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| | A Data ID It sounds good. A universal ID that can be used for your identifiable data, in case you happen to lose your paperwork. Paperwork? When will that term become lost to history? These days, less and less of anything is available as a physical media, and if it is, it's often because someone generates a copy from a printer. How secure or valid is that? After all, with Photoshop and other tools, we can reproduce almost anything that's indistinguishable from the original. The UN wants a universal ID for humanitarian reasons. In case you can't get your personal documents because you're a refugees. They're lost, they're stolen, or just still in the desk drawer because you had to flee your residence. Digital representations of these papers might be the only way for many people to prove anything about their lives. Certainly a concern in today's world. As we should know by now, anything that can be built in the digital world can be stolen. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that the vast majority of people that come up with good ideas don't know how to evaluate them in terms of the horrible ways that others will abuse the system. Creators are optimistic and look to solve problems. They're not nearly devious enough to think of the various permutations that a hacker mind might envision. A universal way to track and verify identity information would be great. I already worry about losing track of digital assets, and some way to query a number of systems to verify I own them would be great. However, the security aspects worry me. Even having governments or the UN provide digital lockers that entail backups of records is problematic. Any centralized system can be abused, and certainly this data would be abused. Or leaked. We see data breaches from government all the time. Can you imagine losing control of passport verification at a large scale? Each individual needs to come up with their own backup of precious documents, in a way that ensures they are encrypted and protected. However, we do need ways to authenticate and verify these digital assets. Maybe free signing certificates should be used when assets are provided to individuals, with public keys being disclosed by the government and escrowed by the UN, or maybe every other government. We ought to be able to verify a digital document in an open, transparent way, while leaving the storage to the individual. That would allow us to develop ways to protect our own assets, but ensure multiple entities can verify authenticity. Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
| The Voice of the DBA Podcast Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn. The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. | |
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| | How might classification and better documentation improve data safety? SQL Atlas is the latest prototype to come from the Redgate Foundry - find out more about what the tool does and try out the interactive demo for yourself. Try the free prototype |
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| | | Additional Articles from SimpleTalk The old system function IsNumeric() often causes exasperation to a developer who is unfamiliar with the quirks of Transact SQL. It seems to think a comma or a number with a 'D' in the midde of it is a number. Phil Factor explains that though IsNumeric has its bugs, it real vice is that it doesn't tell you which of the numeric datatypes the string parameter can be coerced into, and because it doesn't check for overflow. Phil comes to the rescue with a couple of useful alternatives, one of which works whatever version of SQL Server you have, and which tell you what datatype the string can be converted to. More » |
| Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP, Grant Fritchey, for our next Database DevOps demo webinar. He’ll be plugging Redgate’s tools into Git and Jenkins to show you how Redgate's Database DevOps solution helps you build, test and deploy your database changes alongside your app code. More » |
| Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral Blogs Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as... More » |
| SQLRUs from SQLServerCentral Blogs After reviewing some recent audit results for a couple of our SQL Servers, I noted the audit checked for start up... More » |
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| | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): What parameter for SQLCMD will give performance statistics in a compact way, with the values just separated by a colon? |
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right. We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers. This question is worth 1 point in this category: SQLCMD. We'd love to give you credit for your own question and answer. To submit a QOTD, simply log in to the Contribution Center. |
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| Yesterday's Question of the Day |
| Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones): I want to change the name of the share used by my SQL Server Filestream share. Where do I change this? Answer: This changed in Configuration Manager, in the properties for the database engine service Explanation: In Configuration Manager, there is a FILESTREAM tab for the database engine service. This is where the share name is set. Ref: SQL Server Properties (FILESTREAM tab) - click here » Discuss this question and answer on the forums |
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