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HIPPO vs. Data

One trend for many organizations is to be data-driven. This means using data to make decisions at all levels, or at least support those decisions. This was popularized by many companies, and there is research to back up the claims that those organizations who do this have more success, more revenue, more profitability, etc. Much like DevOps, however, it seems many organizations don't want to actually invest in making data-driven decisions.

Instead, many opt to make decisions by HIPPO. If you've never seen this acronym, it stands for highest paid person's opinion. Many managers will defer to whoever is above them in the org chart, often someone that is paid more money than them. Even when there is data to make a different decision, the HIPPO is still used.

It's not just management. I sometimes see technical people do this. In that case, it might be the loudest or most senior person rather than the highest paid, but the sentiment is the same. Rather than using a lot of information, someone makes a decision based on what they want/see/need/desire. I've seen this often with tooling, where one person like Jenkins (or hates it), and the organization changes from  (or to) Octopus Deploy or Bamboo for no real reason. Lately, it seems some people are advocating moving from Azure DevOps to GitHub Actions because, well, I don't know why. There's not a good rational reason.

The goal of collecting and using data is to do so intelligently and with purpose. And not just for big decisions, but for everyday actions. By senior managers and frontline people, to help guide a more efficient and effective company. This involves a lot of technical work, but also cultural change. We have to position data as a strategic and tactical asset that everyone shares and uses as the basis to make the entire organization better.

Of course, these are similar to the concepts of DevOps. Let's build software better. In practice, many attempts succeed initially but fail later as more and more groups fight individual incentives that promote one group's goals over another's. When silos aren't broken down, we fall back into the same patterns.

In this case, listening to (or lobbying) the HIPPO.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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As a data professional, I have some fun with data in my life. I like numbers, and I like tracking things. I've written posts about my year in numbers, and recently noted the states I've visited. Like many of you, I've sometimes used this data to practice a skill, maybe learn to ETL or query […]
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Know how to track changes and key events in your SQL Server databases in support of application troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, and governance. This book shows how to use key features in SQL Server ,such as SQL Server Audit and Extended Events, to track schema changes, permission changes, and changes to your data. You’ll even learn how to track queries run against specific tables in a database. ss

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Carlo Romagnano):
 

More OUTER APPLY
What does the last query? 
declare @t table(i int) insert into @t SELECT * FROM (VALUES ('1') ,('2') ,('3') ,(NULL) ) AS V([i]) SELECT t.i ,MSG.msg FROM @t t OUTER APPLY ( SELECT msg = CASE t.i WHEN 1 THEN 'ONE' WHEN 2 THEN 'TWO' WHEN 3 THEN 'THREE' ELSE CAST(1/0 AS VARCHAR(10)) END ) MSG

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

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Roles Across Schemas

I ran this code in a new database:

CREATE TABLE dbo.mytable (myid INT) GO CREATE TABLE webapi.states (stateid INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT statespk PRIMARY KEY, statecode VARCHAR(2), statename VARCHAR(20)) GO INSERT webapi.states (stateid, statecode, statename) VALUES (1, 'AK', 'Alaska') GO CREATE LOGIN apiuser WITH PASSWORD = 'Demo1234' GO CREATE USER apiuser FOR LOGIN apiuser WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=webapi GO ALTER ROLE db_datareader ADD MEMBER apiuser GO

Next, I log in as the apiuser and change to this new database. I run this:

SELECT TOP 10 s.stateid, s.statecode, s.statename FROM webapi.states AS s; GO SELECT myid FROM mytable; GO

What happens?

Answer: Both SELECTs succeed

Explanation: The user is set with a default schema, though when querying objects that are not schema qualified, the dbo schema is checked. With the membership in db_datareader, all objects across all schemas are included. Ref: db_datareader - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/authentication-access/database-level-roles?view=sql-server-ver16#fixed-database-roles

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