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PODCAST

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.

technology tech news

All Episodes

03:14

Are Data Breaches Inevitable?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/15

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 organizations,

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03:02

Deleting a Database

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/11

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

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03:13

Database DevOps Recommendations

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/08

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

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03:23

How Helpful is a GenAI Copilot

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/06

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

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02:45

Rising Pay for Certifications

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/04

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 get

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02:56

Learn to Code

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/01

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

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03:26

Interview Tips

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/29

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

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02:24

Is SQL Server Feature Complete?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/27

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?

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03:19

50 Years of Microsoft

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/24

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 him

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03:13

The Return to the Office Debate

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/22

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

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02:32

Staying Employed

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/20

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 entry

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02:48

Database First or Application First

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/15

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

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03:18

How Much AI Code Would You Use?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/13

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,

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02:55

Part-Time DBAs

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/08

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

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03:03

Using Feature Flags

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/06

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 believer in

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02:28

A Domain for Data

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/03

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

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03:26

Database DevOps Metrics

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/04/01

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

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03:01

Is GenAI Coming Faster Than You Think?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/03/30

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 slow to

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03:19

The Inefficiencies of Kubernetes

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/03/27

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03:35

The End of SQL Server 2019

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/03/25

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

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348 results

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