Voice of the DBA
On my new laptop, I only use containers as database servers. I made the decision not to install SQL Server or PostgreSQL and instead work on containers only. I've written lightly about this, but I set up docker-compose files to load different instances of SQL Server and PostgreSQL (and others) and batch files to start and stop them. I've also set dedicated places on my disk where I can drop backup files and access them from the host. It's 2024. I moved to containers on my laptop exclusively for databases for the first time this year. This is despite the fact that I like containers, am...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
Most of us will have more than one job in our career. In fact many of us will likely find a new job in the next five years. I hope I'm not in that group, but I recognize that it's a possibility. We never know when our situation will change, or our employer's situation will change. That is one reason I recommend you keep your resume up to date and continue to work on improving your skills. I saw recently from Brent Ozar, in which someone had asked him if they should apply for a job even though they didn't meet all of the requirements or know all of the desired technologies. Brent recommended...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
I had someone ask me about recently. Would I think that's a good choice for a database. I don't really know. From their blog and some online research, maybe, but it's also a minority player in a niche space. I had a chat recently with someone that had implemented , a graph database. Why that and not Neo4J I asked them? Someone at the company had tried it and recommended it. Not a bad reason, as I think experience with tech is important, but it's not the only thing. Read the rest of
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
I've heard of Kafka before. I know it's an Apache project and you can download or read more at . I knew it was a way of moving data around, some sort of ETL tool useful for moving things around. More like a message and queueing system, which is a tool that seems like a great idea, but one that everyone struggles to work with. And one that seemed complex. The overview is that Kafka is "a distributed system consisting of servers and clients that communicate via a high-performance . It can be deployed on bare-metal hardware, virtual machines, and containers in on-premise as well as cloud...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
I know a lot of people in this business do not have computer science degrees. While some do, I suspect it's a minority. I'm certainly curious, so if you want to share your education experience in a comment, tell me if you have a degree and what the focus was, as well as answer a few other questions. At recently, professors and from talked about their computer science curriculum for growing the next generation of professionals. Along the way, they also asked the audience these questions: Read the rest of
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience, waiting for my turn to speak at Just before me, Xe Iaso delivered a funny and thought-provoking talk on . It was very well done and had me feeling nervous about following that session. The talk is a bit of a satirical look at an interview Xe had for a company that tried to get them to derive an architecture for a large distributed system. It was interesting to hear Xe note that often we have architecture diagrams of what we'd like to have, but never an explanation of how we implement a large system, especially one that has to grow as our...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
Many years ago I was training for a triathlon. I had competed in the the previous year in Virginia Beach and wanted to do it again. I had a young child, work was busy, and I was struggling to find time to swim, bike, and run every week. One night, I was at a work event with a customer who was also a triathlete. He was much more competitive and successful than I was at competing in triathlons, and he told me I should just get up earlier and find time to train or ensure I spent time after work on training before I went home to ensure I was meeting my goals. That sounded fine. Want to be better...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
I would hope most of you reading this know what SQL Injection (SQi) is and how you can prevent it. Or at least what patterns cause problems. If not, here's that is worth reading. If you have more questions, . SQL Injection has been, and continues to be, a problem in many systems. In fact, I chatted with Mike Walsh recently after he'd published on an attack for one of his clients. He has some notes that explain how your database server might be vulnerable, as well as a description of a recent attack example. He also notes that many of you are responsible for protecting data, which is separate...
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
One of the challenges many people have is focusing their learning efforts along some path. The best way to move forward is with steady effort that guides you through steps to build knowledge or skill. However, with so much information out there on the Internet, how do you decide where you focus your efforts? Lots of people choose a random method, but the world is full of those people, many of whom never develop strong skills. That might be fine if you are an hobby guitarist or piano player, but it's not the best way to approach your career. Read the rest of
info_outlineVoice of the DBA
This is part of a series on observability, a concept taking hold in modern software engineering. One of the interesting things I saw in was that they are sometimes bandwidth-constrained at remote sites. In an early version of their platform, they sent logs back to HQ, and their logs used all the available bandwidth, so they were unable to process credit card transactions. While most of us don't deal with lots of remote offices sending data back to a central data warehouse, we do often work in distributed environments, and we may send data to/from a cloud or even employees' remote offices. Or...
info_outlineI almost called this "chasing a new laptop" since that's what I'm doing, but I decided to add the date because the current laptop I've using was built in March 2019 and got to me in May 2019. I've had an HP Spectre x360, my second HP Spectre, and I've really enjoyed it. I'm also amazed it still runs. On the last few trips, the two rubber strips that run along the bottom (acting as feet) started to peel away. I've never seen that before and I tried to re-attach them a few times, but that didn't work well.
Not a big deal, and I can live with that, but then during my Australian tour, the laptop started pausing and freezing a few times. It might be that there is too much software on there and needs a pave-and-reinstall, but I decided to check the age on the machine. That was when I realized it was five years old. It's been a great machine, but I don't think I've ever had a work laptop last that long with daily use. Of course, there was about a year during the pandemic when it was rarely used, so maybe its life lengthened during COVID.
Read the rest of Five Years and Counting