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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

02:37

Look Beyond What You See

Voice of the DBA ·

2022/08/08

One of the sales managers at Redgate Software posted an origin story about how he came to work at Redgate Software. It's an interesting story, and while I don't work in sales or have the same origin story, I don't know that I could have seen the place I'm in now early in my career. When I saw the video, it made me think of this movie scene, where Rafiki asks us to look beyond what we see. I think this is a hard thing for many of us, especially when many of us have been leaning on our skills in the

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04:03

The Future of Certifications

Voice of the DBA ·

2022/05/12

Hacker News is a forum for experienced developers. While I think plenty of beginners lurk there, the discussions seem to be dominated by those who have worked in the technology or software industries for years. I saw an interesting article that noted Hacker News doesn't seem to discuss certifications and backed up the claim with some search results that show few results for various terms. I think that many experienced people working in technology are wary of certifications. With a little practical

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03:01

Teams Security Issues

Voice of the DBA ·

2022/01/14

At some point during my career sharing files and links in email became a security concern. There were all sorts of malware problems and issues that spread throughout organizations because someone unknowingly clicked on or forwarded a malicious item. At a couple of large organizations, we had to turn off email for days while we cleaned out systems. Fortunately, antivirus and other types of scanning software improved to prevent most of these problems. It seems that not all developers learned the

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02:19

Acknowledging Success

Voice of the DBA ·

2021/12/13

Today is the Redgate annual award event, and I'm honored to be hosting again. I've been asked a few times, and I used to look forward to the gathering in Cambridge followed by our annual Christmas party. Last year this was virtual, as it is this year, so I'm hosting again from my home office. Not what I had hoped would happen, but I'll have some fun. Last year I had a number of shirt changes between my parts, and I may do that again. I know there are often annual sales awards in many companies,

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03:08

Pulling Together

Voice of the DBA ·

2020/10/07

When the COVID-19 Pandemic grew rapidly in early 2020, medical supplies were in short supply. Different areas and organizations struggled with different types of issues, and one of the higher profile issues was with ventilators. In March, the projections were dire and quite a few hospitals were worried about the supplies of these devices. This was especially disconcerting given how many people were being placed on them and how long it takes to produce them. I met someone at that time that said

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02:28

Build the VCS Habit

Voice of the DBA ·

2020/03/16

I've preached the value of Version Control Systems (VCS) for many years now. In various writings, in the talks I've given on development, CI, DevOps, and more, I always talk about the value of a VCS. One thing I often say is that if someone won't use version control, they aren't a professional. I don't say professional developer, professional DBA, or anything else. You're not a technology professional without knowing how to use a VCS in 2020. You certainly can't work for me if you won't use one. I

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03:37

Data Challenges and Travel

Voice of the DBA ·

2019/07/22

I made a quick trip to Pensacola recently for SQL Saturday #884. I had a great time and consider myself honored to be picked to speak, as well as lucky that I can make the trip. I didn't have a smooth trip, as I wrote on my blog, but things worked out. These were really first world problems and minor hassles for me. When I wrote my blog, I was thinking about all the data I received, and didn't receive on the trip. Across the last few years, United (my primary airline) has enhanced their apps and

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02:06

Who are your authenticated users?

Voice of the DBA ·

2019/03/22

I ran across a data breach at Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal newspaper. Apparently there was a database export that was stored on an Amazon S3 bucket. A security researcher discovered this and notified the company. Once the issue was corrected, the article linked above was published. The details note that the security on the bucket was set to authenticated users, which is good. So, some security was set up. To me, if I were operating in an Azure or AWS environment, I

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02:38

The Devil is in the Monitoring Details

Voice of the DBA ·

2019/01/28

Monitoring a database server is something that many of us know is important, but we often take the process for granted. Whether we've purchased a tool, like SQL Monitor, or we've built our own system, we often set up a watcher for our systems and rarely view the details unless something goes wrong. I'm not sure that's the wrong approach as part of the reason monitoring is set up is to allow data capture in the background and remove one more task from our daily workload. Monitoring isn't

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02:36

Are Indexes Actually Changes to the System

Voice of the DBA ·

2018/10/02

I haven't thought about this in some time, but Brent Ozar raises an interesting question: should index changes require change control? I've worked in an organization that didn't consider an index change to be an item that was presented as an official change. They were seen somewhat like adding new users or changing a firewall rule. These were ticket requests that could be triaged and made by an individual group without notifying the rest of IT. I've also worked in organisations where an index

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03:56

DevOps is Helpful

Voice of the DBA ·

2018/07/02

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at the 24 Hours of Pass Summit Preview. During my session, a demo broke and I had to ignore it. Later I found the issue and blogged about it. What was neat for me is that I didn't need to keep my code up or apps open, but I still found the issue quickly. I found it because I have a DevOps process that instruments and tracks everything. This happened to me a few years ago. I was at a SQL Saturday and demoing one of the Redgate tools. There was an error and I

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03:28

A Great Case for PowerShell

Voice of the DBA ·

2018/05/21

I think PowerShell is a great addition to the Microsoft stack. Given the previous versions of VBScript, Perl and Python ports, and more on Windows, PowerShell is a great improvement. Even for someone that spent a lot of time in the C Shell and Bourne Shell as a student and young professional, I think PowerShell is an improvement. There are certainly still things that make me crazy about PoSh, such as the -eq, but I'm getting more comfortable with the structures and flow. In SQL Server, we had the

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02:31

The Best Ever

Voice of the DBA ·

2018/04/10

Every few years, or every year now, we see a new version of SQL Server proclaimed as the best ever. A few weeks ago, I saw a number of people leaving hte MVP Summit, rating it as the best ever summit. At SQL Bits or the PASS Summit every year, there's no shortage of people posting about that event being the best conference. Is this a human view, that the latest one is often the best one ever if we enjoyed it? Perhaps we learn something and we're excited about the latest new SQL thing and so we're

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03:01

An AI Loophole

Voice of the DBA ·

2018/02/22

I've been working through some of the GDPR legislation, trying to find ways to explain this more clearly to customers and ensure that our products make sense in light of this law taking effect. Redgate is focused in this area and not only do we need to ensure we are compliant, but we also want to ensure we are building tools that help ensure you are compliant. In article 14, there's this text: "the controller shall provide the data subject with the following information... the existence of

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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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