Voice of the DBA
A series of episodes that look at databases and the world from a data professional's viewpoint. Written and recorded by Steve Jones, editor of SQLServerCentral and The Voice of the DBA.
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Do You Have ALL the YAML?
07/25/2021
Do You Have ALL the YAML?
YAML is a file format, and as with many formats, some of us love them and some of us hate them. It seems to be better than XML in many ways, and perhaps easier to deal with the JSON. It might not be better than csv/tsv/delimited formats for large transfers but for many of us, it's a nice format for configuration items. While the format felt fairly intuitive to me, and it's not hard to write, it is quite persnickety about whitespace. This makes using some plugin, like the for VS Code, important to help you prevent mistakes. Even as easy as the format can be to read and understand, it's also easy to make mistakes with the whitespace as you indent and try to add subkeys. Read the rest of
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How Often Do You Patch?
07/22/2021
How Often Do You Patch?
I saw two things recently. First, . I realized that I was CU8 locally, so I had work to do. Second, I noticed that . Amazing that it's been around for 5 years already and has moved into Extended support. We'll still get security updates, but nothing will be fixed from that version, which it seems many people are running. Microsoft also announced they will put out . I am glad to see that, as I've often wanted to know there is a final patch that is released for each version, as I can know when I'm done patching. Read the rest of
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The Danger of Management Access
07/20/2021
The Danger of Management Access
First we had the , and now we have a . It seems the criminals are moving up the stack. We used to see physical attacks on tapes and keyboards, then we saw OS level attacks. Now we seem to be getting to the management layer for software that is used to help us run systems at scale. Since we often require some level of privileged access for monitoring and management systems, this is scary. I certainly wish that we didn't require admin access for monitoring, but unfortunately platforms sometimes do. Many of us depend on some standardization and some sort of software to ensure we can manage systems at scale. I don't know about the OS world, but in the SQL Server world, there are relatively few vendors that provide software for managing systems. If one of these were compromised in some way, this could be very bad for many database administrators. Fortunately, many of us know how to air gap backups and ensure that we are prepared for disasters. Read the rest of
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Seriously Real Time Data Processing
07/18/2021
Seriously Real Time Data Processing
There are many of us that work with systems where data is processed in real-time and then used to make decisions. These might be humans viewing reports and then taking action, or some automated system that might react based on a value changing. In many cases, however, the amount of data, timing in which to react with a decision, and the implications for mistakes aren't that critical. We have some leeway for the processing not being perfect. For vehicles traveling at 180mph, the tolerance for mistakes is low, with the chance of a catastrophic crash looming constantly. That is what is happening with , where university students are competing to develop race cars that can move around that track at these speeds. This would be quite a challenge for vehicles moving around the track by themselves, but in this case, it's a race with multiple cars. Read the rest of
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Messy Job Descriptions
07/15/2021
Messy Job Descriptions
I 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
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Improving DevOps Automation
07/13/2021
Improving DevOps Automation
We use a lot of automation at Redgate. As a company that builds software, we want to ensure that all the changes from our teams get integrated and tested in a timely manner. We have multiple teams on some products, and while we do have regular meetings between them, it can be easy for a developer to miss some update on a change others are making and break something with their own work. Worse, they could cause a regression or security issue, which we work hard to avoid. Recently I saw a post from one of our lead software engineers about the build process. While we have lots of pipelines, the general process hasn't changed in many years. In some sense that's good, because we focus on building better software, not the process. We don't change just for the sake of change, or because a new team or division lead likes one tool over another. I've seen customers where they move from Jenkins to Azure DevOps because someone in charge "likes one better." Not a good use of time. Read the rest of
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Enterprise Software
07/11/2021
Enterprise Software
"I'll go in the store; it's built for that." That is a quote from Jessica Kerr, who is a developer. She has a great blog on software development, called . It starts with a poor experience for an online order for Lowe's. Interestingly enough, as I read this, I was starting a home renovation project, but I didn't have a bad experience, I had a great one. Read Jessica's blog, and see what you think. Read the rest of
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Learning Intentionally with a List
07/01/2021
Learning Intentionally with a List
We're coming up on the middle of the year, and I wonder if you are improving your career this year? Did you make plans and are you sticking to them? I've been tracking progress on , and so far . It's tough to learn, but even tougher to learn when you don't have a specific focus. Choosing to "get better at T-SQL" isn't a good goal. It's vague and hard to measure. To me, you need to pick some specific areas to focus on and then develop some goals on what you want to accomplish. For example, you might want to learn to work with APPLY and convert some queries from joins to APPLY or pick a series of challenging problems that you can solve with that operator. Read the rest of
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Patching Challenges
06/29/2021
Patching Challenges
In my career, I've had to manage many production database instances. In fact, there was a time when two of us were patching hundreds of instances (600?) when MS released patches. That wasn't too often back then, unlike the every other month(ish) schedule that we have with 2017/2019 and the Cumulative Updates. My process was often to test patches on QA/Test servers and then start to roll out the patches to production. We didn't quite follow what , in that we often patched development servers later. We didn't control those, and unless production was patched, we couldn't get developers to patch their systems. Read the rest of
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Where Does NoSQL work well?
06/28/2021
Where Does NoSQL work well?
It seems not too long ago that NoSQL was the hottest thing on the market. MongoDB was leading the charge, with tremendous growth as a company and many developers looking to adopt their platform. I remember years ago going to visit a number of customers in New York City, where Mongo had just grown their offices. Every company was considering migrating their RDBMS to MongoDB, trying to calculate the cost and return. Now, I certainly hear about companies adopting database that are in the NoSQL family, but not always (or even often) to replace a RDBMS. Instead, it's for a new application or alongside an existing RDBMS. While there are applications that are well suited for a non-RDBMS data store, there are plenty that perform worse on those platforms. This might be because the platform doesn't handle their workload, or because the developers aren't writing good code, but I know I'm not worried that RDBMS usage is going away, or even down. Read the rest of
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Evaluating a DBA
06/17/2021
Evaluating a DBA
Interviewing is difficult for many organizations. Often they don't have a consistent process, and very often the people that do initial screening don't know much about what a DBA does. Many of the somewhat trivial questions I see on Internet lists (what's a clustered index?) are suited for someone getting started in the business, not for hiring an experienced DBA. Sure, an experienced person ought to be able to answer those questions, but the real world often requires more nuanced questions that relate to the situations we find ourselves in. I found recently, which has lots of open ended questions, designed to allow someone to talk about what they know and think, giving the interviewer the chance to gauge their level of expertise. Read the rest of
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Tracking, Privacy, and Lots of Data
06/15/2021
Tracking, Privacy, and Lots of Data
Half of all advertising dollars are wasted. We just don't know which half. That's , and it's why I expect that this saying is what has led to complaints from Google, Facebook, and other large firms that track people across different sites and apps. They have built frameworks that make it easy to add metrics to other software and derive advertising revenue for a vendor. As a result, many people building mobile apps use some framework from a large vendor. Read the rest of
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Useless Hackathons
06/13/2021
Useless Hackathons
I participated in a few coding competitions in high school, where we got together for a day with a team and tried to build software to solve a problem. They were challenging and exciting, but exhausting. Not something I'd want to do often. A number of corporations have tried something similar with internal as a way to find internal innovation and inspire employees. Getting a day, or a few days, to build some software that might change an organization can be exciting, but the events are not without some drawbacks. Read the rest of
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Beer Mode
06/11/2021
Beer Mode
David Perell has . He calls these "beer mode" and "coffee mode". When you are in coffee mode, you are getting things done. You have a list, and you work towards accomplishing the items on your list. Lots of us spend time in this mode every day, and often our bosses expect us to spend more of the time here. This has also been described as "closed" mode. Beer mode is different. This is an open mode, where we are not focused on solving an idea, but rather playing with something. We are thinking widely, investigating, and not necessarily planning on getting something concrete completed. Read the rest of
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Titles and DevOps Confusion
06/08/2021
Titles and DevOps Confusion
has become quite the DevOps consultant in the last few years. I used to work with Alex at Redgate before he left to start . I hear nothing but good things about his work, and if you are looking for someone to help guide your database development team, he'd be a good choice. He wrote about the title of DevOps Engineer and why that doesn't quite make sense. He essentially notes that this doesn't really describe what a person does and it might not be a good title. I tend to agree, since DevOps isn't a thing, per se, but rather a set of guiding principles. While this might include building software, or deploying it, there are titles for those things (build engineer or release engineer). It could include Infrastructure-as-code, but that's the domain of sysadmins. Read the rest of
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The Tech Blame Game
06/06/2021
The Tech Blame Game
Last year Solarwinds was hacked and . When Equifax was hacked, in testimony to the US Congress, the for not patching a system. that rebooted a system too quickly. I don't know that any large company from my younger days, say before 1990, would have blamed a massive failure on a single person. While any single person can influence more systems in the age of technology, no one should have the power to cause such a massive failure. If they do, I think I'd look towards poor system design, rather than individuals. Read the rest of
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Hopes for vNext
06/03/2021
Hopes for vNext
It's been quite some time since the last version of SQL Server was released. SQL Server 2019, v15, came out on Nov 4, 2019. Since then we've gotten 10 CUs, but no new version in 18 months. The pandemic likely slowed things down, but with vaccines being delivered and offices starting to slowly open, I suspect we will see more work on the vNext version of SQL Server. With the last few years, there has been a lot of growth in cloud computing, more concern for data privacy and security, not to mention plenty of need to support larger workloads. This week, as I think about the next version, I wonder if you have any wishes or desires for what you would like to see? While Microsoft has a , it gets cluttered and full of bugs as well as suggestions. Read the rest of
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Back to Basics, Reaching for the Clouds, and Leveling Up
06/01/2021
Back to Basics, Reaching for the Clouds, and Leveling Up
The three themes for speakers at this year's PASS Data Community Summit are: Back to Basics, Reach for the Clouds, and Level Up. The goal here is content that covers a wide variety of areas, with many fewer restrictions from previous years. Perhaps the big thing to note for this year's event is: Free. That's right, this year's Summit is free for the general conference. That should boost attendance, and it might mean some incredible audiences for this year's speakers. I'd recommend you submit something and take a chance, as there are opportunities ranging from 10 minute lightning talks to 2 1/2 hour half day sessions. This is a great chance to speak at the largest Microsoft Data Platform focused conference out there. There are also pre-conference sessions. They'll cost something, but with all the proceeds going to the speakers, I'm looking to support someone that will teach me a few new skills. Read the rest of
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A Computer on Wheels
05/30/2021
A Computer on Wheels
I enjoy cars, and I've owned a lot in my life. In fact, I resurrected my list and I count 30 for my wife and I, with 1 motorcycle, 2 ATVs, 2 UTVs, and a tractor. Likely a new tractor or skid steer coming in the next few years as this one is 14 years old. I was hoping for a different car this year, but with two kids needing help, I'm going to have to delay my gratification for another year or so. For years, has been trying to get me to look at a Tesla. He's owned a few and has driven me around. I've never been thrilled with them from a design perspective, though they are quick. Recently I ran across this video (), and for some reason I watched it. It caught my eye (especially dog mode) in that Tesla is doing DevOps with their cars, introducing new features in a way that evolves the car into something new. Read the rest of
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Working Predictable Hours
05/28/2021
Working Predictable Hours
I was listening to Kendra present at Redgate recently and she said this: . Actually, she said she was not better at her job by working longer. Kendra has been very successful, she's driven and a bit of a workaholic. I used to think I was, but after spending a few years at Redgate with her, she can outwork me these days. Of course, she has a bit of youth on her side. We both, however, realize that more work isn't sustainable, or even good for either the employer or employee. Read the rest of
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Should You Learn R or Python?
05/20/2021
Should You Learn R or Python?
I've been working on various skills over the last few years, trying to solve some simple problems in Python and PowerShell, in addition to T-SQL, to continue to improve my skills. It's an interesting challenge at times, especially when I need to use new features or functions to which I haven't had exposure in the past. I also work with R lightly, as I need to build some Questions of the Day for SQLServerCentral and I try to alternate Python and R questions every week. This has caused me to dig in and try to learn more about the language and how to manipulate data. Read the rest of
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Hostage Data
05/18/2021
Hostage Data
Ransomware continues to surprise me in different ways. Recently there was an incident where data was not only encrypted, but also copied back to the criminals. In this case, Apple was the target through a supplier with . That's crazy. Not only might you have business issues where you can't access data, but now you have the stress of the data possibly being released or sold. While not many of us work in organizations where our data would be worth $50mm, it might be worth a significant amount, especially if the data were customer data. This alone might be a good reason to ensure that you have local data already encrypted without the keys present. At least then the criminals couldn't read your data. Read the rest of
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A Work Conference
05/16/2021
A Work Conference
I like the idea of a work conference. We're actually having one at Redgate this week, though it's all virtual. I'd like an in person one, and it sounds like that will happen at Atlassian four times a year when they require employees to be in the office. That's it. Four times a year. Read the rest of
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The Gift of Asking Stupid Questions
05/13/2021
The Gift of Asking Stupid Questions
I am a fan of teaching someone to fish, rather than giving them fish. But when teaching someone, I want to allow them to make mistakes and not just dictate how they work. I want them to learn how to solve problems themselves, gain knowledge, and improve skills. I was watching some of the Pluralsight Tech Skills day recently and in the , I really appreciated his answer on how to approach a problem. He talks about asking bisection questions at scale, asking lots of yes/no or querying questions that lead you towards the solution. Read the rest of
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Incident Response Data
05/11/2021
Incident Response Data
I was watching a PoSh session at the recently where a sysadmin had a series of scripts to run when there was a problem. One of these was , which gathers information from a machine(s) and stores it in a series of files. It's a grab bag of various items, but the data can be used to help determine what's wrong. Some of us have monitoring tools for our databases, and some don't. I'm wondering, in each case, is there a set of data you want or need when an incident occurs? Do you have separate types of incidents that require disparate data? Perhaps you respond differently to performance issues than security incidents than hardware problems and want different types of data gathered. Read the rest of
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Checking Up on Vendors
05/09/2021
Checking Up on Vendors
Many years ago I was in the Denver airport, waiting to board a plane. At the time I was consulting with a small startup company and they called me in a panic, having had an issue with their database deployment and needing to restore the previous version. However, they were getting the "The media set has 2 media families but only 1 are provided. All members must be provided." error. Fortunately, I knew what was wrong and verbally walked them through the process. When I landed, I logged in and verified things were working and that they'd followed my instructions. A few years later I was shopping for furniture with my wife one Saturday night and I got a call from a fellow Operations person at JD Edwards. They had some security issue with a SQL Server, and since I was the SME (subject matter expert), they called me for help. Sitting in a comfy lounge chair (which I never purchased), I helped them solve the issue. Later, I verified things were working. Read the rest of
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Getting Started Remotely
05/06/2021
Getting Started Remotely
My middle kid is about to graduate from college and is starting to look for a job. I suspect he won't have too much trouble, as an aeronautical engineer near the top of his class, but I do think that it's going to be more challenging to find employment than it was two years ago. Though likely better than last year. While my employer has continued to hire people throughout the last year, we definitely know it's been a challenge for some of them to get up to speed, build relationships, and get productive. It's likely easier for technical people, especially for those with experience, but not necessarily easy for those just getting their careers going. Read the rest of
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Cloud Database Growth
05/04/2021
Cloud Database Growth
The growth of the cloud is exploding overall, with all of the major vendors showing growing lots of revenue growth. Not all of them are profitable, but they are growing. This shows that customers want to use the cloud, and more of them are migrating all the time. I do think that databases are likely migrated less than many other services, though their use is increasing. Plenty of organizations would like to offload some of the overhead of owning and managing hardware, which may be one reason why the growth of IaaS in the cloud is one of the more popular options. Read the rest of
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Pulling Together
10/07/2020
Pulling Together
When the COVID-19 Pandemic grew rapidly in early 2020, medical supplies were in short supply. Different areas and organizations struggled with different types of issues, and one of the higher profile issues was with ventilators. In March, the projections were dire and quite a few hospitals were worried about the supplies of these devices. This was especially disconcerting given how many people were being placed on them and how long it takes to produce them. I met someone at that time that said getting a car company to produce these wasn't possible. The factories were specialized and converting machinery and people wasn't something that could be done in months. This was someone that claimed to have over 30 years of manufacturing experience. Read the rest of
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Build the VCS Habit
03/16/2020
Build the VCS Habit
I've preached the value of Version Control Systems (VCS) for many years now. In , in the on development, CI, DevOps, and more, I always talk about the value of a VCS. One thing I often say is that if someone won't use version control, they aren't a professional. I don't say professional developer, professional DBA, or anything else. You're not a technology professional without knowing how to use a VCS in 2020. You certainly can't work for me if you won't use one. I saw a on the ways in which a SQL Server professional can benefit from a VCS. Many of us working with SQL Server aren't developers, we may not be some DevOps engineer. We might be someone that manages systems or handles backups. We might be someone that deals with complex HA, DR, or replication processes. We may be report writers or ETL developers. Read the rest of
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