Voice of the DBA

Steve Jones
  • 4.9 (9)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED DAILY

A series of episodes that look at databases and the world from a data professional's viewpoint. Written and recorded by Steve Jones, editor of SQLServerCentral and The Voice of the DBA.

  1. 2D AGO

    Eight Minutes

    When I was at the Small Data 2025 conference, one of the speakers was talking about their work with AI technologies. This person uses it a lot in their day job, often to complete tasks that they would have struggled to work on in the past, mostly because of time constraints, but also a lack of resources. Sometimes this person has an idea, but doesn't want to distract themselves or others by having them work on a side project. During a recent ride in a Waymo (self-driving car), this person had their laptop out and running Claude Code. They gave it a prompt, asking it to build a small app for some data analysis. During the 8-minute ride, the agent had spit out the code, a Readme, and committed this to a git repo. Later, the speaker tried it and found it solved most of his requirements, and then did some other work on the project, as well as having Claude write more code to get something that was beyond a minimally viable app. Read the rest of Eight Minutes

    4 min

  2. 4D AGO

    JSON Has a Cost

    JSON seems to be everywhere these days. Many application developers like it across all sorts of languages, C#, JAVA, Python, and more. They use it for transferring information between systems, and are comfortable serializing hierarchical object data into JSON from text and de-serializing it back into its various elements. For those of us working in relational databases, JSON seems like a blob of information that isn't easily queried, indexed, or stored. We prefer working with a relational set of data, which brings us into conflict with software developers. We'd like them to convert their objects to a relational structure, and they'd like us to just work with JSON. Read the rest of JSON Has a Cost

    3 min

  3. 6D AGO

    An SSIS Upgrade

    I came across a post recently on the Microsoft Fabric blog about the evolution of SSIS 2025..I hadn't heard much about SSIS in SQL Server 2025, so I thought this might provide some info on the investments that Microsoft is still making in Integration Services. I've run into a few people in the past year who are still heavily invested in SSIS and run packages daily. SSIS seems to be a technology that isn't even close to dying for many organizations. The blog starts well, delving into the security investments with the change to the SqlClient and TLS 1.3, as well as supporting Strict Encryption. I don't know many people using this level of security, but it's good to have SSIS support stronger security. There is also an upgrade for SSIS packages targeting Fabric Data Warehouses if they modify their approach. Read the rest of An SSIS Upgrade

    3 min

  4. JAN 9

    Where Your Value Separates You from Others

    I ran across a post that discusses what makes you a senior engineer (via Brent Ozar). The main point of the post is that there is a core skill that separates senior engineers from others, which is reducing ambiguity. When a senior engineer gets an ill-defined (or ill-communicated) request, they can deliver a solid, or even great, result. When someone says "performance is poor," what do you do with that? Can you build a plan to identify the issues and solve them? Or do you expect the customer to explain what is slow and why it's slow? What metrics do they have showing things are slow? A senior engineer can ask questions to find the problem and then determine how to move forward. Read the rest of Where Your Value Separates You from Others

    3 min

  5. JAN 7

    Your AI Successes

    Recently, I was discussing AI with a friend, and they asked me to name a great success of using AI to build software. I've tried a few things, and I've worked with customers who are using AI tech. However, most of the things I've seen built with AI are small tasks; they're utilities or quick wins that change a minor part of the software. The items tend to be tactical and focused in a narrow band of fixes, and they might save a programmer time, but I'm not seeing large-scale team improvements in productivity. Yet. Read the rest of Your AI Successes

    3 min

  6. JAN 5

    Minimally Viable Security

    Security has been a constant concern for many IT professionals over the years. Many of us are trying to implement better security controls, and yet at the same time, we try to avoid anything that slows us down. Security clearly hasn't been a big enough concern, as we've had more than our share of SQL Injection issues. These often come about from poor practices, lack of education, and too many people not learning to adopt better habits across time. We've also had no shortage of lost backups, open cloud buckets, and more over the years. While security (or cybersecurity) is listed as a concern for tech management, they are quick to avoid slowing down any development or deployment of software. While it is easier to get time for patching these days, it's still not easy. There are plenty of organizations that prioritize resources spent on tasks other than patching, upgrading systems, or training developers. Read the rest of Minimally Viable Security

    4 min

  7. JAN 2

    The North Star for the Year

    It's the beginning of the year, and some of you likely have today off. But plenty of you are at work, moving slowly through this Friday at the start of the year—handling busywork, catching up on maintenance you've let slide, or preparing for the tasks you know will start coming Monday. At Redgate, most engineering teams work toward a North Star goal: a high-level direction that guides your various tasks. Perhaps it's growing a customer base or achieving an overarching product specification. For example (this is completely made up), one North Star might be achieving feature parity across all platforms for SQL Compare. Read the rest of The North Star for the Year

    3 min

  8. 12/31/2025

    Finding Motivation

    I ran across a tweet (are they still tweets?) on X/Twitter that was titled: how to ruin yourself. It had these items, which seem to be coming from a young person. Either a student or in their first job. Stay on your phone all day. Feel sad for no clear reason. Stop eating well and ignore your studies. Sleep super late and wake up in the afternoon. Let sadness take over everything. Always look at others' lives and feel yours isn't enough. Keep blaming yourself for the past but never try to let it go. Compare your progress with people who started years before you. Get stuck imagining outcomes instead of creating them. Keep waiting for motivation instead of building discipline. What was interesting to me is I saw people doing similar things when I was younger. Either adults with careers or fellow students. I'd change "sad" to "anger", which I saw a lot in the 80s. Replace the phone with TV, as I saw lots of people start to invest a lot of time in TV with the growth of cable and 24-hour channels in the early 80s. Eating well was less of a thing, but drinking more was a thing. However, many people stagnated, or maybe ruined, themselves in similar ways. Read the rest of Finding Motivation

    3 min
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About

A series of episodes that look at databases and the world from a data professional's viewpoint. Written and recorded by Steve Jones, editor of SQLServerCentral and The Voice of the DBA.

Information

  • Creator
    Steve Jones
  • Years Active
    2007 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020 Steve Jones
  • Show Website
    Voice of the DBA