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Recently I saw an interesting article, saying that someone could build a general purpose coding agent in 131 lines of Python code. That's a neat idea, though I'm not sure that this is better than just using Claude Code, especially as the agent still uses the online version of  the Claude model from Anthropic to generate code or perform other tasks. There's a video in the article showing how this code can be used to perform some quick tasks on a computer. However, the code isn't specific to Anthropic. It can be used with any LLM, and I started doing just that, with a copy of the code from the article, but modified to use a local AI LLM running under Ollama. You can see my repo and feel free to download and play with it. It's expecting a local LLM on 11434. Read the rest of Local Agents

Introducing Mike Milken: “Science could not move fast enough.” from Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman. Follow the show: Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman From the free market to medical research to philanthropy, Mike Milken has had an outsized impact on it all. In the 1970s he ushered in an explosive era of innovation that changed the world of business and even the world itself. By the ‘90s, when facing his own life-threatening cancer diagnosis, he was determined to accelerate medical research and produce faster cures. Over the decades his work has addressed a vast range of medical problems, public health concerns, economic challenges, and international issues. The Milken Institute is a powerhouse think tank driving research and dialogue and its Global Conference is a can’t miss event for leaders every year. In a rare interview, Mike reflects on his legacy, discusses the leaders he’s invested in, and speaks passionately about the future of the American Dream. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].

Every database platform has some strengths and weaknesses. Some more than others. I caught this site (NSFW) from Erik Darling, and it made my day. I was having a tough one when this site got me to smile and chuckle out loud a few times. I especially like the MySQL and SQL Lite links (again NSFW). Every platform that you might choose to use to back an application can work in many situations. Certainly scale and load are factors to consider, but for the major relational database platforms, most will work fine for many applications. Some might work better than others, but there are always tradeoffs. There are pros and cons. This is also true for the major NoSQL platforms, though most of my experience is with relational ones, so I tend to lean in that direction. At the same time, any platform can fail horribly. Read the rest of Every Database Has Problems

In the last year I've seen a lot of statements about data and sovereignty between countries. While there have been concerns in the past, there seems to be more worry around the world with AI services primarily being run by, and hosted by, US companies. Plenty of my customers at Redgate Software have concerns over our ability to see data when we run AI models, though we don't store the data. Once the session ends, the data is discarded by policy Recently I saw a piece about France trying to rid itself of the reliance on US technology, specifically the Windows OS from Microsoft. They are looking to move to their own version of Linux, as well as a number of open source software packages. This quote was fascinating to me: "We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control." Read the rest of The New OS Wars

One of my colleagues wrote a great post about DBAs and developers, about how a DBA's pushback on bad code isn't to be difficult, it's because they can see the future. I never thought of myself as a modern-day Nostradamus, predicting the future of system performance. Apparently I had another title besides DBA. Working under pressure and with short deadlines often leads to short cuts. I've made them. I've implemented quick hot fixes. I've forgotten to port changes back to development databases. I've increased our tech debt load, just to solve a more immediate problem. Read the rest of Working Better Under Pressure

There was a post on X recently from a founder in the EU about an engineer using Claude and ChatGPT to build a feature. I am not sure how true these posts are or if they are designed to just create engagement, but it's still an interesting topic. The part that makes me think is that (supposedly) the engineer was fired because their "data" (code) was sent to American servers. The code was then deleted and the feature will be built without AI. First, read some of the responses before you form an opinion. There are some funny ones in there. There are a few I think are overblown and silly, and I skim past them. Someone is always more upset than I am, and more than I think they rationally should be, so I tend to let their outrage flow by me. Read the rest of Who is Irresponsible?

It's always interesting to me when I give product feedback to engineers at Redgate on their demos. Quite often they've built a feature that uses AdventureWorks or Pagila (PostgreSQL) or some other well known schema to evaluate how their particular thing works with a database. I try to remind them that many databases aren't well modeled and designed with consistent naming. I ran across a Daily WTF article that isn't showcasing databases, but it does show some poor naming in data being stored in a PDF. The developer who had to automate a process had to map these fields to database fields, which also might not be named very clearly. In fact, I think I've seen a few database models that used column names like the field names in the PDF. Read the rest of Poor Names

Recently, I saw a graph about making decisions that showed the impact of both reversibility and consequences. Here is an example of such a graph and how one might approach decisions. If things are easily reversible or have a low consequence, we tend to make a decision and move on. Or we are willing to make a decision. One of the examples of such a decision was choosing what to wear out to dinner. It's easy to change, and (in general) of little consequence. Choosing to send a large amount of money to someone through Venmo (or some other mechanism), can be hard to reverse and have substantial consequences. This made me think of some of the DBA and developer decisions I've made in the past. When we work with databases, the changes we make can have a large impact and be quite consequential to our organization. Downtime, data quality, etc. could all impact revenue, profit, reputation, or even future prospects of survival. That can be a lot of pressure when you are deciding to refactor a data model or adjust a lot of data during a deployment. Read the rest of Acting with Confidence

Years ago I was giving a talk on software development and asked the audience how long it takes to review a PR that has 10 lines changed. Answers were in the minutes to tens of minutes range. I then asked how long it takes to review a PR that has 1,000 lines changed. Some people said hours, but a few people said seconds. I've often taken the latter, pessimistic view. Not because I don't think engineers want to do a good job, but because I know human behavior. Most humans will get bored, lose focus, and end up skimming through a large amount of code. Many (most?) people don't want to spend all that time, after all they have they their own code to write. They'll just approve the PR and assume testing will catch any major issues. Read the rest of Barely Reviewed Code

SQL Server Central has been a great success over the last 25 years. We've helped a lot of people improve their careers with the Microsoft Data Platform, primarily SQL Server, but we've published articles on other aspects of databases, including other platforms. I wrote a bit about the history of the site last month, with a few stories in various pieces. We even got Brian Knight to contribute a piece on what the site meant to him. Over the years, we experimented with trying to get an SSIS Central or a SSRS Central off the ground. However, we struggled to find other people who would have been willing to partner with us to provide content and answer questions. Eventually, we gave up, though I wish today we'd have pushed forward with a PostgreSQL Central site a few years back. Read the rest of AI Database Central

One of the challenges of AI-assisted coding agents is that they tend to produce A LOT of code. Even in refactoring or migration changes, the AIs can work quickly and generate such a volume of code that the process starts to become overwhelming. For pull requests, for CI/CD build systems, and certainly for human reviewers, they can be overwhelmed. This can become a real problem with OSS projects, where submissions can grow exponentially to the point that maintainers stop looking at pull requests. I suspect the same thing might happen in corporate repositories when lots of developers can refactor or submit huge amounts of code produced by AI agents in a fraction of the time it took a year ago. I was listening to an interview with an experienced software developer and OSS project maintainer who said that he preferred getting a "prompt request" that contained a description of a problem and the specification for a solution that he could submit to his own LLM to get the code. Rather than use an AI to review a code in a PR written by a human or AI agent, a great prompt that can communicates the problem and solution is preferred. Read the rest of Prompt Requests

We do a lot of research at Redgate Software, often contacting customers or Ambassadors and asking questions, getting feedback, listening to their challenges or criticisms. We take that information and it helps guide us to build the tools that help you in your job. Recently I watched a call with a customer that uses our famous Toolbelt in their job and has for years. In this case, the call was about the value of Flyway and how that might fit in their organization. The person performed a lot of manual work to deploy code changes, and could see the way in which Flyway helps, but wasn't interested in saving time. They saw their time as free. I assume their employer felt that way as well. Read the rest of Is Your Time "Free"?

I wrote a blog about sitting at LHR recently and watching planes take off. That's been a fun thing for me to do when I'm stuck at the airport. I can see a plane roll down the runway every 35-45s during busy times. This time I was sitting by a window in the hotel, working and watching. There was a moment when I realized no planes were taking off. I looked and saw a vehicle rolling down the runway, and then realized there were two, one from each direction. It was an runway FOD inspection, looking for anything that might damage a plane. Read the rest of Doing the Little Things

When I was young and needed to learn about something, I had to go to a library or a bookstore to get information. I often started by looking through an encyclopedia. I had to wander between entries to learn more about the topic I was researching. A few lucky friends had their own copy of an encyclopedia, which was nice since we could research at home. At some point these collections of information were moved to CD/DVDs, which made them more portable and more accessible to a larger group of people than in the past. In the 90s we had the innovation of search engines, which allows us to more quickly move through information. There was more information available on the Internet than was ever published in encyclopedias. Over the years, these search engines improved their ability to rank and recommend information that is relevant to your query. However, you still need some idea of what you are trying to learn about. You have to direct the searches, although the Google auto-complete felt very predictive at times. Read the rest of Everything is the right question away

A few weeks ago I was in Bletchley Park, at the facility where the Allies decoded and broke many of the German Nazi messages in World War II. It's quite a facility and museum, and I hope to go back. I was distracted that day and didn't get a lot of time to enjoy the exhibits and really learn more about what happened there. I was there for our Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff, and as a part of that, two different executives in our company shared their stories of people who had worked there. What was interesting is that until we planned this event, these two people had no idea that there were people they knew well, who had been part of the effort to end World War II at Bletchley Park. This facility can be considered to be one of the birthplaces of computing. Read the rest of Hidden Heroes.