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.

Prompt Requests 03/29/2026

Prompt Requests One of the challenges of AI-assisted coding agents is that they tend to produce A LOT of code. Even in refactoring or migration changes, the AIs can work quickly and generate such a volume of code that the process starts to become overwhelming. For pull requests, for CI/CD build systems, and certainly for human reviewers, they can be overwhelmed. This can become a real problem with OSS projects, where submissions can grow exponentially to the point that maintainers stop looking at pull requests. I suspect the same thing might happen in corporate repositories when lots of developers can refactor or submit huge amounts of code produced by AI agents in a fraction of the time it took a year ago. I was listening to an interview with an experienced software developer and OSS project maintainer who said that he preferred getting a "prompt request" that contained a description of a problem and the specification for a solution that he could submit to his own LLM to get the code. Rather than use an AI to review a code in a PR written by a human or AI agent, a great prompt that can communicates the problem and solution is preferred. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40612020

Is Your Time "Free"? 03/26/2026

Is Your Time "Free"? We do a lot of research at , often contacting customers or and asking questions, getting feedback, listening to their challenges or criticisms. We take that information and it helps guide us to build the tools that help you in your job. Recently I watched a call with a customer that uses our famous in their job and has for years. In this case, the call was about the value of and how that might fit in their organization. The person performed a lot of manual work to deploy code changes, and could see the way in which Flyway helps, but wasn't interested in saving time. They saw their time as free. I assume their employer felt that way as well. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40597885

Doing the Little Things 03/24/2026

Doing the Little Things I wrote recently and watching planes take off. That's been a fun thing for me to do when I'm stuck at the airport. I can see a plane roll down the runway every 35-45s during busy times. This time I was sitting by a window in the hotel, working and watching. There was a moment when I realized no planes were taking off. I looked and saw a vehicle rolling down the runway, and then realized there were two, one from each direction. It was an , looking for anything that might damage a plane. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40597735

Everything is the right question away 03/22/2026

Everything is the right question away When I was young and needed to learn about something, I had to go to a library or a bookstore to get information. I often started by looking through an encyclopedia. I had to wander between entries to learn more about the topic I was researching. A few lucky friends had their own copy of an encyclopedia, which was nice since we could research at home. At some point these collections of information were moved to CD/DVDs, which made them more portable and more accessible to a larger group of people than in the past. In the 90s we had the innovation of search engines, which allows us to more quickly move through information. There was more information available on the Internet than was ever published in encyclopedias. Over the years, these search engines improved their ability to rank and recommend information that is relevant to your query. However, you still need some idea of what you are trying to learn about. You have to direct the searches, although the Google auto-complete felt very predictive at times. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40498880

Hidden Heroes 03/19/2026

Hidden Heroes A few weeks ago I was in , at the facility where the Allies decoded and broke many of the German Nazi messages in World War II. It's quite a facility and museum, and I hope to go back. I was distracted that day and didn't get a lot of time to enjoy the exhibits and really learn more about what happened there. I was there for our Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff, and as a part of that, two different executives in our company shared their stories of people who had worked there. What was interesting is that until we planned this event, these two people had no idea that there were people they knew well, who had been part of the effort to end World War II at Bletchley Park. This facility can be considered to be one of the birthplaces of computing. Read the rest of . /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40498735

Changing Data Types 03/17/2026

Changing Data Types Recently I was working with a customer that is trying to smooth out their database development process. They noted that a lot of changes tend to take a significant amount of time and impact their availability. They came to Redgate to see if might be a way to improve the effectiveness of their internal groups that build, deploy, and manage their database software. We can help, but often when I get called to help architect things, we are trying to decide if the customer is a good fit for our solutions. Since we work on a subscription model, we want to be sure customers are happy and get value from their decision. Otherwise they have a poor experience and don't renew. This might be because they aren't ready, or it might be that the question wasn't considered of whether our solution fits their environment well. In any case, I usually dig into the goals and challenges they've faced with their current process. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40457555

Breaking Down Your Work 03/15/2026

Breaking Down Your Work I saw and how he goes about approaching the game of American football. I don't know if this meme is true, but certainly, his efforts to prepare have been a reported issue during Murray's career. The post actually deals with sales and analyzing the reasons for deal success or failure, something I've been able to witness at Redgate the last few years. It's interesting to me to see the sales process examined, though I don't make sales. Incidentally, is one I appreciate, referencing Kobe Bryant and . I like the approach of working and asking questions to become better. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40457505

Multiple Deployment Processes 03/13/2026

Multiple Deployment Processes We had a Simple Talks podcast recently where we discussed roll forward vs roll back. You can and listen to our thoughts, but one interesting place was when we talked about deployments. Grant mentioned that he deployed from version control/source control at a previous employer. I asked him whether he did that for every system. His response: "Well, ..." He admitted that most, but not all, databases came from a controlled source. There were some systems that had a more ad hoc change process. I wonder how many of you have consistent processes throughout your organization. I suspect not many of you do, especially if an organization isn't small. Often, different groups and applications are in a constant state of flux, with lots of different processes and protocols. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40347085

A Full Shutdown 03/11/2026

A Full Shutdown I have the opportunity to work with a variety of customers on their database systems, often with the focus on how they can build and deploy changes to their databases. Often, they have a process around how and when they make changes. Some have maintenance windows, though often these are approved times for changes rather than a true window during which a system is shut down. I ran into a customer recently who scheduled a system shutdown for their deployments. This was a surprise to me in 2026, as I thought most people would have learned to deploy changes to live systems. However, I know that many teams make changes that would render portions of the database inaccessible for a period of time, so maybe that's not true. Maybe they just make changes and deal with the impact on clients. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40347000

Not Just an Upgrade 03/09/2026

Not Just an Upgrade /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40317810

Writing as an Art and a Job 03/06/2026

Writing as an Art and a Job I remember listening to an interview with in the mid 2000s. He was the back page columnist for Sports Illustrated for years as well as a writer in various pieces. He talked about how he would lay on the couch in his office sometimes, trying to think of what to write. His kids would come in looking for attention, but couldn't understand that Dad was "working". I had been writing the editorials at SQL Server Central and I could relate. Moving from 2 to 5 (eventually 6) editorials a week was a lot of work. It was stressful in a way I couldn't imagine when I started writing them. I quickly realized that if I had to produce a new one every day, I was in trouble. There would be days I'd struggle. I needed to have a queue of pieces at least partially ready if I were going to manage this job and find balance with my family. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40316930

Rollback vs. Roll Forward 03/04/2026

Rollback vs. Roll Forward The Advocates at Redgate Software had an interesting discussion about deployments in databases and how you go forward or back from the point at which you discover a problem. You can , but a few things occurred to me while we were having our discussion. The first thing is we all agree data makes things hard. A database is a stateful object, and dealing with stateful objects is hard. That is one of the things I’ve internalized the last few years that has tremendously changed how I work with Redgate customers. The more I consider state, the more I am able to work with the challenges that databases bring. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40205470

Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central 02/27/2026

Having a Little Fun at SQL Server Central /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40180455

Testing is Becoming More Important 02/25/2026

Testing is Becoming More Important Many of us know that testing our code is important. The adoption of unit testing by many software application developers as a normal course of business has dramatically improved the quality of applications. Mobile software, especially, has benefited from the requirement for most software to include, and constantly run, a suite of unit tests. For database software, I find relatively few organizations formally test their database code. A few people have adopted or the , but most don't bother. In fact, many queries that are embedded in application code, or built by ORMs, aren't tested beyond a developer looking at the results from their own (limited set of) test data. That often doesn't catch errors until someone in production runs their application against a larger set of data. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40180270

Can You Let Go of Determinism 02/23/2026

Can You Let Go of Determinism Why do we reboot machines when something goes wrong? I'm sure all have done it, and I would guess quite a few of you have found situations where this seems to fix issues, but there isn't an underlying root cause that you can pinpoint. This is a fairly accepted way of dealing with issues, but have you thought about why this is a way to solve some problems? The main thing that a reboot does is return the system to a know starting state. It's why quite a few people complain about some modern laptops and mobile devices because they avoid restarts and try to sleep/wake instead. Most software expects to work on a stateless machine, so restarts help find a known good state. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40144465

Doing Good at SQL Server Central 02/20/2026

Doing Good at SQL Server Central This is part of a few memories from the founders of SQL Server Central, celebrating 25 years of operation this month. We did photoshoots at Redgate many years ago. We had a bunch of props, including some phrases written down. We could create our own, but my handwriting is atrocious (likely why I never became an architect), but I ended up with this one: Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080330

Engineer Lessons 02/18/2026

Engineer Lessons Many of you reading this have a number of years working with technology. You might have 1 year or 20 years, but you've likely grown and learned along the way. Some of you may also know someone who has several years of seniority in a position but not that many years of experience. In this case, a person might have been working at this job for 5 years, but they really have one year of experience that's been repeated 5 times. That's been a common complaint over quite a few years from people who interview others. They find candidates often have very limited experience, yet are applying for senior roles. These candidates are ones who have just a few years of experience, but have ended up repeating those few years over and over. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080240

Expanding into Print 02/13/2026

Expanding into Print This is part of a few memories from the founders of SQL Server Central, celebrating 25 years of operation this month. When we started SQL Server Central, our goal was to build a great resource that helped other people advance in their careers and also made some money. Our decisions in building the site were based around the digital world and treating the community as we would want to be treated. Over time, however, we realized that continuing to grow this business was hard in a digital-only world. We experimented and proposed helping others build similar sites, like ReportingServicesCentral (which would have been great) or NotificationServicesCentral (which would not), but ultimately, we weren't experts enough in those areas and couldn't find people willing to partner. Everyone thought they could do it themselves and that the knowledge was the hard part, and execution was easy. The truth is that the reverse is the way it works. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/40080125

The Power of Data and Privacy 02/11/2026

The Power of Data and Privacy I tend to be fairly careful with data, especially data on this site. When we started the site, we were worried about potential issues and worked hard to ensure we kept our systems safe and limited the attack surface area for personal information. We also declined the various offers we had to sell our list of subscribers to marketing firms. We know that some places add value for marketing, but some abuse the trust of their users and our approach was always to be careful. When we sold the site to Redgate, we emphasized the need for this trust, and to date, Redgate has been a great steward of your personal information. I regularly field requests for uses of data from other marketing people, and almost all get declined. I've had a number of great managers who have supported me on this because we value your privacy. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39999730

The DBA is Dead; Long Live the DBA 02/09/2026

The DBA is Dead; Long Live the DBA I remember getting a job at a startup in the Denver Tech Center. This was shortly after SQL Server 7 was released, with a marketing campaign that the platform was auto-tuning and wouldn't require a DBA. My colleague asked me if I wanted to learn Cold Fusion and have a longer career. I declined and stuck with this SQL Server thing, which has seemed to work out pretty well over the years. I was reminded of this when I saw a "" post, this time from an Oracle DBA. There are plenty of links in there from Larry Ellison and Oracle about how some version of Oracle won't require a DBA. I've seen (and elsewhere ) about this topic where people seem to think DBAs can be replaced. Or maybe they want them replaced. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39999660

When SQL Server Central Went Down 02/06/2026

When SQL Server Central Went Down Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39971500

Expensive CPUs 02/04/2026

Expensive CPUs There have been a lot of features added to the SQL Server platform over the years. Several of these features let us perform functions that are beyond what a database has traditionally been designed to handle. SQL Server has had the ability to , , and in SQL Server 2025, we can . Quite a few of these features (arguably) are more application-oriented than database-oriented. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a server perform some of these functions, and there have been some very creative implementations using these features. I recently ran into , where she shows how to use the new REST endpoint feature to call an AI LLM to generate and send emails from your database server. That's creative, and it's reminiscent of the numerous examples from various experts over the years who demonstrate how these features can be used to accomplish a task. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39971400

25 Years of SQL Server Central 02/02/2026

25 Years of SQL Server Central The oldest article we have on the site is , by me. It's dated 2001-04-18, though I think that's a date we picked when we converted all the content from one database to another. The founders agreed sometime during Feb 2001 to jointly run SQL Server Central. Since we each owned the copyright of our articles from another site, we migrated several articles to build up our content library. This was back when , , and I all had full-time jobs and managed the site during breaks, nights, and weekends. That was 25 years ago. Twenty. Five. Years. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39889085

There Are a Lot of Databases 01/30/2026

There Are a Lot of Databases I was reading Andy Pavlo's . He's done this for a number of years, and there are links to previous recaps in the piece. He is at Carnegie Mellon University, working on quite a few database-related projects. In the review, he tends to track the database world from the perspective of business success and money. There are certainly parts of it that discuss technical changes, but my overall impression is more about the business and usage success than it is about the way database systems work. The main thing that struck me after reading the review was how many database systems there are in the world. I hadn't heard of any of these: RaptorDB, TigerData, Tembo, StormDB, Translattice, FerretDB, DocDB, SpiralDB, Tantivy, SkySQL, HeavyDB, and more. I'm sure I missed listing some I didn't recognize, and quite a few of these are PostgreSQL-based systems, but still, that's a lot of database systems that exist and are having success. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39888705

More Documentation is Needed 01/28/2026

More Documentation is Needed AI is everywhere, and if you spend any amount of time looking for answers on the Internet to your coding challenges, you've likely encountered a lot of poor, average, good, bad, amazing, and just-helpful-enough AI content. For awhile, I was avoiding the AI summary from Google as the quality seemed slightly off, but lately it's gotten good enough that I tend use it to decide which links to click on in the results. The summary helps me better understand the context Google sees in my search query. I ran across and how helpful these docs are in onboarding, code reviews, and more. The teams that worked smoothly together often had good docs that helped them function as a cohesive group. At least to some extent. Over time, teams start to depend on tools and lose some of that cohesiveness since they rely more on tools than docs. I agree with the piece that this is a part of the reason many teams don't really function as teams over time. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39888355

Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter 01/26/2026

Deep Learning and Craftsmanship Matter There's concern about the future of AI and how it may affect jobs and employment for the masses. I see plenty of people on both sides of the issue. Some are sure AI technologies won't replace people; some are concerned their jobs will be eliminated, and some are hoping that we will eliminate some jobs and create many more. Sometimes that's the same person. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39752445

Learning From Breakage 01/21/2026

Learning From Breakage I've had the fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, experience of being thrown into a few jobs with no training. At a couple of my bartending jobs, I had to start working without any training, calling over someone to help run the ordering machine while I made and served drinks. I managed to slowly learn how things worked throughout that first shift, so I was ready to work on my own the second night. I had a similar experience at a tech job, starting as the lead DBA/IT Manager in a crisis, having to try and solve problems after ask others how things were supposed to work. I ended up fixing a bit of code, adjusting networking, and directing others on my first day. When we have a crisis, we often learn a lot from the situation. I've been through crashed upgrades, virus breakouts, hardware failures, and more in my career. While each was stressful and often not enjoyable, I learned a lot each time and came through the incident a more capable developer/DBA/whatever. When we work through a tough time, we are often better equipped for the next time something goes wrong. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39752355

Eight Minutes 01/16/2026

Eight Minutes When I was at the , one of the speakers was talking about their work with AI technologies. This person uses it a lot in their day job, often to complete tasks that they would have struggled to work on in the past, mostly because of time constraints, but also a lack of resources. Sometimes this person has an idea, but doesn't want to distract themselves or others by having them work on a side project. During a recent ride in a (self-driving car), this person had their laptop out and running Claude Code. They gave it a prompt, asking it to build a small app for some data analysis. During the 8-minute ride, the agent had spit out the code, a Readme, and committed this to a git repo. Later, the speaker tried it and found it solved most of his requirements, and then did some other work on the project, as well as having Claude write more code to get something that was beyond a minimally viable app. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39630635

JSON Has a Cost 01/14/2026

JSON Has a Cost JSON seems to be everywhere these days. Many application developers like it across all sorts of languages, C#, JAVA, Python, and more. They use it for transferring information between systems, and are comfortable serializing hierarchical object data into JSON from text and de-serializing it back into its various elements. For those of us working in relational databases, JSON seems like a blob of information that isn't easily queried, indexed, or stored. We prefer working with a relational set of data, which brings us into conflict with software developers. We'd like them to convert their objects to a relational structure, and they'd like us to just work with JSON. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39629925

An SSIS Upgrade 01/12/2026

An SSIS Upgrade I came across a post recently on the Microsoft Fabric blog about ..I hadn't heard much about SSIS in SQL Server 2025, so I thought this might provide some info on the investments that Microsoft is still making in Integration Services. I've run into a few people in the past year who are still heavily invested in SSIS and run packages daily. SSIS seems to be a technology that isn't even close to dying for many organizations. The blog starts well, delving into the security investments with the change to the SqlClient and TLS 1.3, as well as supporting Strict Encryption. I don't know many people using this level of security, but it's good to have SSIS support stronger security. There is also an upgrade for SSIS packages targeting Fabric Data Warehouses if they modify their approach. Read the rest of /episode/index/show/voiceofthedba/id/39577225

Voice of the DBA

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