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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

01:52

Who is Using Standard Edition?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/08/14

For many years, most of the SQL Server installations I managed or deployed to were Standard Edition. Even in large companies that had agreements with Microsoft, since each instance had a cost (even at a discount), we were careful about where we installed Enterprise Edition. These days with Microsoft wanting to charge everyone for every core, it makes sense to use Standard Edition wherever you can. Read the rest of Who is Using Standard Edition?

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02:23

Carrots and Sticks

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/08/12

Often, we work on projects that might span a significant amount of time. Weeks, months, even years can be devoted to working on one system, or the same system. We may find that our motivation rises and wanes at different times. We get excited and motivated to get things done, and also become discouraged or distracted when challenges arise. Not all of us, or not all the time, but it is hard to maintain a high level of productivity and motivation over time. For managers, it can be a challenge to keep

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02:54

Storage Enhancements

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/08/10

There was a time when I knew a lot about the various storage technologies available for a database. It was important when designing a server around the various requirements for size and performance balanced against the limitations of hardware. The rapid growth of solid state storage and the adoption of storage area networks have changed the game for many of us. We no longer care or think about storage. It's just a service that we consume in our databases, and while we might demand more IOPS

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02:44

A Well Deserved Break

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/26

This is my last day of work. Not forever, just for six weeks. I'm off on my sabbatical after today and won't be back until August 11. However, everything should run smoothly with Grant and Kellyn holding things down until I return. Have a little patience with them as this site can be a bit of a hectic whirlwind at times, and they still have other jobs to do. It's been a wild first half of the year. After very little travel in Jan/Feb, the rest of the year has been a bunch of travel, including most

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02:59

The Technical Debt Anchor

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/24

I ran across an article on the 7 types of tech debt that can cripple your business, which is a great title. It certainly is one that might scare a lot of CTOs/CIOs/tech management. I am sure that much of the IT management gets concerned on a regular basis with how quickly their staff can evolve their software to meet new business needs. The first two items have to do with data, which is understandable. Data is the core of how many organizations operate and move forward, and if you don't have the

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02:50

The Data Warehousing Choice

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/22

Each time I compile and curate the Database Weekly newsletter, I find lots of Fabric content from the various sources I watch to compose the newsletter. Since I primarily deal with the Microsoft Data Platform stack, this makes sense. Most of the things I am interested in are related to Microsoft, and as a result, I tend to use sources that also use SQL Server, Power BI, Fabric, and related technologies. I do look for other related data items, but I am heavily MSSQL focused. Recently, I stumbled on a

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03:08

Multiple Monitoring Tools

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/19

Part of my Redgate work is with customers who need to monitor their database servers. With estates growing quickly, both in scale and types of database platforms used, keeping an eye on everything can be challenging. Add in the lack of staff growing as quickly are the number of servers, and I find many companies seeking out monitoring tools to better help them manage the entire estate.. When someone evaluates a tool, one of the first questions from many people is about load. They are concerned about

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02:54

SQL Server 2025 Excitement

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/17

Are you looking forward to SQL Server 2025? Or perhaps you think this is just another release, or perhaps you are not looking for new features or capabilities in your environment. Maybe you don't care about new things, but are looking for enhancements to features introduced in 2017/2019/2022. There is certainly no shortage of things that can be improved from previous versions (cough graph *cough). I ran across an article on the five things that one person is looking forward to in SQL Server 2025

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03:08

Patching the Patch

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/15

I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The repo is public, and some of the organizers submit PRs for their changes, and others send me an email/message/text/etc. for a change. In this case, an organizer just asked for a couple of image updates to their site. I opened VS Code, created a branch, added a URL for the images, and submitted my own PR. After the build, I deployed it. And it didn't work. Read the rest of Patching the Patch

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03:44

What is a Failed Deployment?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/12

When talking about DevOps, the goal is to produce better software over time. Both better quality as well as a smoother process of getting bits to your clients. There are a number of metrics typically used to measure how well a software team is performing, and one of the things is Change fail percentage. This is the percentage of deployments that causes a failure in production, which means a hotfix or rollback is needed. Essentially we need to fail forward or roll back to get things working. For most

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02:21

Shorten the Debate

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/08

Many of us are faced with choices and decisions constantly in our jobs. How do we approach a problem? What should we do as a team to get the work done? How do we code or manage or test or do something else with a database? Maybe more importantly, how long do we spend deciding? Read the rest of Shorten the Debate

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04:50

Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/05

At an event recently, I had a chat with someone after one of my sessions. I had been speaking on DevOps and ways to better structure your team and build software. After the session, one person asked me if I'd read The Mythical Man Month and if I felt we'd gotten a lot better at building software since that book was published. I do think we have gotten better, way better, in fact. I caught another review of the book a while back from the Pragmatic Engineer. That view looked at what's changed in 50

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02:42

IT Unionization

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/03

I've been reading an interesting book that looks at some of the ways that we can better build software in enterprises. One of the side notes in the book is that the tech companies have the funding and the ability to disrupt many other types of businesses, not just technology. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have delved into other types of industries, potentially pushing others out. We see Amazon becoming as much a shipping and logistics company as they are a retailer. There was a unionization

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02:52

Helping Students with a Data Professional Career

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/06/01

At a recent event, I had a student ask about how to get started as a data professional. What types of things should they do? What platform should they work on or learn? Where should they focus time? What tools are available? Those are all good questions and many of you likely have your own advice. I'll give a few things to think about today, which are good for anyone that might want to get into the data field. I think this is still one of the better technical careers. I've suggested this to my kids,

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03:11

Changing the Paradigm of Work

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/27

I saw an article on AI usage that is based on an upcoming book that suggests redesigning the world around new tech, not adding it to existing things. The first example is how electricity was introduced to existing factories, but it only provided some incremental gains until new factories were redesigned around electric motors. There's also an example given about reworking hotels to remove the front desk since that feature isn't needed. Instead, people could walk in, and an employee with a tablet

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02:58

Does Version Control Scare You

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/20

As a part of my job, I often work with customers on how they can get database code into a version control system. That's Git for the most part today, which is the most popular system in the world. I'm comfortable using Git for many basic tasks, but I am not an expert by any means. I've used version control for years, and quite a few systems, and I like Git as a way of managing code. I have been surprised how many people aren't comfortable with version control or Git. Many don't have the habit, but

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03:20

The AI View from Above

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/18

It likely isn't a surprise to many of you that executives like AI. A survey shows that 74% of executives surveyed have greater confidence in AI-generated insights than advice from colleagues or friends. At the board level, even more (85%) favor AI-driven advice. That's amazing to me, and while I might think this is a bit too much trust being placed in these GenAI LLMs, perhaps it's also partially because they work with too many people who aren't great at their jobs. Plenty of people skim through

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03:14

Are Data Breaches Inevitable?

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/15

I read a piece recently that got me thinking that data breaches might be inevitable. Disclosure: This was written by Redgate, for whom I work, titled "Data breaches May Be Inevitable—Compliance Failures Don’t Have to Be". It's based on our research with the State of Database Landscape survey as well as feedback and conversations with customers. The thing that caught my eye was the first part: data breaches may be inevitable. Do you think that's true? Are we doomed to lose data in our organizations,

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03:02

Deleting a Database

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/11

Who among us has deleted a production database? I'd hope it's very few of you that have done this in your career. I'm sure a few of you have deleted (or truncated or updated all rows for) a table in production. I've done that a few times, but fortunately, I've been able to recover the data quickly. I had this happen in SQL 6.5 and was grateful I could start a single-table restore before my phone rang. Read the rest of Deleting a Database

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03:13

Database DevOps Recommendations

Voice of the DBA ·

2025/05/08

The DORA organization is constantly researching how to better produce software at any organization. This is similar to work done by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute many years ago. Both groups are trying to determine what things help engineers work better and produce high-quality software. On the DORA site, there is a database change management page, where they recommend approaches to managing database schemas. The main thing they talk about is treating all schema changes as

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345 results

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