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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Missing the Office
04/16/2024
Missing the Office
Recently I traveled to visit a customer who has an in-the-office culture. They have multiple large buildings outside a major US city and almost all their employees (7000+) live nearby and are expected to be in the office the whole week. More senior people can opt for 4 10-hour shifts rather than 5 8-hour shifts, but with few exceptions, they have people in the office. I hadn't seen that in a long time. Almost every customer is mostly remote or some level of hybrid (usually 2-3 days a week in the office). What's more, they have an open culture, with rows of desks for teams and spaces between the rows for managers and directors. No cubes! Read the rest of
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When Are Your Breaks?
04/11/2024
When Are Your Breaks?
As I work through 2024, I found myself doing a little more vacation planning this year than in previous ones. In 2022 I traveled quite a bit, but my wife went with me often. We went to Europe 5 times that year and added quite a few vacation days around my work trips. My wife thought that was a great year. Last year, 2023, was different. I traveled more (36 trips), with most of them being short. When I traveled that much, I wanted to end trips quickly and get back home. I learned that was too many, and also too disruptive for life. I got behind on things I needed to do at home, my wife went with me less because many trips were all work, and I lacked energy from the pace of moving all over the world. Read the rest of
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The Code Freeze
04/09/2024
The Code Freeze
One of the ideas behind DevOps is that we minimize the time between code commit and deployment to production. We want to avoid work-in-progress and bottlenecks to getting our software into the hands of customers. This has led a lot of companies to release more often, albeit with smaller sets of features. The total number of things delivered under DevOps might not be greater, but it often is more targeted to those things our customers want/need/use. However, the idea of releasing often means that we try not to stack up too much work before deploying it. What does that mean for holidays and the code freezes or no-deploy periods that many companies have? How do you implement a code freeze under DevOps? Read the rest of
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When is it time for a new job?
04/04/2024
When is it time for a new job?
I subscribe to quite a few newsletters, and one of them is for job hunters. I have a great job, maybe the best job for me, but I like to keep in touch with what's going on because I, well, I have job insecurity and worry about being without a job. I think this is leftover from childhood. I also want to know how to help others in finding their dream job. Recently there was a question asking when it was time for a new job How can you tell (for yourself) when you should be seeking new opportunities? It might not be easy to recognize for many of you. Perhaps you don't realize there are other opportunities you might appreciate because you're comfortable. Perhaps you're the frog in water that's being heated so slowly that you don't realize how poor your current situation is for your health. Read the rest of
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Under the Bus
04/02/2024
Under the Bus
I've had a good career in database work. I've had success, and I've had some failures, fortunately the former far outpacing the latter. In my career across many companies, the code I've written has tended to work well, or at least well enough. I've managed systems and ensured a high uptime, and solved issues quickly. I have left quite a few jobs in technology, some because I was unhappy, some for better opportunities. I was asked to leave one job. I disagreed with my boss, thought he was a jerk, and our CTO told me this person was more valuable than I was at that time. The CTO suggested I move on, so I did. That day. Read the rest of
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CosmosDB APIs Inside SQL Server 2024
04/01/2024
CosmosDB APIs Inside SQL Server 2024
CosmosDB has been a great data platform in the Azure cloud that helps companies deal with disparate types of data. The CosmosDB APIs include those for MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and Gremlin. These wire-level protocols let you work in a way that is compatible with those systems for storing data. That's coming to SQL Server. Read the rest of
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The Journey to Change
03/28/2024
The Journey to Change
I assume most of you reading this work with SQL Server, at least for some of your workday. I know there are plenty of you who also support Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or some other database platform. The results in our (Redgate's) showed that many organizations, indeed most, have more than one database platform in production. This was also a theme in our Data Community Summit and Redgate Summit keynotes, where Ryan and Grant discussed their journey to learn a new platform (PostgreSQL). One, a requirement () for a new job, and another, an opportunity () as the company focus shifted. I assume some of you out there have had similar experiences either moving towards, or away from, SQL Server. Read the rest of
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The Cloud Database Cost Analysis
03/26/2024
The Cloud Database Cost Analysis
There is a skill that I think DBAs and sysadmins will need to develop: cloud cost analysis. I've thought this was important for quite a few years, and I've been (unsuccessfully) lobbying for cost information to be gathered and analyzed in . Hopefully, this work will get done soon, as I see more companies asking their technical people to provide analysis and justification of the resources being billed for in the cloud. Basecamp analyzed its costs in 2023 and . I've seen other companies decide they were saving money in the cloud. Many, however, are likely unsure of the total return they get compared to the costs of cloud computing. I have seen some posts (like ) that try to help you get a handle on your costs, but there is often a lot of complexity in cloud costs when multiple departments have different accounts (AWS) or subscriptions (Azure) with a provider. Read the rest of
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Another View of DevOps
03/24/2024
Another View of DevOps
Chocolatey Solutions Engineer said, "DevOps isn’t something you do, but rather, it’s a way of doing things. What works for us here, may not work for you there, so you adjust." He then went on to say that DevOps is a way of working that reduces time to introduce changes, while at the same time making changes traceable, accountable, and revertable. I've seen many companies try to copy what another company has done, especially with regards to DevOps and software development. I see companies copy the organization of teams from , , or others. Often quite a bit of time and effort is spent changing the way your development team works, and often without a lot of success. Read the rest of
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An Experimental Mindset
03/21/2024
An Experimental Mindset
I wrote recently since I've found far too many people who didn't know Git well (or at all) and they seemed hesitant to experiment and learn. Is this because of being too busy? Do we have so many people who are working in tech where "it's just a job" and not because they enjoy technology? Or has management in too many places beaten people down to the point they don't want to try things? Perhaps your coworkers are resistant to change (or lazy) and you don't want to discuss new ideas with them. Read the rest of
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Re-platforming
03/19/2024
Re-platforming
Re-platforming is the process of moving a system to a new platform. Imagine taking an ASP.NET/SQL Server website and moving to Azure Functions on Azure SQL Database. Or maybe taking a Java client/server app with Oracle and moving it to a series of microservices against MongoDB. Those changes could be a net benefit to your organization in the end, but they aren't quick or easy. They're often fraught with various challenges that can cause a lot of stress while creeping over budget. There's if you embark upon a re-platform. Often this takes place when an organization is looking to modernize their tech stack. Quite a few of the technology DevOps success stories take place when the older structures are not maintainable, but also not able to handle increased workloads or performance requirements. Read the rest of
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Protecting Off Hours
03/17/2024
Protecting Off Hours
to allow employees to protect themselves from unreasonable calls and emails from work during off-hours. You can read more about it, but a bill was passed to allow employees to ignore calls and messages without repercussion It is expected to pass, though I don't expect this to do a lot for bad bosses. They'll find ways to hint or imply that you need to respond, and might even remove your chances of advancement/promotion/raises. While you can sue, that rarely works out well for anyone. From the various reports I've seen, I'm not sure if this includes salaried workers or just hourly workers. I certainly think hourly workers ought to be paid if they're called after hours. I've even been paid as a salaried worker if the calls outside of core hours exceeded a certain amount per week. That seemed fair to me, and in our team, there was always someone willing to work more for extra money, so I could trade on-call work if I didn't want to do it. Read the rest of
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Growing Skills at Work
03/14/2024
Growing Skills at Work
Redgate released the results of their recently, and I was part of . As we were talking, one of the things that struck me was the high number of people who had picked skills as being a challenge for their organization. In a single environment, , and it was listed as . While this industry is full of self-taught individuals who have spent time learning new technologies and tools, it's somewhat amazing that training continues to be an issue. Many organizations limit their training budgets and time allocated to employees while continuing to expand the number of technologies and platforms they use. This is one reason why I think changing database platforms to avoid licensing costs is unlikely to save you money anytime soon. Retraining staff and developing competence takes time. Perhaps this is also one reason why many companies look to the cloud, thinking that they can reduce the amount of upskilling needed by their staff if the cloud vendor manages the systems. Read the rest of
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Navigating the Database Landscape
03/12/2024
Navigating the Database Landscape
The title of our keynote session at the is Navigating the Database Landscape, and I'll be delivering part of the talk, along with Grant Fritchey and Kathi Kellenberger today, Mar 13. This is based on the , as well as our experience working with customers and implementing DevOps solutions over the last decade. The talk was mostly written by others, but as I rehearsed the session, I found myself wondering about how I'd approach my job if we returned to being a DBA or developer. When working in technology today, there are many challenges outside of actually learning about any of the particular products, languages, platforms, etc. We have the politics of working with others, ongoing work, emergency requests outside of channels, random questions asked by others, code reviews, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting, all outside of learning any new skills. While I consider myself a lifelong learner, I know that finding time (and energy) to acquire the basics of any new technology is challenging. Read the rest of
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Is This a Good DBA Job Description?
03/08/2024
Is This a Good DBA Job Description?
I saw this on one of the syndicated SQL Server Central blogs: . This is mostly a list of things, but it covers a lot of the general types of things that many of us expect a DBA to do. However, my question is whether you think this is a good description for a job opening. Would you ask someone to fill this list of things? Maybe a better question is whether you could use this to evaluate candidates, and how would you go about asking questions or gauging a fit based on this. Perhaps you should ask yourself how you evaluate others and if there is a good way to rate them against a list of daily tasks. Read the rest of
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Assistants in the Age of AI
03/06/2024
Assistants in the Age of AI
When I started working for a living, there were secretaries in many organizations. These were people who actually did a lot of correspondence (written or verbal) and busy work for managers or executives. Over time, as email and computers became commonplace on desks, I saw fewer of these positions. As more people started to send email, we had to actually alter software to allow assistants to impersonate their bosses and manage the volume of communications that many of us deal with. We're in a new age of assistants with the emergence of Generative AIs powered by LLMs that can appear to respond in a conversational style to requests and perform actions on our behalf. In this new era, will AIs function as old-style secretaries, handling simple, but important tasks? Are they the trusted helpers that secretaries used to be for many executives? Are we all going to have an assistant, and do we want one, or need one? Read the rest of
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Creating Candidate Interest
03/04/2024
Creating Candidate Interest
It can be hard to find candidates for positions these days. I know there are a lot of people looking for jobs, but are they the ones you want? Are they a good fit for your team? Those are hard questions to answer when culling through resumes, conducting phone screens, and sitting in interview rooms asking questions from a template. What can be even harder is to compare different candidates when multiple people may interact with the candidates. Even if you do all the work, you're busy. Can you make good comparisons of different individuals that you've spoken to across a few weeks, in between all the real work you're trying to get done? I know I've struggled to do this, no matter how many notes I take or how long the discussions are with other team members. I have had a very mixed bag of success in hiring. Read the rest of
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Using AI for Security
03/01/2024
Using AI for Security
AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems and technology has been all over our industry for the past year or so, ever since ChatGPT released the initial public version in late 2022. It seems that there is a lot of hype around the possibilities, with plenty of excitement and skepticism, depending on who is talking about the tech. However, there do seem to be some places where the technology is working well, and security is one of them. There is , which seemed to have run rampant a few years ago. It's still around, though it seems fewer exploits are being publicized. That might be because systems are better protected, perhaps there are fewer attacks (unlikely), or maybe more organizations are getting better at covering up their issues. They might be better prepared to restore backups or quicker to pay a ransom. Read the rest of
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The Art of the Code Review
02/28/2024
The Art of the Code Review
The inspiration for this was a piece about . Throughout my career, I've seen code reviews grow and change. From formal meetings to automated notifications and asynchronous discussions to complete lip service to the process. I'd like to think that most organizations are beyond the latter and there is some sort of review beyond the developer, but I still see a lack of other eyes looking at code before it's deployed, especially database code. The article above opens with the idea of why we review code. The main reason is to create ownership, or more specifically, shared ownership. I had never thought of it in these terms, even though I think the ideas of standards and patterns are certainly shared items. Having everyone take ownership not only keeps quality high but could help you share knowledge and also ensure everyone feels a responsibility to safeguard all the code. This also helps everyone keep an eye on the larger picture of the entire codebase. Read the rest of
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The Dangers of Not Upgrading
02/26/2024
The Dangers of Not Upgrading
About ten years ago my sister-in-law broke the screen on her mobile phone. She'd had an older iPhone and when she went to upgrade, none of the upgrade processes worked because her OS was so far behind that they couldn't transfer her information smoothly. She had been avoiding OS updates because they interrupted her life, but that was now a problem because the world had marched so far beyond her version that there weren't tools, or at least, no one was interested in trying to perform an upgrade across multiple OS versions (I think it was 3 or 5 versions). I ran into this recently with someone else I knew, but not for a mobile phone. For TFS 2015. This customer had been working along with this older system and is finally ready to upgrade to Azure DevOps in the cloud. They wanted to know if they could somehow upgrade the TFS database and move all that data easily into the cloud. I said this wasn't likely easy as this isn't an upgrade, but an export and import of a lot of data. Microsoft offered a path, but it was multiple upgrades before an export/import, which was deemed too expensive. Right now, I'm not sure what they're doing to do. Read the rest of
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Free SQL Server
02/23/2024
Free SQL Server
No, I don't have a way to license a SQL Server instance for your application for free. Microsoft still charges for production workloads. However, there are several ways that you can do development or testing for free, or at a greatly reduced cost. Bob Ward spent a bit of time researching options and he's written . It's very comprehensive and I know a lot of us are grateful to Bob for summarizing our options. As I work with developers in organizations, there are often questions about the licensing for dev editions. This comes up more with Oracle than other platforms, but SQL Server does get asked about. We made a decision to support SQL Server Developer Edition in , which is in line with what Bob's post above says: this edition is for developers (and it's free). There is one caveat here, which I never knew. The licensing guide says you cannot build test data and move that into production. I'm assuming this doesn't mean you can't create a list of US states, countries in the world, or statuses. I think this means something more substantial, but if anyone knows, let me know. Read the rest of
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Visual Design for Safety
02/21/2024
Visual Design for Safety
I drive a Tesla Model Y and love it. They're not for everyone and not for every situation, but I think it's the best car I've owned. My wife feels the same way, and if we had a need for two cars, we'd likely get another one. The car is fun, and I look forward to getting in and moving around town. If you have questions about owning an EV or a Model Y, please feel free to ask. The car isn't perfect, and there are things I wish I could change. There have also been a few recalls on the car, which is interesting for a Tesla. A few of these recalls meant that I got a software update a few days or weeks later and something changed. There was , which affects most Tesla vehicles in the US. I'm sure that by the time you read this, I'll have a software update applied and the issue will be resolved. Read the rest of
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Am I Good At My Job?
02/16/2024
Am I Good At My Job?
I was talking with a friend recently about some of their co-workers. In this case, they were complaining that another person couldn't do some tasks that my friend considered relatively easy things. Deal with an unusual restore situation, write some PowerShell to reconfigure servers, build somewhat complex (to them) queries, etc. Things that my friend thinks most database people should be able to do after a year of experience. However, my friend questioned whether they were evaluating co-workers appropriately. How can one tell? I might be able to tell if a coworker is better or worse at a task, but what's my frame of reference and my experience. I might think them not capable at things I do well. At the same time, I can be wowed by someone with more experience with a technology I don't know well, such as Azure Data Factory, but not really be able to judge if they're average or an expert. Read the rest of
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This is Why You Use Git for Scripts
02/14/2024
This is Why You Use Git for Scripts
Git has become a fantastic tool for me, and many other technologists, over the last ten years. It's almost ubiquitous in most of my clients, and so many people are comfortable with it. Many others aren't, which is why I started a (and other Ops people) on my blog. Quite a few people asked me why I recommend git over a file share for storing code that a team of Ops people or DBAs might use. Why isn't a global file share a better choice in an organization? I think I have a few good reasons, but if you disagree, let me know in the discussion for this piece. Read the rest of
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Un-Stable Teams
02/12/2024
Un-Stable Teams
I've always valued having a team of people I know and can work with. While I haven't had a lot of long-term jobs before Redgate, I have had a few positions that lasted more than a year and appreciated working with the same group for a long time. We might gain or lose a person, but overall, the structure of the team was the same day after day. This was a comfortable atmosphere, and I liked knowing who I was working with each day. At Redgate, we have had some stable teams of people, but in our engineering area, we move teams around. There is each December/January where engineers can choose to leave their team and ask to transfer to another one. They get to put in their top three choices (or remain on their team), and we do a good job of trying to match up everyone's preferences. The number and charter of teams do change a bit each year, so engineers get visibility into the structure we're planning before they mark a preference. It seems from our internal reports that we match up 99% of engineers with their first or second choices (first choice is in the high 80s). Read the rest of
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Do You Have a Jeff?
02/09/2024
Do You Have a Jeff?
In the (worth a read), there is a character called Brent, who is to go-to person for everything in IT. I don't know if this character was modeled after , but I always picture him when I re-read the book, and I suspect he was that person in previous positions. I've been that person as well, and it's both exciting, fulfilling, and very stressful. At , that person has been Robert C, who is my go-to person for many questions. In the DBA world, I think of . He's been a prolific and incredible author over the years on many things SQL-related and is a huge proponent of others learning to write better code and better utilize the database platform more efficiently. I suspect in his company, he is the go-to person for most database-related questions and problems. I also suspect he solves most of them very well and has the influence (or power) to effect change. Read the rest of
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Ranomware vs. AI
02/07/2024
Ranomware vs. AI
Ransomware has been a growing and shrinking problem in the modern world. Every time I think that some new defenses and protections are preventing ransomware from being a problem, I see another issue. Recently, I saw with an attack and a few friends have recently noted their companies were restoring systems after a portion of their network was locked down. With the advent of Rasnsomware-as-a-service, where criminals deploy software and then sell access to others, better detection and protection become more important. As with any software, criminal human operators will use the ransomware software in different ways. That means that we don't necessarily have a simple threat that can be easily programmed against with anti-virus technology. Read the rest of
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Serious Software Glitches
02/05/2024
Serious Software Glitches
Recently pointed out a podcast to me. , but it's for the Journal, which is on other platforms (I listened on Spotify). It's the story of a computer glitch in UK post office software, which resulted in quite a few local postmasters being criminally prosecuted, many convicted, and even a few committing suicide. It's a sad story, and it's complex, but there are some technology-related elements. First, the overall story is Fujitsu sold the UK a point-of-sale system for post offices. There was a computer glitch here, which incorrectly calculated lots of totals and showed postmasters owing more money than they should. They were upset, called support, got nowhere and many were liable for paying money they didn't owe. The UK postal management hid information about the widespread nature of the problem, while prosecuting many local postmasters. Fujitsu support didn't disclose to callers how others were experiencing this same issue. This also coincided with a (an unrelated) law that changed saying computer systems were presumed correct and anyone accused of a crime had to prove the computer was wrong. Read the rest of
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Mind Over Milkshake (Thoughts Matter)
01/31/2024
Mind Over Milkshake (Thoughts Matter)
Last year I went to in Wisconsin. It was a fun event, very community and family-friendly, and I enjoyed it. So much so that I recently went back to the Texas event in January. It's more developer-focused, but it does have some data related sessions. I recommend this conference if you're looking for some fun training and want to combine that with a family vacation. Your kids will love it. In any case, I watched a keynote talk that referenced an NPR article, called . It's an interesting look at how the food labels affected people's bodies. It's not definitive and I wouldn't make any drastic changes based on this, but it is an interesting read on the idea your mind and thoughts can influence your body. I've heard about the effect of placebos in the past, we well as attitude on healing, so this makes some sense. Read the rest of
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Advice To Be a Better Person
09/14/2023
Advice To Be a Better Person
As a hobby, I coach volleyball for kids. Each year I meet new kids and parents and talk about my philosophy. Part of that is that I teach skills, athletics, how to compete, and more. However, I do emphasize as well that I'm trying to build better people, not just athletes. I want these kids to be better prepared for life, for job interviews, for future teachers and coaches, and for better relationships. While I'm not perfect, or maybe not even a great person, I do try to improve myself on a regular basis. Or at least learn to be a better person to others. This isn't because of any ideal or goal, but because life is more fun when I have more skills. Whether that's working with objects or interacting with people. The smoother things go, the more I enjoy the world. Read the rest of
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