March 22, 2018 at 9:08 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Ad Hoc Logs
March 23, 2018 at 5:42 am
We just built a table yesterday where we will log 'back door' data alterations.
March 23, 2018 at 6:33 am
Call me cynical, but I foresee GDPR being a train wreck of epic proportions. Of course all the blame will come down on IT, with the politicians tut-tutting as they load their financial shotguns, inwardly rubbing their hands at the windfall to come. All those non-compliance fines...
As with all things IT, logging needs to be built in from the beginning if you want it to be industrial strength--as GDPR demands. All those legacy systems?
Shudder.
I feel for the EU IT folks, I really do.
March 23, 2018 at 7:06 am
Where I've worked, ServiceNow has been part of the change control process, even if the DBAs occasionally create the support ticket and assign it to ourself. I'm not sure if it's a built in feature of ServiceNow or someone's in-house innovation, but anyone in the organization can create a fast track support ticket simply by sending an email to help desk with a special hash tag in subject line indicating which team to assign it to. Again, we can always send it off in an email to ourself. Also, we use Slack, and there is a special channel for our DBA team to chat about ongoing issues, ask questions, or drop a quick note about what we just did at 2 AM.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
March 23, 2018 at 8:01 am
I am just coming to the end of a book called The Railways. The Nation, network and people and briefly mentions parallels between the effect of the movement of information and services made possible by the internet and the movement of goods and services made possible by the railways.
Obviously the book doesn't dwell on the point but I can see far more parallels, the key one being the emergence of regulation and auditing. Until some pretty scandalous abuses of investors money the legal requirement to audit accounts did not exist. All sorts of regulation that today we take for granted was actively resisted and derided.
Prior to the existence of a railway network there was no business model for how a large organisation should be run. The only organisations of comparable size were the army and the navy. Look at Facebook. Where is the model to govern this type of company? Until last week it was on course to be the worlds first Trillion dollar company.
The emergence of standards and ways of working and their subsequent evolution is also in the book. Tech debt from the 1800s is still with us meaning certain things cannot be standardised.
I think logging and auditing practises are just the tip of the iceberg for IT. We have had it relatively easy up to now.
March 23, 2018 at 8:23 am
David.Poole - Friday, March 23, 2018 8:01 AMI am just coming to the end of a book called The Railways. The Nation, network and people and briefly mentions parallels between the effect of the movement of information and services made possible by the internet and the movement of goods and services made possible by the railways.Obviously the book doesn't dwell on the point but I can see far more parallels, the key one being the emergence of regulation and auditing. Until some pretty scandalous abuses of investors money the legal requirement to audit accounts did not exist. All sorts of regulation that today we take for granted was actively resisted and derided.
Prior to the existence of a railway network there was no business model for how a large organisation should be run. The only organisations of comparable size were the army and the navy. Look at Facebook. Where is the model to govern this type of company? Until last week it was on course to be the worlds first Trillion dollar company.
The emergence of standards and ways of working and their subsequent evolution is also in the book. Tech debt from the 1800s is still with us meaning certain things cannot be standardised.I think logging and auditing practises are just the tip of the iceberg for IT. We have had it relatively easy up to now.
David,
This parallel you've mentioned is very interesting and as a gut reaction I tend to agree with it very much. I'll just may have to read the book now :D. Very thought provoking. Thanks.
March 23, 2018 at 9:09 am
It is interesting how the cable TV has for decades been regulated in terms of customer profiling, data collection, political advertising, content, and anti-monopolization. But FaceBook hasn't been held to the same standard. At some point in scale, a social media website isn't just a place where college kids and soccer moms go to post their photos and share common interests; it becomes a global network and monopoly with far reaching hooks into the economy, politics, and folks personal lives.
The thing about FaceBook being leveraged as a general purpose login and profile framework for unrelated websites is particularly problematic given that FaceBooks primary revenue model is hoarding data and selling it to 3rd parties. Those people at Cambridge Analytica arn't just irresponsible, they are total creeps and sycophants. They were caught on tape bragging about how they use, not only fake news but also: spies, prostitutes, and black mail to influence the outcome of political elections around the globe.
Is this who we want entrusted with our personal data?
In light of all these scandals, when we tell our family and friends that we work in the data analytics industry, what will they think of us?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
March 23, 2018 at 9:13 am
Josh Jay - Friday, March 23, 2018 6:50 AMI wonder if some tool like Slack or a shared MS OneNote notebook would be best? They could be arranged per database, server, etc. to keep a running log of who did what and it would be easy for a new team member to search through.
Personally I use OneNote. But not all of my colleagues do. However, there are so many systems here and each team seems to develop what works for them.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
March 23, 2018 at 12:04 pm
qbrt - Friday, March 23, 2018 8:23 AMDavid,
This parallel you've mentioned is very interesting and as a gut reaction I tend to agree with it very much. I'll just may have to read the book now :D. Very thought provoking. Thanks.
Just a quick warning I've found it interesting but heavy going. Every time I've been on the verge of giving up it throws out a fascinating fact. Apart from railway tracks wear out faster in tunnels, which has fuelled many a pub conversation it mentions the side effects of Dr Beeching's closures. More automation, more self service, more facilities available online therefore removal of expensive equipment from stations. All parallels with DevOps and cloud services
March 23, 2018 at 5:58 pm
I am a few years removed from this but I recall working at a firm where we were preparing to pass an IT audit so we decided to use the SQL audit feature to log every DML and DDL change made except those made by regular end-users who could only access the data through our application.
I recall that one of the challenges coming out of this was the tedious process of periodically reviewing the logged changes. We did this once a month and it wasn't too bad. However, I could see it becoming impractical if the nature of the environment is that there are many of these changes (I'm thinking that should not be the case though).
The other challenge was to ignore system-generated changes (our database was part of transactional replication).
March 23, 2018 at 9:06 pm
Josh Jay - Friday, March 23, 2018 6:50 AMI wonder if some tool like Slack or a shared MS OneNote notebook would be best? They could be arranged per database, server, etc. to keep a running log of who did what and it would be easy for a new team member to search through.
Tough part here is if you work on a server. Text files have worked best for me, and they can be imported or moved as needed.
March 24, 2018 at 8:29 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Friday, March 23, 2018 9:06 PMJosh Jay - Friday, March 23, 2018 6:50 AMI wonder if some tool like Slack or a shared MS OneNote notebook would be best? They could be arranged per database, server, etc. to keep a running log of who did what and it would be easy for a new team member to search through.Tough part here is if you work on a server. Text files have worked best for me, and they can be imported or moved as needed.
Hm, is that because you would be in an Remote Desktop environment? I guess the best tool ultimately is the one that gets used!
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