86 episodes

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.

Voice of the DBA Steve Jones

    • Technology
    • 4.9 • 8 Ratings

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.

    What's Your Job

    What's Your Job

    There are a lot of technology people looking for jobs these days, especially after all the layoffs that have occurred in 2023. At the same time, I have a number of friends and clients that are struggling to hire qualified people. They get lots of candidates, but they are dismayed at how little the candidates they interview seem to know, or at least how little candidates know in the areas that their organization has needs.
    Today, I want to help people get better at growing and managing their careers. Therefore I'm asking those of you that are employed to describe your job. Give us your title in the comments and then list 5-10 things that you've done lately. What types of queries have you written? What tasks did you complete with SQL Server or Azure SQL? Have you needed to research something to solve a problem? What knowledge or concepts helped you complete a task? 
    Read the rest of What's Your Job?

    • 2 min
    How Many Days Can You Survive?

    How Many Days Can You Survive?

    I saw a great post from DCAC on disaster plans and using them after a fire in an LA data center. DCAC wasn't affected, and I wouldn't expect them to be. Denny, Joey, Monica, John, Kerry, and Meagan are all experts in running systems efficiently and effectively. They think about how to ensure that things keep working in the event of disasters and have delivered presentations all over the world helping you become better at managing your own servers.
    However, Denny brings up a great question in the post. How many days could you survive without IT systems? Days? Weeks? Have you ever been in that situation? I'm sure many of us have experienced a failure of some sort. An application crash, hardware dying, or most commonly, Internet access being cut. All of these are small disasters, which typically are fixed quickly. Hopefully, these aren't issues you experience every week. If you do, maybe you need to call DCAC or someone else and fix more fundamental issues.
    Read the rest of How Many Days Can You Survive?

    • 3 min
    Better Communication Through Less Messaging

    Better Communication Through Less Messaging

    I have learned to really appreciate and enjoy Slack as a messaging tool. It's something I use daily, and a place where many inside my company communicate about all sorts of issues. There certainly can be an overload of channels, but for me, I add and prune channels regularly and it's a good way to segregate conversations.
    I didn't feel that way when I started. At first, I resisted using it. Now I couldn't imagine not having it, but not everyone feels the same way. There's an article about a SaaS provider moving their company off Slack and instead using the Basecamp project management platform and keeping communications inside there.
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    • 2 min
    Scaling Up Monitoring

    Scaling Up Monitoring

    Monitoring production databases is important when it's the systems are in production. Operations departments know that catching issues early, being proactive, and having data to troubleshoot issues make their job easier. Not having these things makes their job much more stressful.
    Most of us work with data in some way and the availability of that is important. Certainly, security, integrity, and performance matter as well, but availability is key. Many organizations don't have any monitoring systems set up. Instead, they troubleshoot problems when someone files a ticket or calls. I'm amazed at this, though I know building and managing a monitoring system is hard and purchasing third-party products can be outside of your budget. Still, having something in place makes everyone's job easier.
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    • 3 min
    Validating Password Expiration

    Validating Password Expiration

    I would guess that the majority of instances I've had to manage in my career were those that I didn't initially install and configure. I've inherited more instances than I would bother to count, and I often need to double-check what's been done in the past. As noted in the series on new jobs from Tracy and Josephine, there are a lot of settings to check and adjust to meet your standards.
     
    While backups are often my first priority, security is second. I usually want to know who the sysadmins are and ensure systems are patched and configured to reduce the attack surface area. There is one other security check that I think I haven't always been overly concerned about checking: password expiration.
    Read the rest of Validating Password Expiration

    • 3 min
    AI Thoughts on the Build Keynote

    AI Thoughts on the Build Keynote

    If you haven't seen the Build 2023 keynote, it's, well, interesting. At a surface level, it's focused on AI and delivers some demos that many of us might find to be useful and intriguing. I didn't attend the event (or watch it live), but I did see it a bit later and I made some notes, pausing the 30-minute talk a few times to think about what I'd seen.
     
    The opening lightly glosses over some of the AI enhancements to development tools and the environments that can be created quickly in GitHub or Azure. Some of us will like those, and maybe they'll grow on me, but I tend to prefer a development environment on my own hardware, where I have unlimited compute power at a fixed cost. The first big announcement is then showing Copilot technology, essentially some ChatGPT-like abilities, embedded into Windows 11. The demo shows asking Windows where settings are, with the response including buttons to take actions, like setting dark mode. Minorly useful, though I think Windows search works fine. I can type "env" and get the "edit environment variables" in the results. I still have to click through to change things, but this doesn't seem like a better use of AI, especially if I need to type "set dark mode" instead of "dark".
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    • 5 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
8 Ratings

8 Ratings

aaig ,

Excellent Podcast

Steve is great at providing information for the Database Administrator. I am a 'part time' DBA. And I get a lot out of this podcast and SQL Sever Central.

Steve Poe ,

Sr. Systems Engineer

I look forward to hearing Steve's podcast each week on what DBA/IT people are going and how the industry is evolving. Balance technical with business goals is always a never-ending opportunity.

MillenniumKnight ,

Steve's shows are great

Steve is a matter-of-fact DBA that has a lot of experience in the trenches of database development and database maintenance. He is a straight-shooter that doesn't pull any punches. He offers his opinions and makes you question what you would do in the same situations. A must listen for anyone responsible for data in an organization.

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