Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Data Gravity

    gravity
    Does data have gravity? And will it affect DBAs’ jobs?

    Many of us have worked with distributed applications at this point in our careers, with different parts of the application located on different physical servers. Some of us might have worked with applications that actually have different servers in different locations, potentially even different countries. That can be challenging, dealing with different time zones, different collations and regional settings on servers and more.

    While many of us are not looking to implement cloud computing now, we may do so in the future, but not for simple cost reasons. There’s a piece about data gravity in the cloud, and how the law can drive the location of data in some cases. Just as many companies that wanted to offer gambling services moved to countries with fewer laws about that business, I would expect that we see some companies moving pieces and parts of their data to other countries to take advantage of more lax or lenient privacy or other laws in the future.

    Most companies won’t bother trying to avoid laws like this right now, but at some point in the future, the cost of moving an application to another country might be tiny. We constantly build better tools for distributed development, deployment, and management, and whether it’s a cloud infrastructure, or just a rented VM, we may find that it becomes worthwhile in some cases to move data, not just for cost reasons, but potentially to reduce the costs of compliance with local laws.

    It’s hard to know whether compliance with the law will ever significantly affect the work a DBA does, but I certainly expect that we will have distributed applications with their various components more widely distributed to challenge us in the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Code Scanning

    Code Review
    I think we need better tools for scanning code.

    When I started writing code, the applications I wrote for various companies would only receive manual code reviews from my peers, and then limited testing from a group of people that were usually bored and unchallenged in their jobs. More often than not, I’d be asked by people what to test, how the various parts of the application worked, and receive a basic double check on the tests I’d run, not any extensive analysis. I think a lot of people had, or even still have, a similar experience, which is one reason we have such poor security in many applications.

    These days I know there are much better tools for testing applications, and I have heard of black box scanning of static source code. I haven’t heard of too much real time scanning of the executable code by the authors of code, but I’m sure there are tools out there to help you find vulnerabilities. I saw recently there are even better tools for scanning code that combine both techniques into something being called glass-box scanning.

    Security is a problem in many applications, and it’s great to see more tools being put into place to help uncover issues before our customers do. I don’t know to what extent we are vulnerable in these ways at the database level, but I suspect that we do need better tools to help us comb through access logs, as well as double check permissioning for users and objects. When we do have security problems, they are usually large security problems because of the large amount of data that can be exposed inappropriately, yet we don’t have very mature tools and processes for monitoring and detecting problems.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • High Availability Upgrades

     

    Is SQL Server 2012 worth the upgrade for you?

    SQL Server 2012 will be released soon. I have no idea of the exact date, though I suspect a peek at the SQL Server developers’ vacation schedule in Redmond might provide some clue. The announcement last year was a first half of 2012, so I do expect to see the product RTM sometime between now and July 1.

    One of the highly anticipated features in SQL Server 2012 is the Always Onfeature, which will dramatically increase the ease with which we can build databases that can not only tolerate hardware failures, but be deployed (physically) further apart, and with more flexibility in how backups can be taken. If you haven’t read about Always On, I’d urge you to start looking at this feature and see if it’s something that can help your company.

    Unlike Database Mirroring in SQL Server 2008 R2, which is limited to one secondary database, Always On will allow us to have multiple secondaries. The current mirror databases are unreadable, unless you count the kludgy database snapshot feature. In SQL Server 2012, however, we can actually use the secondary databases to query, providing some limited scale out capabilities. I think that’s fantastic, and it’s a large step forward for the SQL Server platform. I’m wondering if your company feels the same way.

    Will the read only secondaries available in SQL Server 2012 convince your company to upgrade?

    There are lots of other features in SQL Server 2012, some great advances in other parts of the platform that might be worth upgrading for, but I regularly see people struggling with scale issues. With the changes in licensing as well, these new scalability features are worth examining, and I’m wondering how important they are for your business. Important enough to justify the price of an upgrade? Let us know today.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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

  • Use the 4th Dimension

    Time is the 4th Dimension

    Brad recently wrote an editorial about the career-life balance and asked you to think about whether or not you might be focusing too much time on your career. I write fairly often about the need to manage your career, and learn more on a regular basis. There’s only 24 hours in a day, so how do you fit it all in?

    The simple answer is use the 4th dimension: time.

    We can’t fit it all in. There’s no way that any individual can work full time, raise a family, be a good spouse, find time for their friends, pursue a hobby, learn more about their craft, and more in a year. However we don’t live in a single year; we live across time.

    There are times in our lives when work is busy. There are times in our lives when our home life is busy. Hopefully those times don’t overlap, but that is not always the case. We have to learn to find some balance over time, and work on our goals, not necessarily in parallel, but perhaps sequentially. Spend more time on different parts of your life, at different times in your life.

    If your job keeps you extremely busy, then perhaps you don’t focus on learning more this year, or you take on less personal commitments. If you really want to work on a hobby, or coach your kids in sports, or run a marathon, you might need to take on less at work for a period of time. If work is slow, and you are bored, perhaps you ought to spend more time educating yourself on SQL Server and improve your future prospects.

    There are only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 (or 366) days in a year. However we live for many years, and we ought to remember that when we have a busy life. Push back, learn to say no, and learn to be more efficient to fit more things in, but don’t try to fit everything in.

    You only get one life, so enjoy it while you can.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

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