Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Differences

    Are women the same or different as men? They’re different, without a doubt, and I have very much enjoyed reading the thoughts of a few women that I greatly respect this week in our guest editorials. Each of these ladies has eloquently expressed their views on women in the workplace and today I am looking to wrap up this week of focusing on women in technology with my own thoughts on the topic.

    Women are different than men. I think it’s wonderful and I am thankful that we are different. The synergies that make this an amazing world come from the variety of people in it. It doesn’t matter if they’re men or women, having white or brown skin, speaking English or Chinese, or whether they like chocolate or cheese. It’s the infinite variety of people that make this a better world.

    We have to learn to embrace that. Despite our prejudices, we have to extend that tolerance to see the advantages of working alongside that different than yourself. As pointed out in one of Jen McCown’s references, studies have shown that diverse teams of men and women perform better. They are more productive, and they develop ideas that are more often used by others.

    Cultures around the world treat women differently than men. We view them differently and we often separate them out. Look at sports, where so many of us bond in our youth. Men are often physically superior, and participate in different, often more violent sports. That seems to have carried over into business at times. We mistake physical superiority at a game implying that a person better able to handle business. I don’t think that’s true, and I think it takes time, discussion, and awareness to combat that.

    Then there’s sex. No one touched on it this week, but sex, love, emotions evoked by others are a part of our workplace. They shouldn’t be, but how can you get away from it? We can’t help being attracted to whoever we are attracted to, and we often don’t handle that well. It doesn’t matter if our feelings are reciprocated or rebuffed; we seem to struggle with them. Even if we don’t act on it, the locker room jokes and attitudes that many men display can carry over into their interactions with women. I have no idea how to get past this, and I think it’s something that we have to somehow learn to live with, and try not to let it interfere with our professional attitudes.

    We don’t hire someone just based on their skill at a job. If we did, we could just devise some test and hire the person with the best score, or the score above some level. We are hiring someone to do more than just write code; we’re hiring them to work with others, interact with them, and get along. The means that we will subjectively make decisions about who we’d like to work with.

    Which means getting past our prejudices. Understanding our human frailty in judging people and embracing our diversity.

    Steve Jones

  • The Hybrid

    I’m off to SQL Server Connections next week and looking forward to the conference. This is my first time attending, but I have wanted to go for some time. This is one of the few events that is not specifically focused on one technology. In fact, it’s actually 7 conferences in one, co-locating events on ASP.NET, Silverlight, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Sharepoint, Windows, and Exchange.

    It seems that more and more of us working in information technology are called upon to work with a variety of products and platforms. While you might primarily be a DBA that deals with T-SQL or SQL Server administration, you probably are called upon to use other skills as well. You might need to help with Windows security, or Exchange administration, or even do some .NET development. As wide as the SQL Server platform is, it seems that often we have the need for skills with other technologies.

    Even if you don’t actually work in other areas because of regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, understanding those other technologies can really help your career. You might better understand how to integrate SQL Server into your environment or better secure an application. You might even be able to offer ideas that  help a co-worker in their job troubleshoot a problem.

    I’ve felt that the most talented people in IT usually have a varied background and understand a wide variety of technologies. They bring that wide view of the forest to bear on a problem, and often find a solution because they can think laterally and are not tied down to the boundaries of a specific product.

    Steve Jones

  • Are there that many GUIDs?

    Do a lot of people actually use GUIDs as Primary Keys? I haven’t used them much, and I would have thought that more people chose identity keys. It seems that most of the demos and examples I see from bloggers and speakers are constantly using identities.

    However an informal survey from Peter Bromberg showed that four times as many people actually had GUIDs as their primary keys. The blog actually says that GUIDs are not a good choice, but I’m not sure I agree with that. You can use sequential GUIDs, and you can avoid making them the clustered key, so I think they can work as well as anything.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with GUIDs, and they should be unique across all of your rows. There have been some reported cases of duplicates, but for most practical purposes, especially in database work, you ought to be able to count on a GUID as unique. They even have the nice capability of being generated by clients, removing the need for an extra round trip when a client needs to insert multiple rows.

    I typically don’t use them because they’re long, hard to remember and type, and hard to view on the screen. I can’t easily compare rows in multiple tables, and it’s easier for me to work with integers.  I don’t recommend them, but if you are going to use them, be sure you understand the pros and cons, and use them appropriately.

    Steve Jones

  • 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