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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Comforting Habits
12/20/2024
Comforting Habits
I was chatting with a friend recently about routines and some of the helpful or silly things we do. I mentioned that when I played adult baseball, we often had Sunday morning games and a routine of mine was to drive to town, stop at a 7-11, and get a large cup of coffee and an apple fritter. It was a comforting habit that I still have today, often stopping when I have a morning flight to do the same thing in the way to the airport. Only in Denver though, not when I'm flying out of other cities and returning home. Read the rest of
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Big Data or Small Data
12/18/2024
Big Data or Small Data
I went to San Francisco for , a conference sponsored by The premise of the event was that smaller sets of data are both very useful and prevalent. The speaks to me, as I am a big fan of smaller sets of data for sure. I also think that most of the time we can use less data than we think we need, especially when it's recent data. That often is more relevant and we end up with contorted queries that try to weight new or old data differently to reflect this. Maybe the best line for me is this one: Bigger data has an opportunity cost: Time. Read the rest of
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Learning to Grind
12/16/2024
Learning to Grind
When I was younger, I had a variety of jobs, but in most of the positions I had to work hard for stretches. Really hard, as in more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. Often as I was starting a new position, it took some time for me to develop some understanding, some skill, and some muscle memory. In some jobs, especially in restaurants, I also had to build the physical skills to be on my feet for many hours. In technology, I've often found myself unsure of how to approach a new position, aware I had knowledge gaps about how things worked, and often, I was naïve or ignorant of some piece of technology my employer used. Even at jobs where I started as a developer or DBA on a known platform (ASP or SQL Server), I sometimes encountered some aspects of the technology that I hadn't used in the past (like clustering). Read the rest of
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The AI/Human Spectrum
12/13/2024
The AI/Human Spectrum
I was asked this question recently: is it more likely that AI will replace humans or assist them in their work? It's a good question. If you think about the way AI is being hyped in 2024, many people think AI is, or will soon be, replacing people and we need less of them in work. I guess the simplified view is that AI can do the jobs of many people, but I'm not sure the world is that simple. What I think is more likely is that AI becomes a lever that assists a few people in getting more work done and potentially replacing other, less knowledgable humans. Read the rest of
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Continuous Learning
12/11/2024
Continuous Learning
It seems there's quite a dichotomy in the technology workforce. On one hand I hear about the Great Resignation where many employees are leaving their jobs because of RTO (return to office) mandates or some other dissatisfaction with their job. On the other, I've seen quite a few people who were laid off and are struggling to find new positions. On the third hand, there is no shortage of companies who report they are struggling to find and hire talented people for some positions. I don't quite know what to think, but I do know that employment seems to be harder to come by. If you are looking for a job, I believe you need your own sustainable learning plan. If your organization can't find qualified talented staff, then the organization definitely needs a continuous learning plan. Read the rest of
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Why Would You Do That?
12/09/2024
Why Would You Do That?
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Distributed Monoliths
12/06/2024
Distributed Monoliths
I was watching a video called . In it, the person being interviewed said that a lot of people really have a distributed monolith. That caught my eye since I've worked with a number of customers who are trying to adopt microservice architectures for their applications. I think this is less a performance/scaling choice than a reworking of their software development teams, and I'm not sure they will end up with a better system. What is ? I am not an expert, but this appears to be a place where all the services still depend on each other. For example, I might have a service getting user profile info that an app calls, with another service getting previous orders, and a third service that returns inventory. In a monolith, if any of these are down, the others don't work. In a distributed monolith, these might be built independently, but perhaps the core app/web page still requires all these to be working to show the user something. Read the rest of
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Reducing the Cycle Time
12/04/2024
Reducing the Cycle Time
There are lots of software development methodologies. lists a few, among them waterfall, agile, iterative, rapid, and more. What's been interesting to me is that the process of deciding what to code and then whether it works doesn't change much between different ways of building software. Instead, the cycle time between when we ask a client what to do and when we deliver it changes. The more agile/lean we are, the lower the cycle time. The more waterfall-ish, the larger the cycle time. I guess that analysis and breakdown of problems into work also changes, as the scope in modern DevOps styles of development is smaller (more contained) than in waterfall. Read the rest of
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Doing a Little Research
12/02/2024
Doing a Little Research
I've been very pleased with the direction of SSMS the last few years. As it's been separated from SQL Server releases and gets updated more often, I think the changes from v17 though v20 have been improvements. There are still issues, but it's been better. Now we finally have SSMS moving to a modern shell with and I'm excited to see how this changes the future of our tooling. However, the PM for SSMS, Erin Stellato, recently asking why people don't read documentation. She also asks what you want to see in 21, so respond if you think there are holes in the SSMS docs. I think this post came about because of many responses that came from people who clearly hadn't read some documentation. Read the rest of
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Have Grace
11/27/2024
Have Grace
Thanksgiving is tomorrow in the US and it is supposed to be a holiday when we give thanks for our blessings in life. My wife usually has everyone in our family tell what they are thankful for this year. I also see many people posting things they are grateful for during the month of December. Last month I was lucky enough to have dinner with Bob Ward and we were talking about some of the things we'd seen in travels, often some stressful times for ourselves or others. We've seen many people get upset or angry or have some other reaction. Both of us have some empathy for others, recognizing that we don't really know their history or experiences, and it doesn't make sense for us to get upset. If we knew those things, we might better understand the reaction that someone displays to a situation. Read the rest of
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Computer Algebra
11/25/2024
Computer Algebra
I was a bit of a math nerd in high school and college. Some of you might have been as well, but I took advanced math all through high school, culminating with AP Calculus as a senior with 11 other kids (of about 320). In college, I started with Calculus III freshman year and went on to take 7 more semesters of various high level maths. One of those classes included analyzing data with linear regression, which we did with hand calculators and formulae. At , I watched a talk from on linear regression. It was a trip down memory lane, with Jeff explaining how the process worked, the flaws, and how this technique could be used to do some predictions on data stored in SQL Server. It was a great session on the topic, but I liked that Jeff showed how you can use SQL Server to do various math calculations that might be useful to analyze data. I see applications sometimes programming various formulas, but I don't often see people doing this in database queries. Read the rest of
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New SQL Server 2022 Functions
11/22/2024
New SQL Server 2022 Functions
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How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?
11/18/2024
How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?
In most of the organizations I've worked for or consulted with, patching was always a challenge. Patching hasn't usually been given a priority and is often skipped when operations staff is busy. This has resulted in lots of un-patched, or slowly patched systems. I assume this is one reason Microsoft continues to release RTM-GDR patches because some people won't patch at all unless there are critical fixes. I also know that much of IT management sees patching systems like patching parking lots. Needs to be done, but tomorrow, after we do other important work today. Read the rest of
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Do You Want a Microsoft Solution?
11/15/2024
Do You Want a Microsoft Solution?
Microsoft constantly releases new features and products in the data platform space. Many of us have seen the SQL Server product grow in new ways, some of which are very useful to us. As an example the changes from log shipping to clustering to Availability Groups has improved our HA/DR options as well as the capabilities available to us in different situations. With that in mind, I saw someone recently that wanted to deploy SQL Server on Kubernetes, which is something that could be a very interesting way of managing your different systems. However, this individual wanted to know when Microsoft would release their own supported solution with a Microsoft operator to manage the instance. There is , but no official operator. Read the rest of
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Separate Reads
11/13/2024
Separate Reads
Recently I was watching a presentation on how to scale performance in your SQL Server environment and one of the suggestions was setting up Availability Groups (AGs) and having read-intent connections that would query the secondary and not the primary. It's not a bad idea, and and make it easy to implement. The pattern of using multiple connections in an application, one for reads and one for writes, has been suggested often. However, in practice, I've rarely seen this work. Apparently having a connection variable, named dbConn, for writes and a second one, named dbConnReadOnly, for reads is too complex for most developers or teams. Read the rest of
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Time to Change Your Team
11/10/2024
Time to Change Your Team
I assume most of you work with others in a team. Even if you are the data specialist and others work on different technologies, you still have a team. How long has your current team been together in this form? Have you had a stable team that might have grown, but the rest of the individuals and roles/responsibilities stay the same? Or has your team changed makeup, roles, responsibilities, or something else? I don't see a lot of organizations that change their team structures often. There may be people who come and go from a team, but the core structure remains the same. Even when your company might reorganize a bit, often it's teams that shuffle between managers, but mostly remain the same. There certainly are exceptions, and some large orgs (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) regularly shuffle lots of people around, but I'm not sure the teams change their makeup or their mandate much. Read the rest of
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Technology Fears
11/07/2024
Technology Fears
Recently I had a friend traveling who is not very tech savvy. This person has traveled before and has a routine, but in this case, they were struggling to get an airline's mobile app to work. They also struggled with the website, and just before the trip, they were thinking to cancel because they didn't have a ticket in their hand before driving to the airport. This turned out to be a login issue, and between friends and the airline's customer service, they were able to print out a ticket at home and take it in hand to the airport. Read the rest of
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What's New for the Microsoft Data Platform
11/05/2024
What's New for the Microsoft Data Platform
Today is the first day at the and I'm in Seattle where I'll get to open the conference and introduce the Microsoft keynote. I'm sure the keynote will be full of announcements on something, but what? I'm writing this a little over a week before the event, and I have no idea what Microsoft will do. Actually, by the time you read this I may have some ideas as there was a practice session yesterday, but I can't tell you anything. NDA, and really, by the time I got something organized, the keynote will be done. Read the rest of
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I Need a CS Degree. I Don't Need a CS Degree
10/31/2024
I Need a CS Degree. I Don't Need a CS Degree
For a long time I've felt that my recommendation for people wanting to enter technology wasn't to go to college and get a degree, but rather start to learn on your own and get an entry level job (help desk, tech support, etc.) and start to work in the industry. That's a good way to both experiment and understand what you're considering undertaking as a career, as well as limiting your investment. It's also nice to get paid to learn something. College is great, but it's also expensive. I find that for many people, it can be hard to get a good ROI from college these days. The fast rising cost, not to mention the uncertain opportunities after college lead me not to recommend pursuing a CS degree, or really any degree, as a default view. There are exceptions, but for many people, I'd prefer to work and try to better understand where they should invest in education. Read the rest of
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The Cloud Security Problem
10/29/2024
The Cloud Security Problem
Your management gets a great demo from a cloud vendor and decides that the organization needs to implement the new service/application/etc. quickly. Your team tries to comply, furiously learning and experimenting with integrations, software changes, infrastructure configuration, and more. Things get deployed are working. Clients and management are happy with the new capabilities and you breathe a sigh of relief. After a bit of time there's a security issue and all of a sudden there's blame pouring down on everyone. The vendor takes a hit because it's a public security problem, but the reality might be that your organization didn't completely understand how to configure strong security. The public doesn't blame your organization, but internally your team don't know how to make changes to ensure future security. Read the rest of
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Databases for Executives
10/27/2024
Databases for Executives
There's an article at Forbes about the . Disclosure, it's by my boss, but I think it's still a good read. These are points we've learned from research and work with customers and prospects at Redgate Software. These points come from you, as well as from executives with whom we work, but there are so many people in organizations who don't think about the complexity of data, so it's a good one to pass along. The five things are (if you don't want to read): data is growing, getting more complex, there are multiple database platforms in most estates, teams struggle (duh), and data is a business issue. Most of us know about the fourth one, often because we may feel overloaded with work. We might also feel a lot of stress in trying to keep up with not only the workload but also trying to learn more to support the ever-growing variety of systems it seems our employer wants to put into production. I regularly talk with customers whose developers keep wanting to try out a new, shiny database platform in the cloud (or add new features from their existing platforms). Read the rest of
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Knowing Your Total Reward
10/24/2024
Knowing Your Total Reward
For much of my career as a younger person, I was mostly concerned with salary at a job, along with the opportunities for my career. I really wanted to know how much money would hit my bank account and cared most about that. I also wanted to know if I would learn something or get a better title or work with a technology that might help me in the future. That drove me through quite a few jobs in my 20s and 30s, leaving some for more money and more opportunity. As I got a family, I became more concerned about healthcare since that industry is a mess in the US. Often when I looked at a job, I perused other benefits but didn't give them much weight, mostly concerned with salary and the cost of medical insurance. I also somewhat cared about who I worked with (the team), but that was more for helping me choose between different jobs. It wasn't something I thought of as a reward, though I should have. Read the rest of
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When Companies Fail
10/22/2024
When Companies Fail
I own a Tesla, which is essentially a computer on wheels. Much of the way the car works is driven by software, which I love. New features have appeared and minor fixes come through in the same way that they do for apps on my mobile device. It can be annoying to wait for an update to install, which has happened when my wife or I start the update remotely and don't realize the other is planning on driving. Fortunately, I can set these to run overnight from my phone and they mostly disappear into the background. I don't worry about Tesla failing, at least, that hasn't been on my mind, but I ran into about a company in China that is failing. The WM Motor Company filed for bankruptcy, and perhaps coincidently, their app stopped working. Owners couldn't manage basic functions. The company put the server back up, but that brings up a bit of a concern for software that depends on external connections. Read the rest of
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Tech Debt Perils
10/20/2024
Tech Debt Perils
My wife and I have been thinking about some new audio equipment. We've been a little unhappy with our Bose soundbar because of the software flakiness and sporadic network connectivity issues. In looking around, I saw a Sonos product, but after reading a bit about the company's recent history, I decided to look elsewhere. Sidebar: if any of you have recommendations that aren't high-end $$$$ audio, let me know. Read the rest of
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The Vast Expansions of Hardware
10/17/2024
The Vast Expansions of Hardware
At the recently, one of the talks looked at hardware advances. It was interesting to see a data perspective on hardware changes, as many of us only worry about the results of hardware: can I get my data quickly? In or out, most of us are more often worried about performance than specs. However, today I thought it might be fun to look at a few changes and numbers to get an idea of how our hardware has changed, in the march towards dealing with more and more data. Big data anyone? In thinking about disks, I saw a chart that looked at the changes from HDD (hard disk drives) to SDD (solid state drives) to NVMe (Nonvolatile Memory Express). These show read speeds going through the list from 80MB/S to 200MB/s to 5000+MB/s. That's a dramatic change, and not one only in high-end arrays. There are you can put in a desktop that read this fast. If you think about some of the , which read at 8800b/s. Growth in disk speed, inside the timeline of our careers, has grown by a few orders of magnitude in read speed. Read the rest of
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The Modern Algorithm of Chance
10/15/2024
The Modern Algorithm of Chance
These days algorithms rule much of the world. From how supply chains are managed to how vehicles run their engines to the media that many of us watch on the various streaming services. I assume that most of you know that algorithms drive what you see on social media, on YouTube, and even the search results you get, and what you see might be different than what I see. There is a constant search for a perfect, or at least, very targeted way of getting you what you want. Or at least what the algorithm thinks you want. However, is that the best way for algorithms to be designed? It is for the companies that want to profit from your attention, but is this intense personalization better for us? Read the rest of
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The Role of Databases in the Era of AI
10/13/2024
The Role of Databases in the Era of AI
I'm hosting a webinar tomorrow with this same title: The Role of Databases in the Era of AI. and you'll get some other perspectives from Microsoft and Rie Merritt. However, I think this is an interesting topic and decided to try and synthesize some thoughts into an editorial today, partially to prep for tomorrow and partly because I'm fascinated by AI and how it will be used in the future. Read the rest of
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Everything is Code
10/10/2024
Everything is Code
with this quote: “The content updates had not previously been treated as code because they were strictly configuration information.” This is to a US Congressional committee in trying to explain how they grounded much of the airline industry a few months ago. That was a mess of a situation, and apparently, the vendor didn't think their configuration was part of their code. That's an amazing viewpoint to me. The fact that any developer or manager thinks that their configuration data isn't a part of their code is worth testing. Yet, I see this attitude all the time, where developers, QA, managers, and more think that the code is the only thing that changes or doesn't change, ignoring the fact that there are configuration items that affect the code and need to be managed appropriately. Certainly, if the config data were in rather than in a file or database they'd feel differently. Read the rest of
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Keep. It. Simple.
10/08/2024
Keep. It. Simple.
I get a tech newsletter most days, which has news that I enjoy, but interspersed among the news and ads are projects, frameworks, or repos, most of which I've never heard of before. I used to read these, but it seems that there is an endless list of these, which all have marketing descriptions that somehow claim this set of code solves problems that others don't or that this code is easy to use and integrate with, or well, I don't know what other promises. I'm usually turned off by the end of the first sentence. The thing I've noticed is that there are so many projects out there. Even in the database space, if I happen to read a discussion on some aspect of databases, such as database deployment frameworks, I'll see links to technologies I've never heard of in my life. Some are small projects, and some are small companies, but there is an amazing variety of solutions for any tech problem. I'm not sure most of them are much different from the others, but the Not Invented Here syndrome seems to be everywhere. These observations also remind me of just how vast the world is and how little I see of it on a daily basis. Read the rest of
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The Load of Real Time Data Warehouses
10/06/2024
The Load of Real Time Data Warehouses
If you have a data warehouse, what do you think your ratio of reads to writes is on any given day? Do you think 1:1, as in one read for each write? Is it 10:1, with 10 reads for each write? 100:1? Do you track this in any way? One would think that most of the databases we work on in the transactional world have many more reads than writes. I'd have assumed the ratios might be higher for data warehouses, where we load data that is queried (read) as the primary use case. After all, I expect that there are lots of people querying data that is loaded into this warehouse, with relatively few changes. Read the rest of
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