Voice of the DBA

Steve Jones
  • 4.9 (9)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Voice of the DBA

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. 8 HR. AGO

    Computer Algebra

    I was a bit of a math nerd in high school and college. Some of you might have been as well, but I took advanced math all through high school, culminating with AP Calculus as a senior with 11 other kids (of about 320). In college, I started with Calculus III freshman year and went on to take 7 more semesters of various high level maths. One of those classes included analyzing data with linear regression, which we did with hand calculators and formulae. At SQL Saturday Pittsburgh 2024, I watched a talk from Jeff Moden on linear regression. It was a trip down memory lane, with Jeff explaining how the process worked, the flaws, and how this technique could be used to do some predictions on data stored in SQL Server. It was a great session on the topic, but I liked that Jeff showed how you can use SQL Server to do various math calculations that might be useful to analyze data. I see applications sometimes programming various formulas, but I don't often see people doing this in database queries. Read the rest of Computer Algebra

    4 min

  2. 3 DAYS AGO

    New SQL Server 2022 Functions

    Read the rest of New SQL Server 2022 Functions

    3 min

  3. NOV 18

    How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?

    In most of the organizations I've worked for or consulted with, patching was always a challenge. Patching hasn't usually been given a priority and is often skipped when operations staff is busy. This has resulted in lots of un-patched, or slowly patched systems. I assume this is one reason Microsoft continues to release RTM-GDR patches because some people won't patch at all unless there are critical fixes. I also know that much of IT management sees patching systems like patching parking lots. Needs to be done, but tomorrow, after we do other important work today. Read the rest of How Do You Patch 100 Database Servers?

    3 min

  4. NOV 15

    Do You Want a Microsoft Solution?

    Microsoft constantly releases new features and products in the data platform space. Many of us have seen the SQL Server product grow in new ways, some of which are very useful to us. As an example the changes from log shipping to clustering to Availability Groups has improved our HA/DR options as well as the capabilities available to us in different situations. With that in mind, I saw someone recently that wanted to deploy SQL Server on Kubernetes, which is something that could be a very interesting way of managing your different systems. However, this individual wanted to know when Microsoft would release their own supported solution with a Microsoft operator to manage the instance. There is guidance from Microsoft, but no official operator. Read the rest of Do You Want a Microsoft Solution?

    4 min

  5. NOV 13

    Separate Reads

    Recently I was watching a presentation on how to scale performance in your SQL Server environment and one of the suggestions was setting up Availability Groups (AGs) and having read-intent connections that would query the secondary and not the primary. It's not a bad idea, and the SQL Native Client (and other drivers) support this and make it easy to implement. The pattern of using multiple connections in an application, one for reads and one for writes, has been suggested often. However, in practice, I've rarely seen this work. Apparently having a connection variable, named dbConn, for writes and a second one, named dbConnReadOnly, for reads is too complex for most developers or teams. Read the rest of Separate Reads

    3 min

  6. NOV 10

    Time to Change Your Team

    I assume most of you work with others in a team. Even if you are the data specialist and others work on different technologies, you still have a team. How long has your current team been together in this form? Have you had a stable team that might have grown, but the rest of the individuals and roles/responsibilities stay the same? Or has your team changed makeup, roles, responsibilities, or something else? I don't see a lot of organizations that change their team structures often. There may be people who come and go from a team, but the core structure remains the same. Even when your company might reorganize a bit, often it's teams that shuffle between managers, but mostly remain the same. There certainly are exceptions, and some large orgs (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) regularly shuffle lots of people around, but I'm not sure the teams change their makeup or their mandate much. Read the rest of Time to Change Your Team

    3 min

  7. NOV 7

    Technology Fears

    Recently I had a friend traveling who is not very tech savvy. This person has traveled before and has a routine, but in this case, they were struggling to get an airline's mobile app to work. They also struggled with the website, and just before the trip, they were thinking to cancel because they didn't have a ticket in their hand before driving to the airport. This turned out to be a login issue, and between friends and the airline's customer service, they were able to print out a ticket at home and take it in hand to the airport. Read the rest of Technology Fears

    4 min

  8. NOV 5

    What's New for the Microsoft Data Platform

    Today is the first day at the PASS Data Community Summit and I'm in Seattle where I'll get to open the conference and introduce the Microsoft keynote. I'm sure the keynote will be full of announcements on something, but what? I'm writing this a little over a week before the event, and I have no idea what Microsoft will do. Actually, by the time you read this I may have some ideas as there was a practice session yesterday, but I can't tell you anything. NDA, and really, by the time I got something organized, the keynote will be done. Read the rest of What's New for the Microsoft Data Platform

    3 min
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4.9
out of 5
9 Ratings

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 - 2024
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020 Steve Jones
  • Show Website
    Voice of the DBA

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