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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

04:06

Life in a Startup

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/30

I have worked for a few startup companies, including SQL Server Central. Each has been a different experience, and I learned a lot at each stop. However, I'm not sure I'd want to go through that process again at my age. I was thinking about the challenges and the excitement of being at a startup while reading about the founding of Reddit. The post doesn't go a lot into the technical details or the working life, but it is an interesting read from a VC investor. I also found this post on Choosing

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03:53

Common Algorithm Concerns

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/28

When we build software, many of us use the same algorithms to solve problems. We might choose a similar method for a quicksort or a lambda validation or a regular expression. For database work, your code for a running total (or other common challenge) is likely very similar to many other people. At least on the same platform. You might solve this differently in SQL Server and Oracle, but for the same type of database, many of us write very similar code. Actually, for many developers, they copy and

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03:12

Managed Instance Impressions

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/26

Several years ago, I heard about a new product coming in Azure that would provide an IaaS (infrastructure as a service) VM to run SQL Server, with Microsoft managing most of the admin tasks for the instance, like patching and backups. That didn't seem like a big load to me, and I wondered if anyone would actually pay for this product. After all, don't most companies find managing patches and backups? That product became Azure SQL Managed Instance, and I've been surprised at the adoption. Quite a

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03:45

The Costs and Rewards of Speaking

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/23

Most of the people I know who speak at a SQL Saturday or user group aren't paid for their efforts. At many of the community events, the speakers are volunteering their time. Many are also paying for their own way to those events not located in their area. A few, such as me, might get a company to cover their travel expenses, but often this doesn't include time. If I attend a SQL Saturday, I still have a bunch of work on M-F that needs to be done. No comp time for these events. That being said, I'm

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02:37

Invisible Downtime

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/21

This article has a concept I've never heard about: invisible downtime. This is the idea that there are problems in your application that the customer sees. Your servers are running, but the application doesn't work correctly or is pausing with a delay that impacts customers. From an IT perspective, the SLA is being met and there aren't any problems. From a customer viewpoint, they're ready to start looking at a competitor's offering. Lots of developers and operations people know there are issues in

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04:10

Kubernetes is Cool, But ...

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/19

Kubernetes is cool, and I think it's really useful in helping us scale and manage multiple systems easily in a fault-tolerant way. Actually, I don't think Kubernetes per se is important itself; more it seems that the idea of some orchestration engine to manage containers and systems is what really matters. As a side note, there are other orchestrators such as Mesos, OpenShift, and Nomad. However, do we need to know Kubernetes to use it for databases? This is a data platform newsletter, and most of

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03:17

Multiple Display Productivity

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/09

It seems that when I travel to offices these days, it's standard for most desk setups to have two monitors. I think all the desks at Redgate have a docking station and two monitors for people to use. They also convert to standing desks, which is handy. I have a standing desk that I use regularly, and it's nice to have that option when I visit an office. At a number of customer sites, I've seen similar setups, sometimes with laptop/monitor lifts instead of desks that rise. Recently I saw a docking

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02:59

Are IT Certifications Still Relevant?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/07

I've got a few certifications and quite a few more that have expired or aren't relevant. Does anyone think Windows NT 4.0 or SQL Server 6.5 matter? If you need help in those areas, ask someone else. Unless you have a crazy budget with a willingness to pay a ridiculous hourly rate. Kamil Nowinski had a recent video discussing why IT certifications are still relevant. He had ten reasons, and if you want to watch the entire show, you'll hear his reasons and some rationale why he thinks they matter

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03:11

The DBAccountant

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/05

One of the things that I've found with cloud computing services is that the people involved with managing these resources sometimes get asked to become financial accountants. I saw an interesting post from SQL Rod asking about this new task as something all of us might need to consider a part of our job in the modern world. He asks if we are Techouncants or Accountechs? This isn't in the sense of being the Financial DBA trying to manage costs in the cloud, though that is part of his post. It's more

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03:11

The On-Call Load

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/05/02

For most of us working in technology, I think we understand that if something is broken we might need to work. Not that we have to, or we need to, but we might need to. Perhaps you feel differently, or your company approaches on-call in another way. If so, let me know today how you deal with staff being on-call. In my career, there are jobs with formal on-call, informal on-call, or even no on-call. In the latter situation, there isn't anyone who is prepared to handle issues outside of normal working

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03:17

Action Over Knowledge

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/30

I saw a quote recently that resonated with me. It's not something I've often struggled with, but I have at times. Here's the quote: "Life rewards action, not intelligence. Many brilliant people talk themselves out of getting started, and being smart doesn't help very much without the courage to act. You can't win if you're not in the game." - @JamesClear Read the rest of Action Over Knowledge

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03:14

Seagull Management

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/21

Last year, I read Surrender, a book by U2 lead singer, Bono. Bill Gates listed this as one of the top books to read at one point, so I picked it up and dove in. I have enjoyed U2s music since I was in high school, and was interested to hear what made Bill Gates recommend his book. The book is partially a journey of U2, but mostly a look at how Bono's view of the world and life has changed over time. Bono grew beyond music in his life to become an activist and try to shape the world into a better

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02:56

Missing the Office

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/16

Recently I traveled to visit a customer who has an in-the-office culture. They have multiple large buildings outside a major US city and almost all their employees (7000+) live nearby and are expected to be in the office the whole week. More senior people can opt for 4 10-hour shifts rather than 5 8-hour shifts, but with few exceptions, they have people in the office. I hadn't seen that in a long time. Almost every customer is mostly remote or some level of hybrid (usually 2-3 days a week in the

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02:30

When Are Your Breaks?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/11

As I work through 2024, I found myself doing a little more vacation planning this year than in previous ones. In 2022 I traveled quite a bit, but my wife went with me often. We went to Europe 5 times that year and added quite a few vacation days around my work trips. My wife thought that was a great year. Last year, 2023, was different. I traveled more (36 trips), with most of them being short. When I traveled that much, I wanted to end trips quickly and get back home. I learned that was too many,

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03:51

The Code Freeze

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/09

One of the ideas behind DevOps is that we minimize the time between code commit and deployment to production. We want to avoid work-in-progress and bottlenecks to getting our software into the hands of customers. This has led a lot of companies to release more often, albeit with smaller sets of features. The total number of things delivered under DevOps might not be greater, but it often is more targeted to those things our customers want/need/use. However, the idea of releasing often means that we

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03:16

When is it time for a new job?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/04

I subscribe to quite a few newsletters, and one of them is for job hunters. I have a great job, maybe the best job for me, but I like to keep in touch with what's going on because I, well, I have job insecurity and worry about being without a job. I think this is leftover from childhood. I also want to know how to help others in finding their dream job. Recently there was a question asking when it was time for a new job How can you tell (for yourself) when you should be seeking new opportunities? It

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03:43

Under the Bus

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/02

I've had a good career in database work. I've had success, and I've had some failures, fortunately the former far outpacing the latter. In my career across many companies, the code I've written has tended to work well, or at least well enough. I've managed systems and ensured a high uptime, and solved issues quickly. I have left quite a few jobs in technology, some because I was unhappy, some for better opportunities. I was asked to leave one job. I disagreed with my boss, thought he was a jerk, and

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02:03

CosmosDB APIs Inside SQL Server 2024

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/04/01

CosmosDB has been a great data platform in the Azure cloud that helps companies deal with disparate types of data. The CosmosDB APIs include those for MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and Gremlin. These wire-level protocols let you work in a way that is compatible with those systems for storing data. That's coming to SQL Server. Read the rest of CosmosDB APIs Inside SQL Server 2024

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03:18

The Journey to Change

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/03/28

I assume most of you reading this work with SQL Server, at least for some of your workday. I know there are plenty of you who also support Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or some other database platform. The results in our (Redgate's) State of Database Landscape report showed that many organizations, indeed most, have more than one database platform in production. This was also a theme in our Data Community Summit and Redgate Summit keynotes, where Ryan and Grant discussed their journey to learn a new

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03:38

The Cloud Database Cost Analysis

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/03/26

There is a skill that I think DBAs and sysadmins will need to develop: cloud cost analysis. I've thought this was important for quite a few years, and I've been (unsuccessfully) lobbying for cost information to be gathered and analyzed in Redgate Monitor. Hopefully, this work will get done soon, as I see more companies asking their technical people to provide analysis and justification of the resources being billed for in the cloud. Basecamp analyzed its costs in 2023 and decided it could save money

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326 results

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