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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

04:13

Who's Licensed?

Voice of the DBA ·

2017/08/01

My employer licenses software to users. Many of you might have SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, or one of our other handy products. If you do, you might have noticed that we have a Redgate login for you that shows your licenses and lets you activate/deactivate them. This was surprisingly a big project across the last year to streamline and smooth our licensing process. Early on, I realized this was an issue in one company I where I worked. This was during the 1990s and I started working at a small company

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03:43

The Cloud is Just a Tool

Voice of the DBA ·

2017/02/23

The cloud is a term that's full of hype. We hear from various media outlets all the time: the cloud is the answer, the cloud is cheaper, the cloud is the way of the future, the cloud handles your DR, the cloud managers availability, and more. Microsoft has been pushing the message of "cloud-first" (and mobile-first), which has many SQL Server professionals confused, concerned, or even angry. There are also plenty of professionals that dismiss the idea of cloud anything when it comes to data. I've

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03:32

Keyboard Hardlines

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/08/10

A few years ago, I had a keyboard die. At the time, I needed something quickly and ended up with a Logitech wireless model that included a mouse. I'm not sure of which model, but I've ended up getting two or three more Logitech devices over the years. I think I go through a keyboard every 18-24 months, though the mice seem to last longer. For me, having devices available without cords is more important for the mouse than the keyboard, but since Logitech will bundle them, I get both at the same

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03:05

Failover

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/08/05

I saw a note from someone that had a database set up in a High Availability (HA) configuration for production. This person had received an 823 error on the primary server, but a failover hadn't occurred. This wasn't a critical error, but one that noted some anomolies in a few pages, which potentially could be fixed by the automatic page repair in SQL Server. In this case, the individual would have liked to have had the system fail over, just in case there were a chance this would impact

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03:11

The Relentless Cloud

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/07/20

The march to the cloud is inevitable. No, I don't think all your services will be run from a cloud service, but I do think that some of them will be. Maybe 10% for your company, maybe 90%, but likely somewhere in between. In the efforts to reduce costs, and maybe more likely, the idea of shifting costs to expenses, I would bet that most organiztions will take serious looks at the cloud in the next decade for a significant portion of all new services. They might not move most applications, but

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02:09

The Clustered Index is not the Primary Key

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/05/24

I was reading through a list of links for Database Weekly and ran across this script from Pinal Dave, looking for tables where the clustered index isn't the PK. It struck me that this is one of those facts I consider to be so simple, yet I constantly see people confusing. If you click the Primary Key icon in the SSMS/VS designers, or you specify a PK like this: "The Clustered Index is not the Primary Key"

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02:50

Track Your Consultants

Voice of the DBA ·

2016/03/29

If you pay attention to security issues in software, you've probably heard about man-in-the-middle attacks. These can occur more frequently than you expect, though inside of a company, it's more unlikely that you'll experience one if you have some fairly basic security controls on your network.However, if you invite someone inside of your network, such as a consultant of some sort, you should be more vigilent. There's a great post showing how someone can execute a MITM attack against SQL Server

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02:50

Rogue Software Changes

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/11/16

Could a group of software developers make changes that fundamentally alter the way a software system should work without management being aware? That's the question being asked of VW right now. Most people are skeptical, but I ran across a piece that wants to lend credence to the idea that a few software engineers acted with few people being aware. They did this, not because they wanted to defraud everyone, but they wanted a solve a problem that they couldn't do in other ways. They also didn't see

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02:37

The Command Line is Back

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/11/09

I grew up using a command line for all of my computing. I started with a Commodore VIC-20 as a youth, moving on to Apple IIs, TRS-80s, and then OpenVMS in university classes. It wasn't until I started doing graduate work that I started to enjoy graphics in the X Window System, though many of my windows just ran bash and korn shells on SunOS. Since that time, I've mostly made my living in Microsoft Windows and OSX, using graphical programs. I've still been quick to open a command shell at times, but

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01:49

Adjusting Model

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/09/04

In July the T-SQL Tuesday theme was defaults. There were lots of posts about various items, but I found one by Kevin Kline interesting. Kevin noted that the settings for model are not necessarily what many of us would want in production. Is that really the case? This week I wanted to take a poll and see if many of you actually do create defaults for your new databases by changing model that are different than what Microsoft has done. Read the rest of "Adjusting Model"

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02:43

Source Code Security

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/03/31

I'm not surprised, and I had expected to read about something like this much sooner. Apparently someone at the ride sharing company, Uber, posted a security key online in a GitHub distribution. I assume this was some sort of code repository for Uber that may or may not have been supposed to be shared publicly, but having used GitHub, I could see someone making a mistake and accidentally putting private code in the public space. Uber is worried as the key is a security authorization key used to

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02:09

Software Engineering in Practice

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/03/30

I ran across a review of a developer's first year at a company. The company is endjin and the poster describes their first year as a "software engineer apprentice," which is an interesting way to look at one's early career. While it's not for everyone, I suspect that many developers in this business could actually use a bit of apprentice time to solidify their foundation of knowledge. The post talks more about the way in which the work is done than the actual tools involved. A few are mentioned, but

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02:12

Testing

Voice of the DBA ·

2015/01/13

It seems that software always contains bugs. No matter how much time and effort is spent building an application, there will be issues. Sometimes this is because of a lack of testing, and sometimes this is because of poor testing, but in any case, the expectation that we will test our code is becoming more prevalent as we depend more and more on computer software. Users expect our software to work. It seems there is never enough time to properly test software after it is complete. Perhaps your

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02:39

Holiday Struggles

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/12/09

It's the slow time of year. As I saw tweeted recently, "And now for the month when nothing gets done." I haven't usually felt this way at a few jobs as the budget and planning process has typically been a part of a busy month. As I've run SQLServerCentral, I've also been looking back and forward this month, trying to think about our industry and data in a long term way. I have found December to be frenetic as times as I try to get in some ski days while still getting work done. However this year

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02:24

The Real Scary DBAs

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/09/08

I ran into someone recently that told me they were scared at their job. This person had built a number of ETL jobs to move data around between systems. They were trained as a developer, but had a little experience, got sucked into working with SQL Server, and had made a career without really considering themselves a DBA. They seemed a bit bewildered that they hadn't messed up the data in any of their employer's systems. I've met quite a few people like that, who seem amazed to be trusted to

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02:40

Data Decisions or Instinct?

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/07/24

Most of us that are data professionals think the best way to make decisions is to use data to justify some course of action. We look for patterns in data, some guidance that the information we have will lead us to make the best choice for our organization. Google has talked about making data driven decisions as a part of their success and they think more organizations should do this. Any number of other companies also use data to power their BI systems and dashboards that help their employees make

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02:48

Dev Ops

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/07/22

The DevOps movement is supposed to promote a closer collaboration between developers, testers, operational people, and really anyone else that must help software gets build and deployed. The developers need to coordinate their needs and requirements with operational staff. They should work early on with any staff performing testing to help them ensure that bugs are caught quickly and fewer slip through to production. At the same time, operational staff should be responsive and helpful in all the

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02:33

Farewell

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/30

This is my last day of work this quarter as I start my sabbatical at 5 o'clock today. I'll be gone for the next six weeks, away from SQLServerCentral, trying to improve and grow myself while staying as unwired as I can during that time. The rest of the staff here at SQLServerCentral will pick up the load, and I'm sure everything will be fine. This is a bit scary for me. I've pretty much been employed full time since I was 17, only taking a few, short, involuntary stretches of unemployment in almost

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02:57

Patching Problems

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/27

I applied the Windows 8.1 update a few weeks ago and had some issues with my machine. Windows was fine, but I lost my SQL Server service. A few other users, including some of the SQLServerCentral community also had issues and sent me ideas, but their fixes didn't work for me. That was OK because the problems gave me a chance to use PoSh to solve a real problem. I'll be blogging about that in the next week. However the 8.1 update has caused lots of issues, and Microsoft is acknowledging these

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02:34

Laptop Dreams

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/26

The Surface 3 was announced last week, and I was underwhelmed by the event, especially the presentation itself. The entire spectable didn't seem to compare to some other companies' announcements. I did, however, find myself thinking about replacing my laptop with a tablet that's lighter and allows me to forgo a keyboard. As much as I use a keyboard and depend on a responsive set of keys to get work done, there are definitely times when I'd like to just have a screen, and certainly a lighter form

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321 results

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