How Important is a Conference?

Posted on October 12, 2020 by way0utwest

The PASS Virtual Summit is coming up next month, and Andy has a few thoughts on how to get your employer to send you to the virtual conference. As someone that has been through this many times, Andy has good advice, and his thoughts are the types of things I’ve done in the past at various jobs I’ve had. Having a good reason why was important before I started speaking.

Once I started speaking, I often made a deal with my boss that I’d cover some parts of the event and they’d cover others. We both made a shared investment in my career, which made sense to me. I often used Andy’s line, which is what I was thinking about today.

This is important to me.

That’s a good phrase to use. Usually I do a good amount of self learning, I ask lots of questions, scan message boards, and I teach myself various things. However, a conference is a chance to help me think. I get to consider new technologies, I get to talk with others about how they solve problems, or more often, what problems new technologies can cause me. I get the chance to grow in a wider way than I can in the office.

That’s important to me, and it’s been valuable to my employers. I think that’s the case for some conference attendees, but I do think that some drive and desire are important if you get more out of a conference than a couple days off. Let your boss know you have that drive, and show it off. Remind them of the things you do to invest in yourself.

Can you put into words why a conference is important to you? Why it’s valuable for you personally, what you get, and does the chance to go to an event make you more likely to value your current position? If so, then maybe ask to go. There are some valuable packages to help you learn. If not, that’s fine, but maybe ask yourself why not. What don’t you get out of the Summit, or any other conference.

Maybe the main thing to think about today is what is important to you when it comes to benefits and requests of your employer?

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Daily Coping 12 Oct 2020

Posted on October 12, 2020 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to look for reasons to be hopeful even in difficult times.

This has been a difficult year, in many ways. Large ones with the pandemic, the struggles with racism, the difficulty so many people have in even relating to each other. In small ways, with my kids struggling with school, the inability to travel, losing half my coaching season. None of these are really big problems in the grand scheme of life, but they do affect mental health and attitude.

However, there is a lot to look forward to. I am hopeful that testing and vaccines will come at some point. I am not in favor of rushing things, but I do believe lots of smart people are working on the problems and we slowly see progress.

I also see lots of smiles and kindness from local people in my area when I get out to see them. It’s gratifying to remember there are many people that make my community enjoyable.

Slowly I see the world improving in small ways, as we cope with the issues, attitudes change and improve, and we adapt.

I believe we will come back stronger in many ways from this difficult time.

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The API Battle

Posted on October 10, 2020 by way0utwest

I think Oracle is a fine database platform, maybe too expensive, but it works. However, I’m not a fan of the company, and I find myself less enamored with them when I read about this case. This the Oracle v Google case, where Google is accused of violating copyright of Java APIs when it build Android.

Essentially Oracle claims that the Java API, the packages, classes, methods, etc. are copyrighted and cannot be used in any other product. I assume this means that if I implemented the Java.SQL class, writing the code in C#, I’d be infringing on Oracle’s work.

Even if I offered my software for free, this could be legal violation and I’d owe Oracle money. Or I’d need to license the API from Oracle. Any guesses on whether that would be inexpensive or prohibitive?

In one sense, I do think that copyright and patent protection should exist. On the other hand, I think some of the applications of the original laws and ideas to the digital world don’t translate well. I certainly think that APIs shouldn’t be protected. These are essentially function names, and while I appreciate the need to copyright words, I don’t think it should go this far.

I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will hear this case, and rule that this isn’t a violation. As someone that works for a software company, and has written software designed to inter-operate with other products, I think this would cause lots of chaos in our industry. I also think we have enough silly licensing and limiting practices in software, and I’d prefer to see less, not more.

Steve Jones

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What’s the Lunch Factor?

Posted on October 9, 2020 by way0utwest

A few weeks ago I wrote about the bus factor. This is the number of people that could cripple your organization if they got hit by a bus. Maybe a better way of looking at this is the lottery factor. If these people won a lottery and quit, would they cause problems? There were some interesting answers in the discussion.

There is another factor that I heard about in a presentation that I found interesting: the Lunch Factor. This is the number of people that have to get involved for you to deploy changes to production. Today, I wonder what your lunch factor is? Leave a note in the discussion.

This may be one set of people in your organization for things like patches, which are supposedly tested and approved by the various vendors you use. For software that you develop internally, likely there is a slightly different group of people, with some overlap. Usually the Operations staff is the same in both situations.

In a true DevOps organization, the idea is that developers can actually release code to production. Maybe not every developer, or not every developer can release every type of change, but the idea is that developers can, and do, release code. They’re also responsible for this code. In my discussion with Donovan Brown and Abel Wang of Microsoft recently, this is how they view the world.

They also would likely have most code released triggered and controlled by feature flags, which might ensure that customers can’t see the code right away, or that the code doesn’t break existing customer work. This also ensures that you can turn the feature off if there are problems. I’m a big fan of feature flags (or feature toggles) and think they are way too underutilized by many organizations.

Allowing developers to release code is difficult for many managers, and even for Operations staff. There is always the worry that developers don’t have the expertise or accountability to make these decisions, and many orgs don’t have the capability built in to allow this, much less give the authority to a wide group of people.

Microsoft does, as do lots of organizations trying to embrace DevOps and produce higher quality, more adaptable software. Many of these companies are bound by Sarbannes-Oxley and other regulatory rules, and they make it work. They grow, change, adapt, and most importantly, constantly improve their systems and process to allow this. For them, the lunch factor is 1, or maybe 0 if you consider that no one needs to get taken to lunch. What’s your factor? What staff, managers, even change control boards have to get involved? Let us know today and then think if you could reduce that number.

Steve Jones

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