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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

02:43

A Simple Solution

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/09/12

In general, I like simple solutions to problems (and simple songs). They can take work, but a simple solution means it's easy to explain to others, easy for others to refactor/modify, and we limit the amount of effort required to ensure others can use the solution. Sometimes I see very clever engineering solutions, but they become cumbersome to implement and maintain, or worse, no one other than the author understands how they work. In any size organization, that's a piece of technical debt that can

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02:46

Casino Night is Back

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/09/10

We are bringing back the SQL Server Central Opening Night party at the PASS Data Community Summit this year. This was one of the most fun things I've been a part of at the Summit for many years and I'm looking forward to the conference even more. The party will take place Tuesday night, after the Welcome reception. from 8pm-10pm, once again catered as a casino themed party. I'm using the same company we've used in the past, and we'll have a cash bar and lots of prizes. I've already started to make

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03:11

The Invisible Disk

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/09/08

I saw a post recently about the incredible shrinking computer, where a software consultant had written down his predictions for the future. In this case, he writes about a computer shrinking smaller than today, essentially to one chip, with docking stations wherever you need them. We're already at the place where many of us have an extremely powerful computer in our pockets in the form of a mobile phone. I'm still amazed that I bought a phone recently with half a terabyte of storage. A few years ago

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03:15

Container Development Work

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/09/05

On my new laptop, I only use containers as database servers. I made the decision not to install SQL Server or PostgreSQL and instead work on containers only. I've written lightly about this, but I set up docker-compose files to load different instances of SQL Server and PostgreSQL (and others) and batch files to start and stop them. I've also set dedicated places on my disk where I can drop backup files and access them from the host. It's 2024. I moved to containers on my laptop exclusively for

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03:56

Fifty Percent

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/09/03

Most of us will have more than one job in our career. In fact many of us will likely find a new job in the next five years. I hope I'm not in that group, but I recognize that it's a possibility. We never know when our situation will change, or our employer's situation will change. That is one reason I recommend you keep your resume up to date and continue to work on improving your skills. I saw an office hours short recently from Brent Ozar, in which someone had asked him if they should apply for a

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04:13

Trying New Technology

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/29

I had someone ask me about DuckDB recently. Would I think that's a good choice for a database. I don't really know. From their blog and some online research, maybe, but it's also a minority player in a niche space. I had a chat recently with someone that had implemented ArangoDB, a graph database. Why that and not Neo4J I asked them? Someone at the company had tried it and recommended it. Not a bad reason, as I think experience with tech is important, but it's not the only thing. Read the rest of

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03:38

A Kafka Introduction

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/27

I've heard of Kafka before. I know it's an Apache project and you can download or read more at https://kafka.apache.org/. I knew it was a way of moving data around, some sort of ETL tool useful for moving things around. More like a message and queueing system, which is a tool that seems like a great idea, but one that everyone struggles to work with. And one that seemed complex. The overview is that Kafka is "a distributed system consisting of servers and clients that communicate via a

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02:59

Your Computer Science Education

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/22

I know a lot of people in this business do not have computer science degrees. While some do, I suspect it's a minority. I'm certainly curious, so if you want to share your education experience in a comment, tell me if you have a degree and what the focus was, as well as answer a few other questions. At DevOps Days in Minneapolis recently, professors Fox and Sen from Macalester College talked about their computer science curriculum for growing the next generation of professionals. Along the way, they

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02:36

A Lack of Architecture and Planning

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/18

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the audience, waiting for my turn to speak at DevOps Days in Minneapolis. Just before me, Xe Iaso delivered a funny and thought-provoking talk on building a social network on a whiteboard. It was very well done and had me feeling nervous about following that session. The talk is a bit of a satirical look at an interview Xe had for a company that tried to get them to derive an architecture for a large distributed system. It was interesting to hear Xe note that often

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03:10

What Do You Drop?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/15

Many years ago I was training for a triathlon. I had competed in the Sandman Triathlon the previous year in Virginia Beach and wanted to do it again. I had a young child, work was busy, and I was struggling to find time to swim, bike, and run every week. One night, I was at a work event with a customer who was also a triathlete. He was much more competitive and successful than I was at competing in triathlons, and he told me I should just get up earlier and find time to train or ensure I spent time

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02:58

Prevent Complete SQL Injection

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/13

I would hope most of you reading this know what SQL Injection (SQi) is and how you can prevent it. Or at least what patterns cause problems. If not, here's a short explanation that is worth reading. If you have more questions, ask in our forums. SQL Injection has been, and continues to be, a problem in many systems. In fact, I chatted with Mike Walsh recently after he'd published this post on an attack for one of his clients. He has some notes that explain how your database server might be

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03:00

A Checklist for Learning

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/12

One of the challenges many people have is focusing their learning efforts along some path. The best way to move forward is with steady effort that guides you through steps to build knowledge or skill. However, with so much information out there on the Internet, how do you decide where you focus your efforts? Lots of people choose a random method, but the world is full of those people, many of whom never develop strong skills. That might be fine if you are an hobby guitarist or piano player, but it's

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02:55

Send Metrics Not Logs

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/08

This is part of a series on observability, a concept taking hold in modern software engineering. One of the interesting things I saw in an engineering presentation on Observability from Chik-Fil-A was that they are sometimes bandwidth-constrained at remote sites. In an early version of their platform, they sent logs back to HQ, and their logs used all the available bandwidth, so they were unable to process credit card transactions. While most of us don't deal with lots of remote offices sending data

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03:52

Responding to a Disaster

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/08/02

Ryan had a planes, trains, and automobiles situation a few weeks ago. On the same day, I didn't. A delay for a few hours, but an easy trip home. Lots of other people didn't have a smooth trip, and I had a few friends who spent an extra night somewhere or had flights canceled and decided not to take a trip. The Crowdstrike outage hit the entire world, causing problems everywhere. Just before that happened, Azure had an outage in the central region. If you were affected by these, you have my

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02:50

A Quick Turnaround

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/28

I visited a customer last week and attended SQL Saturday Baton Rouge 2024. Both were fun events, and an enjoyable week, though I was away from my wife for 4.5 days, which she didn't love. Today, I had a quick turnaround, heading to Wisconsin Dells for THAT! Conference, which I attended last year and enjoyed. I didn't submit this to the event, but got asked to go as part of my job. I accepted, and I'm gone from home for a week between these two trips. I do travel a lot, but these trips got me

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02:32

Thinking About Technology

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/23

Technology has dramatically changed the world over time. The advent of cars dramatically changed the US, as people could go places and meet others in a way that was difficult and slow before. The telephone let us communicate with people all over the world at a pace that was previously impossible. Computer technology has furthered this at a truly amazing pace, especially since the adoption of mobile devices by so many people. The flexibility in how we can integrate computer technology into our lives

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02:22

The Biggest Database Professional Challenges Today

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/21

Today I have a question for you: What are the three biggest challenges you face today as a database professional? Read the rest of The Biggest Database Professional Challenges Today

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03:25

A Programmer's Attitude

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/18

I caught this piece on the need for programmers (developers) to not trust anyone, including themselves. It is written by a software developer for other software developers, but I think it can also apply to database work as well. It is a bit long, but it starts with the nature of abstractions in the world and how they let us work with simpler models of a situation or environment. However, most abstractions are leaky, and our assumptions about them can cause our systems to fail. The leap from trust to

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03:55

Cloud vs On-premises

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/16

The cloud has been a controversial concept for much of its existence. While the idea has been around for many decades, AWS started selling IT services in 2006, with Azure following suit in 2008. Since then, the use of cloud services has grown tremendously. While some applications and organizations have embraced the idea from the beginning. I found many of you at SQL Server Central were very hesitant at first. I guess some of you are still skeptical about the value of a production database in a

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03:08

Least Privilege

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/07/14

I assume that most of you know about the principle of least privilege. If not, please read this short blog from Brian Kelley and make sure you understand how you should approach security. In the modern world, we also ought to adapt our systems for the zero trust model, which includes the least privilege principle. However, I wonder how many of your organizations really follow these security guidelines internally. Are you strict about adding limited access and removing it when people change

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320 results

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