SQL Server Performance Office Hours Episode 41

Questions:

Hi Erik! How do you see the DBA role evolve in the next couple of years ? Will it go to a more coding level or maybe more to a multi-database role ? Thank you for the great content.
Hi Erik! When will you be coming to Sweden?
What setup do you use to record your YouTube videos?
First of all, thank you for everything you share! When it comes to SQL Server 2025, which new performance-related feature do you believe has the greatest potential to become a real success?
you’ve already told us all the sql books you like, what are the books about lifting yhtat you like?

Video Summary

In this video, I discuss the evolving role of database administrators (DBAs) over the next couple of years and share my thoughts on how it might shift towards coding or a multi-database role. I also dive into some personal questions from viewers, such as my travel plans to Sweden for SQL Server conferences and the setup I use for recording YouTube videos. It’s been interesting to reflect on the future of DBAs while sharing practical advice on equipment and techniques that can help improve your own video production process. Additionally, I touch on what new performance-related features might be coming in SQL Server 2025, or rather, why they may not live up to expectations based on current demos and updates. Overall, it’s been a great opportunity to engage with the community and share insights that can help both DBAs and developers navigate these changes.

Full Transcript

Erik Darling here with Darling Data, and it is my favorite Monday of the week because I get to answer your office hours questions. Five of them, this many. I’ve counted and double counted to make sure that I don’t shortchange anyone or overcharge myself. So we’ve got that going for us. If you want to ask me office hours questions, you can do so. There’s a link down in the video description. It will take you to my website where there’s like, you know, a little language that’s going to be in the description. So I’m going to have the language around like, hey, if you want to ask a question with some details, here’s how to do it. But there’s also a handy link to the Google doc form that you submit your questions to no email required, right? Just send it in there, right? No, just drop it in. While you’re down there in the video description, hunting for the office hours link, you can do all sorts of other wonderful things like hire me for SQL Server consulting, buy my SQL Server training, become a member of my SQL Server channel and all sorts of other stuff. And of course, if you enjoy this content, well, you can always like, like, subscribe, tell all your friends, you know, all that good stuff. Past Data Community Summit coming up short order. Very close now. You can smell the pre-cons that me and Kendra Little are doing. Two days of them, T-SQL, the best T-SQL pre-cons that have ever been pre-conned. So, you know, if you’re not there, you will be missing out entirely.

on the most formative event of your life, right? But anyway, let’s get this T-SQL, or not T-SQL, SQL Server Office Hours, Performance Office Hours, Party Started. Oh, that database is missing an arm. Ah, AI. That’s not, that’s, that’s not nice. Chopping arms off of these poor databases. Anyway, let’s go look at what we’ve got here. So, hi, Eric. How do you see the DBA role evolve in the next couple of years? Will it go to a more coding level or maybe more to a multi-database role? Thank you for the great content. I am notoriously bad at forecasting these things. I’m just straight up not good at it. You know, I’ve, I’ve lived through, I think like three DBA extension, extinction events now. You know, it was like VMs, the cloud and well, I guess we’re living through the AI one at current.

But, you know, I think that if you are good at what you do and you are good at learning things, you know, you, you will, you are, you are not going to be extinct. But, um, as far as like the, the two things you mentioned, I don’t think that it’s going to go to, I don’t, I don’t think that it’s going to go to either one specifically. Um, you know, uh, you, you might see a shift to, uh, or you might see yourself shift to a different technology, a different database platform more and more.

I don’t know. Uh, I, I, I don’t know what industry you’re in, where that might happen. Uh, a lot of my clients are firmly entrenched in the Microsoft stack for better or for worse. Um, you know, so like a lot of them, there is no like multi-database thing, unless it’s for like some microservices or like some outside feature. Like, um, you know, you’ll see them move some micro microservices to like, uh, like Aurora Postgres, but it’s not stuff where they’re like sitting there staring at performance and like, like biting their nails over it. Um, they might go to Elasticsearch for full text stuff rather than keep, uh, like punching themselves in the face with full text indexes and SQL Server.

But, um, you know, uh, like when you think about like what like DBAs generally do, you know, you’ve got your, like your infrastructure DBAs, you’ve got your performance, like, uh, oriented DBAs, which is like what I do. And then you have the people who like, like, who are like developers and stuff. Uh, the people who do, uh, performance tuning work and development work have already, like already do a lot of coding type stuff, right?

You rewrite queries or, you know, like, like the developers make the features and the performance tuners make the features faster, right? Type things. Uh, the infrastructure type DBAs, they’re just doing infrastructure in the cloud mostly now, right? You still have a lot of on-prem people, of course, but for people who are part of that shift, you know, like whatever they were, whatever they were doing on-prem, they now just have to do like through a crappy portal and like maybe some like command line scripts and stuff.

So, um, you know, I, I don’t generally know where, where the whole thing is going to go and end up. Um, but as far as I’m concerned, uh, people are always going to have performance problems. And so that’s why I’m very happy to keep doing my performance tuning stuff.

So that’s the best answer I can muster on that. I just had lunch. So this is like 90% chance I’m going to fall asleep during or after this video. Uh, hi Eric, when will you be coming to Sweden?

Well, uh, I don’t have any vacation plans to Sweden currently. Uh, but if there is a SQL Server conference in Sweden that you feel that I could make a meaningful contribution to, uh, and they are the type of conference that accepts pre-con events, uh, where I can, I can, you know, defray some of the cost of traveling overseas, uh, then I’m, I’m, I’m always happy to show up.

So you tell me when I should come to Sweden based on when there is an event in Sweden that I can attend. And again, defray some travel costs and potentially have a little tax write-off as well. So you tell me when I’m coming to Sweden.

I can’t tell you. All right. Uh, what setup do you use to record your YouTube videos? Well, it’s a good question. Um, I have a Nikon Z30 pointed at me. Um, I didn’t, I bought it because they were like, this is the ultimate content creator camera.

And then like, it got like one firmware update and like in like, I don’t know, I guess it’s 2019 or something and nothing since. So, uh, I don’t know if it is the ultimate creator camera.

It took a lot of work for me to get it to the point where it didn’t overheat and shut off after like 30, 40 minutes. So maybe, maybe not. Uh, I don’t know if that’s the best advice that I, uh, I don’t know if that’s advice you want to take, get it.

Maybe the advice is not get it. Like maybe there’s better advice out there. Um, I’ve got this shore wireless thing that I use. Um, I don’t know if you recall, uh, a few months back, my, my microphone thing snapped and I had to get these clip on things, but it’s been working great ever since.

Uh, and aside from that, I’ve just got a bunch of hot lights. I’ve got two, one on one, like, you know, photography type lights on either side of me. And then a couple of ring lights in front of me over here.

Uh, aside from that, um, it’s, it’s all held together by bubble gum and magic as far as I’m concerned. All right. First of all, thank you for everything you share.

Well, obviously we haven’t eaten dinner together. Uh, when it comes to SQL Server 2025, which new performance related feature do you believe has the greatest potential to become a real success?

Uh, quite frankly, none of them. Um, so there are features that I think are cool. Like I think optimized locking is cool. Um, I also thought the optimized Halloween protection thing was cool until it got pulled out cause there were bugs in it, but I was really looking forward to that one.

Um, aside from that, when you look at like performance stuff in 2025, there’s nothing really all that interesting in there. Um, there’s like the oppo thing, which is built on the pisspo thing, but the pisspo thing isn’t that great.

And they haven’t made the pisspo thing any better. So I don’t think the oppo thing is going to be all that great. Uh, and then like, like the few demos that I’ve seen about like, uh, batch mode improvements for some of the mathematical functions, like sum and min and max and average, all the, all the improvements are measured in microseconds.

So I’m like, you can’t like, like, I remember like when, uh, when, uh, what was it? JSON first came out in SQL Server 2016. There were my actual Microsoft blog posts comparing JSON and XML for stuff.

And the, all the, all of the demos ended with, and as you can see, there is a 300 micro sec, micro second difference. JSON is clearly superior.

And I’m like, get out of here, like, leave me alone. Yeah. Uh, so I don’t know. Uh, I’m not, I’m not all that crazy about SQL Server 2025 for this stuff. Um, clearly this is the fabric in AI release.

This is not a SQL Server release. Nothing good happening here. Uh, the vector indexes are laughable at the moment, right? They’re read only. Um, I had posted the video about the code that they currently runs when you created a vector index.

It’s like, like who pushed that dead horse out the door? Oh, it’s amazing. Anyway, um, what was I going to say? Oh yeah. It was, there was a, there was a, Bob Ward posted a picture the other day of, uh, the SQL Server 2025 book on a shelf with all of his other books and the SQL Server 2025, 2025 book is like a pamphlet about this big.

All the other books are like, like a good solid ribeye thick, right? Maybe a healthy porterhouse thick. That’s that’s, those are steak measurements in case you’re a vegetarian. But it was just funny.

It was like, damn, like, uh, not much to say about that one. All right. Well, anyway, I dug a pretty good hole on that one. I’m going to have to send flowers.

Uh, you’ve already told us all the SQL books you like. What are the books about lifting? Excuse you that you like. Um, well, um, the, the, the, the two books that have made the biggest difference for me, uh, are the two starting strength books.

Um, it’s, there’s the blue book and the gray book. Um, one is, uh, for about beginner, um, barbell training. The other is about intermediate barbell training. Um, I suppose I could put links to those in the video description if you’re interested in picking those up.

Um, but they are excellent at, um, both, uh, describing, uh, the, uh, how to do the lifts properly. I think it’s like 72 pages about how to properly do a squat, which if you, uh, read and slowly absorb them as you’re doing those lifts, you can, you can really like feel why this is the right way of doing things, or at least, uh, I think, I think a very optimal way of doing things.

Uh, and so it’s not only like how to do the lifts, but also like how to program, um, a lot of, uh, uh, take, takes a lot of the programming questioning out of there. Um, you know, there are of course like templates in the book on how to do something, but, uh, past a certain point, you really should just get yourself a proper coach who is good at programming and make, uh, good calls on these things.

Uh, cause, um, you know, you’re, you’re going to get certain, uh, rep and set schemes stuck in your head. And it’s going to be very difficult for you to figure out, uh, alternate ones and which ones would be appropriate at your stage of training.

So, uh, if, if you, if you, if you do find yourself, um, you know, uh, going into the gym and getting, uh, quite advanced with the, both the amount of weight that you can lift and all that other stuff, and you find yourself sort of like hitting plateaus and not like being able to like meaningfully add weight to the bar any further than, uh, getting a coach really is, um, uh, the next logical step for you there.

Anyway, I think that just about covers everything here. Uh, been a pleasure as always. Uh, thank you for watching.

I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I hope you learned something and I will see you in tomorrow’s video. I’ve got some interesting, at least I hope it’s interesting stuff lined up for this week. So, um, we’ll, we’ll slog our way through that as we are slogging our way through, uh, yet another Monday of corporate doldrums and all the other stuff.

Uh, you know, there’s a reason that people used to drink at lunch and it’s sad that we’ve lost that in our, in our society. Anyway, thank you.

Going Further

If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 25% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that, and need to solve database performance problems quickly. You can also get a quick, low cost health check with no phone time required.