Voice of the DBA

Tag: Database Weekly

  • Christmas in July

    My son asked me to sign for a package on Friday. He was at work and had ordered himself some new joystick for a gaming thing. He told me this was his “Christmas to himself in July.”

    We’ve just past the halfway point of the year, and it’s been interesting. Both a semi-stressful moving on from the pandemic, and a fantastic opening up of life for me in many ways. I’ve had some great trips, experiences, and enjoyed time with people.

    This is a time when many will treat themselves to a Christmas in July, perhaps with a gift or a trip that let’s them enjoy life. I thought about that as I saw a few articles like this one on sales and deals. It’s Independence Day on Monday, a holiday in the US, and lots of retailers use this as an excuse for a sale. I won’t likely get anything techy, but I do need some new gloves since we are putting in 1000′ of new fence at the ranch.

    If you’ve had a good year, is there something you’d reward yourself with? A new mobile device? Maybe some tech-game thing? An upgrade to hardware? Maybe you’ll get a new car, like I did last year. Perhaps you’ll take a trip or partake in some event. I guess I fall into that category as my wife and I have tickets to the jazz festival in Winter Park in a few weeks. We’ll spend a weekend in the mountains as a reward for our hard work.

    If it’s been a tough year, maybe there’s something you treat yourself with to cope with this crazy world. Let us know what you will do, or maybe dream a bit and think about what you might wish you would do.

    Steve Jones

  • The 2022 Preview

    This was a strange week for me. Traveling in Brussels with my wife and prepping for a few presentations. Then Techorama, an even more 2019-era conference in Belgium where I spoke around a few customer calls sprinkled in during the week. I have a new SQL Saturday I was trying to get scheduled, while coordinating with my doctor for a surgery Friday, and keeping up with some travel plans for the next month.

    In the middle of all that, Microsoft Build took place this week. Needless to say I didn’t see any presentations from the event, but I did see quite a few blog posts and entries this week from various MVPs and others. I took a few minutes to watch Data Exposed, and I read a few posts. I liked the thoughts from Paul Andrew on the Intelligent Data Platform. He is more of a BI person, and I think a lot of the evolution of the platform is moving to add more BI and get more intelligence from the database for customers.

    I’ve been playing with the CTP lightly for a few months. Many of the MVPs have as well, and while most things work the same, there are some new things that might be useful in your workload. You can get the CTP of SQL Server 2022 at https://aka.ms/getsqlserver2022, and see what’s changed, test your current apps, and in general get excited about the future of SQL Server.

    If you want some ideas and demos to follow around, check out Bob Ward’s demos at https://aka.ms/bobsqldemos. He’s put his various scripts and notebooks for the platform, where you can reproduce and examine some of the features. Bob has been showing off some of these things at various conferences for awhile, and now you can get his code to do some testing. Aaron Bertrand also has a number of posts on SQL 2022.

    As always, if you find issues, send in feedback. MS does read this stuff, and while they don’t always agree with you or I, they do consider things. The more you put the reason you want a change in business terms, the better off things are. Rather than saying “an empty CATCH clause hides an error”, you might say that “the empty catch clause was unexpected and caused clients to resubmit a form 22 times before customer service could track down a bug.” Be specific and show a relation to a tangible business problem for all your errors.
    In many ways SQL Server is a very mature product for me. The core engine meets most of the needs I have for SQL Server Central as well as those of many of my customers. However, there are lots of organizations that might benefit from one or more of these features. Whether on premises or in the cloud, we want the platform to grow and improve.

    Plus, it can be exciting to reproduce one of Bob’s demos and learn something. As we move towards a new version of SQL Server, take a little time to get excited about technology and see what changes are coming in SQL Server and the Data Platform.

    Steve Jones

  • Finding New Employment

    I have been working for Redgate Software for 15 years (14 as an FTE). I think this is the best job I’ve ever had, and I hope this is the last FTE job that I ever have (fingers crossed).

    Plenty of people have found new jobs during the pandemic, which surprised me. I thought many people would be careful and cautious, but the pandemic opened up remote work, new possibilities, and opportunities that didn’t exist in the past. Both employers and organizations took advantage of the changes to better their situations. I know quite a few friends who found new positions, with better compensation, during the last two years.

    I think that trend continues as technology is an area that is adapts well to remote, hybrid, or in-person work. If you’re looking for a job, or you need to hire some candidates, Brent Ozar put out a post that lets either side post a comment and let people know there are jobs and talented people available. I posted a note about Redgate in there, as we are looking for software developers in the UK.

    There are plenty of other positions. In Denver, I had lunch with a friend working at a new company, Sierra Space. They are growing and hiring quite a few people and they use SQL Server. My son works at ULA, and he said they need people as well. While some businesses struggled the last two years, it seems that many technology companies thrived and there are lots of opportunities out there.

    I am a big proponent of actively managing your career. I give talks on professional development and building your brand. My view is that you should work to improve your skills, showcase them, build a network of colleagues, and then find the dream job that fits you. That’s different for all of us, but a little work and effort can help you find something you love.

    I’m approaching retirement in my 50s, and I love my job. Many of you are much younger and still building careers, learning what you like and don’t like (which is more important). You’re deciding what type of job you want and what interests you. Study, learn, come to SQL Saturdays (or ask your local group to run one), and pick the opportunity that works for you.

    Drive your career forward and I know you’ll be as happy to go to work each day as I am.

    Steve Jones

  • Constant Azure Improvement

    This week I noticed a number of changes in the Azure platform from their change feed. Actually, every week has a crazy number of changes across the entire platform, but this week a number of these were related to data and databases. That isn’t always the case, but I saw some interesting items.

    We have zone redundancy for the general purpose tier of Azure SQL database, as well as AAD security principals in the master database and a new DMV for backups. I think Azure SQL Database is a great product, though one that has felt quite limited at times. The use of DTUs at first, the high pause period for Serverless and limited options at lower tiers were always annoying.

    The point at times seemed to be to get customers to place a big financial bet that a higher tier would meet their needs. I had hoped that some of that was just a blip in time as technology improved and more features would be deployed to all tiers. After all, the original Azure SQL database was a key-value store.

    That seems to be coming true as I continue to see improvements to the offerings. Azure SQL Serverless now has a 1 hour pause period minimum instead of the original 6 hour time. Now Cosmos DB has also lowered their autoscale offering. Cosmos DB can be provisioned at a lower entry point for autoscale, at 100RU/s instead of 400RU/s, which might get more people to experiment with a PoC over a bit of time and use the database. I know I’m thinking of trying to mess with some data on the platform. I don’t think I’d need 100 RU/s, much less 400, but I can better live the cost for a few months.

    Hyperscale has been an interesting version of Azure SQL Database. I know quite a few customers that aren’t sure if they need it, but they considered experimenting with it. The problem was that once you choose Hyperscale, you can’t go back to another tier. That’s quite a disincentive to experimentation, which seems to be part of the philosophy of choosing the cloud. There is now a preview of the migration of Hyperscale back to the general purpose tier. I’m guessing it took a little time for the Azure team to implement this, which is why there was a restriction, but it looks like that limit will go away.

    The cloud is an amazing place, as I’ve written before. It enables things to happen at a pace, and with ease that I’ve never seen in a data center without a lot of prep work. This week it seems that the Azure cloud advanced quite a bit in the area that I care about, the data platform space.

    There was also the general availability release of the Azure SQL Migration extension for ADS.

    Steve Jones