Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Wasting Time

    ping pong
    In a few jobs, we had a ping pong table at work and it was a great place to take a 10 minute break from work.

    I used to come into work, get some coffee, sit in a cube, put headphones on, and then spend my day stuck in the world of SQL Server. Solving problems, working on trouble tickets, analyzing performance and more. An occasional meeting interrupted me, and an empty coffee cup interrupted me more, but for the most part I worked as a DBA with headphones on, doing my job. However I wasn’t perfect. There were times that I surfed the web, looking for news, answering questions on forums or more.  Add this to the conversations with co-workers about non-work topics and it’s clear that 8 hours at work isn’t 8 hours of work.

    I’m not alone, and most of my co-workers engaged in other sorts of distractions as well. We weren’t alone either, and this survey from Salary.com shows some interesting results. Many people spend time on the Internet on non-work tasks, and I think that’s OK. I also think it’s not much different from the pre-Internet days of work. Smoke breaks, random walks around the building, water cooler time, I think some people would be surprised how much time they spend away from “work” if their movements and efforts were tracked by the minute.

    As humans, we aren’t going to focus on a single task for a long period of time unless it doesn’t require much thought. For anyone that has to think, however, distractions are necessary over time. Extreme concentration in one area can easily leave us locked in to a particular solution, creating tunnel vision. It’s also hard, and requires some downtime to recharge. That downtime at work can easily come from a few distractions that let your mind wander.  The best people I’ve worked with often had short breaks spread in their day. A game of table tennis, playing a song on a guitar, a short conversation, or even working with a co-worker on some problem unrelated to their job. What looked like a waste of time didn’t seem to affect their productivity.

    Not everyone handles the freedom well, and plenty of people get distracted to the point of being unproductive. However eliminating all distractions doesn’t necessarily make them more productive. They’ll just find some other way to distract themselves. Great employers look to help people learn to manage themselves better, shortening breaks, learning to tackle problems as a challenge, and perhaps learning to become better at their craft by using some break time to learn more.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Certificates Everywhere

    To me, certificates are the best way to secure communications and be aware of what’s allowed and what isn’t.

    One of the things that I think has been most disappointing to me in technology over the last few decades is the lack of progress is managing security keys and certificates. There hasn’t been a really good method designed that works well at scale for disparate organizations.

    Recently at the DevConnections conference, I saw a talk where Mark Minasi talked about the future of tablets and smartphones, where he mentioned the idea that we will use many devices in the future that don’t necessarily need to connect to the domain inside a company. They’ll still authenticate, but with certificates.

    That would be the ideal situation for me, a world where we individually have multiple certificates that identify us, and allow us to have secure communications, layers of security for different purposes, and a way to easily revoke, change, and add new certificates as needed. I’d be able to use easily manage certificates across devices to provide some level of authentication.

    As we move to the deep intermixing of user and company devices, it does start to make sense that we consider using a more ad hoc authentication scheme that can be deployed in a more distributed fashion, rather than the monolithic, authenticate to the domain completely or not at all, scheme we have now.

    I don’t have a solution worked out, but I know there are some very smart security people out there and I’d hope that they are working on a variety of solutions that will increase the security we have, while allowing us lots of flexibility.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • The On-call Demands

    I used to sleep with one of these on my chest to respond to issues.

    I have been on call in all sorts of situations, but over the years the demands lessened at a few companies. Perhaps that was due to maturity on the part of the staff, or maybe the quality of basic software has improved over the years. I know that hardware has improved and it seems that less and less alarms from failed hardware interrupted my evening hours.

    However the amount of after hours calls varied widely, often related to the size of the company. In larger companies, it seemed as though there were more calls per week, but more people to handle them. Smaller companies often had me responding to anything, but there were few calls. This Friday I’m wondering what it’s like for you.

    What is your on-call schedule and the frequency of calls after hours at your current job?

    I’m wondering this week what type of demands are placed on you to respond to issues outside of normal work hours. I assume that a major issue might result in a late night call, whether or not you are formally “on-call” or not, but what is the official on-call schedule like for you. How often are you on call, and how often do you get called. Let us know this week.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Treat the Database like Code

    Source Control can drive people crazy

    In one of Grant Fritchey’s presentations at SQL Server Connections recently, he talked about treating the databaese like code, and storing the changes you make, the DDL for the objects, and more, in a version control system of some sort. Grant had a number of points to make about why this is good, not the least of which is that it brings the DBAs closer to the developers.

    It was a great presentation and it made perfect sense to me. I’ve always tried to store my DDL code in some sort of VCS, checking it and out as needed. I found it helpful for keeping track of which version of an object was released with which deployment. This also helped me to organize the changes which I was going to release, branching them away from the full list of changes stored in source control.

    Databases don’t inherently lend themselves to source control, with the various levels of state that must be stored, the strict ordering of changes, and more, but by imposing a little discipline, you can include the code and keep track of everything important for deploying changes. It’s not easy however, especially since the process of building a current version of your database from VCS would not be the latest change to each object. Objects are built with CREATE statements, but changes over time are made with ALTER statements. A little creativity will help you here, as will any number of third party tools that can keep a current set of CREATE statements handy.

    If you’re not storing your DDL in a VCS, I’d urge you to start. You might not need the features often, but when you do, having versions available can be career-saving. There are a number of free VCS systems available as well, so there’s no monetary reason why you can’t start tracking your code tomorrow.

    Steve Jones

    SQL Source Control from Red Gate Software can make version control possible from within SSMS. Download your trial version today.

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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