Developer Journey: Week 4 - Fixing Stuff

Introduction: A Week of Technical Challenges

Week four has been the most intensive week yet, filled with critical maintenance tasks and optimization challenges that tested my problem-solving skills and deepened my understanding of our systems.

Decommissioning Domain Controllers

One of the first tasks this week involved decommissioning an outdated domain controller. In modern setups, pointing to a domain DNS name rather than a specific host name is standard practice. This method ensures resilience; if one host goes down, others can seamlessly take over. However, some of our legacy software still relied on direct hostname connections, which led to issues when we decommissioned the old controller. Addressing these dependencies involved checking each system's configuration and updating them to more robust standards, ensuring continuity, and reducing future risks.

Optimizing Tableau for Better Performance

Another significant issue was the poor performance of our Tableau application following the development of new reports. Initially, these reports were set to query our database live, which slowed down performance considerably due to the high volume of simultaneous queries. Upon reviewing the situation, I realized that the data source for these reports was only updated overnight, with no changes occurring during the day. To resolve this, I switched the reports to use an extract strategy, pulling data once and storing it locally on the Tableau server. This change dramatically improved the performance, making it faster for users to access and manipulate the reports without overwhelming our servers.

Streamlining Log Management

While setting up the new extract configuration for Tableau, I noticed an excessive amount of logging that was unnecessarily verbose and consuming significant storage space. To tackle this, I revised our log settings to be less verbose and adhere more closely to our department's data retention rules. This adjustment not only freed up valuable space but also enhanced overall system performance by reducing the load on our storage and processing resources.

Conclusion: Reflecting on a Productive Week

The fourth week of my developer journey taught me the importance of proactive system management and the impact of well-thought-out technical adjustments. From handling legacy software issues to optimizing data analytics tools, the work done this week has not only improved our systems' efficiency but has also prepared me better for future challenges. As I continue on this path, I look forward to more opportunities to refine our technological infrastructure and contribute to our team's success.