Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Continuous Learning

    It was a simultaneously busy, and also relaxing Tuesday for me recently. I attended Allan Hirt’s A to Z of Availability Groups at the PASS Summit. I’ve set up an Availability Groups before, but I was never sure that I completely understood everything happening in my lab, so this was a good chance to add some depth and color to my skills in this area. I met a few people surprised that I was spending time in a pre-con learning. They seemed to expect that I’d know most of what Allan was talking about.

    I know quite a bit about AlwaysOn and the related technologies, but I wouldn’t consider myself anywhere near an expert like Allan. I’ve fumbled through settings, but it’s a complex topic, and more importantly, it’s easy to misunderstand or confuse the subtleties of the technology. I went because a good, solid grounding in the technology, being led about in an organized fashion by an expert, is a good way to expand and solidify your knowledge. I saw other “experts”, MCMs and talented speakers in different pre-cons, each trying to continue to learn more about SQL Server.

    SQL Server is a big platform, one that’s wide in the number of features, and deep in complexity. No one knows everything about SQL Server, and most of the people I know that are extremely talented in areas of the platform, continue to grow their knowledge on a regular basis in a variety of areas.

    It’s the mission of SQLServerCentral to help you do the same thing, with our daily newsletter that brings you educational information about SQL Server. Hopefully you look forward to regularly growing your knowledge, just as I do.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. 

  • T-SQL Tuesday #60 – Something New Learned

    tsqltuesdayIt’s been five years, and that’s amazing. Not many things last for a year, much less five, but the T-SQL Tuesday party, started by Adam Machanic (B|T)., has been amazing and lots of fun for me.

    This month, Chris Yates hosts and his theme is Something New Learned. It’s a great topic, especially given the aims of T-SQL Tuesday to spread knowledge out in the world and share it with others.

    AlwaysOn

    This is good timing for me as I took a one day class last week. At the PASS Summit, I spent Tuesday in Allan Hirt’s A to Z of Availability Groups, which tries to help you understand AlwaysOn and the Availability Group portion of the technology. It was a great experience, and Allan did a fantastic job of walking through an overview, and then details. BTW, I can see how this would be amazing, and while I haven’t been, I’m sure that Allan’s Mission Critical SQL Server classes are valuable ways to learn this stuff in a hands on environment in a way that should help you be productive quickly on your own systems.

    The most interesting part for me is that this wasn’t an all day class where I listen to lectures, follow along in a workbook, and then move on. There were actual labs, and not labs that meant I downloaded scripts onto my machine and worked on them. Actually 3 node labs, dedicated to me, with instructions on how things were configured.

    What did I learn? Quite a bit, but for me the big mysteries that I’ve struggled with on AlwaysOn setups have been some of the permissions. Going through the labs, and getting the permissions necessary in the AD domain. The few places I had issues in the lab exercises were almost all related to a permissions issue I missed or had set incorrectly.

    I also went through the advanced versions of the labs, specifically to practice using Powershell for some config items. This was the chance to practice some skills and try to learn a bit more about how I can use PoSh for real world tasks. While the GUI might work well, I know that if I wanted to ensure I could build and create a lab in short order, or on demand, I’d really need PoSh scripting to ensure it was done correctly, and repeatedly. The lab reinforced that.

    I also learned a bit about a better way to teach. I’ve been in a few classes and lots of sessions across the last few years, but this dedicated lab environment really made things much easier for me. The hands on work was valuable in actually working through the concepts. In fact, I’ll be going through it again today as I have access to the labs for 10 days, and the workbook, so I can set up another Availability Group today and see the things I’ve done wrong in my own lab setup.

  • Pay It Forward

    There’s been a joke for years that responds to this question: what happens if I train my developers and they leave? The answer (and the joke) is this: what happens if you don’t train your developers and they stay?

    It’s rather stunning to me that companies don’t want to invest in the people that build their software. Software is one of the most valuable assets a company can create. However it’s not free, just as an investment in better machinery requires capital.

    I blame the MBAs in America (and possibly elsewhere) who started to look at the world very closely with a factory and accounting mentality, seeking to minimize, rather than just lower, costs, and treating far, far too many resources as homogeneous. That includes people, and the ill-conceived notion of human workers as “resources”.

    However I think that our industry has grown up with this idea that we are all tinkerers and like to learn on our own. We can learn on our own, and perhaps we can do so more efficiently than in a class. Classes far too often built and taught by a vendor that builds a product, but doesn’t use the software in the real world. There’s this idea that building software is easy and that we should be able to “pick it up” in our spare time.

    However many other industries invest in their employees, and spend time training them to work better. Doctors and nurses learn from other doctors and nurses. Accountants and lawyers attend continuing education, though often because they must do so for licensing reasons. Engineers study new techniques in their fields, but in these and many other industries, companies often give their employees time, funding, or experimental time in which they can improve their skills. Managers in other fields often recognize that people must continue to learn, or they will see their skills wane.

    Perhaps that’s where we should start. Let’s train managers to understand that training is important to produce higher quality software, faster.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

     

  • Have You Been Hacked?

    I am glad that I don’t work in the retail industry as a DBA. It seems that I read about a new security breach every few weeks from some company. Home Depot, Target, Staples, the list goes on and on, and includes more and more businesses that at least some of us use regularly. It’s gotten to the point where I expect that I’ll need to replace at least one of my cards every year because of some data loss issue.

    However it’s not just retail companies that are getting attacked. According to the Q3 Dambella report, companies are having dozens of devices infected daily and seeing increasing numbers of point-of-sale (POS) attacks all the time. Even those companies that don’t deal directly with credit cards and consumers are finding that they are targets of network attacks more and more. Some of these are merely vandalism, but many are intended as some sort of industrial espionage or data breach that can be used for profit.

    This is the other edge of the data professional’s sword. We have low unemployment and high salaries, but we are also becoming responsible and the target of blame when data is stolen. I really believe that theft detection is becoming more important for data professionals. We won’t be able to prevent attacks, but we surely need to know when they have occurred and be prepared to respond.

    I don’t know how our profession will move forward in the future to meet these needs. Perhaps we’ll become bonded like locksmiths. Perhaps we’ll be bound by insurance requirements to adhere to best practices. I’m not sure any of that will help increase security, but it might help reduce the liability that we may face.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.