(This was the editorial for my 300th SQLskills Insider newsletter last week, that I’ve been producing since March 2011! See bottom of browser window to subscribe.)
I was torn between a “reflections on 15 years” and a “mental health” ponderings for the 300th edition, so here’s a bit of both – blasted out in a half-hour brain dump.
The world has become a very noisy, uncaring, impolite place. I have misophonia, a very low tolerance for nonsense (in a less polite setting I’d say b***s**t or f***ery), and a deep, deep dislike of phones, small-talk, or interruptions. So all these things, that have become ubiquitous over the last 15 years, are most irritating:
Check It Out!
- Cell phones that ‘ding’ constantly
- People having speakerphone conversations in stores, planes, restaurants
- Constant spam texts and calls – the FTC do-not-call list is a joke
- Sensationalist news
- People in such a rush that they tail-gate, weave through traffic, and generally drive dangerously
- Anything to do with our dysfunctional politics (and likely in your country too, if not in the US)
- Entitlement and inconsideration when traveling
- Neighbors letting dogs bark, bark, bark, bark at all times of day and evening
- The seeming lack of pride and professionalism in many service industries
- People letting their kids run wild in restaurants
- The disappearance of basic politeness like saying please and thank you
- And more
Am I just an angry old (oldish, ok? only 54!) man? No, I’ve been writing about some of these things since 2011 (see https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/the-golden-rule-maybe-just-optional-now/). But I am much more intolerant and now that I’ve slowed down since the pandemic I notice these things a lot more.
And they grate and grind and oppress. Which is why I enjoy being at Camp Savage so much – no people, noise, traffic, travel – just lots of nature. Am I wandering off into the woods to bury my head in the sand and live in a shack? Well, kind of lol! Part of our Camp Savage move is to get out of the city, the rat-race, the noise and pollution, and live a healthier, happier life with lots of open space, animals, greenhouses, and so on.
That’s the mental health part. Well, and stopping drinking 18 months ago – that was life-changing, obviously. It’s taken 18 months for my brain to rewire itself.
What about SQL Server? Well, if you think about the bits that I’m interested in, not a whole lot has changed. Sure, there are new, impactful features like columnstore, AGs, query store , ADR, but when it comes down to it, what I’m interested in, consult on, and teach hasn’t really changed. People still need to:
- Figure out where performance is a problem and then fix it
- Have a disaster recovery plan that works
- Implement high availability
- Understand some of how the engine works
- Use indexes correctly
- Communicate well (by far the most popular of all our Pluralsight courses!)
I’m often asked if I’m concerned about cloud or AI meaning DBAs will be out of a job or SQLskills will become irrelevant. We have many clients who have no interest in Azure (either from security, performance, scalability, or just basic trust issues) . We also have a bunch who do use the cloud in some way, but it’s not going to become a zero-on-prem game. AI is in no way ready to replace DBAs – plenty of stories out there of AI doing the wrong thing, the explicitly ‘do not do that’ thing, or going rogue. And AIs are only as good as what they’re trained on and who they’re trained by. I’ve seen some horrible answers to test questions I’ve asked AI engines.
So my answer is a big, fat ‘no’. Not concerned. We’re still here, and hopefully will still be for many years to come.
Quietly 😊
PS One reader, John Ness, wrote this excellent description of DBAs (reproduced and attributed with permission):
We don’t seek the limelight (well not a lot of us) in our everyday jobs. We are just there constantly taking care of the hundreds or thousands of databases (in my case 1200) and ensuring that everything keeps running, that the users can expect constant peak performance, that the backups and restores work, and that the databases are in a consistent state. We don’t shine like a bright light; we glow in the dark.