Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • What’s Your Code Quality?

    The best measure of code quality.

    Today we have an editorial reprinted from Jan 3, 2006 as Steve is on vacation.

    I saw this a piece on code quality recently, specifically mentioning Java development managers and their work on quality. They seem to strive for it and fall short, but I don’t think the results from .NET development managers would be much different.

    The piece talked about most managers not measuring quality or if they do, not starting until the project is over half complete. That’s interesting because in the jobs that I’ve done software development, we were most concerned about timelines, and code was usually graded in one of three ways. Works, doesn’t work, or needs more work. And most things passed through all 3 of these phases during a development project.

    But interestingly enough, I’ve never had quality measured as a DBA. All the T-SQL work either does what it is supposed to do or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, we work some more on it 🙂

    There’s never been any measure of code quality for me, and I’m not sure how I’d go about doing it. It seems from the article that they looked at bugs reported v lines of code. I’m not sure that’s the best measurement since I could write some code that works, but is very slow to execute. Or that has hard-coded information that makes maintenance a nightmare.

    I’m not a software expert, especially with regard to quality. To me it either works as I expect it to and well enough or it doesn’t. I kind of use that thumbnail estimation in that a particular item, stored procedure, function, etc. either returns the results it should or it doesn’t, and it works in an acceptable time frame, or it doesn’t. Comparing a method call to calculate interest on a line to a stored procedure that produces a sales by month result is hard, and I’m not sure I could setup concrete ways to do it.

    But I know people are trying. Like the company that sponsored the survey. So I’m wondering, do any of you measure quality? Know of a good way to do it?

    Steve Jones

    (published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72366/)

  • Have an Extra Beer!

    Fat Tire is Steve's favorite beer

    Today we have an editorial reprinted from Dec 13, 2005 as Steve is on vacation.

    Geeks,

    Have an extra beer tonight. Or your adult beverage of choice to relax and unwind after a long day. After all, it appears that caffeine helps your liver, so don’t worry about damaging it with a couple relaxing frosty mugs.

    The study from the article linked above apparently says that coffee and tea can help reduce the risk of damage from alcohol. So maybe that coffee you drink trying to sober up does more good than just keep you awake?

    As with any study, you should be careful of reading too much into this and don’t go out on some great 12 pint binge and expect a few extra cups of coffee in the morning will repair the damage. After all, in another year we’ll be reading that beer undoes the good that coffee does to your liver 🙂

    But for the geeks in the house that enjoy a cold one, this is certainly welcome news.

    Steve Jones

    (published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72349/)

  • Slow Fixes

    Moving Slow

    Today we have an editorial reprinted from Jan 15, 2006 as Steve is on vacation.

    There’s an interesting piece at the Washington Post on Microsoft’s delays in releasing patches, with some analysis showing that when the flaw is disclosed to the public, a patch comes out much quicker. After some analysis over the last 3 years and researched the dates Microsoft knew about the issue and the dates that the patches were released.

    Surprise, when everyone knows, the patches come out quicker. It seems that the piece is intended to take a shot at Microsoft’s patching process, and maybe it is, but there are some interesting things in there to talk about. First of all is the time lag.

    Is this any different from any software vendor or even internal corporate software? If your boss knows, or the client knows, don’t you work a little harder and a little quicker? Isn’t it more critical and don’t you rush things in addition to working harder when it’s a “public” patch that is needed?

    I’m sure we all do. And it’s human nature to put more effort into something that’s widely perceived as an issue and less effort if you know that you may have more time. We all do that and our work schedules, effort, and productivity change depending on a variety of things, including the importance of the work.

    The piece also leaves open a number of questions and mentions this, noting that the analysis might be flawed. There’s no mention of if the rushed (or delayed) patches had to be repatched later. There’s concern over patches applying to one area, but other similar flaws found in other parts of the software remaining unpatched. That’s something for sure that should be examined in looking for re-patches or whether things are rushed. There’s also the lack of examination on what else was happening inside Microsoft, and whether people working on other projects had to be pulled off them.

    We all know that delays things as well. They take time to get their head back into code, they may be annoyed, a critical person could be out, etc. Not to mention that the statistical methods might not be the best ones, but I’ll leave that to the mathematicians to figure out.

    Patching is hard. As is finding bugs. I think Microsoft has done a much better job over the last 3-4 years and the quality of software, at least SQL Server, has improved. However there is still definitely room for more improvement.

    Steve Jones

    (published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72365/)

  • What Sarbanes-Oxley Won’t Do

    Sarbanes-Oxley Act

    This is interesting. Another case of corporate fraud under the title of “What Sarbanes-Oxley Won’t Do”. Apparently someone got loans, blah, blah, fraud, blah, blah, etc. You get the idea and I’m tired of having to hear and write about it.

    But since S-O affects most IT groups and many of us are dealing with it, it’s worth talking about and writing about. S-O has required more documentation, processes, and accountability for how corporations deal with their financial data. It is intended to prevent another Enron or MCI like occurence by making high level executives accountable for the company’s actions.

    But it doesn’t prevent fraud. It doesn’t prevent dishonesty, and it certainly doesn’t guarentee that your investment is safe in some company. It should make it easier to send people to jail, but even that hasn’t been shown to be the case yet.

    It does, however, make a lot of work for many companies. I was talking with a professional services company recently and they said that many of their clients, public and private, are trying to adhere to S-O because public companies have to, but private ones are either looking for an IPO or to be bought by a larger company, and S-O compliance is often part of the due diligence they’d need.

    If you’re an ISO company, you probably can use one set of docs for both certifications, although you’ll need to dive deeper in certain areas for each one. That’s the good thing since we know how much you IT folks love documenting your processes, procedures, and environments.

    I’m just happy to say that SQLServerCentral.com is not complying and I, for one, am thrilled 🙂

    Steve Jones

    (published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72358/)