Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Monday Monitor Tips: AI Query Analysis

    AI is everywhere. It’s in the news, it’s being added to every product, management wants everyone to be more productive with AI.

    Redgate Monitor isn’t immune from this wave. We have spent a lot of time over the last year trying to learn about AI tech, experiment with it, and find ways that it provides values to customers, not just becomes a marketing label.

    The big area is query analysis, though this wasn’t the first area. I’ll discuss another area in a different post, but this one looks at AI assisted query analysis.

    This feature is a part of Redgate Monitor Standard, which hopefully gives many of you confidence that we haven’t abandoned this edition for the Enterprise one. We still haves teams working on features for everyone in Redgate Monitor.

    This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts.

    Getting Help with Queries

    If you find a problem area on your server and scroll down to look at queries, you can expend the query details with the arrow on the left. When you do this, you see something like this:

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    Lots of these details are familiar, but the AI sparkle and purple button is new. It says “Analyze Query” and what this does is send some query details and context to an AI LLM that Redgate runs in AWS for analysis.

    When you click this, it takes a few seconds and then a response from the AI LLM comes back. You get a summary, which in this case tries to look at the query, infer some intent and then use details from the query to give a quick view of what this query is doing. You can see this in the image below.

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    Below this, we give a performance analysis. In this case, we get the state and some observations about how this query plan looks. In this case, we see estimates of cost and rows, parallelism, etc. and then that this is a system function, there are implicit conversions, and large rows.

    The section below this has recommendations. These are guesses at things that might help improve performance. In this case, there aren’t a lot of items, but some of these can help, like the implicit conversions.

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    Here is another plan, in this case, there are three items noted from the query. There is some detail and ordering. The implicit conversions here are critical as these can dramatically slow the query. The second item, noting over 1 million rows, is another thing to look at and lastly, SELECT *.

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    Below this are positives and action items. You shouldn’t blindly follow these items, but rather evaluate and test if they make a difference. In this case, these would help.

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    We try to intelligently pass through context to the AI LLM, but we are not custom training LLMs. We are hosting the models, so no data is being saved. We send context, get a response, and then that session closes with none of your data kept. You can read more in our AI FAQ.

    Note the upper right corner of the first image, where we tell you that this content might have mistakes and you should check. You can also click thumbs up/down and provide feedback if you wish.

    Summary

    This post looks at the AI query analysis, which is in preview as of Feb 2026. This is intended to help you more quickly analyze what’s happening on your servers. This should help your team have a consistent view of what is going on and help share knowledge among team members.

    If you find issues, or value, in this feature, please send us feedback as we are looking to improve this feature over time.

    If you have feedback, please let us know as we value your opinions and comments on how we shape the future of Redgate Monitor.

    Redgate Monitor is a world class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.

  • The Book of Redgate: Mistakes

    This is kind of a funny page to look at.

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    The next page has more detail. This is the text from the facing page:

    What we do is very difficult, the current situation is hard to understand ,and the future is uncertain. Mistakes are an inevitable consequence of attempting to get the right stuff done. Unless we can make mistakes visible both individually and collectively ,we will be doomed to mediocrity.

    One of the things that I’ve enjoyed about being at Redgate is that we try stuff and we sometimes fail. We talk about those issues in engineering and we do a decent job of an RCA and retrospective that we publish publicly (internally). I like that. Not every group does this, but many do, and lots of groups have influenced others to start or get better.

    We’re not perfect, and we know it. However, we are striving to accept those imperfections in others, even as we try to improve.

    I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.

  • Flyway Tips: Multiple Projects

    One of the nice things about Flyway Desktop is that it helps you manage your database code as a project and see what changes are being built. However, many of our customers end up working with multiple databases, so there is a need for multiple projects.

    This post looks at the new addition to the GUI: the ability to work with multiple projects at one time in the same GUI.

    I’ve been working with Flyway and Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

    Opening a Project

    Flyway Desktop (FWD) used to only allow one project to be open at a time. This proved cumbersome. We debated allowing multiple instances of FWD, but keeping track of them can be cumbersome. We decided to allow multiple projects inside the same FWD instance.

    You can see this below, where I have three projects open at once. I have Northwind, a Synapse project, and an Autopilot project. These are listed across the top as tabs, and clicking each brings that project to the front. The current project is showing the Autopilot one.

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    If I click the Northwind project, notice the little red underline. This indicates the project being shown.

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    To add a new project, I click the plus (+) at the top to the right of my projects.

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    This gives me a list of my projects, the same way I’d see them when I started Flyway Desktop. Notice the 3 I have open are listed first, as they were most recently touched.

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    If I click any of these projects, like my SimpleTalk_Timestamp project, it opens up. As with any project, the comparison on the Schema Model tab starts automatically.

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    Now I can switch projects quickly with a click, and my existing projects don’t close.

    Summary

    This is a small change, but one that has a big impact. The teams are constantly working on small and large changes like this. The ability to manage multiple projects is one that’s been requested and we were working on it, testing designs with customers and finding the best balance for most of them.

    We settled on multiple projects in one GUI, which I like and seems to be working well.

    If you work with Flyway, update your desktop and give it a try. We would love to hear your feedback.

    Flyway is an incredible way of deploying changes from one database to another, and now includes both migration-based and state-based deployments. You get the flexibility you need to control database changes in your environment. If you’ve never used it, give it a try today. It works for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and nearly 50 other platforms.

    Video Walkthrough

    Watch me do this in video:

  • A Wellbeing Day at Redgate

    It’s a day off for Redgate today. This is our annual wellbeing day, where everyone gets the day off.

    Well, not everyone, but anyone that has to work today gets to take another day off. I missed last year’s day because of travel and commitments, but I managed to take a day off later in the year.

    For me, I was coaching in Orlando this weekend at the 2026 Sunshine Classic Girls Junior National Qualifier with my wife. Actually, I was the assistant to the assistant coach, so I was really there supporting my wife and cheerleading for the young ladies. We stayed an extra day for a cheaper flight, and to unwind a bit. The timing worked out, so I don’t use a vacation day today, though I did last Friday, which was the first day of the tournament.

    This is a relatively new perk, just a few years old, but I’m proud that Redgate tries to support and care for employees in different ways. The company has always recognized that balance in life is important and we need time away from work. We work hard when we’re working, so we need breaks.

    It’s a travel day, but these three day tournaments are long and tiring. It’s nice to have a day to unwind before getting back to it tomorrow.