Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Microsoft and R

    Microsoft purchased Revolution Analytics recently, a commercial company that works with the R programming language. This seems to be a decision to improve the analytics and analysis offerings from Microsoft. I’ve heard this will be incorporated into their Machine Learning offering, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some basic R support in SQL Server at some point. If you’re not familiar with R, we’ve got a basic piece at SQLServerCentral on it.

    Microsoft has made lots of acquisitions before, and while there’s some question of whether Microsoft can make R easy to use, I think they can. Years ago, Microsoft bought Proclarity, a company that had some BI type products. Did they succeed with that acquisition? I think they did. A number of the technologies likely made their way into PowerPivot and Power View even though the Proclarity products have somewhat disappeared, being incorporated into other products.

    The R language and environment is complex, and I’m not sure how many database developers or DBAs want to become experts. However I do think that it could be possible to make the language easier, perhaps by building functions into SQL Server that help with the data analysis and computational features, and adding extensions in ADO.NET or other client libraries that might support easier rendering of visualizations.

    We have lots of tools to help here already, with PowerPivot and other related Excel add-ins, and I suspect that any offerings here will overlap with those products, but allow Microsoft to woo an even wider audience of data professionals.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Small Experiments in Data

    Amsterdam is trying to become a smart city, with technology and investments being made in ways that will (hopefully) improve the city living experience for residents. There are a lot of items mentioned in the article, but one of the main items that I think underpins the entire experiment is data.

    The piece notes that people and organizations can contribute to public data, which is then accessible by anyone that wants to build software or applications. The idea that groups can add to, and consume, data, is important. We need lots of data to better understand, and work with, our environment. We also need to ensure that the data is accessible widely otherwise it can be stifling to the innovations that people may dream about.

    Amsterdam is participating in the CitySDK, a project that tries to standarize APIs for cities. That’s important to avoid every environment having to reinvent their own APIs. This also means that software applications written by talented developers in one place might be easily ported to other locations. Ultimately, we might find that not only do our cell phones easily work in all locations, but specific applications that we have (perhaps for something like buses or grocers), might also easily port to other places.

    I also think this provides a lot of opportunity for those of us working in software. I can see that there would be lots of organizations that have ideas for applications, but lack programming skills. There may be lots of opportunities in the future for developers to work with those that dream of new systems by bringing an idea to life. Even if you donated your time, you could polish your development skills, your communication skills with non-technical people, and dramatically improve the impression your resume makes with potential employers.

    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.

  • Computational Biologist

    I saw this job in a NYT times piece and was intrigued to see the mention of a computational biologist at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center. This is a job that couldn’t have existed in past, as throughout most of history we haven’t had computers that could do work in the way we do it today. I suppose we could possibly have had large numbers of people performing these tasks, but I’m not sure that would have been practical. I’m not even sure it would be feasible as the amount of resulting data might have easily overwhelmed any attempt at organization and understanding by a few individuals.

    What I found interesting in the piece is that the “team does not do the basic science. … His group works on the computational pipeline. They try to improve the affordability and effectiveness of cancer treatments through automation. Their goal is to help scientists and doctors tailor treatments to an individual’s situation in a way that should increase the likelihood of a successful outcome.”

    This use of data science and analysis is tackling quite a challenge here. The treatment of diverse humans is challenging, where each person can be slightly different in their biochemistry. What’s more, these diseases are still not well understood, and this doesn’t allow for a simple pattern that can be easily discerned from mounds of data. However bringing more analysis to the problem could have huge rewards for people suffering in the world.

    I have hope that in the future data will continue to solve more problems like this and make the world a better place.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.8MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • The Worst Comments

    I was watching a presentation recently on refactoring C# code and was amazed by some of the comments that the speakers showed in the code. The example was a real application that had been obfuscated and simplified a bit for the talk. The comments, however, had only been changed when they might disclose a specific person or company. The speakers pointed out a few of those changes, but also noted that most of the comments were verbatim from the original code.

    Comments like “Dave changed this from the old way”  or “Bug 445: as per the operations group” were good examples of bad comments. These items don’t really help a developer understand the code. The comments in application code should be there to add to the code itself, helping someone understand a reason for the code, not an obscure reference or an obvious statement (“this code adds two balances together).

    With that in mind, I’m sure many of you have come across some comments in code that have evoked a wide range of emotions. I’m sure you’ve been frustrated, annoyed, or something else. Perhaps even from your own comments. With that in mind…

    What are the worst comments you have found in code?

    I hope you don’t have examples in your current application, but perhaps you do. Perhaps you have even committed your own code recently without really taking the time to accurately describe the change. Maybe you want to go look in your VCS and see what you’ve entered lately.

    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.