Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • ER Modeling

    I saw someone recently note that an Entity-Relationship model is important for your database development project. That UML is important, and the model should be actively maintained. I agree.

    However, I’ve usually not seen this done. Typically when I’ve seen an ER diagram in a shop, it resides on a wall, printed out on multiple sheets of paper. Often there are as many handwritten additions on the pages as there are marks from a printer. The diagram is also usually out of date, even allowing for handwritten notes.

    Maintaining a diagram is hard. Deciding to actually spend time working on one instead of just talking about a few entities and building them, may be harder. This week, I wanted to ask you if you’re up to the challenge in your organization.

    How many of you maintain an ER model for your database?

    Do you have an ER diagram you’ve built? Whether it’s in ErWin, Visio, or Paint. Is there a diagram that’s actively maintained and that everyone can use for designing changes to the database(s) in use? Do people actually consult this and use it in design meetings? Let us know this week.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Big Data Problems

    Nate Silver is a “data guy.” He has made a career of analyzing data, and doing it well. His site, FiveThirtyEight, has become very popular in the last few years after some of their political predictions were surprisingly accurate. Now the site publishes analyses of sports, politics, economics, and more.

    Mr. Silver works with a lot of data, as does the rest of his company, and arguably, he’s one of the people that understands just what “big data” is and isn’t. We could argue about what the term means, but no matter what “big” is to you, Mr. Silver has some thoughts about the challenges we all face with larger data sets.

    In an interview, he noted that storage and access are always issues. Many of are us know this because we are charged with managing data. However he also talks about bias, false positives, and complexity being problems with an analysis that isn’t performed well. It’s a short piece, and I wish there were more depth since many of these topics could be the subject of a book all by themselves.

    While many of us aren’t in charge of performing the analysis, we do often work with those that do. We assist others in writing the queries or assembling the data. Our skill in helping perform analysis, understanding the meaning of data stored in our systems, and learning how to separate the signal from the noise will be talents that your employer will appreciate.

    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.

  • Working with People

    Many DBAs have gotten the reputation of being difficult to work with. I think some of this is based on the impedance mismatch between developers and DBAs that seems to cause issues in many organizations. Many developers want their changes to be deployed quickly, while DBAs want extensive review and testing to be sure that no problems will occur. This prioritization of stability over enhancements by DBAs does make us seem difficult to managers, PMs, and no shortage of clients.

    As the job of data professional has morphed and matured, many of us that might have been strictly DBAs or developers in the past now often need to work with many other people. We find all types and ranges of personalities that we must deal with, and I would guess many of us find other people difficult to deal with.

    Learning to work with difficult people is a skill itself, and I ran across a piece that talks about a few ways that each of us might work with those we find difficult. Maybe more importantly, if we are perceived as difficult, perhaps we can learn a few things about ourselves and how we might adjust our own personality to work with others, or even perhaps we can give others ideas on how to best interact with us. The piece looks at emotional intelligence (EQ), which isn’t necessarily correlated to any other sort of intelligence, so don’t think a low EQ implies anyone is lacking technical talent.

    Our interpersonal interactions are important. As important as our technical skills, if not more so. Learning more about ourselves and learning how to better work with others are important skills for us that can help ensure we have an enjoyable, as well as successful, career.

    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.

  • The Scientific Method

    What’s the greatest invention in the history of humankind? We probably each have some ideas, and we could certainly debate the answer, but Dave Farley says it’s science, and the scientific method. Many of us probably learned about the scientific method. Look at a problem, develop a hypothesis, test it, alter our hypothesis based on results. Repeat. Eventually come up with an explanation that’s proved by the evidence.

    This sounds like a good way to actually build a piece of software. However, is this what most of us do? Or do we continue to pile additional caveats and restrictions to our hypothesis and try to force the system to work a certain way.

    Is the scientific method something we need more of in software? I was watching the talk from Dave Farley, and he mentioned this. He talked about the need to examine a problem, guess how to solve it, try implementing your guess, and then examining the result. If it’s not correct, then you change something and try again. It’s an agile process that tends to work well when there are fast feedback cycles.

    However the one thing in the talk that was the most telling to me is that something isn’t finished until a customer can see it and give feedback. Until then, it’s really in limbo. I would guess that if more development efforts focused on making this happen quicker, we’d end up with better software, written more quickly.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.