Database DevOps Metrics
Voice of the DBA
is dedicated to helping others build software better and faster, at a higher quality, and in a way that is more efficient. They continue to compile and publish report every year, which is a fascinating read. As a part of the report, they have identified that identify high performing organizations in terms of software. These are divided into two areas: throughput and stability. Throughput measures are change lead time and deployment frequency. Stability measures are the change fail percentage and failed deployment recovery time. Read the rest of
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Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think?
Voice of the DBA
If you're a fan, no. You're chomping at the bit, waiting to get everyone using GenAI models in their work. If you're skeptical, then you might think it's never coming to take your job, be a personal assistant, help you with coding, etc. Pick the task it won't help you with. A more nuanced view, which is similar to mine, is from Kendra Little, in which she says , I'm not quite as pro-AI as Kendra, mostly because I see so many companies that are slow to change, slow to adopt new tech, slow to adjust their thinking. They just soldier on and keep running their business, as they've been doing for...
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The Inefficiencies of Kubernetes
Voice of the DBA
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The End of SQL Server 2019
Voice of the DBA
Well, not really the end. I doubt anyone running SQL Server 2019 is going to stop (or upgrade) just because mainstream support ended. Actually, I wonder how many of you know that on Feb 28, 2025. I do think the 6 or 7 of you running Big Data Clusters likely knew this was the end of any support. I saw on this, which includes a survey of which versions are still running. This is from an IT asset firm and matches . 44% of you are running SQL Server 2019, which is the largest percentage. Since there's an additional 32% of you running versions older than 2019, I'm sure that upgrading isn't a...
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Monoliths and Microservices
Voice of the DBA
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More Supply Chain Attacks
Voice of the DBA
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Lower Your Attack Surface Area
Voice of the DBA
It's no surprise that our systems are under attack by all sorts of criminals. Some organized, some opportunistic, some just aiming for vandalism. We need to protect our digital systems to prevent issues, and a part of better protection is reducing the number of places that are vulnerable. Those places include databases. discusses the rising costs of data breaches and the increased frequency of attacks. It also examines the increasing number of regulations that are demanding proof of stricter security measures. It can be hard enough to defend production systems, let alone protecting dev/test...
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Tracking Table Sizes
Voice of the DBA
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The Job Outlook for Database Professionals
Voice of the DBA
This is a strange time for many technology professionals and their employment. It seems many organizations have open positions and are struggling to fill those slots with qualified candidates (). At the same time, many other organizations have followed the large technology firms (FAANG, MSFT) and in the last year. At the same time, with the hype and rapid growth of GenAI systems, we have companies that are looking to machines to fill some of their labor needs. as their plan was to use AI tech to help them write enough code. They've seen productivity gains with AI tech, so they aren't adding...
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A Poor Data Model
Voice of the DBA
Recently there was some online complaints about social security numbers (SSNs) in the US being duplicated and re-used by individuals. This is really political gamesmanship, so ignore the political part. Just know that social security numbers appear to be one of the contenders used in many data models. I found about how SSNs aren't unique, and have a mess of problems. Despite this, many people seem to want to use SSNs as a primary or alternate key in their database systems. They also aren't well secured in many systems, even though we should consider this sensitive PII data. Read the rest of
info_outlineThis is part of a series on observability, a concept taking hold in modern software engineering.
One of the interesting things I saw in an engineering presentation on Observability from Chik-Fil-A 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 maybe we send a lot of data between components. Bandwidth is very good in many parts of the world, but it isn't infinite.
Read the rest of Send Metrics Not Logs