Featured Article(s)
9 Things I learned in 2009 (Part 1)
It is that time of year again. But the list has changed. This is Part one in a two part series.
New WorkShop – SQL Server TSQL For The Rest of Us
By popular demand, our next virtual workshop will be all about getting you going with TSQL – from understanding SELECT and UPDATE and DELETE statements to creating databases, creating stored procedures and much more. We’ll be covering it and explaining it and showing it so you can see and experience exactly how everything works. Learn about TSQL for managing your systems and learn what you need to know to get started and up to speed with TSQL. This is a multi-hour workshop and includes sample scripts, slides and I’ll be there to answer questions all along the way.
[Register now] or [Get more information]
Looking to Get More from SQL Server Information?
There’s a very interesting tool that can help – SQLMetaTool – it will extract and consolidate SQL Server database metadata. It will even keep track of history and a "suspect" column analyzer. There is a bunch of information shown by this tool and it even supports SQL Server versions 2000, 2005 and 2008. Definitely worth a look – get a trial download today and see what it can do for your own systems. Check it out here.
Data USE and Privacy Concerns Abound
Several of you wrote in to talk about the safety and privacy of data – from Steven: "The problem with the lack of data privacy is not really the lack of privacy – it’s using that available data to enforce political and or socio-economic mandates that you may not agree with. Let’s say that your insurance agency, your doctor and your grocery store start sharing information. You go to the checkout line and as your purchases are being scanned, they are evaluated in real time by your insurance agency against your doctor approved diet. That candy bar that you want triggers an alert at the insurance agency and now becomes subject to a large surcharge at the grocery checkout because it’s not on your approved diet. Too many candy bars and your insurance rates go up.
Whether you like it or not, your freedom to choose will be constrained by some system that’s "Looking Out For You" – i.e. there’s financial or other consequences for violating some groups idea of what constitutes an ideal lifestyle. Whether you agree with this ideal or not is immaterial. Force of law or overwhelming consequences (e.g. denial of insurance in an era of exorbitant medical costs) will limit your freedom to choose, all in the name of "What’s Best For You". Ultimately, lack of data privacy is going to end up being a straight jacket that we’ll all have to learn to live within."
…and Stewart had completely different (though related) interpretations of the issues: "One thing that I would add to the debate over data certification – whatever technology is used for it – is that it enhances the value to the using organisation. If you know that you can rely on the information, you trust it – and conclusions drawn from it – more. In this way, it is about much more than security."
Data protection in a data privacy-less era will be huge – and it’s a non-trivial challenge, that’s for sure. If you have users of information peeking at data from all sorts of angles, protecting the use of that information becomes a core, key issue.
Is the answer more, or less privacy? What do YOU think? Email me here.
Featured Script
Audit – Table Permissions
Queries that display the permissions for users and/or tables. Produces 2 results sets. The first shows permissions by user, t… (read more)