The recent release of SQL Server 2019 offers new and improved features for data professionals. There's already lots of information out there about the latest bells and whistles; here's a link to start with and if you haven't already then you can download yourself a copy and have a good look around.
If we look at the added functionality or support for different technologies between the 2016 and 2019 releases then clearly there's a lot of learning required to stay up to date; new introductions like Linux, containers, Kubernetes, R, Python, Apache Spark and lots more provide quite a list of new capabilities for DBA's and developers to put to use within their data platforms so gaining a good understanding of these technologies is becoming more and more vital.
But staying up to date can be difficult, especially in a technical landscape that is rapidly evolving as it is in current times but it's also a time where embracing the learning opportunities out there will undoubtedly be massively beneficial for those willing to invest in their career management.
I say "willing" because ultimately it is a choice, and with all the learning material being made available from vendors and from within the community it should be a very straightforward choice to make. Whilst it's not going to be free; it is going to take some time, money or more commonly both, the benefits far outweigh any personal contribution (or if you prefer to view it, sacrifice) that you'll be making.
The main point that I want to put across is that right now, more than ever, it's become absolutely essential for anyone working in a data environment to take ownership of their personal development.
Some may be unsure where to start, which isn't surprising considering the rate of change but that's no reason to simply sit back either. Have a think about some of the factors that go into learning roadmaps; job requirements, your personal career aspirations, areas of interest, new technologies and of course, marketability all need to be considered (yes, the latter does matter) and then map to what training material is out there. It's virtually impossible to not find what you're looking for and if you're stuck for ideas - hey, ask away!
An early SQL conference.
So if you are just watching and waiting take the release of SQL Server 2019 and use it as the perfect opportunity to kick start your personal development journey; go through the release material, explore the new features and supported technologies, check out the changes to existing features, read blogs, watch videos, buy or download some books and attend events like conferences and user groups - there's plenty of choice out there to fit any favoured learning style and many require nothing more than an hour or two of your time. Above all, investing in yourself is the most rewarding investment you can ever make.
In my last post I described some of the reasons why organisations fail to implement a successful DevOps methodology. Often there is a misunderstanding of what actually DevOps is but often existing working cultures can be the thing hindering progress.
From webopedia: "DevOps (development and operations) is an enterprise software development phrase used to mean a type of agile relationship between development and IT operations."
Being a consultant I often work in the "space" between different technical roles which gives me an ideal view of how well companies are utilising DevOps practices or sometimes, where they're going wrong.
For me the most crucial part is building strong collaborative working relationships between teams. In the database world this isn't just between developers and DBA's but also any team who in some way interacts with SQL Server. This includes support teams, testers, release and change teams, architects and technical management.
How we seek to build these relationships is pivotal. As I mentioned in the last post, forced collaboration is a common approach that ends up being counter productive. Organisations in their rush to build a DevOps culture can be too rigid in how they look to develop increased inter-team working, often over-formalising and creating very process driven activities.
Instead organisations should look to encourage rather than dictate and I've seen many successful ways that this achieved, often in a management hands-off style that lets technical teams freely integrate and discuss innovative ways of doing things in much more open forums. When consulting with database professionals we explore common pain points that are shared between teams and how solutions to which are in some way, arrived at by leveraging one another's expertise.
I say in some way because often the the issue isn't strictly technical but comes down to process instead. Release and change management are great examples of this; developers naturally want to make more and more frequent changes to systems which is against the better nature of traditional DBA's.
Understanding each others objectives is the first stage of developing a collaborative effort to build upon existing processes (not work around them) to help each other achieve common aims. The word I never use is compromise and it should never feel like that. All involved should feel like they are building solutions together and not feel like that are to required to relinquish something to get there.
This is a common side effect where the approach to DevOps is unbalanced where teams are becoming involved at different stages. Instead organisations must involve all parties as early as possible and avoid maintaining those traditional silos.
Increased cross functional teams means that teams work much faster together and this effects both development and problem management. One of the obstacles for moving to a platform of more frequent deployment is the risk of introducing much more failure to production systems. Done correctly, a DevOps methodology negates this by increasing the stability of systems and reducing the complexity of releases to environments which in turn makes faults much easier to not just to recognise but also rapidly back out from.
It sounds like a case of everyone wins and typically I would honestly agree with that statement. A DevOps methodology has benefits for both teams and businesses alike; better employee engagement, much more personal development opportunities, increased productivity, more stable environments, more frequent enhancements and improved response times to defects.
Issues that are preventing a DevOps methodology from being implemented can be often be resolved from a cultural perspective. A key starting point for organisations is to encourage collaborative relationships early on and for teams/individuals to seize the initiative and start talking about common pain points, desired solutions and building shared knowledge.
I've been consulting now for well over a year, it's been a fantastic experience so far; I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with some truly incredible people and it's also been amazing to be helping organisations get the most from their SQL Server platforms.
The last 12 months have been extremely interesting considering the current technical shift towards a seemingly endless list of new platforms and capabilities. For many organisations this shift has fundamentally changed how they do things (or going to do things) and many are going through their own journey of digital transformation understanding these new technologies and how to leverage them to improve their existing processes.
Right at the centre is data, nowadays considered to be a companies greatest asset, so how we use data or to be more exact how we extract more value from it is a frequent aim of these transformation projects. As a result the data professional roles within an organisation have changed too and many teams and individuals are having to broaden their technical skill set to design, deliver and support these new capabilities.
There is no truer example of this than the role of DBA but yet the question still remains on which direction(s) they should be focusing their future on? By that I mean development; which skills should they be learning, what certification, what products, platforms etc? It's easy to see why it's confusing; there are lots and lots of new technologies available to us but that also means there is no consistent path for administrators to set out on.
It was easier in the not so distant past; the DBA role tended to come in two distinct flavours; development or operational, but now the line between the two has became far less apparent and in many cases non-existent. The DBA role has without question become much more rounded containing core elements from both "sides" but it goes beyond that. Modern approaches to database administration have reduced the footprint of the operational side of the role so a more DevOps orientated DBA is an essential part of the roadmap, for organisations and individuals alike.
This shared roadmap is actually an integral component of an evolving data platform. I've worked with many different organisations at different stages of development but a key component in each has always been a collaborative working practice between data professionals and I'd say the success of a platform depends on it. Over the past year I've worked alongside many different teams; architects, DBA's, developers, release analysts, change and testing specialists, when working together they all have a great influence of the effectiveness of a data solution.
Whilst it's fair to say organisations should be encouraging this type of working practice it is very much dependent on individuals to pursue and implement it. For DBA's this means engaging with other teams much more frequently, understanding their skills and processes but also adding their own expertise and skill set to produce a much more co-operative function.
It might not fully answer this common question of what next for DBA's, there's a lot of factors involved, not least your personal career aspirations but it does show how when looking for your next phase of self development the paths that you need to take could be very close to your current role.
Your skills as a DBA will always be of paramount importance towards availability, security and performance, but by widening your technical scope by working much more closely with those around you not only improves you as an data professional but also the overall effectiveness your data platform. The starting point is to seek out these opportunities; start building relationships, start knowledge sharing and developing new ideas and different ways of working.
In many ways the data platform is a reflection of the people tasked with shaping it. If we choose not to broaden ourselves, learn new ideas then at some point we come to a standstill, especially in this rapidly evolving technical landscape. If that happens a data platform stops growing, not in terms of data quantity but most certainly in terms of both capability and perhaps most critical of all, value.
This puts a big emphasis on self-development but we've always had that, it's nothing new. The key is to seek out those opportunities, start close and work with teams that you will probably already have a working relationship with. As these relationships grow so does the collaborative skill set and as a result business processes improve and technical solutions get faster and more productive.
This also cuts down reactive measures, less time fire fighting means more time delivering enhancements and of course, more learning. Any learning process shouldn't have a cut off point, the more we broaden our horizons the more the effective we become and in turn, our products, our services and our platforms keep on evolving.
This is the true nature of a technical platform and we as data professionals play such an important part not just in the support or development of them but towards shaping their growth, effectiveness and their value. Perhaps the key to all of this is realising the value of our own development alongside it.
For quite some time now there has been a lot of talk on the various social media platforms regarding the future of the DBA role and whether or not it still has a place in the not so distant future.
I've actually wrote this post a few times but it's always ended up being a very lengthy read of epic proportions so I've decided to hack it to bits and get straight to the point(s) and hopefully open it up for some more discussion because I think it's a very hot topic still and I'm really interested to hear peoples opinions on where the role is heading.
Lets get straight to the point; is there a place for the DBA role? The answer to that is most definitely yes, whilst databases exist there will always be the need for administration, but as core administrative tasks are being automated there will be less for DBA to do along these lines.
One example I hear of why the DBA will still be very important is performance tuning, after all in cloud platforms you are literally going to pay for poor performance but then with the likes of automated index management and the arrival of the adaptive query processing family in SQL 2017 we can see that the time we spend on tuning activities could well be shrinking as well.
This is really where the concern is coming from but perhaps this is the wrong way of looking at things. Instead of worrying about what we're going to be doing, or rather not doing, we should be looking at how the technical landscape is changing and looking at the opportunities that lay within it.
Now I'm not saying for that we should all become data scientists (and nobody else is by the way), data science is hard but it is a great example of an emerging area within the data platform that we may seek to explore for own careers, in fact there is no real reason why anyone shouldn't spend at least a bit of time familiarising themselves with the technology and its capabilities. This goes for a lot of functionality now present within SQL Server; it's native support for R and Python, the likes of Always On and In-Memory OLTP becoming more prominent and the rise and rise of PowerShell automation, we can even run on Linux now and of course there is that cloud thing that everyone is talking about.
All of these technologies are integral parts of the Microsoft's vision for an ever widening data platform and as organisations look to implement them and leverage their advantages it is the DBA that can be at the forefront of this technical transformation, if they want to be.
This for me is the real point. The changing technical landscape is only a threat to those unwilling to explore new areas and learn new skills and this certainly doesn't apply exclusively to DBA's, whatever your involvement in IT this technical shift effects you and to put it bluntly, you can either go with it, or be left well behind.
For DBA's there could be some areas that are out of the comfort zone, perhaps the Dev/BI stacks or architecture but thankfully there is an abundance of training material out there which doesn't cost a small fortune or in some cases anything at all, not to mention all the support coming from within the technical communities. The decision really is yours how you'd like to advance.
Now it is fair to say that organisations won't be simply moving to a new platform overnight, after all how many companies are still on SQL 2005 for example (if you need upgrading, give me a call) but rather than sit back and worry about what might happen and even worse do nothing about it, it's time to start looking at how the emerging technologies can benefit not just the organisations that you work with but how they can benefit you as a data professional.
