way0utwest
@way0utwest.bsky.social
📤 458
đź“Ą 50
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Founder, SQL Server Central and Advocate at Redgate Software. President, SQL Saturday charity
It's H1, early summer. I'm getting notes about getting ready for 2027 healthcare and benefits enrollment. The US is such a mess. I shouldn't have to enroll in August for Jan 2027. Life changes, things move on, insurance companies should be able to handle Nov enrollments.
about 13 hours ago
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It's a great Monday. Feeling relaxed after a few days at home and I'm hard at work getting things ready for my next vacation (over the July 4 weekend). That's a good way to push forward at work.
about 17 hours ago
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Today's editorial: What is the Cloud?
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What is the Cloud?
Last week we had a training session at Redgate Software on the Cloud. One of the first slides from John Q Martin asked the question, "what is the cloud?" The next slide had the answer: it's just someone else's computer. I mean that's true, but it's not Grant's computer. He's got a creaky, 4 year old HP that I don't want running my workload.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/22/what-is-the-cloud/
about 21 hours ago
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Brain Exercises: Fun Away from Work I do like using my brain and trying different activities. Trying to solve T-SQL puzzles, or writing some code, or even playing some games that require me to think. Recently my wife and I took a cruise. We’ve done this before and one of the things we’ve enjoyed…
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Brain Exercises: Fun Away from Work
I do like using my brain and trying different activities. Trying to solve T-SQL puzzles, or writing some code, or even playing some games that require me to think. Recently my wife and I took a cruise. We’ve done this before and one of the things we’ve enjoyed it the trivia contests. They’re fun and they tax your memory a little, and reveal how much you know about the world around you.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/22/brain-exercises-fun-away-from-work/
about 22 hours ago
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Today's editorial: Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears
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Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears
Change is inevitable for most of us. The jobs we hold, the places we work, the people we know, even our families grow and change over time. As I get older and live longer, I've learned to accept, appreciate, and flow with changes. I might resist, delay, embrace, or anticipate tomorrow, knowing there is always a positive and negative side to things.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/19/changes-happiness-and-a-few-tears/
4 days ago
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A Career of Memories Annabel retired from
Redgate Software
this week. Across most of my career at Redgate, I’ve participated in many events, some we hosted, some we sponsored. At most of these events, Annabel has been a part of organizing, financing, executing (or all three) the events with me.…
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A Career of Memories
Annabel retired from Redgate Software this week. Across most of my career at Redgate, I’ve participated in many events, some we hosted, some we sponsored. At most of these events, Annabel has been a part of organizing, financing, executing (or all three) the events with me. From SQL in the City to SQL Saturdays to Redgate Summits to the PASS Summit…
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/19/a-career-of-memories/
4 days ago
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This never happens
5 days ago
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I can take a breath. After a stretch of in and out, I am home for 4+ weeks. My body still isn't sure what time zone I'm in, but I get to sleep in my bed, spend time with my wife, catch up on a few projects, and start coaching some kids again. 1/
5 days ago
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Today's editorial: Follow Your Hunch
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Follow Your Hunch
For a while, I kept seeing that the cost of writing code was approaching zero. So many people felt that with an AI LLM, the costs would go way down to produce software. I'm not sure that's true. In fact, some companies are finding they spend more on AI tokens than salaries. However, the ability to produce more code, experiment with ideas, or generate proof of concepts has gone up.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/17/follow-your-hunch/
6 days ago
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No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator:Â
#SQLNewBlogger
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve never tried it, but the batch separator has to be separate, which I’ll show. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people…
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No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator:Â #SQLNewBlogger
I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve never tried it, but the batch separator has to be separate, which I’ll show. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. The Batch Terminator The default batch terminator in SQL Server tools is “GO”.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/17/no-shortcuts-for-the-sqlcmd-batch-terminator-sqlnewblogger/
6 days ago
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Today's editorial: The Slow Growing Problems
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The Slow Growing Problems
Both as a DBA and developer, I've had plenty of immediate, this-is-broken, fix-it-quickly issues. Usually, I, or someone else, wrote some bad code and somehow got it deployed. I mean, I do test things, and I would (probably) never change code after I'd tested it to fix that one little annoying thing, like the formatting. I'd (almost) never do that, and I'm sure you wouldn't either.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/15/the-slow-growing-problems/
8 days ago
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AI Experiments: Parsing Payment Memos As part of my running the SQL Saturday charitable foundation, I get sponsorship money from vendors. Primarily Microsoft and AMD, but I hope to change that in the future. In any case, I recently got a payment notification that my invoice had been paid. I knew I…
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AI Experiments: Parsing Payment Memos
As part of my running the SQL Saturday charitable foundation, I get sponsorship money from vendors. Primarily Microsoft and AMD, but I hope to change that in the future. In any case, I recently got a payment notification that my invoice had been paid. I knew I had a few invoices outstanding, so I wasn’t sure what was included. MS tries to bundle payments, but I don’t get an email for each one.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/15/ai-experiments-parsing-payment-memos/
8 days ago
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Today's editorial: Liability for AI Errors
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Liability for AIÂ Errors
This week there was an article that speculated that doctors in the UK could be liable for errors made by AI tools unless rules are changed. The argument is that AI tools should be treated as products, which isn't necessarily the case right now. Right now doctors may face all the liability instead of AI tool makers having some responsibility. From my reading, this doesn't appear to say that doctors aren't still accountable for mistakes, but they aren't wholly accountable.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/13/liability-for-ai-errors/
10 days ago
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Editorial Republish:
The Degradation of the Turing Test
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Republish: The Degradation of the Turing Test
I’m on my way back from Frankfurt and PASS Europe. It’s been a long week, a quick Tue-Fri trip to the EU and my brain is a bit fried. Lots of chats and conversations, and more than a few time zones. You re-read The Degradation of the Turing Test while I try to sleep on a plane.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/12/republish-the-degradation-of-the-turing-test/
11 days ago
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The Book of
Redgate
: Taking Breaks We work hard at Redgate, though with a good work-life balance. One interesting observation for me (as an American) is how well most of the company in the UK works normal hours and rarely works outside of those. However, sometimes we do find people, especially…
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The Book of Redgate: Taking Breaks
We work hard at Redgate, though with a good work-life balance. One interesting observation for me (as an American) is how well most of the company in the UK works normal hours and rarely works outside of those. However, sometimes we do find people, especially engineers, heads down and very focused. With our engineers in the office a day or two a week, they might end up coding in a group and trying to solve a challenging issue.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/12/the-book-of-redgate-taking-breaks/
11 days ago
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New Simple Talk podcast with Kristyna Ferris. Power BI, Fabric, career, and game rooms
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTpB...
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Turning down grad school, self-learning Power BI, and Lego! (Kristyna Ferris) | Simple Talk Podcast
YouTube video by Redgate Software
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTpBwS8boSs
12 days ago
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Funny Money: #SQLNewBlogger While wandering around the documentation looking for some
Question of the Day
#SQLNewBlogger
topics, I learned something new about the money data type. This post discusses what I learned. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get…
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Funny Money: #SQLNewBlogger
While wandering around the documentation looking for some Question of the Day topics, I learned something new about the money data type. This post discusses what I learned. Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. The Money Type Did you know that you can add a currency symbol to the money data type for assignment?
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/10/funny-money-sqlnewblogger/
13 days ago
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@PASSDataSummit Europe today in Germany, trying to do some admin work. Not only am I now sure of which time zone I'm in, but I realize I've lost track of time. I had no idea what day it is in June. Without may watch I might have guessed the 5th or 15th. I need a week at home
13 days ago
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My latest commit message: hopefully I can match ifs and endifs An AI might have found this, but they've been surprisingly bad at this type of work. Plus, the code change was way less than the description needed to ask for it.
14 days ago
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Slowly making my way to Frankfurt and @PASSDataSummit Europe. Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.
14 days ago
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Un-Migrating From the Cloud: T-SQL Tuesday #199
#tsql2sday
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Un-Migrating From the Cloud: T-SQL Tuesday #199
This month we have a very interesting invitation from Koen Verbeeck. He has hosted once before, and agreed to help me out this month by tackling another topic. We’ve shared a few beers in the EU, though not in some time, so I hopefully will get the chance to buy him a pint and thank him for this month’s invite.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/09/un-migrating-from-the-cloud-t-sql-tuesday-199/
14 days ago
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Today's editorial: Would You Retire Rather Than ...
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Would You Retire Rather Than …
Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of C++. I read a few of his books and alternately loved what he'd done with the language and hated having to write C++ code in university and at a few jobs. I found it tedious and hard, though arguably better than C once you had a decent set of classes structured. BTW, I love his website, the basic text view of the world, which is how I have built a few sites on my own.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/08/would-you-retire-rather-than/
15 days ago
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Monday Monitor Tips: AI Alert Analysis
#RedgateMonitor
#Redgate
#Redgate
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Monday Monitor Tips: AI Alert Analysis
We keep adding new AI capabilities to Redgate Monitor, where it makes sense. Check out this new feature we’ve added for alerts. This is a great addition to help a busy Ops staff cope with a large database estate. This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts. Alert Index Analysis…
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/08/monday-monitor-tips-ai-alert-analysis/
15 days ago
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I never thought I'd forget how to exit VIM, but had git open it for a message today and I couldn't get out. Fortunately I didn't waste any tokens and let Google tell me (though they might have spent a few to give me the answer)
18 days ago
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The audience for my keynote today
18 days ago
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Today's editorial: The Data Model Matters
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The Data Model Matters
I ran across a statement that seems exciting to me as someone that has written a lot of code in their career. It said: "Many of the "modern" software practices of the last decade were early adaptations to this shift, even if we didn't articulate them that way. Immutable infrastructure. Stateless services. Containers. Blue-green deployments. Infrastructure as code. These ideas all share a common premise: never fix a running thing.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/05/the-data-model-matters/
18 days ago
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A New Word: La Guadière la guadière – n. a glint of goodness you notice in something that you wouldn’t expect, which is often only detectable by sloshing them back and forth in your mind until everything dark and gray and common falls away, leaving something shining at the bottom of the pan – a…
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A New Word: La Guadière
la guadière – n. a glint of goodness you notice in something that you wouldn’t expect, which is often only detectable by sloshing them back and forth in your mind until everything dark and gray and common falls away, leaving something shining at the bottom of the pan – a rare element hidden deep in the bedrock, that must’ve washed there by a storm somewhere upstream.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/05/a-new-word-la-guadire/
18 days ago
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Who loves EDI? I had to learn this at one point and setup a software system to read the XML, parse it, and load it into our system, as well as export docs out we could send to partners. I did not love that. I got a payment from a vendor today for SQL Saturday 1/
20 days ago
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I didn't use Claude at all yesterday. Lots of meetings, some creative writing, recording, just didn't have a thing I wanted to hand off to anyone. However, I did go through a doc to understand what it said. It was about 5 pages of text. 1/
20 days ago
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Still playing catchup after a week off and I already need to prep for travel tomorrow. I suspect this is going to be a >40 hour work week. Fortunately, I don't have too many of these. Unfortunately, this is going to be a Tue-Sat week
20 days ago
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Today's editorial: Over or Under Provisioned
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Over or Under Provisioned
Lots of people move to the cloud; it's common. In fact, it's very common to hear customers who are being asked to migrate their workloads to a cloud vendor for a variety of reasons. You might not agree, but often there is some reason to move to the cloud. Sometimes it's even moving from one cloud to another, just because one of the big three (AWS, Azure, GCP) seems more attractive this year than the one from last year.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/03/over-or-under-provisioned/
20 days ago
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UNION vs UNIONALL:Â
#SQLNewBlogger
While writing another post I realized my UNION query didn’t work as one might initiall expect, so I decided a short post was worth writing. This is based on a previous post on QUOTENME(). Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for…
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UNION vs UNIONALL:Â #SQLNewBlogger
While writing another post I realized my UNION query didn’t work as one might initiall expect, so I decided a short post was worth writing. This is based on a previous post on QUOTENME(). Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. Missing a Row…
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/03/union-vs-unionall-sqlnewblogger/
20 days ago
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Back after a week in Alaska. Bot, byo, byy, sheessshhhh its hard to tpye
21 days ago
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Edtitorial Republish: Fixing Imposter Syndrome
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Republish: Fixing Imposter Syndrome
It’s the last day of vacation. My wife and I stayed in Seattle an extra night so we could unwind and then catch up with a friend this morning before we head back home. While I am having a wonderful Filipino breakfast at Ludi’s, you get to re-read Fixing Imposter Syndrome. If you get to Seattle and find the Biscuit Bitch too busy, walk down a block to Ludi’s and try their offerings. It’s wonderful. Garlicy, but I love the Long-silog.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/01/republish-fixing-imposter-syndrome/
22 days ago
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Join Me in San Diego to Learn about AI and Software Development You might have seen this graphic on the side of my blog. It’s my discount code for VS Live in San Diego this September. I got accepted to talk about LLMs on your local machine or data center, which is something I think will be more…
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Join Me in San Diego to Learn about AI and Software Development
You might have seen this graphic on the side of my blog. It’s my discount code for VS Live in San Diego this September. I got accepted to talk about LLMs on your local machine or data center, which is something I think will be more and more important in the future. Already the EU is less thrilled with US tech giants, and I suspect many other companies will rethink allowing their data to flow to non self-hosted LLMs.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/06/01/join-me-in-san-diego-to-learn-about-ai-and-software-development/
22 days ago
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Republish: Bean Counting to Burnout I’m still on vacation. Today I think is Sitka on our Alaskan cruise, but in any case, no internet for me. Didn’t buy a package, not trying to check things in port. You get to re-read Bean Counting to Burnout while I hike in the woods around town.
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Republish: Bean Counting to Burnout
I’m still on vacation. Today I think is Sitka on our Alaskan cruise, but in any case, no internet for me. Didn’t buy a package, not trying to check things in port. You get to re-read Bean Counting to Burnout while I hike in the woods around town.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/29/republish-bean-counting-to-burnout/
25 days ago
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Vacation Week It might seem I’ve been gone a lot, and I have been. April had me taking three trips, and May wasn’t better with 3 before this, but those were for work. This week the family and I are on a cruise to Alaska, spending a week traveling with the kids. I know it will be amazing, but no…
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Vacation Week
It might seem I’ve been gone a lot, and I have been. April had me taking three trips, and May wasn’t better with 3 before this, but those were for work. This week the family and I are on a cruise to Alaska, spending a week traveling with the kids. I know it will be amazing, but no blogs this week while I take some time to recharge.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/25/vacation-week/
29 days ago
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Today's editorial: The New Software Team
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The New Software Team
One of the things I used to emphasize in talks about DevOps is that no modern software of any significance is built by one person. Everything takes a team, so the foundation of version control becomes extremely important. We need a way to coordinate work across multiple individuals and communicate what changes are being made. This requires a strong foundation, and that starts with version control.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/22/the-new-software-team/
about 1 month ago
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The Book of Redgate: Profits Redgate is a for-profit company. We look to make money by building and selling tools that help you. If we do a good job, we make money. If we don’t, you shouldn’t buy our tools. I found this value to be very interesting: The next page has this statement: Focusing…
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The Book of Redgate:Â Profits
Redgate is a for-profit company. We look to make money by building and selling tools that help you. If we do a good job, we make money. If we don’t, you shouldn’t buy our tools. I found this value to be very interesting: The next page has this statement: Focusing purely on the numbers is a sure way to kill Red Gate’s culture.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/22/the-book-of-redgate/
about 1 month ago
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Don't love this, but certainly I think 3 digits are way way worse than 2. I'd prefer 1, preferably somewhere near 1.
about 1 month ago
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Ugh, had to close most things for a webinar, including all my cool, I'm-going-to-get-to-this tabs in Chrome. Unfortunately the stability of Windows has made me nervous. Now I get to spend 15 minutes re-setting things up
about 1 month ago
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Just about to start our Webinar: AI meets Test Data: Compliance and coverage without the guesswork
www.red-gate.com/hub/events/a...
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Redgate Ambassadors, Events, And Community Activities
See which events we're attending, arrange sponsorship for your event or user group, and find out about the Ambassadors Program
https://www.red-gate.com/hub/events/ai-meets-test-data-compliance-and-coverage-without-the-guesswork
about 1 month ago
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Today's editorial: Limit the Blast Radius
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Limit the Blast Radius
You still need DBAs (that know how to back up systems and test restores). If you think you don't, or if you manager does, then perhaps they ought to read this piece on how an AI agent deleted a production database. This wasn't the case of an agent just running around with sysadmin access to all resources, or a lack of tests that allowed bad code to flow through a CI/CD process.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/20/limit-the-blast-radius/
about 1 month ago
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QUOTENAME Basics:
#SQLNewBlogger
Recently I ran across some code that used a lot of QUOTENAME() calls. A colleague was having some trouble with the code, but what struck me was that I hadn’t often delved into the details of QUOTENAME and how it can be used in different ways. I’d always just passed…
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QUOTENAME Basics: #SQLNewBlogger
Recently I ran across some code that used a lot of QUOTENAME() calls. A colleague was having some trouble with the code, but what struck me was that I hadn’t often delved into the details of QUOTENAME and how it can be used in different ways. I’d always just passed in a string as a single parameter. This post looks at a few details of how this function works.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/20/quotename-basics-sqlnewblogger/
about 1 month ago
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Which one looks legit? Hmmmmm
about 1 month ago
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Today's editorial: What Can AI Really Do?
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What Can AI Really Do?
I wonder how many of you have tried vibe coding something with an AI tool. If you haven't, I certainly recommend it. I've been a bit amazed with a few of my AI Experiments, including my loading of a lot of inconsistently formatted data into a database for USD$5. To be clear, there's plenty of vibe coding that might not be production-ready, but have you ever been handed code from a human developer you didn't think was production-ready?
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/18/what-can-ai-really-do/
about 1 month ago
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Breaking Rules in Rome Last week I was honored with a trip to Rome for the Redgate President’s Club. I was awarded this, along with our top people in Sales, for the work I did in 2025. It was a fun trip, but as we prepared to depart Cambridge, one of the rules our Chief Revenue Officer gave us…
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Breaking Rules in Rome
Last week I was honored with a trip to Rome for the Redgate President’s Club. I was awarded this, along with our top people in Sales, for the work I did in 2025. It was a fun trip, but as we prepared to depart Cambridge, one of the rules our Chief Revenue Officer gave us was: Don’t work this week…
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/18/breaking-rules-in-rome/
about 1 month ago
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Finally home. It's been a fun two weeks, but a long time away and glad to be home for a week before vacation
about 1 month ago
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Editorial Republish: Writing Before Reading
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Republish: Writing Before Reading
I’m still in Europe, now in Rome. I’m sure it’s amazing, but while I’m gone, you get Writing Before Reading. I don’t see this in the archive, so here it is in total: Writing Before Reading This editorial was originally published on May 21, 2020. It is being republished as Steve is gone this week. Have your thoughts changed on reading and writing code?
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/13/republish-writing-before-reading/
about 1 month ago
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T-SQL Tuesday #198–Change Detection This month we have a new host, Meagan Longoria, who graciously agreed to help me this month. I’ve known Meagan for a number of years and she’s been a person whom I’ve asked questions about data visualization and analysis in the past. I was slightly surprised by…
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T-SQL Tuesday #198–Change Detection
This month we have a new host, Meagan Longoria, who graciously agreed to help me this month. I’ve known Meagan for a number of years and she’s been a person whom I’ve asked questions about data visualization and analysis in the past. I was slightly surprised by the topic this month, but only slightly. I’ll write my answer below, but if you want to try blogging and host a future month, let me know.
http://voiceofthedba.com/2026/05/12/t-sql-tuesday-198-change-detection/
about 1 month ago
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