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.

Not Just an Upgrade 03/09/2026

Not Just an Upgrade /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40317810

Writing as an Art and a Job 03/06/2026

Writing as an Art and a Job I remember listening to an interview with in the mid 2000s. He was the back page columnist for Sports Illustrated for years as well as a writer in various pieces. He talked about how he would lay on the couch in his office sometimes, trying to think of what to write. His kids would come in looking for attention, but couldn't understand that Dad was "working". I had been writing the editorials at SQL Server Central and I could relate. Moving from 2 to 5 (eventually 6) editorials a week was a lot of work. It was stressful in a way I couldn't imagine when I started writing them. I quickly realized that if I had to produce a new one every day, I was in trouble. There would be days I'd struggle. I needed to have a queue of pieces at least partially ready if I were going to manage this job and find balance with my family. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40316930

Rollback vs. Roll Forward 03/04/2026

Rollback vs. Roll Forward The Advocates at Redgate Software had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward or back from the point at which you discover a problem. You can , but a few things occurred to me while we were having our discussion. The first thing is we all agree data makes things hard. A database is a stateful object, and dealing with stateful objects is hard. That is one of the things I’ve internalized the last few years that has tremendously changed how I work with Redgate customers. The more I consider state, the more I am able to work with the challenges that databases bring. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40205470

Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central 02/27/2026

Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40180455

Testing is Becoming More Important 02/25/2026

Testing is Becoming More Important Many of us know that testing our code is important. The adoption of unit testing by many software application developers as a normal course of business has dramatically improved the quality of applications. Mobile software, especially, has benefited from the requirement for most software to include, and constantly run, a suite of unit tests. For database software, I find relatively few organizations formally test their database code. A few people have adopted or the , but most don't bother. In fact, many queries that are embedded in application code, or built by ORMs, aren't tested beyond a developer looking at the results from their own (limited set of) test data. That often doesn't catch errors until someone in production runs their application against a larger set of data. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40180270

Can You Let Go of Determinism 02/23/2026

Can You Let Go of Determinism Why do we reboot machines when something goes wrong? I'm sure all have done it, and I would guess quite a few of you have found situations where this seems to fix issues, but there isn't an underlying root cause that you can pinpoint. This is a fairly accepted way of dealing with issues, but have you thought about why this is a way to solve some problems? The main thing that a reboot does is return the system to a know starting state. It's why quite a few people complain about some modern laptops and mobile devices because they avoid restarts and try to sleep/wake instead. Most software expects to work on a stateless machine, so restarts help find a known good state. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40144465

Doing Good at SQL Server Central 02/20/2026

Doing Good at SQL Server Central This is part of a few memories from the founders of SQL Server Central, celebrating 25 years of operation this month. We did photoshoots at Redgate many years ago. We had a bunch of props, including some phrases written down. We could create our own, but my handwriting is atrocious (likely why I never became an architect), but I ended up with this one: Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080330

Engineer Lessons 02/18/2026

Engineer Lessons Many of you reading this have a number of years working with technology. You might have 1 year or 20 years, but you've likely grown and learned along the way. Some of you may also know someone who has several years of seniority in a position but not that many years of experience. In this case, a person might have been working at this job for 5 years, but they really have one year of experience that's been repeated 5 times. That's been a common complaint over quite a few years from people who interview others. They find candidates often have very limited experience, yet are applying for senior roles. These candidates are ones who have just a few years of experience, but have ended up repeating those few years over and over. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080240

Expanding into Print 02/13/2026

Expanding into Print This is part of a few memories from the founders of SQL Server Central, celebrating 25 years of operation this month. When we started SQL Server Central, our goal was to build a great resource that helped other people advance in their careers and also made some money. Our decisions in building the site were based around the digital world and treating the community as we would want to be treated. Over time, however, we realized that continuing to grow this business was hard in a digital-only world. We experimented and proposed helping others build similar sites, like ReportingServicesCentral (which would have been great) or NotificationServicesCentral (which would not), but ultimately, we weren't experts enough in those areas and couldn't find people willing to partner. Everyone thought they could do it themselves and that the knowledge was the hard part, and execution was easy. The truth is that the reverse is the way it works. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080125

The Power of Data and Privacy 02/11/2026

The Power of Data and Privacy I tend to be fairly careful with data, especially data on this site. When we started the site, we were worried about potential issues and worked hard to ensure we kept our systems safe and limited the attack surface area for personal information. We also declined the various offers we had to sell our list of subscribers to marketing firms. We know that some places add value for marketing, but some abuse the trust of their users and our approach was always to be careful. When we sold the site to Redgate, we emphasized the need for this trust, and to date, Redgate has been a great steward of your personal information. I regularly field requests for uses of data from other marketing people, and almost all get declined. I've had a number of great managers who have supported me on this because we value your privacy. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39999730

The DBA is Dead; Long Live the DBA 02/09/2026

The DBA is Dead; Long Live the DBA I remember getting a job at a startup in the Denver Tech Center. This was shortly after SQL Server 7 was released, with a marketing campaign that the platform was auto-tuning and wouldn't require a DBA. My colleague asked me if I wanted to learn Cold Fusion and have a longer career. I declined and stuck with this SQL Server thing, which has seemed to work out pretty well over the years. I was reminded of this when I saw a "" post, this time from an Oracle DBA. There are plenty of links in there from Larry Ellison and Oracle about how some version of Oracle won't require a DBA. I've seen (and elsewhere ) about this topic where people seem to think DBAs can be replaced. Or maybe they want them replaced. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39999660

When SQL Server Central Went Down 02/06/2026

When SQL Server Central Went Down Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39971500

Expensive CPUs 02/04/2026

Expensive CPUs There 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 , , and in SQL Server 2025, we can . 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 , 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. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39971400

25 Years of SQL Server Central 02/02/2026

25 Years of SQL Server Central The oldest article we have on the site is , by me. It's dated 2001-04-18, though I think that's a date we picked when we converted all the content from one database to another. The founders agreed sometime during Feb 2001 to jointly run SQL Server Central. Since we each owned the copyright of our articles from another site, we migrated several articles to build up our content library. This was back when , , and I all had full-time jobs and managed the site during breaks, nights, and weekends. That was 25 years ago. Twenty. Five. Years. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39889085

There Are a Lot of Databases 01/30/2026

There Are a Lot of Databases I was reading Andy Pavlo's . He's done this for a number of years, and there are links to previous recaps in the piece. He is at Carnegie Mellon University, working on quite a few database-related projects. In the review, he tends to track the database world from the perspective of business success and money. There are certainly parts of it that discuss technical changes, but my overall impression is more about the business and usage success than it is about the way database systems work. The main thing that struck me after reading the review was how many database systems there are in the world. I hadn't heard of any of these: RaptorDB, TigerData, Tembo, StormDB, Translattice, FerretDB, DocDB, SpiralDB, Tantivy, SkySQL, HeavyDB, and more. I'm sure I missed listing some I didn't recognize, and quite a few of these are PostgreSQL-based systems, but still, that's a lot of database systems that exist and are having success. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39888705

More Documentation is Needed 01/28/2026

More Documentation is Needed AI is everywhere, and if you spend any amount of time looking for answers on the Internet to your coding challenges, you've likely encountered a lot of poor, average, good, bad, amazing, and just-helpful-enough AI content. For awhile, I was avoiding the AI summary from Google as the quality seemed slightly off, but lately it's gotten good enough that I tend use it to decide which links to click on in the results. The summary helps me better understand the context Google sees in my search query. I ran across and how helpful these docs are in onboarding, code reviews, and more. The teams that worked smoothly together often had good docs that helped them function as a cohesive group. At least to some extent. Over time, teams start to depend on tools and lose some of that cohesiveness since they rely more on tools than docs. I agree with the piece that this is a part of the reason many teams don't really function as teams over time. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39888355

Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter 01/26/2026

Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter There's concern about the future of AI and how it may affect jobs and employment for the masses. I see plenty of people on both sides of the issue. Some are sure AI technologies won't replace people; some are concerned their jobs will be eliminated, and some are hoping that we will eliminate some jobs and create many more. Sometimes that's the same person. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39752445

Learning From Breakage 01/21/2026

Learning From Breakage I've had the fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, experience of being thrown into a few jobs with no training. At a couple of my bartending jobs, I had to start working without any training, calling over someone to help run the ordering machine while I made and served drinks. I managed to slowly learn how things worked throughout that first shift, so I was ready to work on my own the second night. I had a similar experience at a tech job, starting as the lead DBA/IT Manager in a crisis, having to try and solve problems after ask others how things were supposed to work. I ended up fixing a bit of code, adjusting networking, and directing others on my first day. When we have a crisis, we often learn a lot from the situation. I've been through crashed upgrades, virus breakouts, hardware failures, and more in my career. While each was stressful and often not enjoyable, I learned a lot each time and came through the incident a more capable developer/DBA/whatever. When we work through a tough time, we are often better equipped for the next time something goes wrong. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39752355

Eight Minutes 01/16/2026

Eight Minutes When I was at the , one of the speakers was talking about their work with AI technologies. This person uses it a lot in their day job, often to complete tasks that they would have struggled to work on in the past, mostly because of time constraints, but also a lack of resources. Sometimes this person has an idea, but doesn't want to distract themselves or others by having them work on a side project. During a recent ride in a (self-driving car), this person had their laptop out and running Claude Code. They gave it a prompt, asking it to build a small app for some data analysis. During the 8-minute ride, the agent had spit out the code, a Readme, and committed this to a git repo. Later, the speaker tried it and found it solved most of his requirements, and then did some other work on the project, as well as having Claude write more code to get something that was beyond a minimally viable app. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39630635

JSON Has a Cost 01/14/2026

JSON Has a Cost JSON seems to be everywhere these days. Many application developers like it across all sorts of languages, C#, JAVA, Python, and more. They use it for transferring information between systems, and are comfortable serializing hierarchical object data into JSON from text and de-serializing it back into its various elements. For those of us working in relational databases, JSON seems like a blob of information that isn't easily queried, indexed, or stored. We prefer working with a relational set of data, which brings us into conflict with software developers. We'd like them to convert their objects to a relational structure, and they'd like us to just work with JSON. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39629925

An SSIS Upgrade 01/12/2026

An SSIS Upgrade I came across a post recently on the Microsoft Fabric blog about ..I hadn't heard much about SSIS in SQL Server 2025, so I thought this might provide some info on the investments that Microsoft is still making in Integration Services. I've run into a few people in the past year who are still heavily invested in SSIS and run packages daily. SSIS seems to be a technology that isn't even close to dying for many organizations. The blog starts well, delving into the security investments with the change to the SqlClient and TLS 1.3, as well as supporting Strict Encryption. I don't know many people using this level of security, but it's good to have SSIS support stronger security. There is also an upgrade for SSIS packages targeting Fabric Data Warehouses if they modify their approach. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39577225

Where Your Value Separates You from Others 01/09/2026

Where Your Value Separates You from Others I ran across a post that discusses (via ). The main point of the post is that there is a core skill that separates senior engineers from others, which is reducing ambiguity. When a senior engineer gets an ill-defined (or ill-communicated) request, they can deliver a solid, or even great, result. When someone says "performance is poor," what do you do with that? Can you build a plan to identify the issues and solve them? Or do you expect the customer to explain what is slow and why it's slow? What metrics do they have showing things are slow? A senior engineer can ask questions to find the problem and then determine how to move forward. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39577480

Your AI Successes 01/07/2026

Your AI Successes Recently, I was discussing AI with a friend, and they asked me to name a great success of using AI to build software. I've tried a few things, and I've worked with customers who are using AI tech. However, most of the things I've seen built with AI are small tasks; they're utilities or quick wins that change a minor part of the software. The items tend to be tactical and focused in a narrow band of fixes, and they might save a programmer time, but I'm not seeing large-scale team improvements in productivity. Yet. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39577385

Minimally Viable Security 01/05/2026

Minimally Viable Security Security has been a constant concern for many IT professionals over the years. Many of us are trying to implement better security controls, and yet at the same time, we try to avoid anything that slows us down. Security clearly hasn't been a big enough concern, as we've had more than our share of SQL Injection issues. These often come about from poor practices, lack of education, and too many people not learning to adopt better habits across time. We've also had no shortage of , , and more over the years. While security (or cybersecurity) is listed as , they are quick to avoid slowing down any development or deployment of software. While it is easier to get time for patching these days, it's still not easy. There are plenty of organizations that prioritize resources spent on tasks other than patching, upgrading systems, or training developers. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39577120

The North Star for the Year 01/02/2026

The North Star for the Year It's the beginning of the year, and some of you likely have today off. But plenty of you are at work, moving slowly through this Friday at the start of the year—handling busywork, catching up on maintenance you've let slide, or preparing for the tasks you know will start coming Monday. At Redgate, most engineering teams work toward a North Star goal: a high-level direction that guides your various tasks. Perhaps it's growing a customer base or achieving an overarching product specification. For example (this is completely made up), one North Star might be achieving feature parity across all platforms for SQL Compare. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39477545

Finding Motivation 12/31/2025

Finding Motivation I ran across a tweet (are they still tweets?) on X/Twitter that was titled: . It had these items, which seem to be coming from a young person. Either a student or in their first job. Stay on your phone all day. Feel sad for no clear reason. Stop eating well and ignore your studies. Sleep super late and wake up in the afternoon. Let sadness take over everything. Always look at others' lives and feel yours isn't enough. Keep blaming yourself for the past but never try to let it go. Compare your progress with people who started years before you. Get stuck imagining outcomes instead of creating them. Keep waiting for motivation instead of building discipline. What was interesting to me is I saw people doing similar things when I was younger. Either adults with careers or fellow students. I'd change "sad" to "anger", which I saw a lot in the 80s. Replace the phone with TV, as I saw lots of people start to invest a lot of time in TV with the growth of cable and 24-hour channels in the early 80s. Eating well was less of a thing, but drinking more was a thing. However, many people stagnated, or maybe ruined, themselves in similar ways. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39373150

The Side Job 12/29/2025

The Side Job Most of you reading this are likely technology professionals of some sort. You might be a software developer in C# or a DBA or a manager of those teams. Maybe you're an analyst working with data and reporting. You have made this a career choice and (hopefully) are growing and learning more about your craft. I also expect that you want to continue working in the area you are now, or maybe want to move into a related area. Maybe a report writer wants to move into more warehousing/lake housing. Maybe a DBA wants to be a Reliability Engineer. You have a career and you're working in that area. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39373075

Your Value from a Conference 12/19/2025

Your Value from a Conference The PASS Data Community Summit 2025 was held in Seattle last month, and it was an interesting event for me. I wrote a , but a few things stood out. The event was a little smaller, with over 50% first-time attendees, but seemed to be a bit more vibrant. Perhaps people coming for the first time added something that I hadn't expected. I was a bit over-committed, so I didn't spend a lot of time in the public spaces, but things felt a little different the few times I was in the expo hall or the hallway track. I ran across on the value of conferences, and it got me thinking. What is the value that you get from attending a conference (or an event). If your employer pays you might feel that you should bring some value back to them when you return. That's the premise of the thread, and I know there are plenty of people that feel that way. However. Should you value your time and effort any less? Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39229105

The Challenge of AI 12/17/2025

The Challenge of AI In his book, , the CEO of Microsoft AI laid out the risks of AI tech bluntly. “These tools will only temporarily augment human intelligence. They will make us smarter and more efficient for a time, and will unlock enormous amounts of economic growth, but they are fundamentally labor-replacing,” he wrote. Suleyman advocated for regulatory oversight and other government interventions, such as new taxes on autonomous systems and a universal basic income to prevent a socioeconomic collapse. This book was published before Suleyman joined Microsoft. Satya Nadella is more optimistic than his new deputy. In an interview at Microsoft headquarters, while sitting next to his human chief of staff, Nadella said that his Copilot assistants wouldn't replace his human assistant. As his chief of staff sat typing notes of the conversation on her tablet, Nadella acknowledged that AI will cause “hard displacement and changes in labor pools,” including for Microsoft. Judson Althoff, Chief Commercial Officer, said that Nadella was pressuring his team to find ways to use AI to increase revenue without adding headcount. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39362210

Refactoring SQL Code 12/12/2025

Refactoring SQL Code One of the things I see software developers often talking about is how they refactor code. As they touch a class, method, etc., they may take the time to refactor the code to make it cleaner, perform better, or just add some documentation. It seems that a regular part of a software developer's job is refactoring code in the codebase. That is unless they see a "don't touch this, no idea how it works" comment. There are plenty of those, and often everyone leaves that code alone. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39345830

Voice of the DBA

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