I was caught off guard last week when the “Congratulations on your work anniversary!” messages started rolling in on LinkedIn. It had slipped my mind that it had already been a full year since I began contracting with Redgate back in May 2024. And, true to form, LinkedIn, always eager to simplify the complexities of tech careers and notified my entire network that I’d officially hit the one-year mark, although I hadn’t started full-time till the beginning of October. It can almost feel like an identity crisis as you perform so many roles for different organizations – thrilling and satisfying…
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For many DBAs, the thought of running Oracle on a Windows OS induces a collective cringe. Even for someone like me, with a career spanning both Microsoft and Oracle technologies, it’s a combination I typically avoid. However, there are scenarios—driven by licensing, software requirements, or other factors—where deploying Oracle on Windows becomes the logical choice. I recently encountered such a scenario while assisting a team I enjoy working with at Redgate. The task was to refresh and streamline our demo virtual machine (VM) image, which included Oracle running on Windows. Here was my planned approach: Export any data that needed…
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When building products that interact with multiple database platforms, the complexity can be both a challenge and an opportunity. For Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), observing design decisions made without sufficient knowledge of underlying database architecture can be particularly frustrating. These moments highlight the critical need for architectural foresight and platform-specific expertise to avoid pitfalls that compromise scalability, performance, and maintainability. I’ve been managing multiple platforms for a couple decades and in recent years, building products that support the most popular enterprise and open-source databases today. I’m keenly aware of lacking documentation, either due to limited resources or hopes of directing…
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In the midst of us needing to do more with less every day, many of us are incorporating clones to simplify data refreshes to non-production database environments. Working harder is just not an option when we can use newer technology to get more by doing less. Knowing Your Environment Doing less effectively requires some planning for Oracle and a few questions to be asked: Will you need to deploy to a new host/VM target as part of a clone? Will an image with Oracle be used for the new Host/VM target or will you need to build out the Oracle…
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AI has become a buzzword synonymous with the future of technology and innovation. However, the advancement of AI is not just about algorithms and computing power; it’s fundamentally about data. The adage “data is the new oil” has never been more pertinent than in the context of AI. But why is data so crucial for AI, and how do relational databases and data lakes fit into this narrative? The Importance of Data for AI AI learns and evolves through data. Machine Learning (ML), a subset of AI, involves training models on data to enable them to make predictions or decisions…
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One undeniable truth is that we often lean towards what’s familiar to us. Open-source solutions might be cost-effective and supported by their enthusiastic communities, but there’s a correlation between value and investment. Enterprise relational systems, backed by substantial licensing revenues, can afford to innovate and introduce advanced features—capabilities that sometimes surpass what open-source can offer. However, it’s essential to understand that not every application necessarily demands an enterprise-level relational database. Amidst the evolving narrative about AI/ML’s potential to replace our jobs and the rising prominence of object storage seemingly poised to replace traditional database systems, one principle remains: “We gravitate…
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I just finished an interview with a friend for a blog post where he was surprised how differently I was viewed in the Oracle community, (a multi-platform DBA who wasn’t very loyal to Oracle like she should be) vs. the Microsoft community, (that odd Oracle girl.) The truth is, I’ve always enjoyed database technology and few know that my first database (MSSQL 6.5) as well as my first book was in Microsoft SQL Server (Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices). I’m not platform centric at all, work mostly in Oracle, SQL Server/Azure SQL and MySQL, but I’m just CUSTOMER centric. Azure…
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With my upcoming session on “Migrating Oracle Workloads to Azure IaaS” this week at PASS Virtual Summit 2020, I wanted to take some time to dig deeper onto the performance side. The last thing you want to have happen is to migrate your database to the cloud and have it just screech to a halt. The truth is, its often a combination of database and infrastructure issues that are the cause. Although many of you may want me to dig into database performance data, I’m actually going to first focus on infrastructure, as it’s the area that most aren’t privy…
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Cloud is a still a huge buzz word because people are still moving to embrace it. As many companies that are in the cloud, there are still a large percentage of real estate that’s on-premises. As much as I’m now Analytics and AI with Azure, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’ve been adopted by a number of those inside Microsoft to assist in the migration of Oracle databases to Azure. There are three primary goals: Move to the cloud and Azure is their cloud choice, so they plan on staying with the Oracle database platform. Migrate current Oracle databases to…
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So I made it to PASS Summit 2018. After a flight from an airport with one gate- yes, you heard me right, one gate. No Wi-Fi, no connectivity and four employees at the airport. It was a new level of disconnect. After a number of parties last night, I’m at the bloggers table for the first keynote this morning. The first keynote started with an energized talk from PASS president and friend, Grant Fritchey. It was a gracious discussion about the dedication of those in the community and power of those involved. Keynote #1 The theme is #V20, the newest…
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The only thing that stays the same is change…. As the time flies by and the world turns, I often am jarred back to reality when I discover how the little things we do can have a larger impact on the world around us. Flying back from Interop ITX and StarEast conferences last week, I was reminded of this. While reading the latest copy of Wired , I came across a story on D-Tech High School. This is the school that resides on the Oracle headquarters campus, in its own building(s). The story was interviewing different students to discuss how…
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I spent this week speaking at two conferences that may not be familiar to my usual crowd: • Techwell StarEast Testing Conference in Orlando, FL • Interop ITX Data Conference in Las Vegas, NV StarEast Testing Conference Techwell’s event is attended by testers and had over 2000 attendees at the Hyatt Regency Orlando’s Convention Center. This is a huge convention center and I won’t lie- I did try to first register at the Mazda event and then the KPMG event. One of the attendees in my session admitted she was crashing my talk from the KPMG conference and I was pretty…
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So where did 2017 go?!?!? I really, really would like to know… Needless to say, it’s time to do a year in review already and I actually have time to do it this year! DBAKevlar Blog I wrote over 100 blog posts this year between DBAKevlar, Delphix and partner sites, but I’ve enjoyed sharing with the different communities. There’s significant changes going on in the IT world regarding the future of the Database Administrator. This deafening message came through when pulling together my top blog posts for 2017, with Death of the DBA, Long Live the DBA presenting itself as…
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Data gravity and the friction it causes within the development cycle is an incredibly obvious problem in my eyes. Data gravity suffers from the Von Newmann Bottleneck. It’s a basic limitation on how fast computers can be. Pretty simple, but states that the speed of where data resides and where it’s processed is the limiting factor in computing speed. OLAP, DSS and VLDB DBAs are constantly in battle with this challenge. How much data is being consumed in a process, how much must be brought from disk and will the processing required to create the results end up “spilling” to…
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I’m off to Columbus, Ohio tomorrow for a full day of sessions on Friday for the Ohio Oracle User Group. The wonderful Mary E. Brown and her group has set up a great venue and a fantastic schedule. Next week, I’m off to SQL Saturday Vancouver to present on DevOps for the DBA to a lovely group of SQL Server attendees. It’s my first time to Vancouver, British Columbia and as it’s one of the cities on our list of potential future locations to live, I’m very excited to visit. Speaking of SQL Server- Delphix‘s own SQL Server COE, (Center…
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In my latest blog post on the Delphix site, I continue my conversation with why DevOps is the next step for DBAs and how DBAs can embrace this next step in their evolution. This is an extensive series of blog posts, (four so far) to be followed by an ebook, a podcast and two webinars. One is to be announced soon from Oracle called, “The DBA Diaries” and the other will be a from Delphix, titled, “The Revolution: From Databases and DevOps to DataOps“. The goal for all of this is to ease transition for the Database community as the…
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I just returned from a week in Paris and it was fantastic! No amount of terrorist attack could hinder my enthusiasm for the week of vacation and although Tim and I were unaware a man with a hammer at Notre Dame would garner so much attention from the news outlets, I realized quick enough that I was in a slew of online, video and print as the major American tourist who witnessed…well, a person lying wounded on the pavement with police over him, guns drawn. I also became quickly alerted that there was a massive crowd coming towards me looking…
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I love questions- They give me something to write about that I don’t have to come up with from my experience or challenges…:) So in my last post, Paul asked: I am not sure what happens to the other changes which happened while the release was happening? Presumably they are also lost? Presumably the database has to go down while the data is reverted? The Setup In our scenario to answer this question, I’m going to perform the following on the VEmp_826 virtualized database: Add a table Add an index Include transactions, both inserts and deletes Rewind the database using the…