Voice of the DBA

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 an…

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? …

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 introduc…

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'…

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 frien…

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 Failu…

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 …

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…

I'm sure many of you have tried a GenAI LLM to do something. Maybe write some code, maybe get some sort of recommendation or suggestion, maybe to rewrite something or summarize text. I'm sure you hav…

Certifications can pay off, at least in some areas. There's a piece that talks about pay rising for some tech professionals when they have some credentials. Networking, architecture, and project man…

I thought this story about a programmer and a GenAI to be rather humorous. The individual was a game programmer and used the Cursor AI assistant to help them generate some code for a game. After a f…

When is the last time you interviewed for a new position? It could have been at a new company, or maybe you had an interview was for a different position inside your existing company. Perhaps you nee…

I heard Brent Ozar recently talked a bit about the SQL Server platform and its future. He also mentioned that Fabric has distracted the data platform team and it isn't a great product. I tend to agre…

I get the Gates Notes email periodically and I always find it interesting to read. Like Bill Gates or not, he is a very smart individual and has thoughtful things to say. Even when I don't always agr…

At the end of last year, I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a long time. We were chatting and this person mentioned that they were looking for a new job. They had been laid off and needed something…

The revolution with GenAI has been quite the ride since 2023 and quite a few people have been concerned that their employment status might be in jeopardy. I can certainly understand that, especially …

One of the challenges in software development is coordinating database and application changes when one depends on the other. I find many software development teams struggle with this, especially in …

I saw an article recently that a quarter of the Y Combinator startups have 95% of the code in their repos being AI generated. The article notes that if no other startups had any AI generated code (no…

Some of you reading this are database administrators (DBAs) who manage systems as their full-time job. Others of you might be developers, analytics people, or someone else who has another job, but yo…

The use of feature flags in software development has become more and more prevalent over time, especially as teams move to DevOps-style development with frequent releases. I've often thought that usi…