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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Guidelines and Requirements
09/04/2025
Guidelines and Requirements
I saw . At first glance I read this as they'd changed the default values, which would be interesting. However, this is a guideline, set to 75%. I also saw a few thoughts from , and quite a few comments. The comments were interesting in a few ways. It is easy to look at 75% and say that won't work for this server that's on my mind right now because I keep getting woken up. That might be true. However, the 75% number isn't a hard requirement. It's a guideline, a recommendation to ensure you have enough memory for the OS, but you're trying to use most for SQL Server. Feel free to adjust it if you feel the need. Read the rest of
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Concerns over AI Chat Privacy
09/02/2025
Concerns over AI Chat Privacy
One of the major concerns for using GenAI tools is who is reading the data you submit as a prompt, and will this data be used in future training of the model? In other words, could someone using a future model access the data I put in a GenAI chat? It's a valid concern, and not just because of the vendors. There is a lawsuit over the use of data by OpenAI, and . Since this is a lawsuit, there is always a chance that some of the data retained gets entered into a court document or even that it might be read aloud in court and captured in a transcript. Read the rest of
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Data Sovereignty in the Cloud
08/28/2025
Data Sovereignty in the Cloud
I remember when the US government wanted to access data in Azure that was physically stored in Ireland. I and linked to the article back in 2020. This has typically been more of a concern for the EU (and other countries) than the US, but I'm sure there are organizations in the US that use the cloud and don't want their data accessed by other countries' governments. Recently, . The Microsoft response was that they (Microsoft) cannot guarantee data sovereignty for French customers. If the US government served a warrant under the Cloud Act, a US corporation would have to turn over the data. Read the rest of
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Ghostworkers
08/26/2025
Ghostworkers
Ghostworking is pretending to be busy at work. According to , it's on the rise with a number of people looking for other remote opportunities at other organizations. Some employees might be just wasting time at the office, though I suspect there is a minority that are actually working at another (second) job. Maybe they are growing a side hustle or maybe they've even accepted another job, and they're spending part of there day on those tasks. This might be part of the reason that many managers want to get people back into the office. I think that's flawed as a) most managers aren't great at their jobs and b) people still ghost work in the office. I've had numerous "clipboard carriers" alongside me in my career who spend an inordinate amount of time at the water cooler, coffee machine, or walking from place to place and are happy to engage in hallway chats. I've seen plenty of managers also not know how to hold people accountable for their work (or lack thereof). Especially technical people who find many reasons why problems are hard to solve. Read the rest of
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Your Favorite Improvement
08/21/2025
Your Favorite Improvement
SQL Server 2025 is out in preview form. CTP 2.0 is available for you to test, and that have been added to the platform. Some of these are already in the cloud, but this is your chance to test them in your environment. This is version 17.x, though I don't know we've really had 17 versions to work with. In any case, there have been a lot of versions in my career. I've connected to and worked on all of these: 4.2, 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022. No 2025 yet (other than install and a few basic queries), but that's coming. Read the rest of
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Can You Ask for a Raise?
08/19/2025
Can You Ask for a Raise?
I mean, you can ask for a raise. It's always an option, but is now the time to ask for a raise in this economic climate, where businesses can be unsettled and there are a lot of tech workers looking for jobs. I even saw a piece that noted . While that's not where most people work, it seems that often other CIOs/CTOs look to the big tech firms for guidance, and they may choose to hire fewer new staffers as well. This is on my mind at work after reading that I added to the newsletter. It's a response in the advice column where a reader asks how to go about asking for a raise when they think they deserve one. It is unclear in which industry or level this person works, so I am not sure if I think the advice is good. Read the rest of
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The Next Great Thing
08/17/2025
The Next Great Thing
At , I was chatting with Brent about a few things, including AI, which we think is changing the world. I've got my set of AI experiments going, and I do believe we will fundamentally alter work and how we use computers in the future. Not sure if it's for the better or worse, but things are changing and will change more. Read the rest of
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Who is Using Standard Edition?
08/14/2025
Who is Using Standard Edition?
For many years, most of the SQL Server installations I managed or deployed to were Standard Edition. Even in large companies that had agreements with Microsoft, since each instance had a cost (even at a discount), we were careful about where we installed Enterprise Edition. These days with Microsoft wanting to charge everyone for every core, it makes sense to use Standard Edition wherever you can. Read the rest of
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Carrots and Sticks
08/12/2025
Carrots and Sticks
Often, we work on projects that might span a significant amount of time. Weeks, months, even years can be devoted to working on one system, or the same system. We may find that our motivation rises and wanes at different times. We get excited and motivated to get things done, and also become discouraged or distracted when challenges arise. Not all of us, or not all the time, but it is hard to maintain a high level of productivity and motivation over time. For managers, it can be a challenge to keep a team moving over time and focused on achieving goals. Life gets in the way, people take vacations, staff changes, and other things are all issues that can distract a team. Keeping a team focused and productive can be a challenge for many managers. Perhaps especially challenging when someone hasn't received enough training on how to manage and motivate others. Read the rest of
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Storage Enhancements
08/10/2025
Storage Enhancements
There was a time when I knew a lot about the various storage technologies available for a database. It was important when designing a server around the various requirements for size and performance balanced against the limitations of hardware. The rapid growth of solid state storage and the adoption of storage area networks have changed the game for many of us. We no longer care or think about storage. It's just a service that we consume in our databases, and while we might demand more IOPS capacity, we often don't worry too much about how that's provided to our systems. Read the rest of
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A Well Deserved Break
06/26/2025
A Well Deserved Break
This is my last day of work. Not forever, just for six weeks. I'm off on after today and won't be back until August 11. However, everything should run smoothly with and holding things down until I return. Have a little patience with them as this site can be a bit of a hectic whirlwind at times, and they still have other jobs to do. It's been a wild first half of the year. After very little travel in Jan/Feb, the rest of the year has been a bunch of travel, including most of May and June being on the road. With coaching responsibilities for two teams from Jan-Apr, I am ready for a break. No big plans, but I am looking forward to being at home, playing some guitar, working on a few projects while trying to be very unwired for six weeks. Read the rest of
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The Technical Debt Anchor
06/24/2025
The Technical Debt Anchor
I ran across an article on the , which is a great title. It certainly is one that might scare a lot of CTOs/CIOs/tech management. I am sure that much of the IT management gets concerned on a regular basis with how quickly their staff can evolve their software to meet new business needs. The first two items have to do with data, which is understandable. Data is the core of how many organizations operate and move forward, and if you don't have the ability to easily work with data in a flexible way, you can struggle. Many of us technical people know this, but I find many non-data-professional staffers don't get this and are often unwilling to work at improving the situation. They things to just be magically better without changing how they do their jobs. Read the rest of
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The Data Warehousing Choice
06/22/2025
The Data Warehousing Choice
Each time I compile and curate the Database Weekly newsletter, I find lots of Fabric content from the various sources I watch to compose the newsletter. Since I primarily deal with the Microsoft Data Platform stack, this makes sense. Most of the things I am interested in are related to Microsoft, and as a result, I tend to use sources that also use SQL Server, Power BI, Fabric, and related technologies. I do look for other related data items, but I am heavily MSSQL focused. Recently, I stumbled on a piece that contains . It covers some of the options on these cloud platforms at a very high level. A product name and short description, but it shows there are other choices. I found it interesting that Databricks is mentioned, but not Snowflake. I'm not sure why that is, as Databricks is on Azure (and other platforms) as is Snowflake, but perhaps the author doesn't consider Snowflake a peer? That seems strange. Read the rest of
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Multiple Monitoring Tools
06/19/2025
Multiple Monitoring Tools
Part of my Redgate work is with customers who need to monitor their database servers. With estates growing quickly, both in scale and types of database platforms used, keeping an eye on everything can be challenging. Add in the lack of staff growing as quickly are the number of servers, and I find many companies seeking out monitoring tools to better help them manage the entire estate.. When someone evaluates a tool, one of the first questions from many people is about load. They are concerned about the load a tool puts on the system, which is always some amount. Most tools say they use less than 2% of total resources, some might hedge at 5%. Hopefully, there's no more impact than 5%, though that might seem to high, especially if you have a busy database server already. Read the rest of
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SQL Server 2025 Excitement
06/17/2025
SQL Server 2025 Excitement
Are you looking forward to SQL Server 2025? Or perhaps you think this is just another release, or perhaps you are not looking for new features or capabilities in your environment. Maybe you don't care about new things, but are looking for enhancements to features introduced in 2017/2019/2022. There is certainly no shortage of things that can be improved from previous versions (cough graph *cough). I ran across . It's a good list, and the things included make me consider an upgrade. Certainly, any improvements in the performance area, especially with all the investments made in Intelligent Query Processing over the last few versions, are worth evaluating. They might help your workload, or they might not, but if they do, then upgrade. Read the rest of
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Patching the Patch
06/15/2025
Patching the Patch
I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The , and some of the organizers submit PRs for their changes, and others send me an email/message/text/etc. for a change. In this case, an organizer just asked for a couple of image updates to their site. I opened VS Code, created a branch, added a URL for the images, and submitted my own PR. After the build, I deployed it. And it didn't work. Read the rest of
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What is a Failed Deployment?
06/12/2025
What is a Failed Deployment?
When talking about DevOps, the goal is to produce better software over time. Both better quality as well as a smoother process of getting bits to your clients. There are typically used to measure how well a software team is performing, and one of the things is Change fail percentage. This is the percentage of deployments that causes a failure in production, which means a hotfix or rollback is needed. Essentially we need to fail forward or roll back to get things working. For most people, a failed deployment means downtime. I've caused a service to be down (or a page or an app) because of a code change I made. This includes the database, as a schema change could cause the application to fail. Maybe we've renamed something (always a bad idea) and the app hasn't updated. Maybe we added a new column to a table and some other code has an insert statement without a column list that won't run. There are any number of database changes that might require a hotfix or rollback and could be considered a failure. Read the rest of
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Shorten the Debate
06/08/2025
Shorten the Debate
Many of us are faced with choices and decisions constantly in our jobs. How do we approach a problem? What should we do as a team to get the work done? How do we code or manage or test or do something else with a database? Maybe more importantly, how long do we spend deciding? Read the rest of
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Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month
06/05/2025
Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month
At an event recently, I had a chat with someone after one of my sessions. I had been speaking on DevOps and ways to better structure your team and build software. After the session, one person asked me if I'd read and if I felt we'd gotten a lot better at building software since that book was published. I do think we have gotten better, way better, in fact. I caught a while back from the Pragmatic Engineer. That view looked at what's changed in 50 years since the first edition, as well as contrasting the world today. You have to subscribe to read that one, but I'll give you a few thoughts from me on the book itself and the review. Read the rest of
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IT Unionization
06/03/2025
IT Unionization
I've been reading sting book that looks at some of the ways that we can better build software in enterprises. One of the side notes in the book is that the tech companies have the funding and the ability to disrupt many other types of businesses, not just technology. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have delved into other types of industries, potentially pushing others out. We see Amazon becoming as much a shipping and logistics company as they are a retailer. There was a unionization vote, which passed in 2022. Recently, another one failed. Amazon continues to fight these efforts, trying to prevent workers from collectively negotiating the terms of their employment. Read the rest of
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Helping Students with a Data Professional Career
06/01/2025
Helping Students with a Data Professional Career
At a recent event, I had a student ask about how to get started as a data professional. What types of things should they do? What platform should they work on or learn? Where should they focus time? What tools are available? Those are all good questions and many of you likely have your own advice. I'll give a few things to think about today, which are good for anyone that might want to get into the data field. I think this is still one of the better technical careers. I've suggested this to my kids, though only one of them went into a technical area. One is a therapist for autistic children and one helps run the ranch while pursuing a graduate degree in literature. Read the rest of
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Changing the Paradigm of Work
05/27/2025
Changing the Paradigm of Work
I saw that is based on an upcoming book that suggests redesigning the world around new tech, not adding it to existing things. The first example is how electricity was introduced to existing factories, but it only provided some incremental gains until new factories were redesigned around electric motors. There's also an example given about reworking hotels to remove the front desk since that feature isn't needed. Instead, people could walk in, and an employee with a tablet could find them to check them in. I'm all for rethinking and redesigning processes. I do think we have a huge glut of software in many organizations that exists because processes have evolved across time, but not everything and we keep our old software. When we have a new need or want a new capability, we add new software (or add features), but we don't necessarily throw out all the old software, processes, or habits. That wouldn't be practical, often because when we implement something new, it might not meet all our needs. Or at least we don't know it meets our needs at first. Read the rest of
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Does Version Control Scare You
05/20/2025
Does Version Control Scare You
As a part of my job, I often work with customers on how they can get database code into a version control system. That's Git for the most part today, which is the most popular system in the world. I'm comfortable using Git for many basic tasks, but I am not an expert by any means. I've used version control for years, and quite a few systems, and I like Git as a way of managing code. I have been surprised how many people aren't comfortable with version control or Git. Many don't have the habit, but are amenable to it. What I'm amazed by in 2025 is how many people don't use it, given that so many tools we use to work with databases, and even other systems, will store items in Git. This isn't just for development code, but also for infrastructure code. Lots of data tools and servers can store data in Git and use it to deploy changes to all kinds of systems. I'd have expected more people to know Git. Read the rest of
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The AI View from Above
05/18/2025
The AI View from Above
It likely isn't a surprise to many of you that executives like AI. A survey shows that 74% of executives surveyed or friends. At the board level, even more (85%) favor AI-driven advice. That's amazing to me, and while I might think this is a bit too much trust being placed in these GenAI LLMs, perhaps it's also partially because they work with too many people who aren't great at their jobs. Plenty of people skim through data or focus on certain things and might miss the details. While an AI can read and summarize a lot, it might not have the context we expect. I tend to be a bit skeptical of AI summaries, often because they don't necessarily weigh the different parts of an article the same way that I do. Read the rest of
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Are Data Breaches Inevitable?
05/15/2025
Are Data Breaches Inevitable?
I read a piece recently that got me thinking that data breaches might be inevitable. Disclosure: This was written by Redgate, for whom I work, titled "". It's based on our research with the as well as feedback and conversations with customers. The thing that caught my eye was the first part: data breaches may be inevitable. Do you think that's true? Are we doomed to lose data in our organizations, not as a possibility, but something that will happen at some unknown time in the future? Those of you who have suffered breaches might agree with this, but for those of you who haven't had to deal with that situation, are you resigned to it happening at some point? Read the rest of
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Deleting a Database
05/11/2025
Deleting a Database
Who among us has deleted a production database? I'd hope it's very few of you that have done this in your career. I'm sure a few of you have deleted (or truncated or updated all rows for) a table in production. I've done that a few times, but fortunately, I've been able to recover the data quickly. I had this happen in SQL 6.5 and was grateful I could start a single-table restore before my phone rang. Read the rest of
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Database DevOps Recommendations
05/08/2025
Database DevOps Recommendations
The DORA organization is constantly researching how to better produce software at any organization. This is similar to work done by many years ago. Both groups are trying to determine what things help engineers work better and produce high-quality software. On the DORA site, there is a , where they recommend approaches to managing database schemas. The main thing they talk about is treating all schema changes as migrations, which is something some people do. However, many teams also like a desired-state-configuration approach, where they just deploy all the changes from dev (or QA) to prod in a state-based flow. Both can work, but I do think as software matures (and becomes legacy), migrations are preferred. The article lists lots of frameworks in different languages. is among them, which is the product on which I work and sell at Redgate. If you haven't looked at a migrations framework, I'd recommend you do so. They do really give you a tremendous amount of control and flexibility. There are trade-offs, so I'm not blindly recommending this approach, but it's worth educating yourself on how migrations frameworks work. Read the rest of
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How Helpful is a GenAI Copilot
05/06/2025
How Helpful is a GenAI Copilot
I'm sure many of you have tried a GenAI LLM to do something. Maybe write some code, maybe get some sort of recommendation or suggestion, maybe to rewrite something or summarize text. I'm sure you have had some feelings about whether the tool made you more or less productive. There was a trial conducted by the Australia Department of the Treasury on Microsoft's 365 Copilot, asking for volunteers to participate and use the tool in their daily work. They used it and then completed a survey, which are . Only 218 people went through the trial, and the results are interesting. Read the rest of
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Rising Pay for Certifications
05/04/2025
Rising Pay for Certifications
Certifications can pay off, at least in some areas. There's that talks about pay rising for some tech professionals when they have some credentials. Networking, architecture, and project management are mentioned in the report, as are database and data management. I haven't seen the source report, and I'm not sure which certifications are getting higher pay rises, but I'd guess that newer data technologies, things related to cloud databases, and even anything related to AI is likely to get you a raise. Read the rest of
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Learn to Code
05/01/2025
Learn to Code
I thought to be rather humorous. The individual was a game programmer and used the Cursor AI assistant to help them generate some code for a game. After a few hundred lines of code, the AI delivered this: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly." That response makes me actually smile to myself and chuckle out loud. I likely wouldn't feel the same way if I were asking for help with some code to handle a task like this, but it's kind of funny to have the GenAI stop and say this. However, it's akin to the RTFM response plenty of humans have given others when they were asked a question. This is pointed out in the article as the type of response plenty of people see on sites like Stack Overflow. Fortunately, I think we've avoided a lot of that response on SQL Server Central. Read the rest of
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