Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • A View of the Cloud

    Amazon has been an amazing digital company in the last twenty years. I remember making my first order from them, unsure of whether the online bookstore would work better than browsing locally, or if I’d even get my books. I watched them transform into a great shipping company that could sell anything, to a digital reading company with the Kindle, and even an amazing cloud hosting provider with world class programming platforms. At each stage, Amazon has grown to become even more efficient and seductive, slowly gaining more of my business over the years.

    Whether you like the business model and practices of Amazon or not, part of the reason Amazon has become a successful company is that they have an incredible software development process and great developers, both of which have produced a software stack that is very impressive. Apart from their web site, which is impressive, they host their Amazon Web Services, which is a dizzying array of services that can be purchased by anyone, at any time, and get some software up and running quickly. Even if you look at their free tier, it’s very impressive in the number and type of services, including database access.

    I ran across a piece on the 10 year anniversary of AWS that contains some software development lessons from Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon. It’s a good list, and while some might not apply to your particular environment in the same way, it’s a good list of principles to follow. Certainly planning to evolve and to handle failures is something that most of us need to consider. Including security from the ground up, however, is one thing that many of us know, but don’t have good patterns, practices, or habits to follow. Even those companies that work in security conscious areas often leave security concerns until they are well into, or even finished, with their core software development.

    The one area that I think is going to become more important for all of us in the future is understanding resource usage. Certainly we’ve needed to know some baselines and expected growth in the past to plan for upgrades and future needs. However, with the move to VMs and cloud services, how many of us really know what resource usage we would require for peak workloads and when. I suspect most people don’t really know how to map their instance resource usage across different virtual systems, much less evaluate whether their system would be cost effective in a cloud scenario. A better understanding of what resources we really use is something that more and more organizations are going to expect from their technical professionals. I only hope we get some tools to help us here as this is a complex topic.

    The move to cloud services is going to happen for many of us. We might not move all our data, or even much of it, but as we experiment with new platforms, as companies work to avoid capital expenditures, and as the platforms and services mature, more of us will end up with some cloud platform in a portion of our organization. During your journey, or even while you still work with on-premise systems, I’d keep the principles in Mr. Vogels’ article in mind. They’ll help you to build better software in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Your Favorite Feature that Needs Work

    The SQL Server platform has grown tremendously since I started working with SQL Server v4.2. We’ve had various subsystems added, lots of enhancements, and even new languages. There have also been a few parts of the platform that have been discontinued, such as Notification Services and English Query. There are items that are deprecated, though far fewer that have actually been discontinued from the product. I’m not sure if I think that’s better or worse for all of us.

    Apart from the deprecated, discontinued, and removed features, there are also lots of features in the platform that are stale. They receive very little development, and perhaps are very lightly featured on the What’s New pages. Or they never get any development from version to version.

    This week, I’m curious what features you use or like that need help. SQL Server v.Next is in development, and while I don’t think major changes will be made between now and RTM, perhaps there are improvements that could be made in some areas. I’m sure there are a few SQL Server developers at Microsoft that have time to ask for a few more pull requests from their particular area of development. With that in mind…

    What feature in SQL Server do you really like and wish would be improved in the future?

    Your idea would be large or small. Perhaps you have some language enhancement. Maybe you run setup regularly and there is a change that might streamline that process. It may be that replication conflict resolution is a constant problem for you and you’d like a few development hours spent on this. It could be anything that you use, or would like to use. Perhaps you have an idea for an improvement, or maybe you just want something done. Let us know today.

    The place to log bugs or feature requests is at the SQL Server Connect site. Post your idea there, then put a link in the discussion and make a case for why people should vote for it. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll get some improvement for the feature you like in the next version of SQL Server.

    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.

  • The Great and Powerful Internet of Things

    Will we have the IoUT (Internet of Useful Things? As some have said, the IoS (Internet of Sh**e) is really what we have because of the poorly built, poorly secured hardware and software devices. It seems that almost every month I see new devices introduced in the consumer space, most of which aren’t well designed for widespread use, and certainly aren’t very durable. There are, of course, exceptions, including a few I’d like, but for the most part, the rush to market means that many of the IoT devices sold aren’t much better than most of the home built Kickstarter projects. That’s not to say Kickstarter (or Indiegogo or any other site) doesn’t produce good products, just that some aren’t.

    We’ve got an infographic from Website Guide today that you can examine. It’s an interesting item, which is why I published it. There are a lot of great possible applications for IoT style devices. Plenty of businesses and industries are seeing the benefits of using sensors and devices that are (semi-) smart and connected to a network. Using well written applications, companies can come up with new ways of gathering and using information. When these systems are well designed, this can result in lower costs, higher sales (or usage), happier customers, or all three.

    As you scroll down the infographic, you’ll see the dark side of IoT, which is getting more press all the time. Security is the number one concern, as far, far too many devices don’t include the necessary security to protect either the device or the end user. I did watch an IoT demo at Live!360 last year using the Azure IoT hub, and was glad there was some authentication and ability to shut down devices that might be compromised or misbehaving, but far too many IoT systems aren’t well secured.

    That’s disconcerting for me as a database professional. I expect that more and more companies will use IoT in some way. I’d even like to find time for some IoT sensors around the ranch, tracking horses and ensuring they’re all walking around every day. The thing that concerns me is what happens when someone finds ways to hijack or hack a device? Even sensors could be hijacked. What if you’re processing temperature information in dynamic SQL and someone decides to heat and cool the sensor to create certain values? Are you sure your database isn’t vulnerable?

    These concerns leave out the potential for the misuse of any data that’s collected about users, especially if users aren’t aware of what’s being collected and its use. With so many ways of collecting data now, I’m not even sure that anyone has a good handle on all the data collected about them, not to mention how it’s being stored, secured, and used.

    I think there’s incredible potential for some great IoT applications and data in the future. All the forecasts and spending seem to point towards the next 5-10 years being a period where there will be an explosion of the number of types devices built and deployed. Those devices will produce a tremendous amount of data for us to manage in databases. We will have big challenges in storing, indexing, managing streams, and certainly, the pruning of old data.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn

  • A Wide Variation in Skill

    I was helping someone recently clear up some confusion about the encryption structure of their TDE databases. This individual wasn’t sure about how the various keys were used, which ones needed to be backed up, and which keys needed to be restored. As this was an online discussion, anyone could read the posts and add their own thoughts. There was a point where one person chimed in that the process was really easy and anyone should be able to complete it.

    I do think that working with TDE is easy, but I also think that its easy for me because I have experience and practice with the technology. There are nuances to undestanding how the piece fit together and what needs to happen in order to ensure your system operates smoothly during both deployment and in disaster recovery situations. Since mistakes can result in lost data, I understand why people might feel intimidated or nervous, but once they practice a few skills and gain knowledge, I find they get the confidence to proceed.

    Their fear is often because of ignorance, which is understandable. All of us have things to learn, especially in technology where the rate of change is quite high. Before we learn something, or even while we’re trying to understand concepts, various tasks might seem quite difficult, or even complex. These might be simple tasks, such as restoring a certificate or sending a set of objects through a Powershell pipeline or writing a unit test.

    Just because you can do something doesn’t mean everyone can. Just because one person finds a task easy doesn’t mean others won’t find it complex. The knowledge that each of us gathers over time isn’t consistent or easily mapped. We all learn different skills at different times, in varying orders and to fluctuating depths. One of the very frustrating things about technology is that there isn’t a defined path for a particular technology, or even job. Someone that begins working with SQL Server might learn T-SQL first, or backups, and not get to the user/role/GRANT security model for some time. Even then someone might easily add logins and users to roles, granting permissions, but being unaware of the difference between REVOKE and DENY, or be confused by the WITH GRANT option.

    I am not excusing the inability of someone to be competent at their job, but I do think that ignorance deserves some understanding and tolerance. While you might be annoyed that someone doesn’t know how to take a COPY_ONLY backup, I would hope you would treat them as a colleague that needs to learn a new skill and not chastise them if this isn’t something they’ve every dealth with before. If they can’t learn this skill and make mistakes over and over, then that’s a different situation and perhaps they aren’t competent. We should understand ignorance once or twice, but after that the person might need to find a new job.

    I see plenty of people that are constantly working to improve their skills and get better at their jobs. I also see plenty of people content to continue their career with the same level of knowledge they’ve had for a long time, unable or unwilling to change and produce better code or faster systems. I also see plenty of skilled individuals treat both groups of people with the same level of scorn, contempt, or shame. I saw a comment posted recently about how Linux supporters will often mock people using Windows and then deride the same people for asking questions when they switch to Linux. I would hope that our SQL community would treat others better than that.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.