Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Modeling the Earth

    The idea of modeling the Earth is an incredible challenge.
    The idea of modeling the Earth is an incredible challenge.

    Whether you agree with the science of climate change or not, the ability to work on a project like this one from Microsoft Research would be cool. The issue of carbon pollution and the potential impact on our world is huge. If we accept that global climate predictions of problems are true, we may severely impact world economies with the changes that some people have suggested. If we discount the problems and they turn out to be true, we may end up in an even worse position. It’s also entirely possible that climate changes are natural cycles of the planet and we have no need, or possibility, to alter the way the world is evolving.

    No matter what your position, it seems the Microsoft Research isn’t trying to make a stand for either position, but rather attempting to clear the technical hurdles that would allow other groups to compare and debate about their models with regards to any global issue. Their goal isn’t to push users in a direction, but give governments or other organizations tools they can use to either consider future actions, or react to new data or information that can be added to a model. There’s a short interview from CNN with one of the researchers.

    As I browse through the list of projects around the world at the various Microsoft Research facilities, it’s an interesting mix of somewhat practical ideas with pure research into areas that may never become projects. One thing is clear, and that’s much of this work involves large amount of data. Quite a few of the projects themselves deal with data issues, from searching to visualization to analytics. I have to think a few of them will influence or impact SQL Server over the next decade in some way.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The DBA Office

    This is a great office.
    This is a great office.

    I’ve written about offices I like in the past. I’ve worked in a variety of offices, and having telecommuted for the last decade, I find that I mostly prefer a variety of environments. I have a standing desk, where I do most of my work, but I often find myself moving to another room with my laptop to work in a quieter, or louder, environment. I work at a coffee shop, in hotels, even in the car at times. It seems like I might be working too much, but I think I have a good balance between life and work. I just find myself working for short stretches in very disparate environments as I wander through life.

    For me, the ideal environment has varied according to the job that I did. Software development seems to require more quiet and separation than operational work. The more I coordinate with others, the more I like an open floor plan. The more I have to concentrate on my own work, the more I prefer a peaceful, solitary environment. As a DBA, I’ve had to work in both environments and I’ve had my own office, a shared office, a hot desk, and an open plan. I often haven’t had a choice of the arrangement in most jobs, so it’s a good thing I’m adaptable.

    I ran across a piece that looks at the history of the open and closed office, as well as different ways or organizing desks. There are great pros and cons in the article for each setup, and the compromises people make. This week, I’m wondering what many of you would like your arrangement to be.

    What would be your ideal office work environment?

    Would you prefer an open plan? A closed office? A hot desk arrangement that incorporates both of these? Do you want public spaces at times and private locations where you can get solo work done if you need it? If you have preferences, or comments about your current setup, let us know today. Maybe we can design a few “ideal” office spaces together.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Double Compliance

    hipaa_compliant_seal    vs          pci-seal

    I haven’t ever been bound by HIPAA or PCI regulations with the data I’ve managed. Those laws hadn’t been enacted when I worked in those industries, and so I’ve never had to go through an audit. I have been through ISO 9000 and SOX audits, and I found those audits to be both a pain and also a good idea. Various inconsistencies and exceptions in our policies were found, often strengthening our security or bringing more consistency (and stability) to our organization. Those two audits were also very close in scope and requirements. If we could pass one, we typically could pass the other.

    However PCI and HIPAA are not the same, and you shouldn’t expect that passing one would mean you could pass the other. For most of us, we wouldn’t be bound by both of these, since they are applied to the financial and medical fields respectively. However as we look to move forward and use new partners in business, including cloud services, we should be aware that just because a company has one certification doesn’t mean they have the other. If your business partner is PCI complaint in some way, I wouldn’t assume that this means they are in any way HIPAA compliant, and vice versa.

    Should we have standards for data protection that matter to a variety of industries? I’m not sure we should, despite the hassles that may mean for those of us bound by these regulations. Each industry and type of business has it’s own requirements, some of which are not applicable to other fields. Trying to build one standard for privacy, security, or any other requirement is likely to mean a watered-down, ill-fitting regulation that doesn’t protect any data well. Instead we should have specific requirements we need to meet to provide security (or any other need), without specifics on the technology or implementation used.

    Most of you probably don’t like the idea of any regulation, and I’d like to agree with you. However I’ve seen too many people ignore good practices, engage in morally debatable activities, and in general treat other people, and data, in a way they wouldn’t want to be treated themselves. A little regulation, that limits abuses and gross malpractices is a good thing. Too much regulation, specifying details that are often obsolete before they can be enforced, is a bad idea.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The Memory Cube

    How would you like memory in your SQL Server that’s 15 times as fast as your current DDR3 DRAM? I know I would, and since memory is often one of the things that can dramatically speed up, or hinder, SQL Server performance, this article about new memory cubes is good news. Over 100 companies have signed on to the specifications for three dimensional DRAM, which stacks memory dies on top of each other.
    How much better is the performance? Try 160GBps for this cube against the 11GBps that we typically see from DDR3. Even DDR4 is only 18-20GBps of aggregate bandwidth. What’s more, this new technology should require less power. That’s a good sign as more and more data centers are finding that power and cooling are significant issues and can end up being a significant percentage of the total cost of operating computer systems.
    This technology isn’t quite ready for production, as the prototypes only hold 2GB and 4GB of memory right now. However I would expect that to grow quickly as memory companies look to get production cubes out in 2013. The deployment will likely start in network devices and other environments where extremely high speed memory is needed, but I could see that server computers, especially those slated to handle large numbers of virtual machines, will move to this technology once capacities get over 32GB. At that point, there could be lots of OLTP systems that would benefit from faster access to memory, especially those systems backing high volume, (relatively) low storage systems.
    The bottleneck for many systems will continue to be the disk drives, but if you can process more data in memory, at a much faster rate, I’m sure there are lots of DBAs that would love to use this technology to reduce the number of complaints from their clients.
    Steve Jones