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The Voice of the DBA

It's Not Yours

For most of my career, I've felt a tie to the systems I've managed or the code I've written. I've often said that a part of the code was mine, because it was something I'd written. Having some ownership of your work has often meant more pride in ensuring things are well implemented. The same thing goes for administering databases. When an employee feels personally responsible and accountable for  the database and its contents, usually they do a better job.

Most of us know that the systems we manage and the data they contain aren't really "ours", no matter how we might refer to them in conversation. We know that ultimately the data, applications, and hardware belong to our employers. Or, we should know that.

Apparently not everyone does. A contractor just pleaded guilty to stealing classified information from the US National Security Agency, about 50GB worth of data. This isn't a case of spying or malicious intent. Instead, the report is that the employee was a hoarder, just keeping copies of data for some unknown reason. Hopefully that's true.

Many of us will have copies of data that we use for different purposes. We might be building software, or testing queries, or some other task that requires data. We might want to conduct more in depth analysis in our spare time. Those are all positive goals, but none of them mean that we should have copies of data without authorization. We don't own the data, and we should always be sure if we are moving data to other systems, that those systems are secure and someone else has approved the action.

This becomes more important all the time. We have enough issues with data security and keeping our information away from hackers. We make plenty of mistakes with configuration in authorized development and test systems. There's no reason to add to the issues by treating data as our own personal asset, no matter how good your intentions.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

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Featured Contents

 

Stairway to MDX - Level 5: Members, and an Introduction to the MDX Members Functions

Bill Pearson from SQLServerCentral.com

Bill explains what is meant by a 'Member' and 'Member function' in MDX. A member is an item in a dimension that include the 'measures' which are the values of the attributes that belong to a dimension. 'Measures' are themselves members of a dimension called the “measures” dimension. MDX has a set of functions, known as member functions, each of which allow us to perform operations upon any member of a dimension More »


 

Free eBook: SQL Server Backup and Restore

Press Release from Redgate

In this free eBook Shawn McGehee offers advice on query tuning, cutting stored procedures, and system process design and implementation for high availability. Discover how to perform backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Redgate's SQL Backup tool. More »


 

Introduction to Agile with SQL Server

Working with SQL Server in Agile software development can be difficult. Ben Brumm provides an overview of Agile, specifically Scrum, and what to expect when SQL Server, or really any SQL platform, is involved. More »


 

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Changing Default Logs Directory – Back to Basics

Jason Brimhall from SQLServerCentral Blogs

Every now and then I find a topic that seems to fit perfectly into the mold of the theme of... More »


 

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Statistics Use, Extended Events and Execution Plans

Grant Fritchey from SQLServerCentral Blogs

Query tuning ain’t easy. Figuring out which index is getting used is one step, and generally simple, look at the execution... More »

Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

I've got this R class.

 > setClass( + "NFLTeam", + representation( + name = "character", + City = "character", + conference = "character", + division = "character" + ) + ) 

I want to ensure that any instance of this object only uses the values "AFC" or "NFC" for the conference. How can I do this?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.


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Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

I've run this code to get information for a database into a variable.

 $db = Get-SqlDatabase -ServerInstance SQL01\SQL2016 -Name Sales 

Now I want to display the create date for this database as follows:

  • four digit year
  • dash
  • two digit month 
  • dash
  • two digit day
  • space
  • hour:minute

Which format will do this?

Answer: '{0:yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm}' -f $db.CreateDate

Explanation:

One way to do this in PowerShell is to use the .Net formatting with a -f parameter and the variable. In this case, we need the yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm format. mm is for minutes.

Ref: .NET custom format strings - click here


» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Featured Script

Database maintenance progress

Evgeny Garaev from SQLServerCentral.com

Execute the provided script on an MS SQL Server instance where you want to know the progress of a maintenance operation. The script will return all the maintenance commands, progress in % for each operation, and thier start time.

The script has been tested on MS SQL Server versions: 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016.

More »

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

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SQL Server 2008 : SQL Server 2008 - General

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