Prompt Requests
Voice of the DBA
One of the challenges of AI-assisted coding agents is that they tend to produce A LOT of code. Even in refactoring or migration changes, the AIs can work quickly and generate such a volume of code that the process starts to become overwhelming. For pull requests, for CI/CD build systems, and certainly for human reviewers, they can be overwhelmed. This can become a real problem with OSS projects, where submissions can grow exponentially to the point that maintainers stop looking at pull requests. I suspect the same thing might happen in corporate repositories when lots of developers can...
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Is Your Time "Free"?
Voice of the DBA
We do a lot of research at , often contacting customers or and asking questions, getting feedback, listening to their challenges or criticisms. We take that information and it helps guide us to build the tools that help you in your job. Recently I watched a call with a customer that uses our famous in their job and has for years. In this case, the call was about the value of and how that might fit in their organization. The person performed a lot of manual work to deploy code changes, and could see the way in which Flyway helps, but wasn't interested in saving time. They saw their time as...
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Doing the Little Things
Voice of the DBA
I wrote recently and watching planes take off. That's been a fun thing for me to do when I'm stuck at the airport. I can see a plane roll down the runway every 35-45s during busy times. This time I was sitting by a window in the hotel, working and watching. There was a moment when I realized no planes were taking off. I looked and saw a vehicle rolling down the runway, and then realized there were two, one from each direction. It was an , looking for anything that might damage a plane. Read the rest of
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Everything is the right question away
Voice of the DBA
When I was young and needed to learn about something, I had to go to a library or a bookstore to get information. I often started by looking through an encyclopedia. I had to wander between entries to learn more about the topic I was researching. A few lucky friends had their own copy of an encyclopedia, which was nice since we could research at home. At some point these collections of information were moved to CD/DVDs, which made them more portable and more accessible to a larger group of people than in the past. In the 90s we had the innovation of search engines, which allows us to more...
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Hidden Heroes
Voice of the DBA
A few weeks ago I was in , at the facility where the Allies decoded and broke many of the German Nazi messages in World War II. It's quite a facility and museum, and I hope to go back. I was distracted that day and didn't get a lot of time to enjoy the exhibits and really learn more about what happened there. I was there for our Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff, and as a part of that, two different executives in our company shared their stories of people who had worked there. What was interesting is that until we planned this event, these two people had no idea that there were people they knew...
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Changing Data Types
Voice of the DBA
Recently I was working with a customer that is trying to smooth out their database development process. They noted that a lot of changes tend to take a significant amount of time and impact their availability. They came to Redgate to see if might be a way to improve the effectiveness of their internal groups that build, deploy, and manage their database software. We can help, but often when I get called to help architect things, we are trying to decide if the customer is a good fit for our solutions. Since we work on a subscription model, we want to be sure customers are happy and get value...
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Breaking Down Your Work
Voice of the DBA
I saw and how he goes about approaching the game of American football. I don't know if this meme is true, but certainly, his efforts to prepare have been a reported issue during Murray's career. The post actually deals with sales and analyzing the reasons for deal success or failure, something I've been able to witness at Redgate the last few years. It's interesting to me to see the sales process examined, though I don't make sales. Incidentally, is one I appreciate, referencing Kobe Bryant and . I like the approach of working and asking questions to become better. Read the rest of
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Multiple Deployment Processes
Voice of the DBA
We had a Simple Talks podcast recently where we discussed roll forward vs roll back. You can and listen to our thoughts, but one interesting place was when we talked about deployments. Grant mentioned that he deployed from version control/source control at a previous employer. I asked him whether he did that for every system. His response: "Well, ..." He admitted that most, but not all, databases came from a controlled source. There were some systems that had a more ad hoc change process. I wonder how many of you have consistent processes throughout your organization. I suspect not many of...
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A Full Shutdown
Voice of the DBA
I have the opportunity to work with a variety of customers on their database systems, often with the focus on how they can build and deploy changes to their databases. Often, they have a process around how and when they make changes. Some have maintenance windows, though often these are approved times for changes rather than a true window during which a system is shut down. I ran into a customer recently who scheduled a system shutdown for their deployments. This was a surprise to me in 2026, as I thought most people would have learned to deploy changes to live systems. However, I know that...
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Not Just an Upgrade
Voice of the DBA
info_outlineThere 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 send emails, execute Python/R/etc. code, and in SQL Server 2025, we can call REST endpoints.
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 one of these examples from Amy Abel, where she shows how to use the new REST endpoint feature to call an AI LLM to generate and send emails from your database server. That's creative, and it's reminiscent of the numerous examples from various experts over the years who demonstrate how these features can be used to accomplish a task.
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