Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Trust

    An interesting piece I found on Bruce Schneier’s blog that talks about security and trust, specifically with regards to the security of your passwords and hopefully, a password manager. There certainly are problems and potential issues with regards to security and passwords, no matter how you choose to manage those.
    However the part of the article that caught my eye was the opening, where it says “All these other industries we rely on have evolved codes of conduct, regulations, and ultimately laws to ensure minimum quality, reliability and trust. In this light, I find the modern technosphere’s complete disdain for obtaining and retaining trust baffling, arrogant and at times enraging.”
    Is that true? I know we find that there are more systems in place in pharmaceutical, construction, and other professions. These independent groups can provide some certification, evaluation, and standards for their members and practitioners.  I’m not sure how much more trust there is in these fields, and sometimes I think it’s just an illusion of more standards and practices. We find all sorts of moral, and professional failures in these businesses, though perhaps more accountability in the legal sense.
    Is it because these professions are more mature? Perhaps. In some sense, I think many of these fields benefit from the reality of their products and services. We can see, hear, feel, and touch the effects of decisions and actions in most fields. We can interact with our technological systems, but in many cases the complexity behind simple interactions is more like magic to most people that we’d care to admit.
    Plus we seem to be quite willing to build things that don’t work well, and then quickly change them to respond to issues. In some cases we might be more like the people that build quasi-useful products hawked on late night television than the engineers that construct bridges.
    Steve Jones

  • Do You Want a Meritocracy at Work?

    The best tend to rise to the top in sports. Do you want that in technology?
    The best tend to rise to the top in sports. Do you want that in technology?

    Professional sports tend to be a meritocracy in most cases. If your natural athletic talent lets you run faster, jump higher, or perform some other skill better than others, you tend to get more time to play, more money, more recognition, etc. It’s not absolute, and at those high skill levels other factors come into play, but for the most part we find bars of skill that a person must exceed to make money at their sport.

    In the technology business, I’m not sure that’s true. However I want to know how you feel about the idea of skills being used to determine your career advancement.

    Do you want to work in a meritocracy at your job?

    Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean the harder or longer you work, the more money you’ll make, or the more promotions you’ll get. It may mean that the newest, youngest person at your company might rise much faster than you simply because they’re a better DBA or developer.

    This doesn’t mean you never get a raise, but if you’ve settled in your job, if you’re a Dead Sea technologist, then you might be limited to cost of living increases and the dreary, less exciting work that no one else wants to do.

    I know there are problems with determining “better” in many jobs, and it’s hard to measure the productivity and value of people in relation to each other in an objective way. However, if we could, then I’m asking if that’s what you’d prefer. Would you like to work in a place where the more talented people rise faster than the average worker, regardless of seniority, friendliness with management, or any other non-skill based measure.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • The Five Year Plan

    18954IT departments won’t exist in five years. A bold prediction from the CITE conference last week. It’s not so much a prediction of an increase in cloud services, but more the idea that the centralized IT department is struggling with the consumerization of technology, the increasing demands of the business for faster turnaround on projects and prototypes, and the flexibility being demanded by an increasingly technology savvy workforce.

    Like most predictions, I take this one with a grain of salt. I don’t think five years is enough time to change the face of the enterprise IT groups. Five years ago the first iPhone had been out for a year and was being demanded by users to replace their Blackberries. These days many corporations support iPhones, along with other smartphones, and Blackberries have disappeared from many organizations. However IT has adapted, released some of their control, and even integrated some of their policies into new technologies. When I enabled corporate mail on my smartphone recently, I had to allow some remote management features to get mail, which was fine with me.

    I do agree that we will start to see some of our IT functions, especially small projects and POC (proof of concepts) increasingly being driven in departments. There are too many projects, too many different technologies, and too little time to work on them for central IT departments to tackle all these projects. Departmental management won’t wait for IT that is stretched too thin, especially if they have existing staff that have some technology skills. That latter factor is something becoming more and more common all the time.

    However I can’t see central IT disappearing. There are often quite a few systems that are complex, that are too large, too important to let someone manage part time. There are projects that cross departments, or even the entire company, and coordinating tasks and resources between departments is complex. Add to all of this the problems and hassles of hiring good technology people, and I can see projects rising in departments, but being turned over at times to IT to manage.

    I do think that central IT groups need to be more flexible, and reduce some of their rules, or adapt them to new technologies and platforms. I expect people working in central staff to be “lent” to departments for projects, perhaps even multiple departments at the same time to help get projects completed, while also gaining some training on the various systems in order to provide support when other staff isn’t available. Such as weekends.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy. Due to technical issues, we have no podcasts today. Actually, Steve’s camera died and he is in the process of replacing it. Hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow with the podcast.

  • Data Vision

    Will computers "see" more in the future and help us with new tasks?
    Will computers “see” more in the future and help us with new tasks?

    One of the things that I often do when analyzing data is examine visual representations. I don’t ignore data, but often a graph or picture of who the data is distributed or organized gives me a starting place for more details examination of the actual numbers. It has worked well for me and going back and forth from numbers to graphs allows me to better understand the ways in which patterns and tendencies are embedded.  Humans are visual, and we are expanding that capability more and more to machines.

    Years ago I worked for a company that imported wood and sold it in the US. In one of our plants we sorted and organized wood pieces using a combination of human and machine efforts. Conveyor systems moved wood along and humans examined the individual piece as they traveled by. Using chalk marks, they were able to mark items as better or worse quality than others. A computer system scanned for chalk marks and was able to separate the wood more effectively and efficiently than in the past.

    That type of human and machine analysis is being used more in many industries. However instead of using humans to do analysis, computer systems can now do that in some cases. I ran across a piece about software that examines physical parts from a manufacturing process, looking for defects. The computer system can do a better job, faster than most humans. There might be a verification step from humans, but for many parts, this means a higher level of both quality and productivity.

    I could imagine this type of computer examination has a place in data systems as well. We could train an algoirthm to look for patterns in a visualizaiton, and perhaps highlight them for more examination by a human. We could even have some secondary systems that examine error outputs from something like an ETL process and direct developers to the potential issues in their logic, or in the source files, pointing out data or formatting problems. A little more checking, or real time testing, might help improve the overall quality of our processes, whether in the real world or embedded in software.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy. Due to technical issues, we have no podcasts today. Actually, Steve’s camera died and he is in the process of replacing it. Hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow with the podcast.