Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Infographics

    A few years ago I went to a seminar from Edward Tufte that talked about information and how we can better present it to people to convey information and help make better decisions. I was fascinated by the talk, loved many of the examples, and then didn’t get to do much with it. I found that it was hard to come up with ways to convey lots of information, and more importantly, it was time consuming to try and build incredibly dense visualizations.

    I thought this graphic of Napoleon’s army and this one of the Salyut 6 flight were interesting, but I wasn’t sure how they’d translate to any of the business world’s I’d worked in. However, I know I’ve seen some very helpful infographics and visualizations over the years, and I’m sure you have as well. This week, I’m wondering:

    What is an infographic (or visualization) that you found to be both visually pleasing and very useful?

    It could be an animation, a static image, or something else. I know a couple of the videos I’ve seen were amazing. One of Europe’s borders and another of nuclear detonations presented a lot of information in a very eye-catching way. I also enjoyed this one on traffic.

    Let us know which ways of presenting information or visualizing data have been most noticeable by you.

    Steve Jones

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  • The Challenge of Time Off

    I’ve been working full time for most of my life. Since I was 16, I’ve rarely worked less than full time, and often worked substantially more. There are times I’ve had two or three jobs, though fortunately I think those days are behind me. I have a great job now, perhaps the best job in the world, and I get a generous vacation allowance. However I do struggle to take time off some years. That’s my issue, and I’m working on trying to make sure I get away from work more. I appreciate the time off, but I also enjoy my job and the interactions I have with the community.

    However not everyone is in the same situation. There are plenty of people out there that get limited vacation, little support for taking time off from employers. There are those consultants that are self-employed and struggle with taking time off when it means they aren’t paid for that day. I’ve been in all of those situations, and here’s my advice.

    If you don’t think you get enough time off, then look for another job. The same thing applies if your boss doesn’t want to allow you to take the time off you are allotted. There are bad managers out there, and companies that look to take advantage of their employees. You can live with it, you can complain, or you can move on. The choice is up to you, but that’s what I’d do.

    I realize it’s not easy to just get a new job, but you can make a plan and move on. My wife and I did that, though it did take years. Life is short, but hopefully still lasts for many years. Making plans across years is the way to improve your situation over time, though you should still work to appreciate and enjoy the journey along the way.

    If you’re a consultant, the only thing I can say is that you need to budget. You need to limit your expenses and plan for vacation. The amount you bill may be out of your control, but you should have some idea of a range and you your expenses, your living standard, should be based on a number that allows you to take some time off each year. If it doesn’t, you can improve your skills and bill more, or find ways to reduce your expenses.

    I know this can be tough advice, but ultimately you are responsible for your life. You may be dealt a bad situation, but it is up to you to make the best of it, and learn to live within your means if you want to avoid the stress of overwork.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

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  • Slicing and Dicing

    This piece was originally published on Aug 12, 2009.

    I like music, often listening on headphones while I’m working. We often have an iPod in the car when traveling and take turns picking songs, which prevents arguments and lets us all get a feel for what the rest of the family listens to. I’ve even heard some interesting songs that way that I might not have heard otherwise. My son also has a Zune that he uses at night and while cutting grass, and while he likes picking his songs, he’s also used the FM radio quite a bit to listen to a local station he likes, getting a wider variety of music than he otherwise might hear..

    Recently Apple announced that they were looking to re-invent the album with the release of liner notes and booklets along with music. It looks like a way to give more value to consumers, and perhaps convince them to buy whole albums instead of particular songs. I think it’s interesting, and I am one of the few that misses browsing through albums and seeing the cover art that used to go with them. CD liners notes aren’t the same, and digital downloads seem far removed. For those of you that don’t remember what an album is, I’ve included a photo 😉

    I remember awhile back the AC/DC released a new album only at Wal-Mart, specifically because they thought that the album deserved to be kept alive, and they didn’t like singles being sold. They felt it reduced the value of the experience. I can see that point of view, and some record company executives think that the iTunes model of singles is hurting the business.

    I think this isn’t just a music issue, but more and more a digital information issue. There are lots of companies and business models that depend on bundling things together in order to grow value. In fact, a lot of what we do as database people is find ways to put information together and get more value. There might be some minimum effort (and cost) required to do so, and if we had to slice and dice each section of information up and sell it separately, many pieces of data might not be worth selling or even gathering.

    Think of television. If the Golf channel had to be purchased separately, it might not exist. But by bundling the Food channel, the Golf channel and a few more in with other selections, they can all get a slice of the revenue and find ways to survive. The same thing might happen with data marts in your company. The inventory mart might not be able to justify its existence if it had to be built separately at its own cost, but if it’s a spin-off of a larger data warehouse, the incremental cost can exist.

    In fact, many IT departments might have problems justifying their costs if they had to exist as a separate entity. We might see more outsourced IT companies if that was the case. By building them into the company and absorbing the cost, the company gets some benefits and synergies that they might not get from an outsourced environment.

    I am not sure if iTunes is bad for the music business, or if albums are good or bad, but I do like that the model exists and companies are trying to evolve it to work better. I hope that other digital sources of information remember that they don’t just exist to server the market today, but they need to evolve and find ways to server it better in the future.

    Steve Jones

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  • Regrets of the Last Decade

    Microsoft was never an exciting company to me as a kid. I grew up excited by Commodore with their GEOS, early Atari computers and consoles, and the original Macintosh computer. I was fascinated by Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations, running X Windows across multiple machines. The NeXT workstations made early Windows machines seem primitive. When I first worked with SQL Server, it felt like a half-finished product that wasn’t stable on OS/2. Microsoft felt like a pedestrian company that was good for my career, and was trying to grow, but they weren’t exciting.

    Some of that changed in the late 90s as Microsoft embraced the Internet and helped it grow with the ActiveX system. For better or worse, ActiveX seemed to bring life to web sites in a way that Java and other techniques couldn’t. We could argue about the damage that systems like ActiveX and Visual Basic 6 did in terms of application performance and maintainability, but without a doubt these tools caused an explosion of development and no end of work for those of us in technology.

    Developers, developers, developers was exciting and was a great mantra. I believed that Microsoft had really hit upon the key when I heard that. Woo developers, help them build applications, and let the excitement grow. I watched SQL Server mature with it’s expansion into BI areas. I saw Microsoft create the XBOX platform, and build a much better Office Suite than I’d had with Lotus, AmiPro, and others. Microsoft had a time during my career when I thought they were really going to dominate the world of computing.

    However I wasn’t thrilled when Steve Ballmer took over. He wasn’t a geek, and wasn’t one of us. Slowly I felt that the company lost its way. Mr. Ballmer talks about some of his regrets in a piece this week, one of which was Longhown. That project dragged on for years and become the debacle that was Windows Vista. During this same time, SQL Server dragged, taking 5 years to get SQL Server 2005 released. Office seemed to stagnate, offering little reason to upgrade, other than because others were upgrading. The company felt lost, and paled in comparison to the excitement generated by Google and then Apple during the last 12 years.

    As I read the quotes and thoughts in the piece, I have to admit that Microsoft really has quietly advanced. They have had successes and lots of growth, even if the stock price hasn’t skyrocketed. They’ve invested in platforms, research, and technology, internally and through acquisitions, that may help the company maintain its position as a technology leader for some time. For every misstep like aQuantive, Danger and Ray Ozzie, there are advances like Azure and Dynamics. Windows has continued to grow inside enterprises and I rarely see the complaints over scale and capabilities that I remember from early in my career.

    Were the Steve Ballmer years a success or failure for Microsoft? I think I’d call it a maintenance time. Like the manager he is, I think Mr. Ballmer managed the company, without ruining it, but without creating much excitement either.

    Steve Jones