the advice column where a reader asks how to go about asking for a raise when they think they deserve one. It is unclear in which industry or level this person works, so I am not sure if I think the advice is good.

    The gist of the response is that anyone wanting a raise needs to make a business case about why they deserve more money. I agree with that, but the piece goes on to talk about cost of replacement and loss of knowledge. To me, those start to delve into the area of a stick over a carrot approach to asking for a raise. I have used those techniques, but only when I am truly ready to look for another job if they don’t agree. While you might think you know your manager, you never know when they (or their boss/HR) might take offense to you bringing up the losses from you leaving.

    I’d also say that if you are successful with this, it might be a one-time thing, and it might affect future bonus/raise amounts as the company thinks you’ve already gotten extra compensation.

    That’s not to say that you can’t ask for a raise. I’ve been successful making a business case that’s based on my salary compared to peers doing similar work. Experience matters a bit, but the job I do and my responsibilities matter more. Of course, if I’m near the top of a range, then I’m really asking for a promotion and a raise. That might make sense, or it might not. Ask yourself as you build a case if you’d respond well if you owned the company and this was presented to you.

    Maybe the most important thing to evaluate is the situation in which your business finds itself right now. Is it doing well? Sales/revenue/profits increasing? Are they lean on staff and need to hire more? Or is that not the case? Does your management seem to value experience and the work you do or are most of the staff pressed to do more work over time, with your coworkers in similar situations?

    Maybe most importantly, do you trust your manager?

    If you don’t feel confident in positive answers to these questions, proceed cautiously. Asking for a raise is something I’d be very careful of, at least in the US in mid-2025, as it seems to be the hope of executives to use more AI to replace people. Couple that with the large number of people looking for jobs and this environment might cause a reasonable request to be denied or could create lingering ill will. That might not be worth a short-term raise.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.