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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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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Interview Tips
04/29/2025
Interview Tips
When is the last time you interviewed for a new position? It could have been at a new company, or maybe you had an interview was for a different position inside your existing company. Perhaps you needed to talk to a manager internally for a new project. I've tried to treat all my one-on-one meetings or reviews as interviews since I'm usually trying to impress someone enough to get a raise or promotion. Preparing for something you do rarely is hard. Most of us have interviews very infrequently, and we often aren't prepared to impress others. If your partner or a close friend is also a business person, perhaps they can help you get ready, but I've found that most people struggle to help others prepare as they don't know how themselves. Read the rest of
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Is SQL Server Feature Complete?
04/27/2025
Is SQL Server Feature Complete?
I heard Brent Ozar recently and its future. He also mentioned that Fabric has distracted the data platform team and it isn't a great product. I tend to agree, and I see too many bugs, holes, and problems. However at the end of this short snippet, he talks about SQL Server with an interesting comment. Is SQL Server feature complete? Read the rest of
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50 Years of Microsoft
04/24/2025
50 Years of Microsoft
I get the email periodically and I always find it interesting to read. Like Bill Gates or not, he is a very smart individual and has thoughtful things to say. Even when I don't always agree with him, I enjoy hearing his view and have enjoyed seeing him deliver presentations. In fact, one of my career highlights was at , held at the MS campus. Bill Gates was speaking to employees that day and we were allowed to watch the Q&A from the balcony. Later, I saw him start to leave and stop by a sign. He asked someone about SQL Saturday. When they explained the idea for free conferences, he said "that's cool." One of the recent emails talked about the , with the original source code available for a BASIC interpreter. It's an interesting read to me, since I learned BASIC first (and a little assembler) on an Apple II and a TRS-80. I didn't start a company, but I certainly appreciate the excitement of tackling a programming challenge back then when memory and disk were in short supply. Most of my early programming tasks had me worried about how much memory and disk I was using, trying desperately to minimize both. Read the rest of
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The Return to the Office Debate
04/22/2025
The Return to the Office Debate
At the end of last year, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a long time. We were chatting and this person mentioned that they were looking for a new job. They had been laid off and needed something. This is someone with a lot of experience and skill, so I wasn't worried for their career or future. At the time, they mentioned they had gotten an introduction and interest from Amazon, but they weren't interested in a position because of the that Amazon was implementing. I was recently chatting with another friend at a different company. This person manages a tech team, and was looking to hire another data engineer, but was told they could only hire in a certain city (City A) in the US. In this case, it was the city with their main office. They have offices in a few cities, and a large one in City B, but the organization has been thinking of their own RTO plans and has limited hiring. My friend is now wondering if they need to consider moving to City A (not likely) or find a new job. They don't want to have to go to the office every day in City B. Read the rest of
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Staying Employed
04/20/2025
Staying Employed
The revolution with GenAI has been quite the ride since 2023 and quite a few people have been concerned that their employment status might be in jeopardy. I can certainly understand that, especially in light of the tight budgets, , and . There was with a few tips on how to stay employed. While tech workers weren't mentioned as being vulnerable, repetitive data-heavy jobs, such as data entry clerks, telemarketers, and cashiers were. That last one is interesting. Lots of companies have tried to use automated checkout stations, but this hasn't necessarily eliminated cashiers. Maybe there are fewer, but lots of companies in the US have rolled back some of these efforts as fraud, mistakes, and slower checkouts have been an issue. Read the rest of
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Database First or Application First
04/15/2025
Database First or Application First
One of the challenges in software development is coordinating database and application changes when one depends on the other. I find many software development teams struggle with this, especially in today's environments when no one wants to take a system offline. While some companies can stage and manage deployments, many of us find our systems need to keep running 24x7 with minimal outages (if any). Lots of you work in environments where your software is changing on a regular basis. Plenty of you will either be developing those changes, or managing the systems to which those changes are deployed. You likely will be coordinating with other people (in either case) to deploy a software artifact (C#, Java, Python, etc.) and a set of database changes in order for your clients to use whatever new functionality is being delivered. Read the rest of
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How Much AI Code Would You Use?
04/13/2025
How Much AI Code Would You Use?
I saw . The article notes that if no other startups had any AI generated code (no idea the likelihood here, then about 24% of their code for startups is GenAI written. 24% Is that high or low? If you think about all the code you've written in the last year, how much of it could be reasonably generated by AI? All the queries, schema changes, test code, dummy data insertions, refactoring to add a column to a table or result set. Could it be AI written? Read the rest of
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Part-Time DBAs
04/08/2025
Part-Time DBAs
Some of you reading this are database administrators (DBAs) who manage systems as their full-time job. Others of you might be developers, analytics people, or someone else who has another job, but you get stuck with managing the database somehow. I've seen a receptionist and a dental hygienist act in this role. We may call you the accidental DBAs, though that doesn't imply you are good or bad at managing databases. I got into this line of work as an accidental DBA who was also a developer. No matter what your job title, my guess is that you aren't over-staffed at your organization. Likely you wish you had one (or more) more person to help keep up with the work. It seems that we never have enough time to get everything done in a week. And that's with a full staff. What do you do when someone is sick or goes on vacation? If you're like me, you get further behind and feel extra stress while your coworker is out of the office. Read the rest of
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Using Feature Flags
04/06/2025
Using Feature Flags
The use of feature flags in software development has become more and more prevalent over time, especially as teams move to DevOps-style development with frequent releases. I've often thought that using feature flags allows technical people to separate out the deployment of some feature or change from the release of that to users. There are a number of articles on this style of work (, ) as well as . I am a big believer in feature flags helping with improving your software in many ways. These articles (and others) highlight the advantages that a software organization gains by using feature flags. Failed releases become less of an issue, as the specific change that doesn't work can be turned off. This can even work with databases. I can deploy a database change and at a later time have the code (or new table/column) start being used when a feature flag is set. If there is an issue, I can turn off the feature flag and stop using the code (or populating the schema). I can then clean things up, even saving data before I make a change. Read the rest of
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A Domain for Data
04/03/2025
A Domain for Data
A domain is a set of possible values (among other definitions). I use this word a lot in my work, often with a problem domain (the thing you're trying to solve) or the domain of possible values (like the US States and Territories list). That last one is interesting, as this is often the set of data we stick in some reference or lookup table to use in a form on a screen. There is a domain as part of the SQL specification, which I never knew about. I was reading . This doesn't exist in SQL Server and T-SQL, but it has been a part of PostgreSQL for quite a few versions. The article talks about the definition of a domain from a few very experienced database design people. Read the rest of
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