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, I’ve drawn parallels between what I’ve asked the computer to do, and how this might play out in the real world if we weren’t working on digital systems. Most of the constructs we have, connecting to a system, sending a query, configuring a firewall, sorting data, etc. can be related to a physical action.
If you want to understand page splits, imagine you had the index from a book printed out (or a TOC), and broken out across multiple pieces of paper. If I asked you to insert something in the middle, or to lengthen an entry that doesn’t fit, what would you have to do? You’d need a new piece of paper, you’d put it in a place between the others, you’d copy over some data, you’d erase some data from existing pages and more. Exactly what Brent’s animation shows.
That’s real work.
The more I think about the work the computer does, even if it’s measured in ms or ns, the more I can think about whether I can find an efficient way to complete my task. It’s not that I mind the computer reading 1mm rows (or 100mm), but if I can reduce the work, I reduce the latency, the computer, the disk, the cost, the everything. My customers are happy when I try to reduce the work and make everything run faster.
This view has helped me look for and find better ways to implement solutions over the years. I know that not everything needs to be optimized, after all, sometimes we do more work in the physical world because of expediency, but we know the tradeoff. We can judge if it’s worth it.
Too often I see people think the computer is doing the work and they dismiss the effort. It’s the same attitude people have in the real world when someone else has to move/lift/pay for something. It means less to them.
Treat everything as if you had to do the work yourself. You’ll treat others better and appreciate the effort spent, whether it’s another human, a software program or an AI LLM. Your results will show better judgment, and hopefully, quality.
Steve Jones
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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.
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