Voice of the DBA

Tag: Database Weekly

  • A $3 Billion Donation

    Earlier this week, Microsoft agreed to grant royalty free licenses for 60,000 of its patents for Open Invention Network (OIN) members as it joins the group. The patents include a number that affect Android, Linux, OpenStack, and more. As recently as a few years ago, Microsoft was making over $3 billion from this set of patents, including a billion dollars from Samsung.

    To be fair, licensing revenue has been declining, so this isn’t likely a $3b gift, but it’s still substantial and more important, it’s a positive step forward.

    Actually, it’s a surprising move, and one that seems to have stunned many journalists and open source advocates. There are numerous stories that seem to describe the move with disbelief, which is a position I would have held until recently. If I had seen this post from Erich Anderson, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel, I would have parsed the language, looking for the careful crafting of phrases that indicated some future duplicitous action.

    Instead, as I’ve worked with more and more people from Microsoft and talked with them about upcoming changes, I’ve found that Microsoft is truly changing. They’re becoming more open, and trying to prove their services and software are worth using, not trying to lock customers into an environment they can’t easily leave.

    Nowhere is this more evident than Azure, where there are quite a few Linux VMs. In fact, I thought I heard that there were more Linux than Windows VMs earlier this year, but I can’t find confirmation. In any case, Microsoft supports free and open source software (FOSS), including MySQL as a Service. Incidentally, that powers tsqltuesday.com. I moved the site there earlier this year, using Microsoft’s MySQL services.

    Microsoft is a for profit company, and I expect that they want you to use their software in addition to services. That’s no surprise, but they are becoming less cutthroat and much more welcoming. Scott Guthrie, who leads the cloud and enterprise group, noted that “It’s not just code, it’s community.”

    That’s been my philosophy here are SQLServerCentral. We’re a community, and the vision from Brian, Andy, and I was to share and help others as much as we could. We continued that with SQL Saturday, and we continue that today in our own ways. Andy and I try to support individuals in various ways. Brian has really put his money forward in this area with the Pragmatic Works Foundation.

    We’re a community. All of us. We compete, we argue, we laugh, we cry, but we’re a community and we can all try to grow our business, improve our skills, and advance our industry as a community. I’m proud to be a member of the SQL Community and the #sqlfamily.

    Steve Jones

  • The Ever Expanding Data Platform

    This past week was the 2018 Ignite conference from Microsoft, where we had a number of announcements about the data platform. You can rewatch some of the sessions from the event, and I might recommend the keynotes to see some of the demos and positioning of the data platform. That’s the direction that Microsoft is moving their database products, as a complete platform that not only includes SQL Server, but CosmosDB, Managed Instances, Data Lakes, and  more.

    If you’re a SQL Server DBA, it’s time to stop thinking yourself as a SQL Server DBA or developer. Instead, you need to be a data professional, especially on the Microsoft stack. While you might concentrate on SQL Server and live in SSMS, you ought to be aware of the growing options for working on the Microsoft stack. Azure Data Studio, which Grant wrote about this week, ought to be a tool you investigate. You also ought to be looking at the latest version of SSMS, which had it’s v18 move into a public preview this week. With these tools being free, companies ought to be moving away from the older versions that shipped with SQL Server 2014 and earlier. Instead you should at least be on a v17 version of SSMS. Talk to your IT group and give it a try today. It works fine with all your SQL Server versions, from 2005 through 2017.

    Microsoft is certainly hoping you’ll run more workloads in Azure, and that’s where the data platform is growing. CosmosDB, which I think has a lot of promise for various types problem domains, or even as a companion to SQL Server for certain types of data. There is an increase in their SLA to 5 9s, which is both impressive and ambitious. I know very few on-premises instances that get by with 5 9s across multiple years, leaving aside the ability to get 10ms write performance in the SLA. The is also multi master replication and support for the Cassandra API. While I haven’t done much with CosmosDB, it is on my radar to experiment with as a data store option.

    Managed Instances will be generally available on Oct 1, just a couple days away. While I wasn’t sure that this product would catch on, I’m not surprised that some companies would like to get away from managing most of the stuff around the database and stick with the data. To me, this, more than anything else, can mean that DBAs at larger companies need to be managing data, security, and more, without worrying too much about the basics of backups and HA. Even threat detection, something few of us are good at, is handled by Azure. The restore demo in the keynote is truly impressive. I’m not sure many of us would want to, or be able to, architect those speeds. At least not as easy as provisioning an Azure Managed Instance.

    There are lots of other announcements, which you can read. The one really interesting thing for me was the Data Box announcement. I’ve had more than a few people be concerned about the initial loads of data into an Azure database or data lake. I’ve had that concern, and actually been part of a company that FedEx shipped a rack of disks as part of a SAN to a DR site because of bandwidth constraints. The Data Box is a device that you can order and fill, shipping this back to Azure for loading. It comes in 40TB, 100TB, abd 1PB sizes. That is truly stunning to me. Drop ship 1PB if you have the need. You can even see a picture of it from Argenis Fernandez for some idea of size.

    It’s an exciting time to be a data professional, and Microsoft’s data platform continues to grow. I don’t know that any of us will know more than a tiny bit about most of the platform, but I certainly plan on increasing my knowledge in a few areas to become better aware of how they work and what they are capable of. I might not be able to use them well, but I can at least have enough knowledge to have a conversation about the technology and have an idea of whether it might solve a problem that I run into at work.

    Steve Jones

  • We Need Data Privacy Consistency

    For most of the last year, I’ve had quite a bit of my time devoted to the GDPR and related topics. My company is affected, as it’s based in the UK. Not only must we comply, but we know many other companies must as well. As a result, some of our product focus was aimed at helping companies solve their data privacy issues, especially with regards to data.

    That continues to be a good idea as the GDPR isn’t the only regulation out there affecting organizations’ data handling practices. There are other laws around the world, but the US is a big market, one of the biggest we have, and we are seeing increased need in the US for the same types of data privacy and protection solutions mandated by the GDPR.

    California recently passed their own data protection legislation, and it’s leading the way in the US. Tim Ford wrote a short piece on how this affects his company. He notes that as a consumer, he’s glad to see stricter data handling practices being required. However, as a business owner, he’s concerned and I think there is some basis to be worried.

    There are other laws that might pass soon in the US. New York has a bill, Colorado has signed a weaker, but still new, law. Other states are considering items, but the US Congress has yet to really move forward on any legislation, which might lead us to have multiple data handling practices that are required. That would be a nightmare, much more difficult than the hiring and tax practices of different states.

    I couldn’t imagine having to work with different processes, and certainly wouldn’t want to have more restrictive laws being passed in the future that might cause us to change practices multiple times. I can only hope that the US gets a common law for all our states, and that the practices are in line with what the GDPR requires. Other countries have used that as a basis for their laws, and I can only hope the US does the same.

    Steve Jones

  • We Don’t Have Perfect Information

    I was discussing the PASS Summit with someone and they were wondering about building their schedule. Actually, they wanted to pick sessions, but see the choices in a calendar format, but the schedule wasn’t out. My suggestion was to just build the schedule and then sort out conflicts later.
    A few people have mentioned over the years that they want to build a schedule and be ready for the event to maximize their experience and be efficient. I think that’s a common, normal, technical person thing to do. We’re Type-A, we like knowing and having a set schedule.
    The problem is that we don’t have perfect information. Even if the descriptions and abstracts included perfect information about the agendas, what is covered, and to what depth, including demos, we’d still not necessarily assimilate and recognize all that data. We’d think a session on database design covered fourth normal form, even when the text said third normal, or we’d expect that an SSIS data load talk included something on CSVs when the presenter described the talk as being with flag text files.
    We’re human, and that means we have flaws in how we deal with the world. This includes the ways in which we model and analyze data. While we can make mistakes in our analysis, we often may simplify our view of a problem to the point where our analysis is inherently flawed.
    I try to remember this when I write reports from systems that others will use. I won’t have every piece of information that might affect a system, but I try to ensure I have the most important, or significant, data. At least, the data I (and the users) feel is significant. The important thing to remember is that out data is always incomplete, and it’s entirely possible that we have missed a valuable piece of data.
    When that happens, we have to adapt and adjust our systems, just like our conference schedule. We’ll learn more across time and we can use that information to change our system. I know that my view of a conference like the PASS Summit today, or even a week before the event, will be different than what I know, and how I feel, at the event. I should have a plan, but be willing to flex as circumstances change.
    Steve Jones