Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Going Solo

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 20, 2007. It is being republished as Steve Jones is on vacation. 

    Are you ready to leave the corporate world and become a consultant? It’s a tempting thought and probably one that everyone in corporate America considers at one time or another. Especially those of us in technology who have skills that can easily be used to help some other company.

    Here are 10 reasons not to go into business for yourself, which is an interesting list. It’s from someone who evangelizes the benefits, joys, and methods of escaping the corporate cubicle. If you’re seriously considering becoming a consultant, starting your own business, or going out in any way on your own, I’d recommend her site as a place to learn some things.

    Coming from someone that helped start this site and has worked for it for 3 years this might sound funny. I don’t really like being in business for myself. I know, I’ve been successful, had a good life, let you all know about large parts of it, but the truth is I didn’t love working for myself. If not for Andy and Brian supporting me, I’m not sure I’d have done it.

    Working for yourself, even when you’re successful, isn’t this easy, amazing job. It’s a hassle and it’s hard to worry about the different parts of a business. I’m a writer and a techie. As much as I pay attention to marketing, sales, and other groups, I don’t want to do their jobs. I have an opinion and am happy to express it, but I don’t want to get more involved than that.

    I’m not really advocating one way or the other that you should or shouldn’t start a business or stay in a cubicle. Rather I want to caution you that it’s not as easy as tuning queries. The marketing, accounting, and collections will be as much as the job as the T-SQL.

    Read about other’s experiences, think hard about it, and consider all the parts of the job that you’ll need to do. There’s always more than you think and remember that just as with a new job in corporate America.

    The grass is not always greener.

    If you want to go into consulting, read this book.

  • Feedback and Big Data

    Data Feedback loop
    The Data Feedback Loop

    How do we improve the way we do things? We measure them, observe, make a change based on our observation, measure again, and then repeat, looking to make our process, product, or idea better over time. We design our software this way as well, especially in any of the rapid and agile development methodologies. We get feedback as we make changes, adapating our efforts to improve the end product.

    We should be doing this with data as well, especially as we start to drown in waves and waves of data that grow over time. This piece from Alistair Croll talks about the ways in which we can adapt feedback to our data process. The various parts of the feedback loop, from collection to storage to analysis are all challenges we face as we start to encounter Big Data.

    The challenges that companies will face as they try to find competitive advantages in all their data create huge opportunities for those of us working as data professionals. Whether we learn how to better manage the storage of data, we study techniques for pattern recognition or machine learning from large data sets, or we find ways to present complex data to humans for deeper analysis, this is a good time to work with databases.

    We have seen SQL Server evolve and grow, and become incredibly complex. It’s expanded into spreadsheets (PowerPivot), high speed data collection (StreamInsight), and even other platforms (Hadoop). It’s too much for any one person to master, but the complexity and breadth of the platforms gives you the chance to pick an area that interests you. You can learn a bit about the whole feedback loop for data, specialize in the area that speaks to you, and hopefully have a challenging, interesting, and successful career.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We are experiencing issues with our podcast hosting provider. We are working to resolve the problems and get the podcasts back as soon as we can.

  • Insider Security Threats

    Monitoring is the key to really good security.

    Are you worried about internal users at your company compromising your data security? I’d hope that you are at least a little worried, after all, we find out regularly that people we thought we knew acted in a surprising manner, or did something inappropriate that we hadn’t expected. It’s not always malicious or intentional, but even when it’s accidental, our security gets compromised and we receive some of the blame.

    Security is a hard process to implement, especially over time. Too much security implies too little trust, and as humans, we want to trust each other. As we work together, and build trust, we tend to let security lapse a bit. As organizations grow, evolve, and change people around, we introduce security loopholes from mis-configurations, poor architectural foundations, or simple mistakes like failing to remove someone from a security role.

    This piece talks a bit about the internal security threats you face, while ranting a bit about the term “insider threat”. The threats you face from external attackers are different from those you face from internal employees. However in each case, there’s one thing that’s important for getting close to a secure environment: monitoring.

    We can’t determine every type of attack vector, protect every system or database completely, but we can monitor for issues and be prepared to react when a problem occurs. The auditing capabilities of SQL Server have grown tremendously with the eventing enhancements to the platform, and I urge you to spend some time learning about Extended Events, which give you even more of an insight into what is happening on your server.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We are having some technical issues with our hosting provider and are working to get the podcasts back online soon. Our apologies for the delays.

  • Going Solo

    If you want to go into consulting, read this book.

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 20, 2007. It is being republished as Steve Jones is on vacation. 

    Are you ready to leave the corporate world and become a consultant? It’s a tempting thought and probably one that everyone in corporate America considers at one time or another. Especially those of us in technology who have skills that can easily be used to help some other company.

    Here are 10 reasons not to go into business for yourself, which is an interesting list. It’s from someone who evangelizes the benefits, joys, and methods of escaping the corporate cubicle. If you’re seriously considering becoming a consultant, starting your own business, or going out in any way on your own, I’d recommend her site as a place to learn some things.

    Coming from someone that helped start this site and has worked for it for 3 years this might sound funny. I don’t really like being in business for myself. I know, I’ve been successful, had a good life, let you all know about large parts of it, but the truth is I didn’t love working for myself. If not for Andy and Brian supporting me, I’m not sure I’d have done it.

    Working for yourself, even when you’re successful, isn’t this easy, amazing job. It’s a hassle and it’s hard to worry about the different parts of a business. I’m a writer and a techie. As much as I pay attention to marketing, sales, and other groups, I don’t want to do their jobs. I have an opinion and am happy to express it, but I don’t want to get more involved than that.

    I’m not really advocating one way or the other that you should or shouldn’t start a business or stay in a cubicle. Rather I want to caution you that it’s not as easy as tuning queries. The marketing, accounting, and collections will be as much as the job as the T-SQL.

    Read about other’s experiences, think hard about it, and consider all the parts of the job that you’ll need to do. There’s always more than you think and remember that just as with a new job in corporate America.

    The grass is not always greener.