Best Server Patching Podcasts (2025)

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Episode 52: Why Most LLM Products Break at Retrieval (And How to Fix Them) 28:38

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5d ago28:38

28:38

Most LLM-powered features do not break at the model. They break at the context. So how do you retrieve the right information to get useful results, even under vague or messy user queries? In this episode, we hear from Eric Ma, who leads data science research in the Data Science and AI group at Moderna. He shares what it takes to move beyond toy dem…

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A Well Deserved Break 2:44

11d ago2:44

2:44

This is my last day of work. Not forever, just for six weeks. I'm off on my sabbatical after today and won't be back until August 11. However, everything should run smoothly with Grant and Kellyn holding things down until I return. Have a little patience with them as this site can be a bit of a hectic whirlwind at times, and they still have other j…

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Episode 51: Why We Built an MCP Server and What Broke First 47:41

11d ago47:41

47:41

What does it take to actually ship LLM-powered features, and what breaks when you connect them to real production data? In this episode, we hear from Philip Carter — then a Principal PM at Honeycomb and now a Product Management Director at Salesforce. In early 2023, he helped build one of the first LLM-powered SaaS features to ship to real users. M…

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The Technical Debt Anchor 2:59

13d ago2:59

2:59

I ran across an article on the 7 types of tech debt that can cripple your business, which is a great title. It certainly is one that might scare a lot of CTOs/CIOs/tech management. I am sure that much of the IT management gets concerned on a regular basis with how quickly their staff can evolve their software to meet new business needs. The first t…

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The Data Warehousing Choice 2:50

15d ago2:50

2:50

Each time I compile and curate the Database Weekly newsletter, I find lots of Fabric content from the various sources I watch to compose the newsletter. Since I primarily deal with the Microsoft Data Platform stack, this makes sense. Most of the things I am interested in are related to Microsoft, and as a result, I tend to use sources that also use…

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Multiple Monitoring Tools 3:08

18d ago3:08

3:08

Part of my Redgate work is with customers who need to monitor their database servers. With estates growing quickly, both in scale and types of database platforms used, keeping an eye on everything can be challenging. Add in the lack of staff growing as quickly are the number of servers, and I find many companies seeking out monitoring tools to bett…

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SQL Server 2025 Excitement 2:54

20d ago2:54

2:54

Are you looking forward to SQL Server 2025? Or perhaps you think this is just another release, or perhaps you are not looking for new features or capabilities in your environment. Maybe you don't care about new things, but are looking for enhancements to features introduced in 2017/2019/2022. There is certainly no shortage of things that can be imp…

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Episode 50: A Field Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products -- With Hamel Husain 27:42

20d ago27:42

27:42

If we want AI systems that actually work, we need to get much better at evaluating them, not just building more pipelines, agents, and frameworks. In this episode, Hugo talks with Hamel Hussain (ex-Airbnb, GitHub, DataRobot) about how teams can improve AI products by focusing on error analysis, data inspection, and systematic iteration. The convers…

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Patching the Patch 3:08

22d ago3:08

3:08

I had to make a few changes to a SQL Saturday event recently. The repo is public, and some of the organizers submit PRs for their changes, and others send me an email/message/text/etc. for a change. In this case, an organizer just asked for a couple of image updates to their site. I opened VS Code, created a branch, added a URL for the images, and …

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What is a Failed Deployment? 3:44

25d ago3:44

3:44

When talking about DevOps, the goal is to produce better software over time. Both better quality as well as a smoother process of getting bits to your clients. There are a number of metrics typically used to measure how well a software team is performing, and one of the things is Change fail percentage. This is the percentage of deployments that ca…

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Shorten the Debate 2:21

29d ago2:21

2:21

Many of us are faced with choices and decisions constantly in our jobs. How do we approach a problem? What should we do as a team to get the work done? How do we code or manage or test or do something else with a database? Maybe more importantly, how long do we spend deciding? Read the rest of Shorten the Debate…

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Reflecting on the Mythical Man Month 4:50

1M ago4:50

4:50

At an event recently, I had a chat with someone after one of my sessions. I had been speaking on DevOps and ways to better structure your team and build software. After the session, one person asked me if I'd read The Mythical Man Month and if I felt we'd gotten a lot better at building software since that book was published. I do think we have got…

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Episode 49: Why Data and AI Still Break at Scale (and What to Do About It) 1:21:45

1M ago1:21:45

1:21:45

If we want AI systems that actually work in production, we need better infrastructure—not just better models. In this episode, Hugo talks with Akshay Agrawal (Marimo, ex-Google Brain, Netflix, Stanford) about why data and AI pipelines still break down at scale, and how we can fix the fundamentals: reproducibility, composability, and reliable execut…

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IT Unionization 2:42

1M ago2:42

2:42

I've been reading an interesting book that looks at some of the ways that we can better build software in enterprises. One of the side notes in the book is that the tech companies have the funding and the ability to disrupt many other types of businesses, not just technology. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have delved into other types of ind…

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Helping Students with a Data Professional Career 2:52

1M ago2:52

2:52

At a recent event, I had a student ask about how to get started as a data professional. What types of things should they do? What platform should they work on or learn? Where should they focus time? What tools are available? Those are all good questions and many of you likely have your own advice. I'll give a few things to think about today, which …

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Changing the Paradigm of Work 3:11

1M ago3:11

3:11

I saw an article on AI usage that is based on an upcoming book that suggests redesigning the world around new tech, not adding it to existing things. The first example is how electricity was introduced to existing factories, but it only provided some incremental gains until new factories were redesigned around electric motors. There's also an examp…

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Episode 48: HOW TO BENCHMARK AGI WITH GREG KAMRADT 1:04:25

2M ago1:04:25

1:04:25

If we want to make progress toward AGI, we need a clear definition of intelligence—and a way to measure it. In this episode, Hugo talks with Greg Kamradt, President of the ARC Prize Foundation, about ARC-AGI: a benchmark built on Francois Chollet’s definition of intelligence as “the efficiency at which you learn new things.” Unlike most evals that …

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Does Version Control Scare You 2:58

2M ago2:58

2:58

As a part of my job, I often work with customers on how they can get database code into a version control system. That's Git for the most part today, which is the most popular system in the world. I'm comfortable using Git for many basic tasks, but I am not an expert by any means. I've used version control for years, and quite a few systems, and I …

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The AI View from Above 3:20

2M ago3:20

3:20

It likely isn't a surprise to many of you that executives like AI. A survey shows that 74% of executives surveyed have greater confidence in AI-generated insights than advice from colleagues or friends. At the board level, even more (85%) favor AI-driven advice. That's amazing to me, and while I might think this is a bit too much trust being placed…

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Are Data Breaches Inevitable? 3:14

2M ago3:14

3:14

I read a piece recently that got me thinking that data breaches might be inevitable. Disclosure: This was written by Redgate, for whom I work, titled "Data breaches May Be Inevitable—Compliance Failures Don’t Have to Be". It's based on our research with the State of Database Landscape survey as well as feedback and conversations with customers. The…

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Deleting a Database 3:02

2M ago3:02

3:02

Who among us has deleted a production database? I'd hope it's very few of you that have done this in your career. I'm sure a few of you have deleted (or truncated or updated all rows for) a table in production. I've done that a few times, but fortunately, I've been able to recover the data quickly. I had this happen in SQL 6.5 and was grateful I co…

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Database DevOps Recommendations 3:13

2M ago3:13

3:13

The DORA organization is constantly researching how to better produce software at any organization. This is similar to work done by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute many years ago. Both groups are trying to determine what things help engineers work better and produce high-quality software. On the DORA site, there is a database change …

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How Helpful is a GenAI Copilot 3:23

2M ago3:23

3:23

I'm sure many of you have tried a GenAI LLM to do something. Maybe write some code, maybe get some sort of recommendation or suggestion, maybe to rewrite something or summarize text. I'm sure you have had some feelings about whether the tool made you more or less productive. There was a trial conducted by the Australia Department of the Treasury on…

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Rising Pay for Certifications 2:45

2M ago2:45

2:45

Certifications can pay off, at least in some areas. There's a piece that talks about pay rising for some tech professionals when they have some credentials. Networking, architecture, and project management are mentioned in the report, as are database and data management. I haven't seen the source report, and I'm not sure which certifications are ge…

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Learn to Code 2:56

2M ago2:56

2:56

I thought this story about a programmer and a GenAI to be rather humorous. The individual was a game programmer and used the Cursor AI assistant to help them generate some code for a game. After a few hundred lines of code, the AI delivered this: "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling…

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Interview Tips 3:26

2M ago3:26

3:26

When is the last time you interviewed for a new position? It could have been at a new company, or maybe you had an interview was for a different position inside your existing company. Perhaps you needed to talk to a manager internally for a new project. I've tried to treat all my one-on-one meetings or reviews as interviews since I'm usually trying…

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Is SQL Server Feature Complete? 2:24

2M ago2:24

2:24

I heard Brent Ozar recently talked a bit about the SQL Server platform and its future. He also mentioned that Fabric has distracted the data platform team and it isn't a great product. I tend to agree, and I see too many bugs, holes, and problems. However at the end of this short snippet, he talks about SQL Server with an interesting comment. Is SQ…

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50 Years of Microsoft 3:19

2M ago3:19

3:19

I get the Gates Notes email periodically and I always find it interesting to read. Like Bill Gates or not, he is a very smart individual and has thoughtful things to say. Even when I don't always agree with him, I enjoy hearing his view and have enjoyed seeing him deliver presentations. In fact, one of my career highlights was at SQL Saturday #175 …