A Remote Work Guide

Posted on April 24, 2020 by way0utwest

It seems that the vast majority of people I know in the data professional world are working from home these days. Actually, I think more people are working remotely than ever before. I don’t know how much will carry over into the future, but I certainly think more companies will think about having people work from home more often. This might be the thing that finally gets many managers accepting remote work as a normal way for employees to get things done.

Across the last month I’ve seen lots of advice and thoughts about how to adjust to remote work. Some I agree with, some I don’t. I’ve been full time at home for seventeen years at this point and my wife did it for nearly twenty. We’ve had a lot of experience, and learned a lot in that time. While thinking about the advice I’ve give to others, I noticed this guide from Gitlab for their employees on adjusting to working at home and wanted to share it.

I think this guide has some good advice, though certainly finding space and finding separation between work and home life can be tough at first, especially with kids at home. I think it took me 2-3 months to really adjust to the new routine when I started full time at home, and even now, I can struggle at times. Usually I have the gym, coaching, travel, and other activities to break up life and get me away from my office. That’s not the case now, and this tweet from Scott Hanselman sums up things for me. This isn’t the same as my routine has been for over a decade. This adjustment is hard, and we should allow for fits and starts from both ourselves and others.

Many of us technical people are somewhat introverted. I know I am, despite all the public speaking I do. It’s easy to retreat a bit into our own world right now, which isn’t necessarily the best thing. As the guide notes, experiment with some changes and new things. I have to say that I never thought a virtual coffee break or happy hour would be something I’d try, but I look forward to my 9am happy hour with Redgate staff every Friday. Don’t stop engaging completely, and as you find structure, experiment a little here and there.  Loneliness can creep up on you.

If you’re a person that likes the written word, the SQLServerCentral forums have some great discussions. Feel free to join in to something fun, like coping, baseball, or anything not about SQL, or stick to technical topics if you like. If you prefer video, I’d urge you to reach out to a friend or family member, or even someone on Twitter, for a quick chat. I’ve made it a point to reach out to a few people every couple days, usually text or messaging, just to check in and say hi. It’s been helpful to me.

Remote work is a challenge in and of itself, but this isn’t the same as normal telecommuting. Try some different things, build some routine, and remember to take care of yourself and your family in this challenging time. If you have tips or tricks that have worked for you, especially those of you in small spaces, share them with others in a comment today.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

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Live Stairways Day 1 Homework

Posted on April 23, 2020 by way0utwest

I recorded my first class for the Live Stairways – Learning DAX and Power BI. My apologies for anyone that wanted to join. We had an error in the Zoom meeting, and I had to create a new meeting.

Some fits and starts, but still, an interesting first class, as I worked through Level 1. A few things I, and you, need to do to follow along. I’ll add this to the class course, but for now, some homework.

Homework

First, SQL Server.

If you haven’t installed SQL Server and SSAS, do that. You can get the developer edition from the SQL Server downloads page. I’m using SQL Server 2017, but 2019 should work. Set this up on a machine somewhere, and be sure to add SSAS.

I don’t have SSAS installed, so I’ll do a video and post on how to add that to your SQL Server installation.

Next, Power BI Desktop.

If you haven’t installed Power BI Desktop, go here and download it. It’s an easy, standard Windows install.

Last, AdventureWorks DW Version

The AdventureWorks scripts are on GitHub. You can download the install script and run this to set up the DW database.

That’s it for now. I’ll hold off on the SSAS project for now.

homework #1 – Install SQL Server and SSAS
homework 2 – AdventureWorks DW version
Homework 3 Power BI

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Mongodb Encryption

Posted on April 23, 2020 by way0utwest

The last decade has seen a number of new database platforms get implemented in a variety of organizations. Most of the newer popular platforms have been NoSQL (Not Only SQL) products, and one of the first that became quite popular was MongoDB. I first ran into a few customers using this platform around 2012/2013. At the time some customers inquired whether we had any products to help with development. We did, somewhat, as we invested in 3T.

MongoDB has enjoyed a lot of popularity and set some standards for how to store and retrieve data. CosmosDB (and other products) has API compatability with MongoDB, precisely because of its popularity. While I’m not sure MongoDB is the replacement for your RDBMS, I’m sure it has places and problem domains where it shines. I’ve also watched the product improve and grow to meet the requirements and desires of more customers. One recent addition was field level encryption.

MongoDB has had storage level encryption, similar to TDE in SQL Server. It also has had transport encryption (think SSL network protection). This new feature is more like Always Encrypted (AE) in SQL Server. Clients can perform the encryption and decryption, assuming they have the keys. This isn’t quite like AE as it appears to need code changes, but it does protect the data from system administrators, which is a concern for some applications and industries.

How well does this work? There certainly is a challenge with managing keys, distributing them to clients, revoking them, and more. All of these are the same challenges more encryption technologies have to deal with, including AE. This is a good addition to all data platforms, which ought to enable encryption, but having, or even using, the encryption, isn’t a panacea for the problem of protecting data. We need lots of other things to be designed, implemented, and operated securely.

I’m not a big fan of MongoDB, but it’s a fine platform, and it likely works well for some organizations. I’m glad that it continues to enhance its security capabilities, and I hope that anyone implementing it enables all that they can. Too many installations in the past haven’t had good security, and that’s a problem. If you manage data, secure your system, and be sure you continue to monitor the platform for security issues and keep learning more about how to best protect your data.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

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Daily Copying 23 Apr 2020

Posted on April 23, 2020 by way0utwest

I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter, 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 take a small step towards an important goal.

Goals are interesting. I’ve struggled with them for most of my life, and I dislike setting them and forcing myself to meet some arbitrary thing. I find life comes pretty fast, and sometimes throws me a lot of curve balls. That being said, I’ve had a lot of success and I rarely find myself lacking for things I’ve accomplished, both at work and in life.

That being said, I’ve let a lot of things go, partially because life is busy and I get caught up with it. I don’t have any great big goals, but I do have a few things nagging me.

Around the ranch there are always things to work on. Some of them are priorities, and often those are the ones I don’t love working on. I get satisfaction from fixing feeders, but I don’t really enjoy it. This was most of my last Sunday. Bracing and replacing old wood.

20200419_144558_HDR

However, I do like tackling some new things. One of the we’ve done a few times, more in this stay at home time, and want to do more, is sit outside in the evening. As we did recently with a friend, 6ft apart.

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I’ve been wanting to build some Adirondack chairs for this space, with some built in tables, or at least wine glass holders. These chairs are OK, but we need more, and my wife would like to encourage boarders to come and sit and watch their horses.

I’d like to build something like this, which really could be from some of the scrap wood I have around. I’ve got lots of odd sizes that likely would work here, at least for a prototype.

2020-04-21 10_28_22-(305) Pinterest

I’m hoping to get slighly started with this over the weekend. It’s not a priority, but tackling something new feels good. I’m aiming to get the basic frame measured and cut. That would be a good first step.

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