Been running into an interesting trend in working on different systems, looking for performance issues, finding things that need to be addressed. Typically it all starts with a client that is confused about the performance they’re seeing after an upgrade that was supposed to fix everything automagically, but doesn’t seem to have accomplished that once completed. There are many, many […]
Editorials
We’re At A Critical Tipping Point Data Control and Privacy-Wise
This is an incredibly important time in the life of a data professional I believe. These are times that are going to shape exactly what’s expected of us all in terms of data ownership, data protection, data privacy, data security and so-on. All of those things sort of fall under the heading of Data Management, particularly when you consider the two […]
Availability as a Database Security Component?
In trolling around reading up on different thing to do with database security, I came across a graphic (credit: checkmarx.com) that took what I thought was a surprising look at security and what was included in an overall secure model for data. There were limited items – Availability, Integrity, Confidentiality. I won’t go into a lot of specifics, I suspect […]
Keeping It Real – Or Communicating, Without Insulting
One of the things that seems to come up over and over again in talking with data folks is this concept of having to communicate. I’m not saying we’re collectively hermits. What I mean is that it’s difficult to explain complex topics to people that are impacted by them, but sometimes… they just don’t care. They want to get their […]
SQL Server (and IT) and the Experience Differentiator
It’s always funny (to me) to see posts, articles and even overheard and been part of discussions about experienced vs. younger (see what I did there?) DBAs and technical people in general. It seems like so many times the conversation revolves around “keeping up” and staying involved. But it seems to me that there are very clear advantages to all […]
Knowledge is Power – Microsoft and SQL Server Telemetry Data from Azure
Very interesting things are happening with updates, features, new directions and such for SQL Server. At last, we’re working with real-world, information about how SQL Server is used, what types of things it’s coming up against in that usage and what types of issues are being seen. How? With Azure. There’s a great post on RedmondMag.com that starts to explore […]
Critical Data Recovery is Multi-Faceted
Yesterday, the post was about cyber-attack recovery. Talking about the need for a more comprehensive recovery mechanism and approach than just “restore to the most recent backup.” As mentioned, this also applies to failover systems. In many cases, people will put in failover systems (or cloud-based services that are highly unlikely to go down) and figure they’re covered. But the […]
Cyber-Attack Recovery – Are You Ready?
Many times when folks are planning for recovery of a system, it’s because they anticipate that the system will crash or will be unavailable in a fairly traditional way. (Is there a traditional way for a system to crash???) However, as I was reading a post about the premise that the “Majority of banks [are] still vulnerable to cyber attacks” […]
When Does AI Start Threatening Data Security?
There was an interesting post in the Daily Mail about AI and phishing attacks. Essentially, they were saying that future cyber attacks for phishing and such could be driven by AI. AI could get so intelligent that it was able to assume the identity of people you work with and are used to corresponding with, could mimic them based on […]
The Morphing DBA Responsibilities
One of the things that pundits (do DBAs and data professionals really have pundits?) like to talk about is the demise of the DBA. What with managed services, automation (autonomous administration) and tuning, security and all of that – combined with better administrative models for backup and recovery and those types of things – all of this comes together to […]