Voice of the DBA

Tag: DBA

  • Working Better Under Pressure

    One of my colleagues wrote a great post about DBAs and developers, about how a DBA’s pushback on bad code isn’t to be difficult, it’s because they can see the future. I never thought of myself as a modern-day Nostradamus, predicting the future of system performance. Apparently I had another title besides DBA.

    Working under pressure and with short deadlines often leads to short cuts. I’ve made them. I’ve implemented quick hot fixes. I’ve forgotten to port changes back to development databases. I’ve increased our tech debt load, just to solve a more immediate problem.

    The challenge is cleaning things up later, when we have more deadlines and things to fix. It seems that we never have enough time to do the job the way we would like, and there’s certainly no time to go back later and fix things. Most management won’t make this a priority until things get so bad that we have to rewrite a lot of code (which we should never do).

    DevOps, pipelines, automations, and yes, AI, helping can reduce some of the tech debt we create if we use those tools appropriately. Which is a big IF. Often we have more immediate pressures that prevent us from finding time to invest in our systems or in ourselves.

    Getting a handle on bad code, checking it early, and doing so every time with automation can help prevent some of these issues, even when we are in a hurry. That’s why it pays to adapt our work and learn from others. Listen to that DBA that keeps your systems alive. Listen to the DevOps engineers that want you to automate things. Certainly, make them prove their suggestions work, but adopt those patterns. Learn to work with them, rather than against them.

    They can see the future.

    Steve Jones

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

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

  • Hidden Heroes

    A few weeks ago I was in Bletchley Park, at the facility where the Allies decoded and broke many of the German Nazi messages in World War II. It’s quite a facility and museum, and I hope to go back. I was distracted that day and didn’t get a lot of time to enjoy the exhibits and really learn more about what happened there.

    I was there for our Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff, and as a part of that, two different executives in our company shared their stories of people who had worked there. What was interesting is that until we planned this event, these two people had no idea that there were people they knew well, who had been part of the effort to end World War II at Bletchley Park. This facility can be considered to be one of the birthplaces of computing.

    They were some of the hidden heroes of World War II.

    Our executives drew a parallel of these people to our customers, notably the DBAs we work with. These are often hidden heroes in their organizations, toiling away, getting things done, keeping systems running, without the recognition or gratitude they might get if their efforts were more widely broadcast.

    That might be a bit of a stretch. However, many of us who work on database systems are doing essential work that our organizations depend on. If we do a poor job, many people complain. If we make mistakes, (usually) lives aren’t lost, but profits can be. Often, no one knows our names, we don’t get a lot of thanks for databases working well, and we have high expectations from our customers.

    Many of us know that data is critical for most organizations today. Many in management today are acknowledging this as well, at least to investors. I don’t know if they’ll ever start to truly appreciate data professionals with kudos and compensation. That might not be a step they’re willing to take since many other departments might claim to be just as important as they also work with data in some way.

    Perhaps we will remain the hidden heroes in today’s organizations.

    Steve Jones

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

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