Voice of the DBA

It's always interesting to me when I give product feedback to engineers at Redgate on their demos. Quite often they've built a feature that uses AdventureWorks or Pagila (PostgreSQL) or some other well known schema to evaluate how their particular thing works with a database. I try to remind them that many databases aren't well modeled and designed with consistent naming. I ran across a Daily WTF article that isn't showcasing databases, but it does show some poor naming in data being stored in a PDF. The developer who had to automate a process had to map these fields to database fields, which also might not be named very clearly. In fact, I think I've seen a few database models that used column names like the field names in the PDF. Read the rest of Poor Names

Recently, I saw a graph about making decisions that showed the impact of both reversibility and consequences. Here is an example of such a graph and how one might approach decisions. If things are easily reversible or have a low consequence, we tend to make a decision and move on. Or we are willing to make a decision. One of the examples of such a decision was choosing what to wear out to dinner. It's easy to change, and (in general) of little consequence. Choosing to send a large amount of money to someone through Venmo (or some other mechanism), can be hard to reverse and have substantial consequences. This made me think of some of the DBA and developer decisions I've made in the past. When we work with databases, the changes we make can have a large impact and be quite consequential to our organization. Downtime, data quality, etc. could all impact revenue, profit, reputation, or even future prospects of survival. That can be a lot of pressure when you are deciding to refactor a data model or adjust a lot of data during a deployment. Read the rest of Acting with Confidence

Years ago I was giving a talk on software development and asked the audience how long it takes to review a PR that has 10 lines changed. Answers were in the minutes to tens of minutes range. I then asked how long it takes to review a PR that has 1,000 lines changed. Some people said hours, but a few people said seconds. I've often taken the latter, pessimistic view. Not because I don't think engineers want to do a good job, but because I know human behavior. Most humans will get bored, lose focus, and end up skimming through a large amount of code. Many (most?) people don't want to spend all that time, after all they have they their own code to write. They'll just approve the PR and assume testing will catch any major issues. Read the rest of Barely Reviewed Code

SQL Server Central has been a great success over the last 25 years. We've helped a lot of people improve their careers with the Microsoft Data Platform, primarily SQL Server, but we've published articles on other aspects of databases, including other platforms. I wrote a bit about the history of the site last month, with a few stories in various pieces. We even got Brian Knight to contribute a piece on what the site meant to him. Over the years, we experimented with trying to get an SSIS Central or a SSRS Central off the ground. However, we struggled to find other people who would have been willing to partner with us to provide content and answer questions. Eventually, we gave up, though I wish today we'd have pushed forward with a PostgreSQL Central site a few years back. Read the rest of AI Database Central

One of the challenges of AI-assisted coding agents is that they tend to produce A LOT of code. Even in refactoring or migration changes, the AIs can work quickly and generate such a volume of code that the process starts to become overwhelming. For pull requests, for CI/CD build systems, and certainly for human reviewers, they can be overwhelmed. This can become a real problem with OSS projects, where submissions can grow exponentially to the point that maintainers stop looking at pull requests. I suspect the same thing might happen in corporate repositories when lots of developers can refactor or submit huge amounts of code produced by AI agents in a fraction of the time it took a year ago. I was listening to an interview with an experienced software developer and OSS project maintainer who said that he preferred getting a "prompt request" that contained a description of a problem and the specification for a solution that he could submit to his own LLM to get the code. Rather than use an AI to review a code in a PR written by a human or AI agent, a great prompt that can communicates the problem and solution is preferred. Read the rest of Prompt Requests

We do a lot of research at Redgate Software, often contacting customers or Ambassadors and asking questions, getting feedback, listening to their challenges or criticisms. We take that information and it helps guide us to build the tools that help you in your job. Recently I watched a call with a customer that uses our famous Toolbelt in their job and has for years. In this case, the call was about the value of Flyway and how that might fit in their organization. The person performed a lot of manual work to deploy code changes, and could see the way in which Flyway helps, but wasn't interested in saving time. They saw their time as free. I assume their employer felt that way as well. Read the rest of Is Your Time "Free"?

I wrote a blog about sitting at LHR recently and watching planes take off. That's been a fun thing for me to do when I'm stuck at the airport. I can see a plane roll down the runway every 35-45s during busy times. This time I was sitting by a window in the hotel, working and watching. There was a moment when I realized no planes were taking off. I looked and saw a vehicle rolling down the runway, and then realized there were two, one from each direction. It was an runway FOD inspection, looking for anything that might damage a plane. Read the rest of Doing the Little Things

When I was young and needed to learn about something, I had to go to a library or a bookstore to get information. I often started by looking through an encyclopedia. I had to wander between entries to learn more about the topic I was researching. A few lucky friends had their own copy of an encyclopedia, which was nice since we could research at home. At some point these collections of information were moved to CD/DVDs, which made them more portable and more accessible to a larger group of people than in the past. In the 90s we had the innovation of search engines, which allows us to more quickly move through information. There was more information available on the Internet than was ever published in encyclopedias. Over the years, these search engines improved their ability to rank and recommend information that is relevant to your query. However, you still need some idea of what you are trying to learn about. You have to direct the searches, although the Google auto-complete felt very predictive at times. Read the rest of Everything is the right question away

A few weeks ago I was in Bletchley Park, at the facility where the Allies decoded and broke many of the German Nazi messages in World War II. It's quite a facility and museum, and I hope to go back. I was distracted that day and didn't get a lot of time to enjoy the exhibits and really learn more about what happened there. I was there for our Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff, and as a part of that, two different executives in our company shared their stories of people who had worked there. What was interesting is that until we planned this event, these two people had no idea that there were people they knew well, who had been part of the effort to end World War II at Bletchley Park. This facility can be considered to be one of the birthplaces of computing. Read the rest of Hidden Heroes.

Recently I was working with a customer that is trying to smooth out their database development process. They noted that a lot of changes tend to take a significant amount of time and impact their availability. They came to Redgate to see if Flyway might be a way to improve the effectiveness of their internal groups that build, deploy, and manage their database software. We can help, but often when I get called to help architect things, we are trying to decide if the customer is a good fit for our solutions. Since we work on a subscription model, we want to be sure customers are happy and get value from their decision. Otherwise they have a poor experience and don't renew. This might be because they aren't ready, or it might be that the question wasn't considered of whether our solution fits their environment well. In any case, I usually dig into the goals and challenges they've faced with their current process. Read the rest of Changing Data Types