Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Data Matters

    A very interesting book about technology and business – from inside Google.

    I recently finished reading In the Plex, which is a great look inside Google and how they operate. For a company that has had so much secrecy around it’s internal workings, this was an amazing look at how the company operates. If you’re interested in Google, or even in how a technology company might grow and operate, or even just curious about the decisions that might affect our lives with regard to digital information, this is an interesting book to read.

    There are lots of things to talk about in there, but one thing in particular seemed to stand out to me. I n many cases, the justification for getting some project approved, or moving forward, is different than in many companies. It’s not the personal relationship with the person in charge, or because it seems like a good idea, but because the data matters. That’s a quote used quite often in the book.

    Those of us that work as data professionals know that data is important. We spend lots of time and effort to cleanse, standardize, and organize data in a way that allows it to be used as information for better decisions. That’s the fundamental idea behind business intelligence and data warehousing: extracting information from data and using it to run your business better.

    However I suspect that many companies don’t have management that really understands or truly appreciates the value of the data stored. They don’t often devote the resources, especially time, to allows data professionals to build better systems that people can use. We struggle to purchase enough storage and struggle to make writing better T-SQL or tuning the systems a priority. Most importantly, we often don’t have the time to spend just working with data in different ways to try and build patterns.

    Data is important, but without having the ability to turn it into information, most of that value remains locked away.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • The Window Is Shrinking

    Security is important, but perhaps doubly so in the cloud.

    There have been a number of issues with Dropbox and their encryption process for files stored on their systems. This highlights some of the issues with cloud services, as I’ve talked about as well. I use Dropbox, but for any files that have identity information, I encrypt them locally and only store the encrypted versions.

    There have been quite a few issues with cloud-type services related to security, and at this point, I think it’s good. The press about the Sony hacks, the RSA issues, and others should be scaring consumers and management in companies into demanding better security from vendors. Without a strong emphasis on security from clients, cloud vendors have no reason to spend more effort on security than they do now. I am actually hoping that insurance doesn’t cover the Sony issues, which will help force companies to consider purchasing insurance specifically for security issues. That will force insurance companies to demand better security as well.

    That means the window for throwing together a service without a well thought out security plan is shrinking, and that’s good. We should have security on the mind as we write code. Building that habit takes training, but it also takes practice and requires management to buy into the need to spend some time implementing security throughout our code, and testing for potential issues.

    I look forward to the time when strong security exists in all applications, not bolted on as an afterthought, but designed in from the very beginning.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Hardware Hacking

    How safe are our chips?

    One of the reasons that we have so many gadgets at low costs, with a regular re-fresh and re-tool of the internals is that many of our computing chips and circuit boards are built overseas in factories that are optimized for low costs and rapid evolution to new technologies. That works fine for consumers, but it presents a problem for a government concerned with security.

    Since the fabrication plants are under the control of a foreign government, that means that the military and governments that want to use the same chips that consumers use must vet the designs, and then the end product. This piece talks about the problems with the supply chain that can come from foreign suppliers that might have incentives to allow hardware hacks into the designs at the request of their own governments.

    The world continues to grow closer economically, but we still have our own national patriotism and loyalty . We want our own countries to grow and do well, and our companies to grow inside of our own borders. As the stakes raise, will foreign supplies think about introducing backdoors or other hardware hacks into more of our chips? Imagine the problems we might have if our x64 chips contained a way for foreign companies to access our data?

    Criminals certainly would love these hardware hacks and as they get more and more sophisticated, I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes an attack vector in the future. We might find in the future that we will not only have choices between Intel and AMD, but also choices between domestic produced and foreign produced chips.

    Steve Jones

     

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • The Career Path

    Which career path would you like?

    Most people seem to wander through their careers, taking any job that comes their way. Others have a tight focus, often with a larger goal of ending up as the owner of a company or perhaps the CIO of one.

    However for the technical person, someone that wants to remain employed for a long time, but doesn’t want to oversee others, there isn’t a clear path. So many DBAs, developers, and other people have no interest in moving into management, but they still would like to progress in some fashion to other jobs.

    This Friday I wanted to ask what that progression might be like if you had no restrictions from HR and could design your own set of jobs:

    What would you like your technical career path to look like?

    I am wondering if you think there ought to be some way to advance to a senior person, maybe with multiple levels after your title. Perhaps some of you would like to move into an architect position or even be seen as some technical fellow after some amount of time.

    Think about the way that a technical career might advance, without going into management, and let us know in which direction you wish you could move.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts