Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Design Investment

    I ran across a bit of a rant from Don Halloran on the lack of design effort being made in many applications and software. He talks about a lack of consistency in databases, confusing column names and datatypes not used correctly. Don laments that “It seems database design doesn’t get much respect, and I really don’t understand why this is.”

    We all probably have some idea of why systems get built like this: the designer is ignorant, or lazy, or maybe doesn’t pay attention because it’s not part of their job. Any reason could fit, but ultimately it comes down to someone taking on a job without making the investment in their own career.

    If I were putting tile in my own bathroom, I accept a few mistakes, and I might cut some corners. I might be happy to accept a little fumbling around while cutting tile. I would not, however, put up with that if I were paying someone. I would expect a more professional job. If I decided to change careers and lay tile for a living, I’d also expect to make an investment in my own skills to learn how to do a professional job.

    I understand that developers are paid to write code, and that they are more interested in manipulating objects, methods and properties and implementing DR or indexing. If you plan on working with SQL Server, it pays to make the investment in learning how to do it properly. If for not other reason than because you should consider if part of your professional responsibility.

    Steve Jones

  • Hot Skills

    What are the hot skills to work on in 2011? I found this article that gives you a list of some of the things that companies will be looking for according to a survey in Computerworld. It’s a fairly standard list of generic skills that companies are looking for, but it ended with something that I think that people often overlook: business acumen and communication skills.

    How many of us have to work with someone regularly that is not a technologist? How many times do you have to explain something to a business person in a way that is devoid of technical jargon? I would bet that most of us have to do that. However  it seems that too many technology professionals still want business people to better understand what we provide with our computer hardware and software. Instead of us learning more about the business, we want the business to tell us what we should do.

    Building your soft skills, especially  your communication skills, is important, but too often technology professionals give lip service to any effort. We tend to write poorly, we struggle to explain concepts like disaster recovery in a way that those outside of technology can understand.

    I like to write, but I also learned early in my career that there was a huge advantage to being able to express myself clearly to everyone that I had to work with. I talk about this at The Modern Resume, but there really is no substitute for making some type of effort to learn to write better. It’s a great skill that I’m sure will provide benefits in 2011, and every year after.

    Steve Jones

  • Community Direction

    When Microsoft implemented Connect, I thought it was a great idea. It was a way for real users to submit bugs, and others to see those bugs, voting on them if they thought they were important. It would help Microsoft determine what features and bugs are important and perhaps allocate resources accordingly. However there was a fundamental problem with the system. People would see individual items, and could vote for them, but wouldn’t have an idea of what other items might be listed.

    The work on SQL 11 is underway, and recently I got a note from Itzik Ben-Gan asking people to vote for windowing enhancements to the T-SQL language. I’m not sure exactly of all the places that these are useful, but Itzik is one of the smartest people I know and I tend to believe that if he finds these enhancements useful, they are likely going to make T-SQL easier to work with.

    But are these items a priority? I am sure they are valuable, but are they more valuable than CREATE or REPLACE? IS it more of a priority than allowing SSMS add-ins? There are any number of enhancements that are listed, but most of us don’t have the time to dig through them all, or even try to determine how important they might be when weighed against other items.

    Microsoft can do what they want, and they need to keep one eye on the sales generated from new features. However I wish that they’d reserve a slice of their development efforts for older features and get some community help in choosing which items to work on. I’d love to see a list of the items they are considering, maybe the top 20 features, and let us add votes to pick the 10 they can work on.

    We may not sign the purchase orders, but us DBAs really like SQL Server and would appreciate improvements that make our jobs easier.

    Steve Jones

    PS: Here are Itzik’s items:

  • What Do We Need in SQL Server?

    What should be included in the next release of SQL Server? SQL Server 11 is being worked on now, and there are a number of features that I’m sure will be new, as well as some improvements to old features.

    But what should be changed/added/improved upon? Brad McGehee asked that question in his September Blog question. There are some really interesting ideas in the comments, and I hope that some of these get submitted to Connect for inclusion in SQL 11, or even SQL 12. The product will always need work, and we should all be looking forward to future versions.

    I think the product will evolve in the future, and include more Cloud-like features since SQL Azure is getting a lot of attention and it seems many vendors are looking to push for a more service oriented, cloud-based architecture. However for the foreseeable future, I’d think that the next few versions will continue with the same type of install-an-instance-on-a-server that we’ve been used to.

    If you have ideas, or want to lobby for new features, please feel free to include them in the discussion along with your reasons why they are a priority. And if they’re very important to you, please feel free to submit them on Connect and let us know the URL.

    Steve Jones