Google has launched a version of their AlloyDB that can be installed on-premises. AlloyDB is a PostgreSQL compatible cloud database, a full-managed PaaS service. However, they are giving away a free developer edition and a paid for commercial license that can be installed where a customer wants to run it. The new product is called AlloyDB Omni.

I like Google's approach here. Obviously Google would prefer lots of their customers would move to the cloud version hosted in GCP (Google Cloud Platform), but they know that's not realistic. Even for customers that want to move to GCP, the customers might need to keep some workloads on-premises for a period time, so Google is giving them an option to modernize their workload with a new datastore that is PostgreSQL compatible, but running on-premises. Presumably this will be compatible with the cloud version and if customers want to, they can just shift to AlloyDB.

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This article has a great opening quote. It says: "We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge". It's from John Naisbitt, who wrote the book, Megatrends in 1988. I think this quote can be very apropo in organizations as we have data, we have plenty of reports deriving information, but sometimes we don't have a lot of knowledge, especially when there has been turnover in our staff.

We can train new people on many things, but not everything. The knowledge of the culture, of what others know, of the little strange bugs or behaviors that can't get fixed, the tribal knowledge accumulated by living in an environment. These are the learnings that can't easily be replaced, and until they are, often new employees are less productive.

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Companies often want more data to help them make decisions on how they run their business. There has been this quest to gather and analyze as much data as possible to increase the efficiency of their operations to help reduce costs or increase profits. This has led to the importance of data as an asset, and the need for more data professionals in many organizations.

That's good for many of us that work with data.

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No, Redgate Software isn't hiring for SQL Prompt. I'm sure quite a few of you depend on SQL Prompt and would like more engineers working on it. Maybe a few of you would find that an interesting piece of software to work on.

Rather, a Prompt engineer is someone that works with AI, trying to get a system to produce better results. I can't decide if this sounds like an interesting job that stretches your brain or the equivalent of a mediocre developer that just keeps copying something from Stack Overflow, hitting compile, getting an error, and repeating that cycle.

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There was a Slack thread at Redgate recently where a developer was showing some code where they decided to use the "extra" column from the information_schema.columns view. They were making decisions on how to detect certain metadata about a column based on the data in this column. Apparently, the data in here is overloaded for different options that might be set on a table.

This caught my eye because I had no idea there was a column named "extra" in this view. I flipped over to SSMS and decided to check what was being stored in here. To my surprise, there was no "extra" column. As I dug in a little deeper in the thread, I realized the developer was talking about Information_schema.columns in a MySQL database.

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I travel quite a bit every year. Over 20 trips in 2022 and five trips in the first quarter of 2023. To make life easier, I have a few routines that I use to ensure that travel goes smoothly and I don't forget things. One of those routines is using a parking service near the airport.

This company used to have a fairly manual process, though it improved over the years. The pandemic forced them to move to more contactless service, which I appreciated. I could make a reservation online, get a QR code, and use that to both enter and exit the facility without interacting with anyone or handling money. A bit safer, but the big win for me was that this process was quicker for me move into and out of the lot.

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I give talks on branding and managing your career at various events. Often I am helping people to better market and sell themselves if find new opportunities. One area that I talk about for data professionals is the online profile. I think having one is important, especially as many of our contacts with potential employers are made digitally.

I ran across an article that focuses on LinkedIn, specifically the profile you create there. It has some thoughts on recommendations, accomplishments, certifications, and more. I like the thoughts, and I do think they help showcase who you are as a professional working in some field. It is worth reading through the article and adjusting your profile to include these items.

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For much of my career, I've run SQL Server Central. A large part of the popularity of the site is from the forums, where people can pose questions about their struggles with SQL Server and get answers from the community. There are also some off-topic forums, where people discuss various things outside of databases. In here, we have discussions a about life, sports, and more. While we do expect people to maintain an air of professionalism and respect others, we don't try to moderate content.

That's how much of the Internet has worked, with various sites allowing users to post content, but not having any responsibility for what has been posted. The liability for that lies with the person doing the posting, which creates a thorny issue when users post anonymously. Setting that aside, I've been a proponent of this, not believing that Facebook or LinkedIn, or SQL Server Central ought to be liable for what users write and post. I do thinks users bear that responsibility.

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Many organizations have been trying to find better ways to build and deploy software for their customers. Whether they deal with the general public or internal customers, we know that delivering software that customers use can be a competitive advantage. That's the goal of DevOps.   While most developers and management want to do this, they sometimes forget what the goal is. Instead, they want to continue to work in a similar manner themselves while giving lip service to actual change. They often do this while pushing others to somehow produce more and better software inside the same system. I see this over and over inside various companies.

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The last three years have felt like a bit of a time warp. I'll run into someone or reach out to a friend, thinking that I haven't talked to them in a year or two. Then I realize that it's been 4 or 5 years because the 2020-2022 time frame felt like a year or less. A long year, but still, less than the three years that passed.

Life is mostly back to normal for me, with travel, events, vacations, coaching, work, etc. all similar to the way things were in 2019. At the same time, I've changed and my life has changed. Some of this is aging, some is life moving on, but some is from the pandemic.

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