Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Reasonable Timeframes

    Many of us hear about problems with various systems on a regular basis. We report them in Database Weekly far too often, and I’m sure a few of you have been informed (or found) bugs, nagging issues, even vulnerabilities in your systems.

    What’s a reasonable time to fix a system after an audit?

    It’s a simple question, but it’s not very simple to answer. After all, most of us don’t have a lot of slack development time built in to fix issues. Unless the issue is a broken application that doesn’t work, the items disclosed in an audit need to scheduled in among other work. After all, most of the time the audit finds something that no one is aware of, or no one has wanted to fix. This is work that no one really planned on completing.

    I ran across an interesting piece about the Employment Department for the state of Oregon hasn’t fixed a number of issues after an audit last year. While some strides have been made, there are still outstanding issues, the sum total of which it is estimated will take a decade to complete. That’s a long time, but in large systems, especially ones where the entire application cannot be rewritten because of resources, it’s not unusual. I’ve worked in a few places where we had large scale systems that we knew had issues, but we couldn’t easily re-design and implement fixes in any reasonable length of time. Often this was because of downstream dependencies, but certainly culture and management hadn’t made change a priority.

    I sympathize with those people dependent on mainframe systems. The power and reach of those systems, the poor documentation, not to mention the complex training required to change clients’ habits is huge. I would hope that the government groups using these large scale systems would work together to jointly proceed on development, with politicians also involved to help standardize the requirements across state lines (or countries’ borders) and simplify the software needed.

    However, no one ever makes software simpler, especially when it’s being designed.

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • The Digital Woes of Public Records

    Researcher Chris Vickery, discovered that 191 million voter records are available to the public. The information was in a database on the Internet, which seemed to be a collection of voter records and information compiled from public sources in various US states. While no Social Security numbers were present, names and dates of birth, as well as address and voting scores were in the database.

    That’s scary, though potentially not a problem. A number of states publish voter data as public records. A few might have restrictions on the use of that data, but the fact that the data is available means it could be used maliciously, with overburdened authorities unlikely to prosecute anyone even if they’re caught.

    This is one of those areas where our understanding and control of data hasn’t caught up to the digital age. It is one thing when public data is available to those that must physically search for it, or even query for singleton records. However data can reveal much more information, or even be used in new ways when large volumes of it is available. Now the ability to access every voter’s name, address, and date of birth could potentially be a problem.

    I see so much data that we might have taken for granted in the past, thinking nothing of it’s visibility, being a problem in the future. When someone can gather large amounts of data, and store is cheaply, even accessible in something like a data lake, we may find that public data is problematic. When anyone can start to gather and combine lots of data from different sources, we might find that capability quite scary as potentially lots of information about individuals can be determined. We’ve seen anonymous data sets de-anonymized with the application merge of data from different sources.

    I truly hope that we find ways to better protect and ensure privacy in the future, as all the capabilities and power that computing brings to data analysis truly has a dark side.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Culture and Performance

    Most people in management seem to believe that culture matters in a company. I know some don’t, and I’ve worked for a few of those people, whichi s never an enjoyable experience. As the world seems to change to more and more knowledge work for people in technology, it seems that businesses are starting to realize that the way their employees feel about the company can have a direct impact on the company’s bottom line.

    There’s an article about culture and motivation in the Harvard Business Review that I think does a good job of looking at how well people perform when they have various motivations. The authors talk about the six reasons why people work, each of which can drive motivation in a different way. Some are positive motivators, some are negative, and it’s good to be aware of the differences.

    This ties into culture in that the way your organization is built. The culture that pervades the company can really determine how employees are motivated. More negative motivators result in less performance, especially creative performance, from employees.

    I don’t think that building a great team and getting the most from people is necessarily this simple. Different people respond differently to a culture, and the same person might even respond differently at different times in their employment. However I do think that you can look to adjust the way you fit each employee in, with the work you assign, the support you give, and the demands that you make on them.

    The mark of a good manager is that they find ways to treat each employee differently, in a way that suits them best, while maintaining a core set of values and rules for the entire organization.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

  • Who’s Got a Preteen SQL Server?

    This year we will have the end of extended support for SQL Server 2005. Microsoft has been reminding people they should upgrade, which may be important if your organization requires support for the running software. Personally I think if you’re still running SQL Server 2005, and it works for you, why upgrade?

    It’s been ten years since that version was released, and while it was a huge step forward with the SQL CLR, better mail, and more, it had plenty of issues. Since that time we’ve had 4 major releases with a fifth coming this year. All of those versions have built on the base of SQL Server 2005’s completely rewritten codebase and have improved many features.

    Recently I got a note from someone that noted that they have been upgrading their SQL 2005 systems over the last few years (along with SQL 2008 instances) and have made great progress. however they still have a few SQL 2005 instances that they are racing to upgrade. This person was wondering how many others are out there facing similar struggles.

    So this week I’m wondering. How many of you have those instances growing up and getting close to double digit ages? Are you working to upgrade SQL 2005 instances? Have you been thinking about those 2008 instances who are already out of mainstream support and will leave extended support in a few years?

    Let us know how you think about your aging database software.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.