Voice of the DBA

It can be hard to find candidates for positions these days. I know there are a lot of people looking for jobs, but are they the ones you want? Are they a good fit for your team? Those are hard questions to answer when culling through resumes, conducting phone screens, and sitting in interview rooms asking questions from a template. What can be even harder is to compare different candidates when multiple people may interact with the candidates. Even if you do all the work, you're busy. Can you make good comparisons of different individuals that you've spoken to across a few weeks, in between all the real work you're trying to get done? I know I've struggled to do this, no matter how many notes I take or how long the discussions are with other team members. I have had a very mixed bag of success in hiring. Read the rest of Creating Candidate Interest

AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems and technology has been all over our industry for the past year or so, ever since ChatGPT released the initial public version in late 2022. It seems that there is a lot of hype around the possibilities, with plenty of excitement and skepticism, depending on who is talking about the tech. However, there do seem to be some places where the technology is working well, and security is one of them. There is an article about how Microsoft is using AI to help spot ransomware, which seemed to have run rampant a few years ago. It's still around, though it seems fewer exploits are being publicized. That might be because systems are better protected, perhaps there are fewer attacks (unlikely), or maybe more organizations are getting better at covering up their issues. They might be better prepared to restore backups or quicker to pay a ransom. Read the rest of Using AI for Security

The inspiration for this was a piece about the art of the good code review. Throughout my career, I've seen code reviews grow and change. From formal meetings to automated notifications and asynchronous discussions to complete lip service to the process. I'd like to think that most organizations are beyond the latter and there is some sort of review beyond the developer, but I still see a lack of other eyes looking at code before it's deployed, especially database code. The article above opens with the idea of why we review code. The main reason is to create ownership, or more specifically, shared ownership. I had never thought of it in these terms, even though I think the ideas of standards and patterns are certainly shared items. Having everyone take ownership not only keeps quality high but could help you share knowledge and also ensure everyone feels a responsibility to safeguard all the code. This also helps everyone keep an eye on the larger picture of the entire codebase. Read the rest of The Art of the Code Review

About ten years ago my sister-in-law broke the screen on her mobile phone. She'd had an older iPhone and when she went to upgrade, none of the upgrade processes worked because her OS was so far behind that they couldn't transfer her information smoothly. She had been avoiding OS updates because they interrupted her life, but that was now a problem because the world had marched so far beyond her version that there weren't tools, or at least, no one was interested in trying to perform an upgrade across multiple OS versions (I think it was 3 or 5 versions). I ran into this recently with someone else I knew, but not for a mobile phone. For TFS 2015. This customer had been working along with this older system and is finally ready to upgrade to Azure DevOps in the cloud. They wanted to know if they could somehow upgrade the TFS database and move all that data easily into the cloud. I said this wasn't likely easy as this isn't an upgrade, but an export and import of a lot of data. Microsoft offered a path, but it was multiple upgrades before an export/import, which was deemed too expensive. Right now, I'm not sure what they're doing to do. Read the rest of The Dangers of Not Upgrading

No, I don't have a way to license a SQL Server instance for your application for free. Microsoft still charges for production workloads. However, there are several ways that you can do development or testing for free, or at a greatly reduced cost. Bob Ward spent a bit of time researching options and he's written a post that outlines a number of your options. It's very comprehensive and I know a lot of us are grateful to Bob for summarizing our options. As I work with developers in organizations, there are often questions about the licensing for dev editions. This comes up more with Oracle than other platforms, but SQL Server does get asked about. We made a decision to support SQL Server Developer Edition in Redgate Clone, which is in line with what Bob's post above says: this edition is for developers (and it's free). There is one caveat here, which I never knew. The licensing guide says you cannot build test data and move that into production. I'm assuming this doesn't mean you can't create a list of US states, countries in the world, or statuses. I think this means something more substantial, but if anyone knows, let me know. Read the rest of Free SQL Server

I drive a Tesla Model Y and love it. They're not for everyone and not for every situation, but I think it's the best car I've owned. My wife feels the same way, and if we had a need for two cars, we'd likely get another one. The car is fun, and I look forward to getting in and moving around town. If you have questions about owning an EV or a Model Y, please feel free to ask. The car isn't perfect, and there are things I wish I could change. There have also been a few recalls on the car, which is interesting for a Tesla. A few of these recalls meant that I got a software update a few days or weeks later and something changed. There was another recall recently, which affects most Tesla vehicles in the US. I'm sure that by the time you read this, I'll have a software update applied and the issue will be resolved. Read the rest of Visual Design for Safety

I was talking with a friend recently about some of their co-workers. In this case, they were complaining that another person couldn't do some tasks that my friend considered relatively easy things. Deal with an unusual restore situation, write some PowerShell to reconfigure servers, build somewhat complex (to them) queries, etc. Things that my friend thinks most database people should be able to do after a year of experience. However, my friend questioned whether they were evaluating co-workers appropriately. How can one tell? I might be able to tell if a coworker is better or worse at a task, but what's my frame of reference and my experience. I might think them not capable at things I do well. At the same time, I can be wowed by someone with more experience with a technology I don't know well, such as Azure Data Factory, but not really be able to judge if they're average or an expert. Read the rest of Am I Good At My Job?

Git has become a fantastic tool for me, and many other technologists, over the last ten years. It's almost ubiquitous in most of my clients, and so many people are comfortable with it. Many others aren't, which is why I started a Git series for DBAs (and other Ops people) on my blog. Quite a few people asked me why I recommend git over a file share for storing code that a team of Ops people or DBAs might use. Why isn't a global file share a better choice in an organization? I think I have a few good reasons, but if you disagree, let me know in the discussion for this piece. Read the rest of This is Why You Use Git for Scripts

I've always valued having a team of people I know and can work with. While I haven't had a lot of long-term jobs before Redgate, I have had a few positions that lasted more than a year and appreciated working with the same group for a long time. We might gain or lose a person, but overall, the structure of the team was the same day after day. This was a comfortable atmosphere, and I liked knowing who I was working with each day. At Redgate, we have had some stable teams of people, but in our engineering area, we move teams around. There is an annual re-teaming each December/January where engineers can choose to leave their team and ask to transfer to another one. They get to put in their top three choices (or remain on their team), and we do a good job of trying to match up everyone's preferences. The number and charter of teams do change a bit each year, so engineers get visibility into the structure we're planning before they mark a preference. It seems from our internal reports that we match up 99% of engineers with their first or second choices (first choice is in the high 80s). Read the rest of Un-Stable Teams

In the Phoenix Project (worth a read), there is a character called Brent, who is to go-to person for everything in IT. I don't know if this character was modeled after Brent Ozar, but I always picture him when I re-read the book, and I suspect he was that person in previous positions. I've been that person as well, and it's both exciting, fulfilling, and very stressful. At Redgate, that person has been Robert C, who is my go-to person for many questions. In the DBA world, I think of Jeff Moden. He's been a prolific and incredible author over the years on many things SQL-related and is a huge proponent of others learning to write better code and better utilize the database platform more efficiently. I suspect in his company, he is the go-to person for most database-related questions and problems. I also suspect he solves most of them very well and has the influence (or power) to effect change. Read the rest of Do You Have a Jeff?