Voice of the DBA

Database DevOps Metrics

The DORA organization is dedicated to helping others build software better and faster, at a higher quality, and in a way that is more efficient. They continue to compile and publish the Accelerate State of DevOps report every year, which is a fascinating read. As a part of the report, they have identified four key metrics that identify high performing organizations in terms of software. These are divided into two areas: throughput and stability. Throughput measures are change lead time and deplo...

Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think?

If you're a fan, no. You're chomping at the bit, waiting to get everyone using GenAI models in their work. If you're skeptical, then you might think it's never coming to take your job, be a personal assistant, help you with coding, etc. Pick the task it won't help you with. A more nuanced view, which is similar to mine, is from Kendra Little, in which she says AI will eliminate DBA Jobs Faster Than You Think , I'm not quite as pro-AI as Kendra, mostly because I see so many companies that are slo...

The Inefficiencies of Kubernetes

The End of SQL Server 2019

Well, not really the end. I doubt anyone running SQL Server 2019 is going to stop (or upgrade) just because mainstream support ended. Actually, I wonder how many of you know that SQL Server 2019 passed out of mainstream support on Feb 28, 2025. I do think the 6 or 7 of you running Big Data Clusters likely knew this was the end of any support. I saw a report in the Register on this, which includes a survey of which versions are still running. This is from an IT asset firm and matches Brent Ozar's...

Monoliths and Microservices

More Supply Chain Attacks

Lower Your Attack Surface Area

It's no surprise that our systems are under attack by all sorts of criminals. Some organized, some opportunistic, some just aiming for vandalism. We need to protect our digital systems to prevent issues, and a part of better protection is reducing the number of places that are vulnerable. Those places include databases. This article discusses the rising costs of data breaches and the increased frequency of attacks. It also examines the increasing number of regulations that are demanding proof of...

Tracking Table Sizes

The Job Outlook for Database Professionals

This is a strange time for many technology professionals and their employment. It seems many organizations have open positions and are struggling to fill those slots with qualified candidates ( one look at this ). At the same time, many other organizations have followed the large technology firms (FAANG, MSFT) and laid off large numbers of their staff in the last year. At the same time, with the hype and rapid growth of GenAI systems, we have companies that are looking to machines to fill some o...

A Poor Data Model

Recently there was some online complaints about social security numbers (SSNs) in the US being duplicated and re-used by individuals. This is really political gamesmanship, so ignore the political part. Just know that social security numbers appear to be one of the contenders used in many data models. I found a good piece about how SSNs aren't unique, and have a mess of problems. Despite this, many people seem to want to use SSNs as a primary or alternate key in their database systems. They also...

Your Biggest Data Model Complaints

I've been working with databases for a long time and there are no shortage of things I've seen other people do that I don't like. Sometimes I shake my head a little. Sometimes I might groan inwardly (hopefully not aloud), and sometimes I might make an effort to convince someone else to do something differently. Sometimes I'm really annoyed (or angry) and don't even know what to do. Read the rest of Your Biggest Data Model Complaints...

Why Not Use AI?

Erin Stellato, a program manager at Microsoft, asked a very interesting question on LinkedIn : "why do you *not* want a Copilot in SSMS?" That got me to stop and think a minute. Why don't we want to use an AI to help us? It's a good question, given the hype and (maybe) potential of the technology. While it might not help you now, or with your specific thing, it might help others, so are there good reasons not to use AI technologies, like the GenAI LLMs? Read the rest of Why Not Use AI?...

Trust is a Funny Thing

I caught an article on AI skepticism and there was a point in the article where trust was mentioned. Specifically the reasons that people distrust an AI or tech tool is that it makes a mistake, so they stop using it. A few examples of this were using a writing AI that made a grammar mistake or a GPS routing device that added a wrong detour. In those cases the humans stopped using the assistance of the algorithm because they felt it wasn't trustworthy. What's fascinating to me is that I had this ...

Moving On After a Technology Fail

Is Ransomware Fading?

How Much Linux Do You Need?

The End of Azure Data Studio

I don't know how many of you will be disappointed or impacted by this, but Azure Data Studio (ADS) is being retired, as of 6 Feb, 2024. It will be supported for a little over a year, until 28 Feb, 2026. On one hand I'm not surprised, and on the other, I'm a little shocked by this. I have written a number of articles on ADS , and shown how things work, as well as pointed out a number of things that don't work well in the product or its extensions. These pieces have gotten a number of reads, and p...

Extended Event Comfort

Unreliable Narrators

Building a Data Center

Words vs Data

Data Debt

I had never heard of data debt until I saw this article on the topic . In reading it, I couldn't help thinking that most everyone has data debt, it creates inefficiencies, and it's unlikely we'll get rid of it. And by the way, it's too late to get this under control. I somewhat dismissed the article when I saw this: "addressing data debt in its early stages is crucial to ensure that it does not become an overwhelming barrier to progress." I know it's a barrier, as I assume most of you also know,...

Creating vs. Maintaining

If your job as a developer or DBA has been like mine, it's a constant stream of requests to change something, often without enough information and short deadlines that create a bit of stress. There's always more work to be done, and while it might be a great job, you're often trying to finish something quickly enough to get to the next thing. In this mode, how often do you think about creating (or modifying) the thing you're working on for today vs maintaining it for tomorrow. In other words, do...

The Era of Cloned Humans

Can You Become a More Productive Engineer?

The short answer is of course, most of us can learn and improve our skills to become better developers, engineers, DBAs, etc. While we might not be able to become the 10x engineer that many aspire to be, we can certainly become a better employee inside of an organization. There's a piece on becoming a more effective engineer, which is actually titled know how your org works . It a piece from an engineer that started with a tweet : The text was: You can either complain and pontificate on Twitter ...

The AI Budget Assistant

The Types of Changes

The Managed Cloud Database Options

There are many, many choices for cloud database services these days. I would hope everyone is aware of the various IaaS options in public clouds with EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine, and others. These are often the easiest way to move your workload, but you've really just moved a VM from one place to another (likely more expensive) place. For managed databases, there are lots of choices, but you might not be aware of your options. I ran across an article that discusses the various flavors of ...

Simple(r) Coffee

Starbucks has too many order combinations. This article about the challenges for their new CEO notes there are over 170,000 combinations of things customers can order. As someone who has visited a store often and stood behind someone placing an order, that sounds like an accurate number. Sometimes I hear people order things to drink that I had no idea were even possible. When there are too many choices, sometimes there can be a delay as the person tries to process the information and make a deci...

The Lesser Used Functions