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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

02:24

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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01:53

The Development Backup

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/20

Have you ever had a development server crash? Have you lost work because of this? Had delays or had to recreate code? You shouldn't, or at least you shouldn't lose much work or time.. There was a time when I offered to manage backups on all development servers. This was in a large environment with hundreds of instances. I wasn't worried. I had scripts to do the work of setting up, running, and reporting on backups for instances. I knew how to deploy these scripts to hundreds of servers. Read the

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02:47

Failure

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/16

Tim O'Reilly has written some great pieces over the years on many aspects of technology and change. I've followed him for years and I've enjoyed many of his thoughts and views on our industry. I think he's thoughtful and truly envisions the amazing things that technology can do to change the world, mostly for the better. I think it's worth randomly reading through (or listening to) some of his thoughts. He recently wrote a long piece on the failures he's had in business with his company, O'Reilly

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02:32

Why Don't We Have Better Practices?

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/15

This essay isn't quite Safe For Work (SFW) and might offend a few people, so be warned, but I found it somewhat humorous. It's a look at all the insanity and problems with programming and software in the world. It certainly makes me glad that those of us working on software don't actually build tangible objects like bridges. However the piece did make me think a bit. Why do we have so conflict and strange practices in many software systems? Why haven't we decided upon more good security practices

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02:19

Better Training

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/13

I was talking with some data professionals recently about training and the value of college, work, or some other method of entering the technology business. I have a few thoughts about the different ways of teaching people about this business, and I'm curious what you think. What do you think of traditional computer science? Colleges have students study computer science theories, languages, and more. Build small software projects, write pieces of operating systems and more as part of their

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02:50

Calling Local Speakers

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/12

There's likely a call for speakers open somewhere near you. When I was early in my career, I'd see these calls at large conferences like Comdex, TechEd, even the PASS Summit, and I'd think I'd never get the chance to present, with the best of the best speakers being accepted and no chance that I would be chosen. Things have changed in the world with the growth of SQL Saturday, there are a dozen open calls right now, all around the world, with many opportunities for new people to give a

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02:23

Backup Responsibility

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/09

One of the most important things that you can do as a DBA, or really as any sort of system administrator, is back up your system.Ensuring that you have have backups, and of course, that you can restore them, is the number one priority for sysadmins. Everything else that you need to do is second to backups. After all, backups ensure you still have a system after a disaster. If you can't do that, then security, performance, features, none of that matters. I have worked in large and small environments,

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02:49

No Handwaving Away the DBA

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/08

There's a great quote I read, at the end of this article. It says: "...if you think that switching to NoSQL will just let you hand-wave away all of the challenges of running a database, you are terribly misguided." The context is that all too often people looking to move away from some of the hassles of working with RDBMS platforms, which includes working with the DBA, haven't completely thought through the issues. I do think NoSQL has a place in the world. There are domains of problems that I'm

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02:10

Managers

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/07

Most of us have managers that are picked from the ranks of our technical staff. Often the most talented technical person, or most willing technical staff member, is promoted to manager, given a few hours of training on the various tools that he or she will use to deal with the administrative paperwork a manager fills out, and then cut loose to "manage" a group of people. And they stink at it. Most of them are bad. Not only are they bad managers, they are often bad leaders, and many find their

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01:54

Vocation or Career

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/06

Career: an individual's journey through learning, work, and other aspects of life. Vocation: an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which he or she is suited, trained, or qualified. Which one describes your current employment situation? How do you feel about the technical work you do? A career is a good thing, and I hope that you all have long, successful careers, I hope you continue to learn and maintain a balance between work and your life outside of your job. Read the rest of

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01:58

The Gadget Itch

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/05/02

Many of the people that work in technology are interested in gadgets and hardware as much as software. Not all of us, but many of us have had side projects where we've melded hardware and software together. For those of us that are older, and started working with computers decades ago, that might have been the only way that we could get a computer system to work. I'm glad that I still find people interested in hardware. My son recently built his own gaming computer from parts, and I'm hoping to

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02:06

The Subtle Push to the Cloud

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/04/29

With SQL Server 2014 released, there's the temptation to upgrade for many DBAs. However the licensing costs and debatable improvements in the product will temper the DBA's enthusiasm with the reality of the ROI seen by management. While reading about the licensing changes, I also saw this note from Tom LaRock, where he wrote about the features most of us aren't using. It made me think about upgrades, and perhaps the strategy Microsoft is employing. As Tom mentioned, the features not being used are

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02:08

Good Practices for Software Development

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/04/24

Would you post your password on a wall in your office? Of course not, because other employees, the cleaning crew, even guests walking around your office would be able to access your system with your account. When I read Brian Kelly's post on passwords in files, that's what I thought of. Sticking credentials in a file, where they're subject to any kind of search, is a bad idea. However this happens all the time. Combine this with a few other "common practices" like using sa to connect to a database

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02:31

Open Source the MCM

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/04/23

It's over. There's no more MCM program or certification from Microsoft. The last MCM test was given last year and no upgrades are planned for SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2014. That's a little sad, though there are quite a few of our SQL Server professionals that can still proudly wear the MCM title for the rest of their careers. The MCM tests were designed differently than all the other MCP type tests, requiring more thought and deduction, as well as practical skills. The lab in particular was

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02:33

Due Diligence

Voice of the DBA ·

2014/04/22

I often talk with people about building their brands and finding a way to ensure they are a highly desirable employee. One of the ways that I think people can do this is with a technical blog about their career. Having a technical blog allows someone to show off their skills in a particular area. The blog doesn't have to be ground breaking work or extremely innovative solutions to complex problems. While employers need those people, they also need people that do solid work every day on regular

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327 results

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