The Men in Black
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The NSA computer problems could be a big problem for you and me at some point.
Computers crashing, garbled reports, and who knows what other data is lost. It seems mostly like the issues relate to individual client computers, but since they're so secretive about things, it makes me wonder. I certainly hope that I don't get picked up on some report by mistake and receive a visit from the Men in Black.
Most of us don't work for anyone close to the NSA, but we do think our data is just as critical. After all if we can't trust the results of the queries we run, or our users can't, then what's the point? If computer problems result in inaccurate results, then the computers have to be fixed or replaced.
A few years ago I was working for Peoplesoft and we had been working on a migration of our primary financial system, running Peoplesoft ERP of course, from Oracle to DB2. This had been in the works for about a year and as the manager for the production DBAs, I inherited a portion of this project when I took the job. The project team was dozens of people and we got down to the Tues before the Saturday night cutover for the final GO/NO GO meeting.
That morning I got a call from my lead DB2 DBA. We had just certified the project the previous week on DB2 SP4 and he was calling to tell me that early that morning IBM had released a notice that in some queries SP4 could result in incorrect values for aggregate queries. Needless to say this was a problem for me.
This project has cost the company tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars and when we started the meeting there were probably 20 or so people on the call, including directors and quite a few managers like me. I had to bring this up as a possible no-go issue. There were lots of arguments to move forward, not the least of which was a limited window to complete this project because of other company issues. But I held my ground that this was a problem.
Eventually we had people work 24 hours a day for the next two days to regression test all, or nearly all queries to be sure they would work correctly. It was out of my hands and two days later I flew to California to supervise the cutover of the database servers. Things went fairly smoothly and I held my own in the midnight to 4 am poker game while the database server loaded data.
I don't know how detailed the tests were, but I knew I had to make a stand on the issue. Despite lots of pressure from other groups, ultimately I knew that if users couldn't be sure the data they received was correct, or worse, used incorrect data to report financial results for the company, my group would take a lot of heat for the problems.
Data issues are serious for any number of reasons. I hope that everyone recognizes that and goes the extra mile to be sure their queries work as expected.
Steve Jones
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Please consider limiting your editorials to those that cannot EVEN be mistaken for political statements.
I suscribe to your e-mails to learn about technology. I don't care about your political views, whether I agree with them or not. Lately I have noticed a tendancy for you to step beyond the bounds of technology journalism and into things that do not enhance our understanding of techology.
The article you pointed to would have been helpful had it told us something about the technology, why it had disappointed etc., but was out of that scope. It was interesting to know personally, but no use for us professionally.
Bob McEuen
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We all want to believe our government's agencies capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound (like Fox' imaginary CTU does in 24) because that belief makes a good security blanket. But we all know that the laws of physics (and project management) still must apply to secret agents and ECHELON mark-whatever.
Given the state of the software and hardware industries in general, even if we presuppose a [completely unreasonable] Top 10% Factor for "the elite members of the NSA," this would still result in how many off the following kinds of errors, bugs, glitches, whatever in NSA's systems per line of code (just based on current industry metrics)? 
Project Management Mishaps: ?
Requirements Specfication Errors: ?
Design Specification Errors: ?
Code Construction Errors: ?
Maintenance Programming Errors: ?
Production Configuration Errors: ?
It would be frightening to lift some "industry average" numbers from current research and munge together several trend lines for scenarios based on "if the NSA geeks are average" as well as "if the NSA geeks are all in the top 10% of the industry" and "if the NSA geeks are superhuman." Not that Congress makes a good oversight agency, but when The Pot starts calling The Kettle names, perhaps we should all pay attention, eh? It's hard to imagine that NSA bugs/KLOC metrics are any better than the Pentagon's or any private concerns. Whenever humans (who must all put their pants on one leg at a time) are involved in technology endeavors...
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Bob McEuen, you are a tool.
I cant believe you wasted your time and everyone elses time posting that.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Technology without application or effect, is that screen saver with the pipes or stars coming toward you.
What is concerning is how little, Super Steve "Porno King, Sausage King of Chicago (think ferris), Jedi Council" Jones referred to the NSA situation. The auditing of its citizens whether be through census or phone tapping is a serious issue. Who holds that information and how it is protected or destroyed when deemed irrelevent for the hopefully very narrow search paramaters is disconcerting when most IT Managers blithly throw out hard disks, CD ROM's, DVD's without considering the data left on them. This needs public disclosure the steps which data is maintained and how it is safeguarded, length of holding periods and such.
The tools we use and i'm referring to the the useful one, SQL SERVER, not like yourself Mr. Bob McEuen, are ones that can and are being used to keep tabs on us (or them), depending on your point of view.
We are the Watchmen. And I don't like it.
There are no standards, industry does not self-regulate, if people really knew how poorly their personal information and how much of it is taken care of the riots in France would be nothing. I personally destroy every drive, CD, disk that is no longer in use to assure privacy. I could easily outsource it. But I take pride in assuring at least in my little corner of the world, noone abuses the data used for legal business uses.
PS: In Canada did you know that the photo on drivers licence is NOT yours (Ie your property (shooshy aint the teaport that i'm sure). I'm not sure of how it is in USA.
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I'm not sure where the article went out of scope, although I sympathize with your concern. The NSA article discusses important points about the risks of diving into projects without proper planning -- something that especially DBAs should hear over and over and over again.
Typically Steve's editorials discuss more than just SQL syntax. They cover "impact" issues such as those discussed in the NSA article. One of those impact issues is how planning can be affected by politics (regardless of political persuasion, few would doubt that such impact can happen). A few specific effects are listed in the article with reports of trouble using poorly made software or outdated hardware. Thinking about how the situation got to that point helps to round out a tech person's understanding of the environment in which they work.
It doesn't mean that a DBA has to have a certain political persuasion; it means only that a DBA, for better or worse, must acknowledge the potential for politics and should take a stand when they see a risk that could affect the data. I think Steve's final line sums it up nicely: "Data issues are serious for any number of reasons. I hope that everyone recognizes that and goes the extra mile to be sure their queries work as expected."
I recall another editorial that would be deemed out of scope if Steve limited himself just to pure technology (syntax, hardware, etc.) -- one about his ordeal with ordering something online (Sears, I think). Although someone could say that he was venturing away from pure technology, I don't think anyone complained that he was being too political. It was just a question of Steve's attempt to sort out why an operational problem happened and what combination of issues (technical or otherwise) contributed to the problem.
Just my two cents.
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html -
TIAT!
(the Ts stand for Tempest and Teapot, respectively)
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Let's not forget the word 'editorial' on the banner. If some readers want to stay with pure technology, then perhaps they should stick to the articles.
But remember databases consist of data, and how that is handled has enormous effects in the real world. To wash our hands because those effects are not technology is foolishly narrow thinking.
[Bruce Schneier's security blog has a semi regular Friday afternoon squid article. We all need to change gears periodically]
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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Bob,
I apologize if you're offended, but it wasn't intended as a political commentary. More that data issues are a problem and I'd hate to think that anyone trusts incorrect data, but more that someone making decisions on incarceration. It's not political, but a real possibility since there are a number of people suspected of terrorism that are being held and have been for a long time. Whether you agree this is the right thing or not, and I'm not stating it is or isn't, it's a frightening situation.
As far as the editorial, the reason I told my story was to point out that I think potential data errors are serious business and I felt it was worth standing up, despite the fact that it didn't endear me to many of my peers or superiors.
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TIAT indeed!!!
Read the editorial - if it interests you and you have something to contribute - respond - if it doesn't interest you - MOVE ON!!!
As for learning about technology - this site is full of articles, scripts, discussions etc.. why come to the one spot where you're almost guaranteed to not find it and then grouse & gripe ?!?!
Oh - and for those looking for really pertinent tech articles - here's a link!
"PS: In Canada did you know that the photo on drivers licence is NOT yours. I'm not sure of how it is in USA."
GPF2^...whose photo is it ?!?!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
It becomes property of the government in printed, digital, or any other form.
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I puzzled over that one for so long and now all is clear - the way I read it I thought the Canadian licenses have mugshots of people other than yourself and I was about ready to dismiss it as just an attempt at being funny - didn't realize that there could be another meaning to it...nuances nuances...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
It is funny both ways... but of course... for some find confusion easier than others.
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