Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Refreshed in Tuscany

    I returned last Sat, 15 Jun, from 9 weeks of crazy travel. It wasn’t all for work, but it was a long stretch. I spent a good portion of Monday and Tuesday just getting caught up on what was going on, what the status of my workload is, and what I might have missed.

    While it’s been a hectic week, it wasn’t that hard, other than a little recovery from jet lag. The last two weeks were in the UK/EU, so I don’t think I was back on Colorado time until Tuesday.

    What helped me deal with that long stretch was some vacation. My wife and spent most of the second week in the UK in Tuscany, Italy. We rented a small place in the Cortona region, just outside of Camucia. We rented a car and visited a few wineries, as well as Siena and Montepulciano. You can see the edge of our farmhouse down a private driveway with Cortona on the hill in the distance.

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    We had a very relaxing time there, and I’d highly recommend it was a vacation spot.

    Part of my time in Australia was also a holiday with my wife where we mostly relaxed and did little, but explored Sydney a bit. Waking up to this view was amazing.

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    The point of this isn’t to make you jealous or brag about my holiday, but to remind you that getting away is important and nice. It can help you recharge, even when you’re busy. My trip to NY to see my daughter graduate was busy and hectic, but even then I felt better coming back to work after the change in scenery.

    Whether you want one long break a year or lots of small ones (my preference) make sure you get away from work.

  • Polyglot Persistence

    I’ve seen the term polyglot persistence floating around Redgate a bit recently in the marketing department. I haven’t really seen this term anywhere, and I wonder if you have. If you have, drop a comment.

    The definition is based on the polyglot programming, where you write an app using multiple programming languages. I don’t know a lot of people who do that, and if you do, let me know. I guess some do, since I’ll see things like HTML+C#, or maybe something like Blazor + C#.

    In any case, the idea seems to be that you use multiple databases to satisfy your requirements. A few examples might be:

    • SQL Server for most data, Redis to cache shopping carts
    • Oracle for most data, ElasticSearch for full-text searching
    • PostgreSQL for profiles and leaderboards, MongoDB for real-time game actions

    I’ve tended to showcase NoSQL + Relational here, but I have seen a few people using two relational stores or two NoSQL stores because it suits their needs. The really common additions (for me) are some type of NoSQL store for performance with more stable, long term data in relational.

    I don’t think this covers the relational for OLTP and something else for OLAP/warehousing, as that seems to be an ETL/ELT/transfer of data over time for a different purpose rather than for the same application, but I guess it could cover that.

    I think Polyglot Persistence is a good idea, especially when you have complex requirements that aren’t easily solved with one database, even when you have in-memory or search/graph features in your database. Often those don’t perform as well as specialized systems, though there is a level of complexity and the challenge of ELT/ETL’ing the data to/from the second system.

    Evaluate carefully, PoC, and test at scale before you decide this is worth the trade.

  • The Last Trip (for now)

    I’m in Cambridge, UK today, at Redgate Software. This is our annual Global Marketing Week, where the entire marketing department gets together to learn, share, connect (recognize the theme), as well as enjoy some time with colleagues that we rarely see. I think Grant, Ryan, and I see more people more often than most others, and I’m grateful we get to spend a week here.

    This is the end of my wild travel time, where I’ve spent 11 full days at home since Apr 12. In fact, I don’t get home until Jun 15, so it’s not over yet, but it’s close. I’m definitely tired and a little worn out, but I’m looking forward to a week in the office and then a week of vacation next week in Europe with my wife.

    Not much blogging for the next two weeks, though I may drop some office or fun pix here later this week.

    Then I get home and no travel for a few weeks.

     

  • Denver Dev Day – Best Practices for Database Deployments Resources

    I delivered a talk today on database deployment best practices at the Denver Dev Days 2024. This is a great event, and I have been lucky enough to attend a few and speak.

    The deck I presented from is here: BestPractices Database Deployments_DenverDevDay.pptx

    The main sections covered in this talk:

    • Feature Flagging
    • Rollback/Undo
    • Release Branches (Cherry Picking)
    • Observability
    • Best Practices

    I’ll do some blogging on these topics separately in the future.