This week was mostly about governance, not planned, but sometimes you must go with it. I have a few systems that are lucky enough to have a few tech-savvy users. I have been grooming them for data steward roles and trying to get them to step up the quality assurance in their group. Yeah, as you guessed it, this is not an over tech post with code snippets, but you will find this is more challenging, and for some, you will find it more rewarding.
This process started about a year ago. I was working with a department. Talking about data quality. Over the next year, we had a dozen or so talks like this. They were not prompted, scheduled, or planned. Kind of more like seizes the opportunity-type talks. The plan is to reinforce the quality and bring it up every time.
This call was now talking about archiving data, consistent naming, and documenting the department’s workflow. This is starting to working into long-term planning for this department. Remember, in county government, one department and another department do completely different businesses. For example, a department does court care management, and another does water quality. Not overly connected processes, as you can see. I jokingly refer to county IT as managing 20+ businesses at once with the resources of one business.
When I got off the phone, I was reflecting and making a few notes about the call. Here were my thoughts:
- I did not step into the minefield of forcing change. This was a lot better than a year ago, success.
- We were able to make a for process changes and document them, success.
- We came up with an archive method of old data to keep compliance in tacked and the database size also, again successful.
- We talked about other groups that might benefit from this. I am yet to reach out to them on this. Sadly this was not a complete success yet.
So, this is basically how it went 3 times this week. Each talk about 1-2 hours long. Nothing was forced on a department. Each group was able to understand the benefits and needs and the risks involved.
Is this part of the DBA role? A lot of people think this role is keeping the databases up running fast and aid in development. These data governance tasks fall into the keep the databases up and running. Let me explain how. Reducing the databases reduces the maintenance windows. It helps the users meet compliance rules, manages the cost of servers because the database server size is not bloated. Users are not accidentally updating the databases that they should not be. The names of objects are consistent, so users do not have to waste time looking for stuff. The processes are documented, so onboarding becomes an easier task.
What are the drawbacks? Great question. It’s a Sloooow process to develop because it is a relationship and takes trust to develop. You, as a DBA, can’t plop down a list and say work this way. You have to talk to the stewards and help them understand why and where you are going with it. Then they will take on that extra work to make it better. You have to listen to them. They gave great ideas and are better with that data than you. They work the job all the time.
Was it worth it? Yes, I have a department with 1TB of data in their database, exceeding 100 databases. They are removing 6% of databases and 300GB of data. The searches are easier, saving about 1-4 seconds on selecting an item on a list. I have a plan to replace the 2012 SQL Servers databases.
Where do I go from here? Hold until we have another opportunity to talk over something. Be open to change and listen to the problems they are having. This will allow you and them to work as a team and get good things accomplished.
Helping make your databases; fast, reliable, secure, and less downtime. How can I help you?
