Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Republish: Bad IT People

    I’m still on vacation in Napa Valley, at least for a few more hours. It’s a chance to get away for me, so you get to re-read Bad IT People.

    Hope you had a great weekend.

  • Independence Day 2026

    Tomorrow is the United States 250th Independence Day celebration. I’ve been hearing about this on the radio for weeks, and it’s struck me that I’ve been alive and lucky enough to experience both the 200th (1976) and the 250th (2026) milestones. I’m not sure either is more amazing than any other 4th of July, but the round numbers stand out.

    In 1976, I was an 8 year old, and I vaguely remember going to Mount Trashmore park in Virginia Beach. It was a fun day of a cook out with hot dogs and kool-aid, playing in playgrounds, and some few moments wading in the lake nearby. It felt like an amazing event to be a part of.

    As a 50+ year old, I’m less excited about the 4th of July, but I am excited this weekend. I’m flying this morning to San Francisco with my wife for a weekend in Napa Valley and a slightly better food and drink selection.

    While I’m away, I hope you have a quiet day, nothing goes wrong, and you ease into the weekend. Or if you’re in the US, I hope you also enjoy a day off.

    Steve Jones

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

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

  • Cognitive Coverage

    Satya Nadella talked about cognitive coverage in the age of AI, about being able to understand and manage AI agents to get work done as a software developer. The interview from Hard Fork Live covers the future of work and comfort in this new age. This reminds me of a book that the CEO of Redgate recommended, Reshuffle. I love the book, but it’s slow reading as I constantly stop and think.

    Work is changing; it’s becoming unbundled and re-bundled in different ways, and many of us will have to learn to work in new ways. Not all of us, but many of us. Some might see their day-to-day efforts change little; some will not recognize their job a year from now. As with anything, lots of us will be in the middle with some changes, some status quo. That’s certainly where I am with AI assistance.
    The short version of what Satya says is that there is new glue work coming to software engineers. To me, this is where we re-bundle the work that needs to be done: there is work completed by us, results from AI LLMs, and the glue that puts that stuff together. The glue is managing, organizing, deciding, and probably a few other xxx’ings in there. It’s also about understanding what’s happening across all the work you are responsible for completing.

    That understanding is the cognitive coverage. I like that term as it implies that I need to know the sum total of what’s happening from my team, both humans and AI agents. I can grok the way the river of work is flowing.

    And it’s flowing. It’s not stopping. It might be getting wider. I can lightly influence it, but if I don’t keep an eye on things, it might go in directions I don’t expect and even overflow its banks.

    The hosts noted that most people want to know their jobs won’t change or how they will change. That’s one of the big things with AI that’s disruptive and scary. With a machine able to learn and adjust in ways that are more flexible than ever in the past, we have to be adaptable as well. We have to learn to work with this flexible, non-deterministic, eerily human-like technology. It’s a scary and unnerving thing for many of us.

    AI is definitely changing the world. It’s not magic; it’s not going to automatically get rid of all, or maybe not many, humans, but it is going to change the demands placed upon them. Getting a grasp of your cognitive coverage of what AI does is going to be important.

    Steve Jones

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

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

  • SQL Server Still Wins

    Is it worth continuing to run SQL Server when PostgreSQL licensing is zero? Rebecca Lewis has a well written post on why that looks at some of the pros and cons of paying for SQL Server instead of moving to PostgreSQL. She starts with some of the things PostgreSQL does well, of which I think the Extensibility is really cool. SQL Server has some of this in CLR and the non-SQL language support, but those seem kludgy and complex to me. They aren’t really integrated into the SQL Server platform.

    They’re good, but I do wish vendors or the community could add some extensions in a way PostgreSQL does. Of course, I also worry about stability, so maybe this is a wish that isn’t really a great idea.

    The pros list for SQL Server is quite a good list, at least for existing users. Tooling isn’t close, both for DBAs and developers, and inside the platform. At Redgate, we support both SQL Server and PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor, and there is so much more information that we can gather from SQL Server on what’s happening. It’s truly amazing when I compare them. We constantly are looking to add to our PostgreSQL monitoring solution and ensure admins see as close a view in PostgreSQL as SQL Server, but the reality is so much information is available.

    On the dev tool side, while SSMS can be slow, it’s still way better than any other database development tools I’ve seen.

    The innovation argument for SQL Server over PostgreSQL isn’t a great one, as PostgreSQL continues to evolve, but I’m glad Microsoft continues to work on the engine. I wasn’t enamored with SQL Server 2022, but I do like 2025 and look forward to what comes in 2028 (my guess). What I really wish, however, is that Microsoft marketed SQL Server more, with a little less Fabric in the way.

    That being said, I am continually grateful for the SQL Server marketing team’s support of SQL Saturday/Day of Data events.

    It is interesting to think that the Microsoft-stack gravity is Rebecca’s third argument. It certainly makes a lot of work convenient if you use Microsoft tools, and I completely agree that ripping this out is a major reason why people stick with SQL Server. Across the last 5-6 years, I’ve had many customers tell me they’re moving to PostgreSQL and abandoning SQL Server. They constantly ask Redgate for more PostgreSQL tools (and we’ve built some), but the reality is that a year, or two, or three later, they still have those ambitious plans. They haven’t moved.

    It’s really, really hard to change database platforms.

    That might not seem like a pro, but it is a reason why SQL Server still wins in many organizations. It’s comfortable, effective, performs well under a variety of situations, and quite frankly, there are millions of people who are more comfortable with it than many other platforms.

    I like other platforms, but I love SQL Server. It’s been good for my career and I look forward to spending the next 10-15 years continuing to help others get the most out of their installations.

    Steve Jones

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

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