Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • A New Word: Slipfast

    slipfast adj. longing to disappear completely; to melt into a crowd and become invisible, so you can take in the world without having to take part in it – free to wander through conversations without ever leaving footprints, free to dive deep into things without worrying about making a splash.

    I used to be incredibly shy. When I first started going to conferences and events, I was like Tim. I didn’t want to participate. I wanted to listen, but if I were at the front of the room after a talk, I didn’t want to ask a question or be included. I wanted to be invisible and listen.

    My life is different now, and I engage often with others. I enjoy seeing people and talking with them. I enjoy actively taking part in the world.

    To a point.

    There are times I want to feel slipfast, just being an observer of the world without participating.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Don’t Forget the Database–Slides and Resources

    I delivered a talk this past week at Agile West called “Don’t Forget the Database”

    Slides posted here:  DontForgetTheDatabase.pptx

    This is based on code and the app in my ZeroDowntime repo.

  • A Quick Trip to Agile West

    Redgate is sponsoring Agile West this year, and the marketing team asked me to give a talk on database DevOps technologies.

    I have a keynote talk, called Don’t Forget the Database, that I’ll be delivering on Wednesday. This covers some of the challenges of why the database is harder than software, but doesn’t need to be. I show some demos of zero downtime deployments as a part of this talk.

    Likely I’ll record the demo and talk over it, as I have seen that technique work well and it keeps me from fumbling around.

    My wife is coming with me. This is a quick Tues-Thur trip for me, and easy. Las Vegas is about an hour flight for me, and I only have a few commitments, so this is a chance for the two of us to see a show or two and get out of town for a short break.

    I’m lucky that some of my business travel allows my wife to come around, and it’s worth the expense to bring her and make the trip more enjoyable. That makes it easy for me to handle the 20-30 trips a year I make.

    If you’re at the show, stop by the Redgate booth or my talk and say hi.

  • ChatGpt Experiments–Getting Documentation

    I get asked questions by salespeople all the time. Usually this is because a customer is struggling and I try to educate the salesperson as well as give them something to send to the customer. Here’s a place I used ChatGPT to make this quicker, or at least try.

    This is part of a series of experiments with the ChatGPT and other AI systems.

    Asking a Question

    A customer asked about configuring SQL Backup Pro to use Amazon S3 for backup locations. Rather than search out the docs, find URLs, etc. I asked ChatGPT. Here’s what I got:

    Prompt: How do I configure SQL Backup Pro to send files to Amazon s3?

    Answer:

    To configure SQL Backup Pro to send backup files to Amazon S3, you need to set up an Amazon S3 storage account and configure SQL Backup Pro to use it as the destination for backup files. Here are the general steps to configure this integration:

    1. Create an Amazon S3 bucket: Log in to your Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and create an S3 bucket where you want to store the SQL Server backup files. Take note of the bucket name and the AWS access credentials.

    2. Install SQL Backup Pro: If you haven’t already, download and install SQL Backup Pro from Redgate Software. Ensure that it is properly installed and licensed.

    3. Open SQL Backup Pro: Launch SQL Backup Pro and open the SQL Server instance you want to configure for backups.

    4. Configure backup settings: In SQL Backup Pro, navigate to the Backup tab and configure the backup settings according to your requirements, such as database selection, compression level, and encryption settings.

    5. Configure backup destination: In the backup settings, choose the backup destination as “File (network or local drive)”.

    6. Set the backup path: Specify a local folder where SQL Backup Pro will temporarily store the backup files before transferring them to Amazon S3. This can be any local folder accessible by the SQL Server service account.

    7. Configure transfer settings: Under the “Backup files to the network or local folder” section, select the option “After the backup completes, copy files to another location or device”.

    8. Choose the transfer type: In the transfer settings, select the transfer type as “Amazon S3”.

    9. Enter Amazon S3 credentials: Provide the AWS access credentials (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) associated with your Amazon S3 bucket. These credentials authenticate SQL Backup Pro to access and upload files to your S3 bucket.

    10. Specify the S3 bucket details: Enter the bucket name and the desired S3 region where the backup files should be uploaded.

    11. Set other transfer options: Configure additional transfer options, such as file naming, retention policies, and logging preferences.

    12. Save and test the configuration: Save the settings and perform a test backup to verify that SQL Backup Pro can successfully transfer the backup files to Amazon S3.

    Once the configuration is complete, SQL Backup Pro will automatically transfer the backup files to the specified Amazon S3 bucket after each backup operation.

    Note: The specific steps and options may vary slightly depending on the version of SQL Backup Pro you are using. It’s recommended to consult the product documentation or contact Redgate support for detailed instructions based on your specific version and environment.

    Did it Work?

    While this was generating, I actually looked for docs to evaluate whether this was good advice. I don’t completely trust the AIs yet. What I found was:

    The instructions from ChatGPT don’t reference specific URLs, which I think is something that I would hope for. If I were sending instructions to a client, they might figure things out from the ChatGPT answer, but they’d be annoyed.

    A good example of where domain knowledge is needed, and still some work. This might be helpful if I had links it the answer to quickly check things.