This is my last day of work. Not forever, just for six weeks. I'm off on my sabbatical after today and won't be back until August 11. However, everything should run smoothly with Grant and Kellyn 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 mo...
Jun 26, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 63
I ran across an article on the 7 types of tech debt that can cripple your business , 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 th...
Jun 24, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 62
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 ...
Jun 22, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 61
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 a...
Jun 19, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 60
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 an article on the five things that one person is looking forward to in SQL Server 202...
Jun 17, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 58
I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The repo is public , 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 Patching the Patch...
Jun 15, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 59
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 a number of metrics 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 ...
Jun 12, 2025•4 min•Season 11Ep. 57
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 Shorten the Debate
Jun 08, 2025•2 min•Season 11Ep. 56
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 The Mythical Man Month 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 another review of the book a while back from the Pragmatic Engineer. That view looked at what's changed in 5...
Jun 05, 2025•5 min•Season 11Ep. 55
I've been reading an intere 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 unioniza...
Jun 03, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 54
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 k...
Jun 01, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 53
I saw an article on AI usage 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...
May 27, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 52
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, b...
May 20, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 51
It likely isn't a surprise to many of you that executives like AI. A survey shows that 74% of executives surveyed have greater confidence in AI-generated insights than advice from colleagues 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...
May 18, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 50
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 " Data breaches May Be Inevitable—Compliance Failures Don’t Have to Be ". It's based on our research with the State of Database Landscape survey 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 organizat...
May 15, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 49
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 Deleting a Database...
May 11, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 48
The DORA organization is constantly researching how to better produce software at any organization. This is similar to work done by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute 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 database change management page , where they recommend approaches to managing database schemas. The main thing they talk about is treating all schema changes as migra...
May 08, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 47
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 a...
May 06, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 46
Certifications can pay off, at least in some areas. There's a piece 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 ge...
May 04, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 45
I thought this story about a programmer and a GenAI 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 proper...
May 01, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 44
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, a...
Apr 29, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 43
I heard Brent Ozar recently talked a bit about the SQL Server platform 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 Is SQL Server Feature Complete?...
Apr 27, 2025•2 min•Season 11Ep. 42
I get the Gates Notes 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 SQL Saturday #175 - Fargo , 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...
Apr 24, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 41
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 return-to-the-office (RTO) mandate that Amazon was imple...
Apr 22, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 40
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, widespread layoffs , and executive views on AI technologies . There was an article recently talking about AI taking over some jobs 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...
Apr 20, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 39
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 y...
Apr 15, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 37
I saw an article recently that a quarter of the Y Combinator startups have 95% of the code in their repos being AI generated . 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, refa...
Apr 13, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 36
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 ma...
Apr 08, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 38
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 ( feature flag driven development , Why Use Feature Flags? ) as well as a discussion at Reddit . I am a big believe...
Apr 06, 2025•3 min•Season 11Ep. 35
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 an article from Joe Celko on the CR...
Apr 03, 2025•2 min•Season 11Ep. 34
