x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Voice of the DBA

A series of episodes that look at databases and the world from a data professional"s viewpoint. Written and recorded by Steve Jones, editor of SQLServerCentral and The Voice of the DBA.

technology tech news

All Episodes

02:50

Track Your Consultants

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/03/29

If you pay attention to security issues in software, you've probably heard about man-in-the-middle attacks. These can occur more frequently than you expect, though inside of a company, it's more unlikely that you'll experience one if you have some fairly basic security controls on your network.However, if you invite someone inside of your network, such as a consultant of some sort, you should be more vigilent. There's a great post showing how someone can execute a MITM attack against SQL Server

en

02:50

Rogue Software Changes

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/11/16

Could a group of software developers make changes that fundamentally alter the way a software system should work without management being aware? That's the question being asked of VW right now. Most people are skeptical, but I ran across a piece that wants to lend credence to the idea that a few software engineers acted with few people being aware. They did this, not because they wanted to defraud everyone, but they wanted a solve a problem that they couldn't do in other ways. They also didn't see

en

02:37

The Command Line is Back

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/11/09

I grew up using a command line for all of my computing. I started with a Commodore VIC-20 as a youth, moving on to Apple IIs, TRS-80s, and then OpenVMS in university classes. It wasn't until I started doing graduate work that I started to enjoy graphics in the X Window System, though many of my windows just ran bash and korn shells on SunOS. Since that time, I've mostly made my living in Microsoft Windows and OSX, using graphical programs. I've still been quick to open a command shell at times, but

en

01:49

Adjusting Model

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/09/04

In July the T-SQL Tuesday theme was defaults. There were lots of posts about various items, but I found one by Kevin Kline interesting. Kevin noted that the settings for model are not necessarily what many of us would want in production. Is that really the case? This week I wanted to take a poll and see if many of you actually do create defaults for your new databases by changing model that are different than what Microsoft has done. Read the rest of "Adjusting Model"

en

02:43

Source Code Security

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/03/31

I'm not surprised, and I had expected to read about something like this much sooner. Apparently someone at the ride sharing company, Uber, posted a security key online in a GitHub distribution. I assume this was some sort of code repository for Uber that may or may not have been supposed to be shared publicly, but having used GitHub, I could see someone making a mistake and accidentally putting private code in the public space. Uber is worried as the key is a security authorization key used to

en

02:09

Software Engineering in Practice

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/03/30

I ran across a review of a developer's first year at a company. The company is endjin and the poster describes their first year as a "software engineer apprentice," which is an interesting way to look at one's early career. While it's not for everyone, I suspect that many developers in this business could actually use a bit of apprentice time to solidify their foundation of knowledge. The post talks more about the way in which the work is done than the actual tools involved. A few are mentioned, but

en

02:12

Testing

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/01/13

It seems that software always contains bugs. No matter how much time and effort is spent building an application, there will be issues. Sometimes this is because of a lack of testing, and sometimes this is because of poor testing, but in any case, the expectation that we will test our code is becoming more prevalent as we depend more and more on computer software. Users expect our software to work. It seems there is never enough time to properly test software after it is complete. Perhaps your

en

02:39

Holiday Struggles

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/12/09

It's the slow time of year. As I saw tweeted recently, "And now for the month when nothing gets done." I haven't usually felt this way at a few jobs as the budget and planning process has typically been a part of a busy month. As I've run SQLServerCentral, I've also been looking back and forward this month, trying to think about our industry and data in a long term way. I have found December to be frenetic as times as I try to get in some ski days while still getting work done. However this year

en

02:24

The Real Scary DBAs

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/09/08

I ran into someone recently that told me they were scared at their job. This person had built a number of ETL jobs to move data around between systems. They were trained as a developer, but had a little experience, got sucked into working with SQL Server, and had made a career without really considering themselves a DBA. They seemed a bit bewildered that they hadn't messed up the data in any of their employer's systems. I've met quite a few people like that, who seem amazed to be trusted to

en

02:40

Data Decisions or Instinct?

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/07/24

Most of us that are data professionals think the best way to make decisions is to use data to justify some course of action. We look for patterns in data, some guidance that the information we have will lead us to make the best choice for our organization. Google has talked about making data driven decisions as a part of their success and they think more organizations should do this. Any number of other companies also use data to power their BI systems and dashboards that help their employees make

en

02:48

Dev Ops

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/07/22

The DevOps movement is supposed to promote a closer collaboration between developers, testers, operational people, and really anyone else that must help software gets build and deployed. The developers need to coordinate their needs and requirements with operational staff. They should work early on with any staff performing testing to help them ensure that bugs are caught quickly and fewer slip through to production. At the same time, operational staff should be responsive and helpful in all the

en

02:33

Farewell

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/30

This is my last day of work this quarter as I start my sabbatical at 5 o'clock today. I'll be gone for the next six weeks, away from SQLServerCentral, trying to improve and grow myself while staying as unwired as I can during that time. The rest of the staff here at SQLServerCentral will pick up the load, and I'm sure everything will be fine. This is a bit scary for me. I've pretty much been employed full time since I was 17, only taking a few, short, involuntary stretches of unemployment in almost

en

02:57

Patching Problems

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/27

I applied the Windows 8.1 update a few weeks ago and had some issues with my machine. Windows was fine, but I lost my SQL Server service. A few other users, including some of the SQLServerCentral community also had issues and sent me ideas, but their fixes didn't work for me. That was OK because the problems gave me a chance to use PoSh to solve a real problem. I'll be blogging about that in the next week. However the 8.1 update has caused lots of issues, and Microsoft is acknowledging these

en

02:34

Laptop Dreams

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/26

The Surface 3 was announced last week, and I was underwhelmed by the event, especially the presentation itself. The entire spectable didn't seem to compare to some other companies' announcements. I did, however, find myself thinking about replacing my laptop with a tablet that's lighter and allows me to forgo a keyboard. As much as I use a keyboard and depend on a responsive set of keys to get work done, there are definitely times when I'd like to just have a screen, and certainly a lighter form

en

01:53

The Development Backup

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/20

Have you ever had a development server crash? Have you lost work because of this? Had delays or had to recreate code? You shouldn't, or at least you shouldn't lose much work or time.. There was a time when I offered to manage backups on all development servers. This was in a large environment with hundreds of instances. I wasn't worried. I had scripts to do the work of setting up, running, and reporting on backups for instances. I knew how to deploy these scripts to hundreds of servers. Read the

en

02:47

Failure

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/16

Tim O'Reilly has written some great pieces over the years on many aspects of technology and change. I've followed him for years and I've enjoyed many of his thoughts and views on our industry. I think he's thoughtful and truly envisions the amazing things that technology can do to change the world, mostly for the better. I think it's worth randomly reading through (or listening to) some of his thoughts. He recently wrote a long piece on the failures he's had in business with his company, O'Reilly

en

02:32

Why Don't We Have Better Practices?

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/15

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 conflict and strange practices in many software systems? Why haven't we decided upon more good security practices

en

02:19

Better Training

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/13

I was talking with some data professionals recently about training and the value of college, work, or some other method of entering the technology business. I have a few thoughts about the different ways of teaching people about this business, and I'm curious what you think. What do you think of traditional computer science? Colleges have students study computer science theories, languages, and more. Build small software projects, write pieces of operating systems and more as part of their

en

02:50

Calling Local Speakers

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/12

There's likely a call for speakers open somewhere near you. When I was early in my career, I'd see these calls at large conferences like Comdex, TechEd, even the PASS Summit, and I'd think I'd never get the chance to present, with the best of the best speakers being accepted and no chance that I would be chosen. Things have changed in the world with the growth of SQL Saturday, there are a dozen open calls right now, all around the world, with many opportunities for new people to give a

en

02:23

Backup Responsibility

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/09

One of the most important things that you can do as a DBA, or really as any sort of system administrator, is back up your system.Ensuring that you have have backups, and of course, that you can restore them, is the number one priority for sysadmins. Everything else that you need to do is second to backups. After all, backups ensure you still have a system after a disaster. If you can't do that, then security, performance, features, none of that matters. I have worked in large and small environments,

en

355 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs