Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • One Single View

    This editorial was originally published on Oct 9, 2007. It is being re-run as Steve is traveling.

    When I worked at JD Edwards, one of the goals of our business intelligence system was to house a single view of the truth. I recently saw a blog post by Andrew Fryer that does a good job of explaining what this is. Basically it’s a way for us to view some particular slice of data and ensure that it is consistently accepted by everyone in the company as the “correct” data for whatever it represents.

    This sounds a little silly, but it’s actually a problem in many companies. At the recent PASS Summit, Bill Baker did a presentation where he actually showed a realistic example of this as a reason to implement Performance Point Server. If you have a contest at a company for the most sales, who wins?

    You’d think this is easy, but is it the person with the most dollar sales? Do returns count? Should we account for size of a store or hours worked? Obviously we could define this, but depending on how different people might run reports or calculate things in their own spreadsheet, there could be different results.

    It was the first time that I actually understood what Performance Point brings to a company and why you might implement it. Now I’m not plugging Performance Point here, because I think you could wind up with some tool that requires a couple full-time administrators and developers just to get things set up and maintained. And I’m not sure that you can completely control things with permissions and reports. My guess is that people will always want to pull their own data offline and create their own report (often for the purpose of supporting their own position), but it’s an interesting idea.

    The single view of the truth is something I think all DBAs and “data people” want. We want to know that a customer is a customer is a customer. We want to normalize data and have relations that ensure we aren’t duplicating data. We fight through the issues of meanings in one system being translated properly to the next system.

    A single view of the truth is hard to create, but it’s a goal that I think is worth pursuing. And implementing a data warehouse is a great way to get started on this. By talking with business people and forcing them to give you rules and mappings, and then implementing a source system everyone can use, it can really ensure that everyone in the company is on the “same page.”

    And who knows? Forcing business people to define what that single view is might just help them run the business better.

    Podcast Notes

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  • Hard Data v Gut Feel

    basic instinct picture
    Instincts are great, but they need data behind them

    One of the mantras that has guided Google through so many of its product development routines is the fact that the data matters. If you can show that there is data to support a decision, it is more likely to be well received than one based on the experience, instinct, or hunches of any person.

    Often in the past I wished that the companies I worked for had operated in a similar manner. Many times I’ve had managers decide to pursue some course of action based on something other than data. At times I’ve even had managers ask if we could rework queries or reports to support their position. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable to question the queries we had written as we may not have approached the problem in the best way, but asking for evidence to support a pre-determined result felt wrong to me.

    Companies spend thousands, or millions, of dollars every year on all sorts of resources to collect, manage, and analyze an ever growing set of data points. Many of us find our jobs revolving around data, looking for new ways to analyze data and drive better decisions. At the same time, many companies struggle with decision makers that trust their own instincts more than the data reports they review.

    There isn’t a lot we can do as data professionals, other than continue to refine the models we build and work more closely to convince managers to tune our models, using the actual data before and after the decisions to analyze the results. We can also champion the ideas that the data is more objective, and should be a significant part of the decision process, while allowing for some input by the people that have a wealth of experience in our particular industry. We want their gut feel, but we don’t want to ignore the data.

    As with most things in business, communication and compromise help to drive us forward to better decisions in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The DBA Tax

    Are you an asset or a tax?

    When I started working with a small company in Denver over a decade ago, SQL Server 7 had just been released. One of the marketing messages for the product was that it was self-tuning and didn’t need a DBA. More than a few of my friends asked if I was worried about my job. If we upgraded from SQL Server 6.5, would I lose my job? Was I worried? I wasn’t and we’ve seen in the decade since that there’s no shortage of a need for DBAs to manage database systems.

    That hasn’t stopped many companies from trying to build products and solutions that don’t have a DBA tax. They want a tool that doesn’t need a DBA, or a developer to tune queries. Some get closer than others, but most still require someone with technical skills to work on the platform, and help ensure it runs smoothly.

    When PowerPivot was released a few years ago, I heard no shortage of fears from data professionals that this tool would eliminate much of their work. Since then I’ve heard no shortage of consultants and BI developers say that this tool has spurred even more work for them. It simplifies prototyping, and allows for a better front end experience, but it also requires better data, cleaner data, and better models of data for users to work with. They are drowning in work.

    It’s easy to let fear drive you. It’s easy to let your concerns over technology replacing you limit your willingness to experiment and improve the systems you work on. However if you improve yourself, and your skills, I don’t think you’ll ever be seen as a “tax” on your company’s computer systems, but rather an asset that is worth paying the ongoing cost to keep.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Starting to Program

    Hopefully you have more recent resources for programming.

    As DBAs, I think we need to learn to program better for the future. It doesn’t matter whether you are looking to manage clusters with Powershell or add your own SQL CLR routines to your instance, it pays to learn a bit about programming. At some point. I think every DBA will be exposed to some type of code that isn’t written in T-SQL. Whether they’ll be able to do anything with the code, or understand it, is entirely up to the individual.

    As the SQL Server platform has expanded, there have been enhancements and additions to the product. In addition to the core T-SQL, there is now VB.NET and C# in Integration Services, Reporting Services uses RDL and various programming expressions. Analysis Services has XMLA, MDX, maybe more. Powerpivot introduces DAX, and the .NET language runs through all of these subsystems. PowerShell is being pushed as the future administrative language for all Microsoft technologies.

    With so much of the data professional’s job starting to require programming skills, how does one get started? We are working on some stairways to help in some areas, but this Friday I wanted to ask you this question:

    For the DBA or system administrator that wants to learn programming, what do you recommend?

    I’m looking for some links or tutorials, similar to this list for a Python programmer. Do you have a list of programming resources that might help someone learn basic concepts, get started with a particular language, or improve their skills? I’m looking for links that you’ve used, or a friend has used. I’ll look to compile these into a few lists that people can reference to get started on learning more about programming.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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