May 29, 2012 at 4:51 am
From when I worked at the bank...
Devs getting sysadmin on the shared development server - no. Db_owner on their databases, yes. Alter trace permissions, yes. DB_creator for some, yes. Not sysadmin though. I had enough cases of devs breaking things because they weren't aware of the consequences, and besides the first integration test database was also on the dev server and there were policies around who could change the schema of that DB (and a small subset of devs liked bending the rules).
If they wanted a local instance, that was fine, they were fully responsible for any local instances, the DBAs only looked after (as in backup and monitoring) the shared dev server.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
May 29, 2012 at 5:00 am
GilaMonster (5/29/2012)
From when I worked at the bank...Devs getting sysadmin on the shared development server - no. Db_owner on their databases, yes. Alter trace permissions, yes. DB_creator for some, yes. Not sysadmin though. I had enough cases of devs breaking things because they weren't aware of the consequences, and besides the first integration test database was also on the dev server and there were policies around who could change the schema of that DB (and a small subset of devs liked bending the rules).
If they wanted a local instance, that was fine, they were fully responsible for any local instances, the DBAs only looked after (as in backup and monitoring) the shared dev server.
It's still the same over at that bank.
May 29, 2012 at 6:33 am
Brandie Tarvin (5/29/2012)
We don't give Devs more than db_owner in the databases they need to have. For one, we do have a DBA admin only database that we develop code in for production which has data that is restricted to our team. For another, we have developers who write code and forget to add WHERE clauses.EDIT: I should add, it wasn't one of the Devs asking for debug access anyway. It was one of our analysts. When I asked, he told me he was trying to step through code in SSMS so he could see the value of a variable at certain points. At which point I told him to just do a SELECT on the variables as he ran through the code manually. Don't need debug access for that.
Still, it would be nice to give that kind of access without granting someone SysAdmin perms.
No WHERE clause?:w00t::w00t:
I agree sysadmin seems a bit overkill for debug, but also would think an Analyst would be stepping thorough this in QA with a Developer.
Then they are both on the same page with what the code should do and actually does.
May 29, 2012 at 7:05 am
Greg Edwards-268690 (5/29/2012)
Brandie Tarvin (5/29/2012)
We don't give Devs more than db_owner in the databases they need to have. For one, we do have a DBA admin only database that we develop code in for production which has data that is restricted to our team. For another, we have developers who write code and forget to add WHERE clauses.EDIT: I should add, it wasn't one of the Devs asking for debug access anyway. It was one of our analysts. When I asked, he told me he was trying to step through code in SSMS so he could see the value of a variable at certain points. At which point I told him to just do a SELECT on the variables as he ran through the code manually. Don't need debug access for that.
Still, it would be nice to give that kind of access without granting someone SysAdmin perms.
No WHERE clause?:w00t::w00t:
I agree sysadmin seems a bit overkill for debug, but also would think an Analyst would be stepping thorough this in QA with a Developer.
Then they are both on the same page with what the code should do and actually does.
In our company Analysts <> Testers. Analysts do business analysis and are working off "prod copy" databases and the data warehouse. They don't work with Dev code, or with the Devs.
May 29, 2012 at 7:26 am
Brandie Tarvin (5/29/2012)
Greg Edwards-268690 (5/29/2012)
Brandie Tarvin (5/29/2012)
We don't give Devs more than db_owner in the databases they need to have. For one, we do have a DBA admin only database that we develop code in for production which has data that is restricted to our team. For another, we have developers who write code and forget to add WHERE clauses.EDIT: I should add, it wasn't one of the Devs asking for debug access anyway. It was one of our analysts. When I asked, he told me he was trying to step through code in SSMS so he could see the value of a variable at certain points. At which point I told him to just do a SELECT on the variables as he ran through the code manually. Don't need debug access for that.
Still, it would be nice to give that kind of access without granting someone SysAdmin perms.
No WHERE clause?:w00t::w00t:
I agree sysadmin seems a bit overkill for debug, but also would think an Analyst would be stepping thorough this in QA with a Developer.
Then they are both on the same page with what the code should do and actually does.
In our company Analysts <> Testers. Analysts do business analysis and are working off "prod copy" databases and the data warehouse. They don't work with Dev code, or with the Devs.
And in ours, Analysts are expected to work with Developers.
And these Analysts don't get SSMS, which is likely another difference.
"Prod Copy" somewhat implies a separate environment.
Debug usually requires elevated priveleges even on a machine.
They seem to have taken this all the way to the top. 🙂
May 29, 2012 at 9:47 am
Grant Fritchey (5/29/2012)
Piling on with Jeff, I'd rather enable the developers to keep them going as fast as possible in the dev environment. I've always had at least one layer between dev & production, sometimes two or three. That's where I could catch any silliness with security before it got out to the wild. A couple of missed QA deployments or a failed CI build with all the noise those generates and the developers are back on the straight & narrow again.
Just to show how serious I am about the Developers and the Dev environment... I actually do Point-in-Time backups on the Dev environments so I can help Developers rollback if they make a terrible mistake.
Someone once asked my why I'm more for rolling back mistakes in Dev than preventing them altogether. My answer comes from one of my favorite bosses of all time. "I know you're going to make mistakes... if you don't, then I'm not pushing you hard enough."
Smart man... great enabler.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 29, 2012 at 10:51 am
Jeff Moden (5/29/2012)
Grant Fritchey (5/29/2012)
Piling on with Jeff, I'd rather enable the developers to keep them going as fast as possible in the dev environment. I've always had at least one layer between dev & production, sometimes two or three. That's where I could catch any silliness with security before it got out to the wild. A couple of missed QA deployments or a failed CI build with all the noise those generates and the developers are back on the straight & narrow again.Just to show how serious I am about the Developers and the Dev environment... I actually do Point-in-Time backups on the Dev environments so I can help Developers rollback if they make a terrible mistake.
Someone once asked my why I'm more for rolling back mistakes in Dev than preventing them altogether. My answer comes from one of my favorite bosses of all time. "I know you're going to make mistakes... if you don't, then I'm not pushing you hard enough."
Smart man... great enabler.
Sounds like he didn't beleive in the blame game. Never had a boss actually say that, but I worked with a great supervisor years ago. I was never made to feel that I screwed up when I know I screwed up. Worked with a group of people that cared more about getting things done and training people, than pointing fingers when things went work.
May 29, 2012 at 11:04 am
Brandie Tarvin (5/29/2012)
We don't give Devs more than db_owner in the databases they need to have. For one, we do have a DBA admin only database that we develop code in for production which has data that is restricted to our team. For another, we have developers who write code and forget to add WHERE clauses.
I've been more in line with Brandi. I want developers to build stuff, and they have free reign on their own machines, but for servers, I want to limit the amount of stuff that gets changed. I also want to be able to have someone managing the servers without stuff changing, either on the Windows host or the SQL instance.
Course, I think I've had worse developers overall than Jeff in most cases.
May 29, 2012 at 11:21 am
Jeff Moden (5/29/2012)
Grant Fritchey (5/29/2012)
Piling on with Jeff, I'd rather enable the developers to keep them going as fast as possible in the dev environment. I've always had at least one layer between dev & production, sometimes two or three. That's where I could catch any silliness with security before it got out to the wild. A couple of missed QA deployments or a failed CI build with all the noise those generates and the developers are back on the straight & narrow again.Just to show how serious I am about the Developers and the Dev environment... I actually do Point-in-Time backups on the Dev environments so I can help Developers rollback if they make a terrible mistake.
Someone once asked my why I'm more for rolling back mistakes in Dev than preventing them altogether. My answer comes from one of my favorite bosses of all time. "I know you're going to make mistakes... if you don't, then I'm not pushing you hard enough."
Smart man... great enabler.
I sort of agree with that. I want developers to make mistakes (and suffer if they can't see how to recover from them). People learn from mistakes, and good developoers who make mistakes become better developers as a result. They also learn how to structure systems so that the impact of a mistake is minimalised and so that recovery is not fraught and nerve-racking, because they don't like suffering.
Of course I don't regard anyone as a real developer who hasn't (a) done some customer support work, (b) done some user support work (that's often not the same thing as customer support), (c) maintained and supported someone else's code, (d) desk-checked someone's code and been considered useful by that someone, (e) written useful unit tests for a component where they've seen only the spec, not the code, (f) done a stint in system integration, and (g) shown a willingness to learn new programming languages, new tools, and new paradigms. Of course they also have to be able to "think outside of the box" (and it probably helps, although it isn't absolutelky necessary, if they can "think inside the box" too). If people with all that under their belt can't be trusted with SA privileges on development systems they are not the sort of person anyone ought to want to employ.
In fact I've been happy sometimes to give people with that background SA privileges on my customers' production systems, because our customers tended to want instant fixes (to problems like "oh dear, we have a new client and we've promised him our system will do this thing that we never considered when we bought from you, we need it by the day after tomorrow, please change our system to do it?"). But it's generally much nicer if productin systems can be tied down a bit tighter than that (as they usually can, I think)!
Tom
May 29, 2012 at 1:17 pm
I thought things were very dull and quiet of SQL Server Central (logged in this evening after not having time to look at it yesterday, only 8 messages in the thread) but now I've seen this which I reckon makes up for the dearth of inspiration elsewhere on the site. 😀
edit: that's 8 new messages that I hadn't seen before, not 8 messages in total. I didn't use DBCC TimeWarp to retrieve the thread as it was before Steve first posted to it. :hehe:
BTW, the reason I didn't have time to look yesterday was that I spent most of the day travelling (or sitting on a stationary plane while flight delayed, which I guess isn't actually travelling because it isn't travel when you don't move). Some of the actual movement being at a pace that would have earned a scornful look of disdain from a crippled snail - that was getting through the "security" farce at Manchester airport - the "fast lane" in security - which we use because my wife is somewhat disabled - was vastly slower than the checkin queue, which is quite an achievement. I haven't had quite such an awful experience at an international airport since last time I was in the states, which was five years ago. Anyway, I'm back in LZ now. Unfortunately have to go back to UK mid-June, but at least for 18 days I can pay about 2 euros for a bottle of excellent red instead of the £8.50 the same bottle costs in a supermarket in England.
Tom
May 29, 2012 at 2:05 pm
L' Eomot Inversé (5/29/2012)
I thought things were very dull and quiet of SQL Server Central (logged in this evening after not having time to look at it yesterday, only 8 messages in the thread) but now I've seen this which I reckon makes up for the dearth of inspiration elsewhere on the site. 😀
If you want a train wreck, I nominate this
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
May 29, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Posting for a job I just witnessed:
BO/Crystal Reports Specialist
:hehe:
May 29, 2012 at 3:50 pm
For those not on tiwtter, just signed the papers for my new house. Went from no debt to hundreds of thousands, but in the long run it'll be great!
Any of you New England folks are welcome to make a trip to NH this Saturday to help us move. For the next month I have 2 houses so I can even put up some travellers 😀
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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May 29, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Mark 2 (5/29/2012)
Posting for a job I just witnessed:BO/Crystal Reports Specialist
:hehe:
So does that mean you need to have BO or be able to remove BO?
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
Check out these links on how to get faster and more accurate answers:
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Need an Answer? Actually, No ... You Need a Question
May 29, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Mark 2 (5/29/2012)
Posting for a job I just witnessed:BO/Crystal Reports Specialist
:hehe:
Brings back some fond memories - I wrote one of Crystal Reports editors back in 1992/1993...
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