Expensive CPUs
Voice of the DBA
There have been a lot of features added to the SQL Server platform over the years. Several of these features let us perform functions that are beyond what a database has traditionally been designed to handle. SQL Server has had the ability to , , and in SQL Server 2025, we can . Quite a few of these features (arguably) are more application-oriented than database-oriented. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a server perform some of these functions, and there have been some very creative implementations using these features. I recently ran into , where she shows how to use the...
info_outline
25 Years of SQL Server Central
Voice of the DBA
The oldest article we have on the site is , by me. It's dated 2001-04-18, though I think that's a date we picked when we converted all the content from one database to another. The founders agreed sometime during Feb 2001 to jointly run SQL Server Central. Since we each owned the copyright of our articles from another site, we migrated several articles to build up our content library. This was back when , , and I all had full-time jobs and managed the site during breaks, nights, and weekends. That was 25 years ago. Twenty. Five. Years. Read the rest of
info_outline
There Are a Lot of Databases
Voice of the DBA
I was reading Andy Pavlo's . He's done this for a number of years, and there are links to previous recaps in the piece. He is at Carnegie Mellon University, working on quite a few database-related projects. In the review, he tends to track the database world from the perspective of business success and money. There are certainly parts of it that discuss technical changes, but my overall impression is more about the business and usage success than it is about the way database systems work. The main thing that struck me after reading the review was how many database systems there are in the...
info_outline
More Documentation is Needed
Voice of the DBA
AI is everywhere, and if you spend any amount of time looking for answers on the Internet to your coding challenges, you've likely encountered a lot of poor, average, good, bad, amazing, and just-helpful-enough AI content. For awhile, I was avoiding the AI summary from Google as the quality seemed slightly off, but lately it's gotten good enough that I tend use it to decide which links to click on in the results. The summary helps me better understand the context Google sees in my search query. I ran across and how helpful these docs are in onboarding, code reviews, and more. The teams that...
info_outline
Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter
Voice of the DBA
There's concern about the future of AI and how it may affect jobs and employment for the masses. I see plenty of people on both sides of the issue. Some are sure AI technologies won't replace people; some are concerned their jobs will be eliminated, and some are hoping that we will eliminate some jobs and create many more. Sometimes that's the same person. Read the rest of
info_outline
Learning From Breakage
Voice of the DBA
I've had the fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, experience of being thrown into a few jobs with no training. At a couple of my bartending jobs, I had to start working without any training, calling over someone to help run the ordering machine while I made and served drinks. I managed to slowly learn how things worked throughout that first shift, so I was ready to work on my own the second night. I had a similar experience at a tech job, starting as the lead DBA/IT Manager in a crisis, having to try and solve problems after ask others how things were supposed to work. I ended up fixing a bit of...
info_outline
Eight Minutes
Voice of the DBA
When I was at the , one of the speakers was talking about their work with AI technologies. This person uses it a lot in their day job, often to complete tasks that they would have struggled to work on in the past, mostly because of time constraints, but also a lack of resources. Sometimes this person has an idea, but doesn't want to distract themselves or others by having them work on a side project. During a recent ride in a (self-driving car), this person had their laptop out and running Claude Code. They gave it a prompt, asking it to build a small app for some data analysis. During the...
info_outline
JSON Has a Cost
Voice of the DBA
JSON seems to be everywhere these days. Many application developers like it across all sorts of languages, C#, JAVA, Python, and more. They use it for transferring information between systems, and are comfortable serializing hierarchical object data into JSON from text and de-serializing it back into its various elements. For those of us working in relational databases, JSON seems like a blob of information that isn't easily queried, indexed, or stored. We prefer working with a relational set of data, which brings us into conflict with software developers. We'd like them to convert their...
info_outline
An SSIS Upgrade
Voice of the DBA
I came across a post recently on the Microsoft Fabric blog about ..I hadn't heard much about SSIS in SQL Server 2025, so I thought this might provide some info on the investments that Microsoft is still making in Integration Services. I've run into a few people in the past year who are still heavily invested in SSIS and run packages daily. SSIS seems to be a technology that isn't even close to dying for many organizations. The blog starts well, delving into the security investments with the change to the SqlClient and TLS 1.3, as well as supporting Strict Encryption. I don't know many people...
info_outline
Where Your Value Separates You from Others
Voice of the DBA
I ran across a post that discusses (via ). The main point of the post is that there is a core skill that separates senior engineers from others, which is reducing ambiguity. When a senior engineer gets an ill-defined (or ill-communicated) request, they can deliver a solid, or even great, result. When someone says "performance is poor," what do you do with that? Can you build a plan to identify the issues and solve them? Or do you expect the customer to explain what is slow and why it's slow? What metrics do they have showing things are slow? A senior engineer can ask questions to find the...
info_outlineI saw a job description recently for a DBA that asked for SQL Server experience, but also "other RDBMSes, like Cassandra and PostgreSQL". Not sure Cassandra fits there, or why this says like. I've seen some other ads that ask for C# or Python. Some asking for MDX/DAX knowledge along with AWS Cloud Formation and programming APIs. Some have a required and optional or "nice to have" sections, but many include a laundry list of technologies and skills. For software developer roles, the list of skills often exceeds what I think any person in the world might know.
There was a debate about this at SQL Server Central in one of the threads. It seems some people are split on whether this is a problem or a good thing. Quite a few people noted that they wouldn't apply when there are so many items listed that they don't have experience in. For others, we wouldn't hesitate if we had around 50% of the items listed. I'm in the latter category, as I've had plenty of friends, and myself, get jobs that might have seemed out of reach based on the description and our skills.
Read the rest of Messy Job Descriptions