Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Acing an Audit

    Good procedures built into your processes should make passing an audit very easy.
    Good procedures built into your processes should make passing an audit very easy.

    I’ve been through relatively few audits in my database career. I’ve worked in a few industries that didn’t require them, and avoided the stringent requirements of PCI and HIPAA. ISO 9000 was the first audit I encountered and I had been preparing for Sarbanes-Oxley (recently passed) when I left that company to come work for SQLServerCentral.

    The preparation for an audit required a lot of work, meetings, and organization. The first time I suffered through an ISO audit, I was amazed at how much of our daily work was interrupted and the time spent ensuring we would pass the audit. The second time wasn’t much better, though I’d instituted some processes and controls for the DBA group that did reduce the amount of preparation needed for our portion of the audit.

    I wish that more companies I’d worked for had actually built the controls, security, and documentation into their processes. Maybe then they’d only need a 30 minute window to prepare for the audit. That’s what an insurance company needed to do recently according to this piece. I found many of the rules and regulations required in the ISO and SOX documents to be ones I’d want to implement for my database systems. The hard part was getting management to agree and implement the rules as part of our daily work.

    I did find it interesting that the company had built their own software to match their processes and allow employees to work efficiently. Lots of companies have struggled with the idea of becoming their own software company, but if software is truly going to be an important part of most businesses, perhaps it’s a good investment for most of them.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Still 32

    I was listening to a presentation recently and the presenter talked about some of the restrictions in working with 32 bit SQL Server on 64 bit Windows hosts. Another person joked that any companies still running 32 bit software were way behind the times. I heard a comment that surely everyone runs 64 bit hardware these days, don’t they?

    Do they? How many servers in large companies are still running on the x86 architecture? I know I have old laptops still running those processors, though I’d like to think that most companies have a hardware refresh rate that’s no longer than 5 years, and most laptops and servers would be x86.

    The platform architecture, however, doesn’t necessarily imply our software has been upgraded to 64 bit. There are problems with various drivers that won’t run under 64-bit architectures. Excel is often a problem as SQL Server moves to 64-bit versions. There are 64-bit drivers, but the change, testing, etc. effort for many companies may not be worth pursuing. It can be annoying for us data professionals, but it’s a valid business decision. The same argument often applies to those companies running SQL Server 2000 (or older versions).

    Five or six years ago I heard a presenter that worked for a large Fortune 100 company say that their policy was for applications to last ten years. That included the hardware and software, since the cost of change, whether through new software or major upgrades, was significant. With many companies still running SQL Server 2000, I suspect that many companies have a similar, unofficial, policy.

    I don’t know whether the majority of software we use in our careers is 32 bit or 64 bit, but I am sure that we will have to deal with the former for years to come. You can complain about it, but you better learn to work with it.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Serverless Software

    Developers may never see groups of servers like this again in the future.
    Developers may never see groups of servers like this again in the future.

    I love the words “loosely coupled.” At times in my career, I’ve built software and have aimed to ensure that processes, workflows, and components worked well on their own. In the places where I had to work with data or services on different physical machines, I tried to ensure that each item would run separately, and communicate when needed, but wouldn’t fail if another machine was down.

    That’s kind of the idea proposed in the article that says the future of software is serverless? It’s an interesting read, talking about the advances in cloud services that can change the way developers build applications. Developers should think about liking services, and pieces of applications, ignoring the idea their systems are tied to specific servers.

    It’s a future that I think makes sense for most environments. Development shouldn’t be concerned about the size or care of physical machines. Instead they should think about building on a platform of services, and expecting the scale to grow or shrink as needed, without code changes.

    I do think this could be the future in which development proceeds inside companies, as well as for commercial software. However vendors need to sell “private clouds” which function in the same way as the public ones, for those companies that want to control, and invest in, their own hardware.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Geeky Oscars

    Skyfall is recommended, but be warned, it's long.
    Skyfall is recommended, but be warned, it’s long.

    Last fall I heard an interview with one of the people who had worked on Skyfall. I can’t remember who it was, but this person mentioned the director had made the film with an eye towards the Best Picture award. It’s less than a month away from the Oscar awards, and Skyfall wasn’t nominated. I’m not sure it should have been, but I did very much enjoy the film.

    Last year was a good year for geeky films. The top grossing films of 2012 were dominated by those topics that we might see as appealing to the nerds, geeks, and technologists. I greatly enjoyed the top 4 and would recommend to others. However the amount of money a film makes doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth watching, and if a film doens’t earn much money, that shouldn’t mean you want to avoid it.

    This Friday, as a break from the software and database discussions we have, I wanted to ask you

    What sci-fi, fantasy, or geek-oriented films do you recommend from 2012?

    Did you think John Carter or Total Recall (the remake) were worth watching? Are there other films you’d recommend that might not have been well marketed or widely distributed? With the streaming video services and online rentals, it’s easy for many of us to watch films that we might have missed in the theater.

    Let us know this week what you recommend and give us an idea for how we might relax over the weekend or throughout the year. At least until the Dr. Who 50th Anniversary special.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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