Voice of the DBA

Tag: software development

  • Why Don’t We Have Better Practices?

    This essay isn’t quite Safe For Work (SFW) and might offend a few people, so be warned, but I found it somewhat humorous. It’s a look at all the insanity and problems with programming and software in the world. It certainly makes me glad that those of us working on software don’t actually build tangible objects like bridges.

    However the piece did make me think a bit. Why do we have so many conflicts and strange practices in our software systems? Why haven’t we decided upon more good security practices that we widely disseminate and use? Why doesn’t much of our code follow established patterns, like those that we might use to build a bridge?

    I think ultimately it’s because of the ease with which we can “try” something out in code. Our industry allows us to easily build mock ups of ideas, which often get altered and enhanced as we test out ideas to the point where we don’t have time to start over from the beginning in a new way. We continue to build and grow our systems like some sort of bizarre Winchester House, often afraid or uninterested in questioning the conglomeration of architectures that might be contained inside a single application. Even databases are not immune, containing multiple data models and substructures that may or may not mesh smoothly with each other, and often don’t contain much DRI at at all. I also think it’s the NIY syndrome that so many technologists have.

    It seems as though the more we learn about computing, and more important and embedded software becomes in our world, the less we seek to constrain the innovation and impose any sort of engineering or strong discipline on our systems. It makes me think we’ll never get to the highly integrated, and well running computer systems of the future.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Secure Coding

    I was looking recently for some sort of guideline that would help me ensure that code was securely written. I stumbled upon the CERT standards, of which there are few, but one that seemed interesting was this one on Oracle and Java. I thought this first standard was a great explanation of good and bad code that you could use for this particular problem.

    I looked for something similar from Microsoft. I found this, which seems more like a random collection of links that don’t teach, or lead, anyone through the ideas of how to write better code.

    In some ways, Microsoft has produced a microcosm of the Internet. A mish mosh of lots of information with no organization applied at all.

  • The Gadget Itch

    Many of the people that work in technology are interested in gadgets and hardware as much as software. Not all of us, but many of us have had side projects where we’ve melded hardware and software together. For those of us that are older, and started working with computers decades ago, that might have been the only way that we could get a computer system to work.

    I’m glad that I still find people interested in hardware. My son recently built his own gaming computer from parts, and I’m hoping to distract him from some games and get him to help me build some robots with a Raspberry Pi computer and BrickPi add-on board. However it’s not just kids as I’ve seen a number of people at Red Gate working with hardware to build a variety of interesting projects.

    This week I’m wondering if any of you are interested in creating your own devices. If you had the chance to build a device or gadget for work, what would it be? A panic button when there’s a problem that you can press and instantly set of Star Trek “red alert” sirens? A status display based on your continuous integration builds? The question this week is:

    What would you build if you had a parts list like this one?

    Whether you’ve started actually assembling things or you’re just dreaming of something, or perhaps even just seen something that’s intrigued you, let us know. I actually think this might be a fun competition of some sort for an event, perhaps a hacking competition across a couple hours at a SQL Saturday or conference.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.8MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • Continuous Delivery Visualization

    A good one, one of the better diagrams I’ve seen.

    CD

    From http://markosrendell.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/practical-benefits-of-continuous-delivery/

    Now if we can get tooling and processes to make this work reliably for databases.