Voice of the DBA
info_outline The Types of ChangesVoice of the DBA
info_outline The Managed Cloud Database OptionsVoice of the DBA
info_outline Simple(r) CoffeeVoice of the DBA
Starbucks has too many order combinations. about the challenges for their new CEO notes there are over 170,000 combinations of things customers can order. As someone who has visited a store often and stood behind someone placing an order, that sounds like an accurate number. Sometimes I hear people order things to drink that I had no idea were even possible. When there are too many choices, sometimes there can be a delay as the person tries to process the information and make a decision. Some people can't make a decision. Others enjoy the variety and keep making different decisions each time....
info_outline The Lesser Used FunctionsVoice of the DBA
info_outline Adding The Right ValueVoice of the DBA
info_outline The Rise of Data Centers CentersVoice of the DBA
For the last few years, we've seen no shortage of cloud migration stories and felt pressure from management who wanted to migrate our systems to the cloud. It seems that almost everyone I speak to has a story of having to move a system out of their owned or leased data center into a public cloud from some vendor. A lot of this is the movement of VMs from one place to another, which has me scratching my head. If we're just running VMs, surely we can do this cheaper in our own data center. Perhaps, though there are a lot of costs to setting up or running a data center, and it's not easy getting...
info_outline The Learning Plan for 2025Voice of the DBA
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info_outline Comforting HabitsVoice of the DBA
I was chatting with a friend recently about routines and some of the helpful or silly things we do. I mentioned that when I played adult baseball, we often had Sunday morning games and a routine of mine was to drive to town, stop at a 7-11, and get a large cup of coffee and an apple fritter. It was a comforting habit that I still have today, often stopping when I have a morning flight to do the same thing in the way to the airport. Only in Denver though, not when I'm flying out of other cities and returning home. Read the rest of
info_outline Big Data or Small DataVoice of the DBA
I went to San Francisco for , a conference sponsored by The premise of the event was that smaller sets of data are both very useful and prevalent. The speaks to me, as I am a big fan of smaller sets of data for sure. I also think that most of the time we can use less data than we think we need, especially when it's recent data. That often is more relevant and we end up with contorted queries that try to weight new or old data differently to reflect this. Maybe the best line for me is this one: Bigger data has an opportunity cost: Time. Read the rest of
info_outlineI saw a blog post from Randolph West recently that asked How do you restore a SQL Server 2000 database in the year 2024? It's a bit of a process, involving an intermediate version and two restores. He also points out the need to run DBCC after the first restore, which is a good idea. I wonder how many people would take the time to do this, or even think about it as an upgrade step?
This was interesting to read as I had a customer ask me about doing this a few months back. They were trying to clean up their database estate and modernize some of their older systems. This was becoming a big project for them, as they had several pre-2017 systems, none of which were in support. Auditors, regulatory authorities, and even business partners see this as a large security risk and get concerned if you're running older software.
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