It was around the year 2010 when a customer of mine implemented data governance software and policies around the data within their production database. They put in the effort to ensure that their production data and systems were protected from prying eyes of a hacker and the treacherous fingers of an unscrupulous software programmer. However, they left their development and test database environments relatively alone with little to no data controls in place. Worse yet, they extracted production data to be used in development. Then a breach occurred in their development environment (you know, the one with production data). The breach resulted in millions of records containing credit card information and customer information being stolen. The result was a multi-million dollar fine.

Jeff Carlson

August 24, 2022

Have you ever wanted to stream data from your database without having to install additional resources that require more time and energy to maintain? Just recently, I spoke with a {person who shall remain nameless} about how they wanted to dump new data to a file, move it from one cloud provider to another, and then place it in storage for consumption by downstream systems. There was more to it and it hurt my head to listen. I had only one question for {person to remain nameless} “When did you start hating your fellow coworkers?” I mean, really… other people will have to maintain that mess.

Jeff Carlson

June 3, 2022

In this codelab, we will walk through the process of creating an image recognition engine. Its primary purpose will be to identify employees entering a building who may or may not be wearing a mask. Understanding how many employees are wearing a mask at any point in time could assist with return-to-office scenarios and possible contact tracing. This in turn would enhance building safety and awareness.

Jeff Carlson

November 8, 2021

When the performance of your SQL database drops suddenly, do you know why? Tracking performance and linking cause to effect can be tricky with real-world database systems. DBAs, architects, and SREs are often working with multiple database systems, each with multiple databases in various states of development, testing, and production. These systems are often mixed between one or more cloud providers and self-hosted servers. On top of that, the performance of each database is influenced by auto-scaling, constantly-shifting workloads, engineering changes and updates, and more!

Jeff Carlson

July 6, 2021