Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Age of Software

    Do you use old software?

    Does the age of software matter? It’s an interesting question and one which recently came to my attention after a blog post by Dan Jones. Dan works on the SQL Server team and posted a note that the SQL 11 (Denali) tools would only be supported on certain operating systems, of which Windows XP was not one. In the comments on his post it seemed that there was a split in how this decision was viewed by readers, with a number of people saying that a ten year old OS didn’t need to be supported and should be upgraded.

    However, in my mind, the age of the OS isn’t an issue. If the OS still works for you, there’s no problem running it. My wife’s company has the majority of their users on XP, and she just received a new laptop with Windows 7 just a few weeks ago. There wasn’t any fundamental reason for the change, as all their business applications work fine with Windows XP, but as new hardware is purchased, there often are not XP drivers, so employees are slowly moving. That seems to be the case with many companies, who find XP to be a very solid OS for most users.

    However for SQL Server, I agree with the decision. The test matrix for SQL Server tools is likely huge, and they are supporting two desktop operating systems (Vista and Windows 7) as well Windows Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2. I would rather that the resources working on adding features, and fixing bugs in SQL Server, not be diverted to working on XP or Windows Server 2003 as those are too old. Not old in age, but old in versioning, being more than a version behind the current operating systems.

    I know there are a lot of people that are not happy with this, and I can understand their reasoning, but I just don’t think that the number of companies that want to go to SQL 11, and are unwilling to allow developers and DBAs to upgrade to Windows 7 is large. Personally I’d rather have more resources devoted to more exhaustive testing on the current set of operating systems and fixing any bugs that are found.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • More Regulation Coming?

    Is more regulation coming for data handling and storage?

    Recently Citibank had hackers access a large number of credit card numbers and account details for their customers. It was all over the news, but there was a great piece in the New York Times (registration required) about how this seems to be a nagging problem. We’ve had data breaches before, and banks have had security issues, but they don’t seem to be learning. A number of government officials in the article are quoted as seeking new regulations for data security.

    As data professionals, we are often charged with ensuring data is safe, yet accessible to authorized individuals. That responsibility can be hard to manage, especially when our management often doesn’t want to increase our budgets, or accept more restrictive ways of authenticating users or even slower access. I certainly don’t envy the IT folks working at banks and healthcare companies, and am not sure I’d even want to take a job in those industries in the future.

    I don’t think that more regulation is necessarily the answer, at least not direct regulation. Technology changes so quickly, systems are implemented in diverse ways, and direct regulation often leads to rules that exist to help some vendor profit, not provide better security.

    Whether we get new regulation or not, I think that most of us need to learn more about what security methods work well in our systems, the implications of picking a specific type of encryption, and in which ways we can be audit our systems to detect issues. In the days of limited budgets and apathy from management, a little education is the best way to improve the security of your systems.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Excel in the Clouds

    Excel Forever!

    I think that no matter what happens with Windows, SQL Server, and many other Microsoft products, Excel will be with us forever. It seems as though this quote is true: “Excel is a leading tool for data analysis today” (From Excel to the Cloud). Almost everyone that works with data uses Excel, including business users, and even Powerpivot didn’t bother to try and build a better interface. It’s built on Excel as an add-in.

    Microsoft Research has built a new way for Excel to interact with data sets in the cloud, with an add-in that brings various analysis algorithms to data using cloud computing. It’s built more for research and development, and not necessarily business, but it’s an interesting idea. I know that there are often scale issues with analysis systems, and computing resources can be expensive to maintain full time.

    The cloud , however, brings a more flexible way to scale up computing resources for specific problems. If you are involved in the analysis of large amount of data, this could be a great way to provision resources for people that need to analyze very large amounts of data. I don’t know how the economics would work for large transfers of data, but the scalability of buying CPU power only when you need it can be very attractive.

    The interface choice of Excel is another concession that it’s just the best way to look at data. It also is very familiar to most computer users, and removes the need to construct any type of application for users. I know that most of the time that I want to analyze lots of data, I drop it into Excel because it’s easier to manipulate and play what-if games; it’s certainly easier than using T-SQL aggregates.

    It also means that Excel is likely going to be with us forever. Between Windows and OSX, it’s got to be one of the most used applications in the world.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Archiving

    This actually looks like an easy way to archive data

    Not many database systems get designed with a well thought out archiving plan at the beginning of their lifecycle. In most cases that’s fine since few databases seem to gather enough data to require archiving, and if there is extra time early in the life cycle of an application, it’s probably better spent tuning queries for efficiency anyway.

    However when archiving is implemented, it can’t be done so in a cumbersome way. That almost always leads to some sort of data hoarding by individuals, which often leads to an application being built on Excel rather than SQL Server. This article talks about the problem of data access from a storage point of view, but it could easily apply to databases. If we require some special function, or intervention by the DBA to allow access to archived data, it’s quite possible that users will take matters into their own hands.

    As SQL Server has grown, we have ended up with a number of features that should make the archival of data much easier. Partitioned views and tables in many cases can allow an application to function with understanding that the underlying data is stored in multiple locations, and potentially even multiple systems. It does take a little more administrative work to seamlessly implement these features, but it’s a skill that DBAs should be able to make work smoothly.

    The problem of large data sets will continue to grow over time, and it’s a problem I suspect most DBAs will face at some point in their career. Take some time to learn about partitioning and how you can both manage data more efficiently over time, as well as improve performance if you find access patterns vary for different sets of data.

    It’s also a good reason to ensure that your applications don’t ever expect to pull back an entire table for any reason. Working with a few rows of data at a time is prudent when you have thousands of rows and essential when you have billions.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts