Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Next Great Thing

    At SQL Bits, I was chatting with Brent about a few things, including AI, which we think is changing the world. I’ve got my set of AI experiments going, and I do believe we will fundamentally alter work and how we use computers in the future.

    Not sure if it’s for the better or worse, but things are changing and will change more.

    Brent mentioned he was thinking about how a few years ago the “next great thing” was blockchain, which was going to change databases and storage, but never really caught on. I never thought it would as it seemed too niche-y for me.

    What other great waves of tech have you seen over the years? I saw a prediction that data engineering will be dead in 5 years. I’ll take that bet. I’ve been hearing the DBA (or other data related positions) will be gone soon for over 25 years. I remember friends asking me if I was worried about my position after SQL Server v7 was released in 1998. I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. It seems there is more work than ever, though certainly the bar is higher for people doing the work.

    You need to learn to be better at your job if you want some job security. That’s one reason I constantly push people to learn, improve, and show off ( consider #SQLNewBlogger posts) their skills. Employers want to know you’re providing value if they’re paying you $$ (or € or £ or ¥ or whatever).

    There have been plenty of tech flops. Virtual/Extended/Augmented reality and various headsets haven’t quite taken off, though there is no shortage of new “AI powered” eyeglass products. Quantum computing still seems to be only slightly less fantastic than fusion energy. Voice control or gestures were supposed to make keyboards obsolete, but we still type a lot.

    There are also some amazing things. Touch computing, especially on mobile, dominates. More and more digital payments are changing our commerce functions. Smartphones are essential devices for most people with apps available for anything and everything.

    I do think GenAI will continue to change the world and how many of us work. This was an interesting talk on how AI changes work, not from a technologist per se, but from a writer. The GenAI models continue to improve, and I find them most useful in saving me minutes, not doing all my work. They are becoming more helpful, though slightly untrustworthy assistants. They are eager teenagers that can help, but need supervision and guidance.

    And sometimes need to be abandoned for the current task and you need to do the rest of (or all of) the work.

    What memories do you have of past “next great things? or maybe of what you see for the future?

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Who is Using Standard Edition?

    For many years, most of the SQL Server installations I managed or deployed to were Standard Edition. Even in large companies that had agreements with Microsoft, since each instance had a cost (even at a discount), we were careful about where we installed Enterprise Edition.

    These days with Microsoft wanting to charge everyone for every core, it makes sense to use Standard Edition wherever you can.

    One great change for those of us that need to develop for Standard Edition is what Joey calls the most requested feature for SQL Server 2025. We can now install a Standard version of the Developer Edition. This is something many teams have desired since developers tend to use the features available to them, and until now, every Developer Edition has been equivalent to Enterprise Edition (EE). This has resulted in lots of scripts that use EE features, which won’t run on production Standard Edition servers.

    I’m wondering how many of you out there are running standard edition? Leave a comment and let us know. I suspect there are plenty of organizations who have simple apps and run Standard to save money. I know I’ve had many employers that wanted to do this, especially for systems that didn’t need large numbers of cores.

    I wanted to write about a Standard version of Developer edition as an April Fool’s joke in 2024 but was told not to do it. I suspected this version was coming, and I’m glad that it’s finally announced. As long as we have different features in different editions, we need a developer version of each edition.

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Carrots and Sticks

    Often,  we work on projects that might span a significant amount of time. Weeks, months, even years can be devoted to working on one system, or the same system. We may find that our motivation rises and wanes at different times. We get excited and motivated to get things done, and also become discouraged or distracted when challenges arise. Not all of us, or not all the time, but it is hard to maintain a high level of productivity and motivation over time.

    For managers, it can be a challenge to keep a team moving over time and focused on achieving goals. Life gets in the way, people take vacations, staff changes, and other things are all issues that can distract a team. Keeping a team focused and productive can be a challenge for many managers. Perhaps especially challenging when someone hasn’t received enough training on how to manage and motivate others.

    As tech workers, we could be motivated in a few ways. Perhaps there are goals, achievements, or rewards that spur us on to work harder. There could also be penalties or consequences if we don’t get enough done. There is always the threat of termination, but in practice, I see this as a last resort. More likely are subtle punishments such as boring assignments, more on-call work, or perhaps difficulties in getting vacation approved.

    As a worker, do you want more carrots or sticks? Is the possibility of a reward or the threat of punishment a bigger motivator?

    I’d like to say that carrots motivate me more, but as I think about it, I’m not sure. The carrot has to be significant to get me to change how I work. I think the stick also has to be fairly severe to force a change, but I think I’m often more motivated by the negative side of things than the positive. I’m sure that’s somehow from my childhood, but if I’m honest with myself, that’s what gets me moving more quickly. Though if there is too much of a stick, I’m quick to look elsewhere.

    What about you? Carrots or sticks?

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

  • Storage Enhancements

    There was a time when I knew a lot about the various storage technologies available for a database. It was important when designing a server around the various requirements for size and performance balanced against the limitations of hardware.

    The rapid growth of solid state storage and the adoption of storage area networks have changed the game for many of us. We no longer care or think about storage. It’s just a service that we consume in our databases, and while we might demand more IOPS capacity, we often don’t worry too much about how that’s provided to our systems.

    I caught an article about IBM and a few enhancements to their offerings. They have a FlashSystem 5200, which is a way of taking their enterprise-class systems and packaging it in a way that organizations of all sizes can afford. In this case, they can get 1.7PB in a 1U package, which seems insane. I can remember working on an Enterprise 2U system that maxed out at 200GB worth of SCSI HDDs.

    I wondered if this was a lot in today’s world. A few friends work for Pure Storage, and I’ve met some customers who were very impressed with their arrays. When I looked at a FlashArray//X70 from them, they get 2.4PB in 3U, so the IBM offering is more dense. In terms of IOPS, I’m sure they are both very fast, likely fast enough for most places I’ve worked.

    What’s interesting is that I’ve found sysadmins way more concerned about specs and loving the Pure arrays more than the DBAs. DBAs (I think) are stuck with the hardware, and so they are always looking for what the bottlenecks are on a system and can I tune them down to a reasonable level. Or can I just get more storage or IOPs from whoever is in charge of storage?

    The world of storage (and networking) has come so far in the last 30 years that the numbers today seem mind-bogglingly fast compared to even a decade ago. It makes me wonder why we have any performance problems at all. Unfortunately, all the hardware in the world can’t compensate for keeping too much data in expensive storage and writing bad code. A little query expertise and archiving structures would likely make all that hardware look as amazing in the real world as it appears in spec sheets.

    Steve Jones

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

    Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.