Voice Of The DBA podcast

A secret field that summons lightning. A massive spiral that disappears into a salt lake. A celestial observatory carved into a volcano. Meet the wild—and sometimes explosive—world of land art, where artists craft masterpieces with dynamite and bulldozers. In our Season 2 premiere, guest Dylan Thuras, cofounder of Atlas Obscura, takes us off road and into the minds of the artists who literally reshaped parts of the Southwest. These works aren’t meant to be easy to reach—or to explain—but they just might change how you see the world. Land art you’ll visit in this episode: - Double Negative and City by Michael Heizer (Garden Valley, Nevada) - Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson (Great Salt Lake, Utah) - Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt (Great Basin Desert, Utah) - Lightning Field by Walter De Maria (Catron County, New Mexico) - Roden Crater by James Turrell (Painted Desert, Arizona) Via Podcast is a production of AAA Mountain West Group.…

1
Helping Students with a Data Professional Career

1 day ago

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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 are good for anyone that might want to get into the data field. I think this is still one of the better technical careers. I’ve suggested this to my kids, though only one of them went into a technical area. One is a therapist for autistic children and one helps run the ranch while pursuing a graduate degree in literature. If I were to give someone advice on how to get started in a tech field, I’d likely start with these items: first, download the free SQL Server developer or Express editions. Most of us run Windows and this is a good place to start. Get SSMS, and learn to connect to your server. If you have struggles, ask a question in our forums . From there, I’d suggest working through a book on SQ L. Or look at our Stairway series on T-SQL ( basic , beyond basics , advanced ). Learn to work with data and query it. Learn to download and get datasets into a database, as well as how to query, update, and analyze the data. Those are key skills. If you want to manage systems, try setting up an Availability Group, ensure you have backups and can restore systems, and maybe explore replication and CDC. If you want to develop applications, then start building something. Ask a GenAI for help, but produce a working system that lets you analyze some data. Pick sports data, or music data, or something else, and produce an application or report that conducts an analysis of the data. Work with something that’s interesting to you. While you’re doing this, blog. Write about what you learn. Build a growing resume that showcases your skills. Chat with others online, build a network of people, and always have an up-to-date resume that you can send out to find a job. Your resume/CV and your blog are invaluable. That’s my advice. Anything else you suggest? Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…

1
Changing the Paradigm of Work

6 days ago

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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 example given about reworking hotels to remove the front desk since that feature isn’t needed. Instead, people could walk in, and an employee with a tablet could find them to check them in. I’m all for rethinking and redesigning processes. I do think we have a huge glut of software in many organizations that exists because processes have evolved across time, but not everything and we keep our old software. When we have a new need or want a new capability, we add new software (or add features), but we don’t necessarily throw out all the old software, processes, or habits. That wouldn’t be practical, often because when we implement something new, it might not meet all our needs. Or at least we don’t know it meets our needs at first. I don’t love the examples, especially as I see organizations where Teams/Slack are heavily in use (not just in tech companies), and these tools have changed how people work. Not everyone has moved, and there is a lot of document sharing and legacy systems, but that’s also because not everyone wants to or can change at the same pace. However, lots of people have changed how they create, share, collaborate, communicate, and more because of these tools. I also think the hotel example is silly (read the article to see more). I don’t need a desk, and often I check in and get my key without ever visiting a desk. However, I do like the desk because when I need something, I want to be able to find someone, not wander around looking for an employee or waiting for them to respond to some page. When there’s a desk I can see someone is there. I certainly don’t want a kiosk with an AI there to queue at to request a person help me. GenAI LLMs are going to change work for a lot of people, especially those in tech. I don’t know that we can redesign the way we work now, as the technology is still advancing, and I’m not sure how we will want to integrate agents with GenAI to do work. We have to experiment and find ways to use this tech before we build too much. We also have to see it mature. When we do, I bet many more people will start to use AI to generate code, change settings, deploy things, and more. I’m also sure that they will make many mistakes, at scale, and we’ll be using a GenAI agent to undo things, or perhaps we’ll have humans scrambling to fix systems. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the humans commonly fixing things as we might not trust the AI Agent (or our prompting) to fix our mistake. If you could redesign work, what would you want out of an AI? Assume that it is at least as competent as someone you work with. Is there a way that a GenAI system would make your work smoother? Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…

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Does Version Control Scare You

13 days ago

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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 like Git as a way of managing code. I have been surprised how many people aren’t comfortable with version control or Git. Many don’t have the habit, but are amenable to it. What I’m amazed by in 2025 is how many people don’t use it, given that so many tools we use to work with databases, and even other systems, will store items in Git. This isn’t just for development code, but also for infrastructure code. Lots of data tools and servers can store data in Git and use it to deploy changes to all kinds of systems. I’d have expected more people to know Git. As a part of my charity work, I manage the SQL Saturday site , which is stored in a public GitHub repo and all changes are submitted through pull requests to make changes to the site. A few organizers will fork the repo and submit changes to me as pull requests. I love those as I can approve those on my phone. A very few organizers can merge their own changes, as they’ve built up trust. I am, however, surprised at how few people are willing to do any Git work. It seems that so many data professionals don’t want to use or learn Git. I’d have thought this was a core skill for many technical people these days. At least the core ability to clone, branch, commit, and create pull requests. Squashing commits, rebasing, and more can be challenging, but often there will be someone in your organization that can help you if you need to perform those actions. I wonder if you are intimidated by version control, or if you find yourself too busy to use it, or maybe you don’t think it’s valuable. I am curious what you think today. I’ve written about how to use Git in ADS (don’t do that anymore), but those instructions work for VS Code. I’ve written a bit about how DBAs can start using Git . If you don’t like the CLI, there are many thick clients, which are easy to use. Give Git a try today and see how it might help you manage and version your code, your scripts, your documentation. Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…

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Helping Students with a Data Professional Career

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