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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

03:32

Un-Stable Teams

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/02/12

I've always valued having a team of people I know and can work with. While I haven't had a lot of long-term jobs before Redgate, I have had a few positions that lasted more than a year and appreciated working with the same group for a long time. We might gain or lose a person, but overall, the structure of the team was the same day after day. This was a comfortable atmosphere, and I liked knowing who I was working with each day. At Redgate, we have had some stable teams of people, but in our

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03:54

Do You Have a Jeff?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/02/09

In the Phoenix Project (worth a read), there is a character called Brent, who is to go-to person for everything in IT. I don't know if this character was modeled after Brent Ozar, but I always picture him when I re-read the book, and I suspect he was that person in previous positions. I've been that person as well, and it's both exciting, fulfilling, and very stressful. At Redgate, that person has been Robert C, who is my go-to person for many questions. In the DBA world, I think of Jeff Moden. He's

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03:13

Ranomware vs. AI

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/02/07

Ransomware has been a growing and shrinking problem in the modern world. Every time I think that some new defenses and protections are preventing ransomware from being a problem, I see another issue. Recently, I saw Subway got hit with with an attack and a few friends have recently noted their companies were restoring systems after a portion of their network was locked down. With the advent of Rasnsomware-as-a-service, where criminals deploy software and then sell access to others, better detection

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06:04

Serious Software Glitches

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/02/05

Recently Robert Sterbal pointed out a podcast to me. This link is for Apple Podcasts, but it's for the Journal, which is on other platforms (I listened on Spotify). It's the story of a computer glitch in UK post office software, which resulted in quite a few local postmasters being criminally prosecuted, many convicted, and even a few committing suicide. It's a sad story, and it's complex, but there are some technology-related elements. First, the overall story is Fujitsu sold the UK a

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02:47

How Often Do You Update SSMS?

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/02/02

I got a message recently that SSM S19.3 is out. I am wary of major versions, especially with a few add-in tools, but I have tended to try and update SSMS regularly when it patches, which is about once a quarter. As I checked my desktop, I saw I was still on 19.1 (my laptop was 19.2), so I downloaded and updated both machines. I wonder what the rest of you do. I know many of you have corporate rules and restrictions and you may not be able to update regularly, but in many places, I've worked, once

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03:40

Mind Over Milkshake (Thoughts Matter)

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/31

Last year I went to THAT Conference in Wisconsin. It was a fun event, very community and family-friendly, and I enjoyed it. So much so that I recently went back to the Texas event in January. It's more developer-focused, but it does have some data related sessions. I recommend this conference if you're looking for some fun training and want to combine that with a family vacation. Your kids will love it. In any case, I watched a keynote talk that referenced an NPR article, called Mind over

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04:18

A Great Place to Work

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/26

I have had quite a few employers in my career. Of the ones that paid me for computer work, I'll say that there were 3 great ones (1 I owned), 2 average ones, and 3 poor ones. I've had a few other minor times or contract situations where I didn't really judge or care one way or the other. A lot of time is spent at work, but if it's days/week/(few months), I can deal with most situations. That being said, even at the poor places, I learned a lot and I grew, so I don't regret them or wouldn't want them

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02:57

Take A Vote and Accept Your Loss

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/24

I feel differently today than in the past about many of the things I've seen technical people argue about. I've written about Tabs vs. Spaces and Singular vs. Plural, and others have debated commas before or after among other topics. While these might be interesting sidebars at lunch, I see them sometimes devolve into time sinks with teams revisiting the issues over and over during their daily work. These types of religious wars stifle a lot of productivity and often can linger for years. However,

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03:44

Hire Well

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/22

In the last few years, I've noticed that the quality of technical workers can vary quite a bit in many organizations. I think most people get things done, but often not at a high-quality level. It's one reason that I write, speak, and try to motivate more of you to work on your skills and your career. I want to see better software being built. I tend to work with more database developers than application developers and I tend to see more SQL code than C#/Java/etc. And I see a lot of poorly written

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02:48

Learning NoSQL

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/17

It's a good idea to learn more about different technologies. I've been amazed throughout my career, and even now as someone working for a software vendor, how many different technologies I run into. I'm also amazed at how little bits of knowledge comes in handy, either to help me understand a problem or to help guide others with a recommendation of how to proceed. Many of us have experience with relational databases and tabular data. We are comfortable with it, even if we might struggle with a

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03:04

Portable Data Storage

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/15

I saw a review on a rugged SSD, and it got me thinking about local storage. Over the holidays I needed to scan something from a device at the ranch, but to get the image to my computer, I needed a flash drive. It took me 10 minutes of searching around to find one because I rarely use them anymore. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I'd used one for a transfer between computers. I just send stuff through OneDrive/DropBox/GDrive or some other mechanism. Today I'm wondering if the rest of you

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03:25

Continuity Across Restarts

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/12

There are a lot of database platforms, and each tries to convince you theirs is better. As Brent points out in that link, sometimes they just skip comparing themselves to other platforms because it makes them look better. They only look at the platforms they compete well against. For most of us, we often just need basic CRUD operations. I know that most RDBMS platforms would work for us, and sometimes NoSQL ones work as well, though I think that NoSQL isn't necessarily better for many applications

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04:48

Re-evaluating the Cloud

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/10

Last year 37 Signals (makers of Basecamp and Hey) announced they were leaving the cloud. I wrote about the decision, and wondered if they'd look back at this as a great decision or one they'd regret and backtrack to the cloud again. They planned to build their own tooling, buy a bunch of servers, and run their own data center (or rather, rent space in someone's data center). Recently there was an update, in an FAQ, about how the transition has gone. In short, very well. One of the founders, David

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03:51

Advice for Business

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/08

During the last few months, I've seen a few different advice posts that caught me eye. One was Kevin Kelley's blog (and his book) on life advice that I previously wrote about, I look at the book once a week or two, read 1-2 items, and think about them. I think some of them are geared more for younger people growing into life, but quite a few are still things that I appreciate as learnings or reminders. Recently I ran across another one, Sam Altman's post looking back from a business point of view

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03:03

Projects To Showcase Your Skills

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/05

It seems I've heard from a lot of people looking for jobs lately. I had a friend reach out and when I posted a note on LinkedIn I had someone looking for a job, I heard from a few dozen others that they were in the same situation. The last year has seen a lot of turnover in IT. There have been lots of big (and small) companies that have let staff go, for a variety of reasons. The why doesn't matter to you if you've lost employment. You just need a new job. At the same time, I hear from lots of

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03:12

Fixing Poor Programming Practices

Voice of the DBA ·

2024/01/03

I see a lot of poor programming practices in real-world code. I'm sure I've written a few myself. I'm also sure that many of you see the same thing and sometimes wonder how that code got deployed. One of the things I told myself over the last few years was that I had to accept the reality of situations. It's easy to complain and say that code should be written differently or entities should be modeled in another way, but I (or you) can't change that situation today. And it ignores the fact that we

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03:12

The 2024 Plan

Voice of the DBA ·

2023/12/29

Today is the last working day of 2023. Next week we start with the New Year's holiday on Monday and then many of us go back to work, starting a new year. This is the time of year where many people make New Year's Resolutions, most of which will be abandoned by March. Some of you might keep to your goals, but it is hard to make substantial changes in your life all at once, especially based on a calendar date. Instead of making a resolution this weekend, I would suggest that you think about your

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03:08

Some Relief But Still Some Concern

Voice of the DBA ·

2023/12/27

Years ago Andy Warren and I were talking about the Database Weekly newsletter and what we wanted to include in each edition. We knew there wasn't enough news on a weekly basis, so we decided that we'd add blogs from various individuals as well as press releases, patches, and other items related to databases and SQL Server. At some point, we realized we were getting older and one of the unfortunate things that happen is people pass away. We thought about including obituaries as well since we knew a

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03:58

Building CyberSecurity Skills with an Advent Challenge

Voice of the DBA ·

2023/12/22

I've been working on the Advent of Cyber challenge this December. It's more of a walkthrough of some puzzles than it is solving them yourself, but it has given me a brush up on some skills and helped me learn some basics of how people in charge of (or looking to break) security look at the world. Plus it's been a little fun with a silly storyline each day. The first challenge starts with a chatbot and trying to social engineer answers out of it. This was interesting to me, even though it was likely

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04:47

AI In the Nov 2023 Enterprise

Voice of the DBA ·

2023/12/20

AI is everywhere. I can't seem to get away from stories on the technology in 2023, and while I don't know that I've found it that helpful, I keep looking at it because it's becoming a pervasive technology that most enterprises will experiment with in some way. There is a look at generative AI in the Enterprise in the O'Reilly Radar, which tracks how technology is changing and influencing the world. The report talks about most of the respondents to a survey using AI, which makes sense as the people

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350 results

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