Voice of the DBA

  • Imagine the Physical World

    Brent Ozar has a series of database animations posts, where he tries to explain what work is done by SQL Server during certain operations, such as Index Seeks and Page Splits. These show how the engine might need to read or update various pages as it tries to perform operations. Both experienced and novice SQL Server people might think that these are interesting, but not that useful. I think they’re great. For most of my IT career,…


  • Don’t Fight with AI

    I was recently trying to handle a simple task with a few AI tools to see how well things worked. I realized that AI isn’t great for everything and there are times you need your judgment to stop fighting AI and use other tools. Tl;dr choose the shortest path and know your tools. In this case, just copy paste a script and results (see the bottom). This is part of a series of experiments with AI systems.…


  • Architecting Zero Downtime Deployment Resources–Albany Day of Data

    Thanks to those who attended my session at Day of Data Albany 2026. I’m posting this to help you find the resources from the talk. Slides: ArchitectZeroDowntime_SQLSatAlbany2026 GitHub Repo: https://github.com/way0utwest/ZeroDowntime The GitHub repo has the code for the database setup and demos (and teardown) in the SQL folder. This creates the db, login/user, schema, and data. The VS project is in the DBClient folder. I don’t think this is updated beyond .Net 4.6 (?), but feel free…


  • The Quiet Part

    Apparently, Meta did what a lot of employees suspect their management will do: use AI to lay off people. In this case, there is a report (and lawsuit) that Meta used it’s AI-integrated HR platform to make decisions about who to let go in a layoff. The rumor is that the AI used productivity metrics to choose who was the target of the layoff. As with a lot of AI failures, this appears to be another case…


  • Car Update: August 2026

    It’s been some time since I provided a car update, so I decided to showcase a few things I’ve learned about my cars since the last one. In this post: A Second EV: Lucid Gravity Efficiency and Tires on the Tesla Model Y Serendipity with a Suburban This is part of a series of thoughts on cars, just for fun. These are my thoughts and opinions based on my experiences. Our Second EV: Lucid Gravity We bought …


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