Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Ten Database Commandments

    I love the Notorious B.I.G. His music isn’t for everyone, but I enjoy it. This piece takes one of his songs (NSFW – Ten Crack Commandments) and applies the list to databases. Each item from the song is listed, along with the way it might be changed for database work. The list is from Ottertune, which is a service designed to help you optimize your use of AWS RDS and Aurora databases, with AI. If you believe their hype, their service will get better performance and lower costs for you.

    In any case, with regard to databases, I suspect that the author is having some fun with the rules, and a few of them made me smile. They are cloud-related, but a few will apply to any environment.

    The first one is about budgets, noting you should not disclose your budget, which is in general a good rule whenever you are buying something. Don’t disclose information, and someone working for a vendor of tools, I think that most budget conversations aren’t something technical people should worry about. Decide what value you get from some tool/service/process/etc. and if there are time savings. Then let someone else decide if the ROI is worth the cost.

    Rule 2 is a stretch, but I do think that looking at new tools can be helpful. The caveat here is that many people, don’t often learn enough about existing tools to understand if they will solve issues. There are a lot of things you can do with many tools, so don’t just look for some magical new tool. Learn to use your tools well, and if you want to try a new one, keep in mind you will need to invest some time both learning about it and practicing some skills before you really know if it’s helpful. The other thing to remember is every new tool increases the bar for new staff. Try to limit the number of tools you use to those you need.

    Security is important and rule 3 is remembering not to give out more permissions than needed, especially to developers. I love this quote: “You don’t want randos at your organization logging in and running queries that they found on Stack Overflow.”

    A number of the other rules have to do with performance, which is certainly Ottertune’s business, but these are good basic practices that I see organizations not following. Too often management wants to save money and technical people make decisions that compromise performance. Lots of people overload systems, and then they can’t handle the workload well. I get that many CFOs and others want to see high CPU usage, which means they’re using the resources they pay for, but databases can be very bursty with resource usage. At the same time, you don’t want to over-provision resources because you are scared. Learn to find a balance that doesn’t waste money, but handles your workload well.

    Perhaps one of the best things about the cloud is that if we do make bad decisions, we can often provision more resources. It can take time to move to a new tier of service, so don’t expect instance response up or down, but if you need to double the CPUs for month-end processing, you can likely plan for the time to scale up your database instance and then scale down again when all the work is complete.

    It’s a fun article, and if you’re looking for some fun Notorious B.I.G.-related database content, grab a cup of coffee when you need a break and a smile.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • A New Word: Vaucasy

    vaucasy – n. the feat that you’re little more than a product of your circumstances, that for all the thought you put into shaping your believes and behaviors and relationships, you’re essentially a dog being trained by whatever stimuli you happen to encounter, reflexively drawn to whoever gives you reliable hits of pleasure, skeptical of ideas that make you feel powerless.

    I think a lot about how my life has gone, and how I react to things. My thoughts, my behaviors, and how my past shapes me. I do try to learn more, and I think I do a good job.

    I’m also proud of watching my kids grow and change as adults. When I look at them, I think they have a really interesting mix of things they inherited from my wife or I, and also from their experiences. They are all very different, but similar.

    Vaucasy is certainly something that I think affects all of us. There is a very human need to react to simuli, looking for pleasure. I also think we can change that and put our thoughts into shaping behaviors and thoughts, but it takes effort.

    It’s worth it.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Republish: Singular or Plural

    I still in Seattle attending the PASS Data Community Summit 2023. I decided to republish Singular or Plural today as my thinking has changed on these items. This isn’t worth a long debate. Get everyone in the room and let 2-4 people get 5 minutes to make a case, take a vote, and move on.

    I need to write an editorial on that.

  • Deploying Indexes with SQL Compare

    I suspect many people assume this is the case, but a customer recently asked if SQL Compare handles indexes. It does, and this post shows the basics of index comparisons with no filters.

    This is a part of a series of posts on SQL Compare on my blog. You can read other posts I’ve written by clicking the link.

    The Setup

    I have two databases that are completely synced from a schema perspective.

    2023-10-30 13_56_53-SQL Compare - E__Documents_SQL Compare_SharedProjects_(local)_SQL2017.SimpleTalk

    I’ll now create an index in Compare1. This is a simple index on a single table. I use this code:

    CREATE INDEX IDX_mychar ON dbo.MyTable (Mychar)

    Once I refresh the compare, I see this. Note that I’ve selected the table that has a difference and it shows the new index. This bottom left shows the scripted version of the code I ran above.

    2023-10-30 13_58_13-SQL Compare - E__Documents_SQL Compare_SharedProjects_(local)_SQL2017.SimpleTalk

    If I create the deployment script, I see the index in it, as shown here:

    2023-10-30 13_59_03-Deployment

    By default, SQL Compare includes almost all objects and that includes indexes. There are options to change the behavior with indexes, and I’ll cover those in future posts. You can also set a filter that might exclude indexes (or include those), but those are also future posts.

    SQL Compare is a fantastic product for simplifying work and it does so much more than this. Give it a try if you own it or download an evaluation today.