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.

Database DevOps Metrics 04/01/2025

Database DevOps Metrics 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 /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35914155

Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think? 03/30/2025

Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think? 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 decades. Even when you might make a case for change, or prove it's worthwhile, they just don't spend the time to change. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35914090

The Inefficiencies of Kubernetes 03/27/2025

The Inefficiencies of Kubernetes /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35831430

The End of SQL Server 2019 03/25/2025

The End of SQL Server 2019 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 priority. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35766835

Monoliths and Microservices 03/24/2025

Monoliths and Microservices /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35515565

More Supply Chain Attacks 03/21/2025

More Supply Chain Attacks /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35515370

Lower Your Attack Surface Area 03/19/2025

Lower Your Attack Surface Area 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 environments. I see an increasing number of organizations that limit access to production systems, even to the point that this impedes some of the daily work habits of technology professionals, but that is probably a good thing. Too many of us are too lax when it comes to security. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35515230

Tracking Table Sizes 03/07/2025

Tracking Table Sizes /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35486185

The Job Outlook for Database Professionals 03/05/2025

The Job Outlook for Database Professionals 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 more developers. They still need human developers, just not more of them. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35442005

A Poor Data Model 03/03/2025

A Poor Data Model 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 /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35441740

Your Biggest Data Model Complaints 02/28/2025

Your Biggest Data Model Complaints I've been working with databases for a long time and there are no shortage of things I've seen other people do that I don't like. Sometimes I shake my head a little. Sometimes I might groan inwardly (hopefully not aloud), and sometimes I might make an effort to convince someone else to do something differently. Sometimes I'm really annoyed (or angry) and don't even know what to do. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35383310

Why Not Use AI? 02/26/2025

Why Not Use AI? Erin Stellato, a program manager at Microsoft, : "why do you *not* want a Copilot in SSMS?" That got me to stop and think a minute. Why don't we want to use an AI to help us? It's a good question, given the hype and (maybe) potential of the technology. While it might not help you now, or with your specific thing, it might help others, so are there good reasons not to use AI technologies, like the GenAI LLMs? Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35383165

Trust is a Funny Thing 02/24/2025

Trust is a Funny Thing I caught and there was a point in the article where trust was mentioned. Specifically the reasons that people distrust an AI or tech tool is that it makes a mistake, so they stop using it. A few examples of this were using a writing AI that made a grammar mistake or a GPS routing device that added a wrong detour. In those cases the humans stopped using the assistance of the algorithm because they felt it wasn't trustworthy. What's fascinating to me is that I had this same conversation with a human the day before. Someone mentioned they were working with a group and they misstated something. After that, the group stopped listening to all this person's advice, thinking it was all suspect. Essentially one mistake overrides everything else. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35335730

Moving On After a Technology Fail 02/21/2025

Moving On After a Technology Fail /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35288840

Is Ransomware Fading? 02/19/2025

Is Ransomware Fading? /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35181895

How Much Linux Do You Need? 02/14/2025

How Much Linux Do You Need? /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35182190

The End of Azure Data Studio 02/12/2025

The End of Azure Data Studio I don't know how many of you will be disappointed or impacted by this, but Azure Data Studio (ADS) is being retired, as of 6 Feb, 2024. It will be supported for a little over a year, until 28 Feb, 2026. On one hand I'm not surprised, and on the other, I'm a little shocked by this. I have written , and shown how things work, as well as pointed out a number of things that don't work well in the product or its extensions. These pieces have gotten a number of reads, and people have commented on them, so I wonder if there are a lot of you that are upset by this. Is this going to change the way you work? I will say that it will lightly change my work, as I do use ADS to connect to PostgreSQL, but not so much for SQL Server. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35229685

Extended Event Comfort 02/10/2025

Extended Event Comfort /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35181695

Unreliable Narrators 02/07/2025

Unreliable Narrators /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35137290

Building a Data Center 02/05/2025

Building a Data Center /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35074840

Words vs Data 02/03/2025

Words vs Data /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35074750

Data Debt 01/31/2025

Data Debt /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35033710

Creating vs. Maintaining 01/29/2025

Creating vs. Maintaining If your job as a developer or DBA has been like mine, it's a constant stream of requests to change something, often without enough information and short deadlines that create a bit of stress. There's always more work to be done, and while it might be a great job, you're often trying to finish something quickly enough to get to the next thing. In this mode, how often do you think about creating (or modifying) the thing you're working on for today vs maintaining it for tomorrow. In other words, do you consider how easily your work can be understood, is documented, is designed to allow for flexibility, and can be enhanced without many (any?) side effects, or anything else. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/35033590

The Era of Cloned Humans 01/27/2025

The Era of Cloned Humans /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34874055

Can You Become a More Productive Engineer? 01/24/2025

Can You Become a More Productive Engineer? The short answer is of course, most of us can learn and improve our skills to become better developers, engineers, DBAs, etc. While we might not be able to become the 10x engineer that many aspire to be, we can certainly become a better employee inside of an organization. There's a piece on becoming a more effective engineer, which is actually titled . It a piece from an engineer that started with a : The text was:You can either complain and pontificate on Twitter on how the tech industry *should* ideally work, or you can learn how your org *really* works and what’s rewarded, and optimize for that. Or quit and find another job. This might sound cynical - but it’s what it is. That sounds a little harsh, but the reality of how your org works or is structured or interacts is a reality. We all have hindsight to look back and wish someone (including us) had written code better. We might be sure if we could change one thing, or add/remove someone else, or make some other change, then things would be better. We might feel that there is a simple solution. Those things might be true, but they aren't the reality of the situation. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34873945

The AI Budget Assistant 01/22/2025

The AI Budget Assistant /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34873835

The Types of Changes 01/17/2025

The Types of Changes /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34808780

The Managed Cloud Database Options 01/15/2025

The Managed Cloud Database Options /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34777480

Simple(r) Coffee 01/13/2025

Simple(r) Coffee Starbucks has too many order combinations. about the challenges for their new CEO notes there are over 170,000 combinations of things customers can order. As someone who has visited a store often and stood behind someone placing an order, that sounds like an accurate number. Sometimes I hear people order things to drink that I had no idea were even possible. When there are too many choices, sometimes there can be a delay as the person tries to process the information and make a decision. Some people can't make a decision. Others enjoy the variety and keep making different decisions each time. That's fine if you're visiting a restaurant, but it's less useful if you're building software. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34777265

The Lesser Used Functions 01/10/2025

The Lesser Used Functions /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/34700380

Voice of the DBA

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