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Cognitive Coverage

Satya Nadella talked about cognitive coverage in the age of AI, about being able to understand and manage AI agents to get work done as a software developer. The interview from Hard Fork Live covers the future of work and comfort in this new age. This reminds me of a book that the CEO of Redgate recommended, Reshuffle. I love the book, but it's slow reading as I constantly stop and think.

Work is changing; it's becoming unbundled and re-bundled in different ways, and many of us will have to learn to work in new ways. Not all of us, but many of us. Some might see their day-to-day efforts change little; some will not recognize their job a year from now. As with anything, lots of us will be in the middle with some changes, some status quo. That's certainly where I am with AI assistance.

The short version of what Satya says is that there is new glue work coming to software engineers. To me, this is where we re-bundle the work that needs to be done: work completed by us, results from AI, and the glue of that stuff together. The glue is managing, organizing, deciding, and probably a few other xxx'ings in there. It's also about understanding what's happening

That understanding is the cognitive coverage. I like that term as it implies that I need to know the sum total of what's happening from my team, both humans and AI agents. I can grok the way the river is flowing.

And it's flowing. It's not stopping. It might be getting wider. I can lightly influence it, but if I don't keep an eye on things, it might go in directions I don't expect and even overflow its banks.

The hosts noted that most people want to know their jobs won't change or how they will change. That's one of the big things with AI that's disruptive and scary. With a machine able to learn and adjust in ways that are more flexible than ever in the past, we have to be adaptable as well. We have to learn to work with this flexible, non-deterministic, eerily human-like technology. It's a scary and unnerving thing for many of us.

AI is definitely changing the world. It's not magic; it's not going to automatically get rid of all, or maybe not many, humans, but it is going to change the demands placed upon them. Getting a grasp of your cognitive coverage of what AI does is going to be important.

 

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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How We Handled a Vendor Retry That Loaded Twice in Snowflake

Chandan Shukla from SQLServerCentral

The vendor file arrived twice overnight, Snowflake loaded both copies without complaining, and finance found the problem before the pipeline did.

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Add New Disk to Windows Failover Cluster for SQL Server

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

I have a 2-node failover cluster instance running on Windows Server 2019 Standard edition. I have a requirement to add a new SAN disk to the SQL Server failover cluster instance (FCI), and then I need to move a user database to that newly added shared disk. Can you show the steps required to add a new disk to the FCI and move the user database?

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From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Microsoft Build 2026 announcements

James Serra from James Serra's Blog

Once again there were a number of Microsoft Build announcements related to data and AI, and some were very impressive. Below are my favorites. I am prioritizing the data...

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From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Where Is My SQL Agent? Running Scheduled Jobs Against Azure SQL Database

gbargsley from GarryBargsley

One of the first things I review when I inherit a new SQL Server environment is the SQL Agent jobs. I can learn a tremendous amount about an organization...

SQL Server 2025 Unveiled: The AI-Ready Enterprise Database with Microsoft Fabric Integration

SQL Server 2025 Unveiled: The AI-Ready Enterprise Database with Microsoft Fabric Integration

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

With built-in AI for application development and advanced analytics powered by Microsoft Fabric, SQL Server 2025 empowers you to innovate—securely and confidently. This book shows you how.

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Getting the Average

I have this data in the dbo.Commission table in a SQL Server 2022 database.
salesperson commission
Brian       12
Brian       16
Andy        7
Andy        14
Andy        21
Steve       20
Steve       NULL
All the data is a varchar, and I decide to run this query to get the totals for each salesperson.
SELECT SalesPerson
     , AVG(TRY_PARSE(Commission AS int)) AS TotalCommission
 FROM commission
 GROUP BY SalesPerson
GO
What average commission is calculated for Steve?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

 Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

DBCC CHECKDB Limits I

When running DBCC CHECKDB on SQL Server 2025, can I include the Resource Database?

Answer: No, because the Resource database cannot be put into single-user mode.

Explanation: The Resource database cannot be modified unless it is single-user mode, which isn't allowed. Ref: DBCC CHECKDB - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/database-console-commands/dbcc-checkdb-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver17

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


Editorials
Spending Time in the Office - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Spending Time in the Office
What is the Cloud? - Comments posted to this topic are about the item What is the Cloud?
Midjourney, Healthcare? - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Midjourney, Healthcare?
Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears
Article Discussions by Author
SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About - Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Art, Part 4: Happy 4th of July — A British DBA's Guide to Celebrating a War We Don't Talk About, which is is not currently available on the site.
Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Concurrency and Baseline Control: Level 5 of the Stairway to Reliable Database Deployments
Multiple Values Inserted - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Multiple Values Inserted
Extreme DAX: Take your Power BI and Fabric analytics skills to the next level - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Extreme DAX: Take your Power BI and Fabric analytics skills to the next level
Changing the Schema - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Changing the Schema
Index Fragmentation Explained: Page Splits, Logical Reads, and What to Do - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Index Fragmentation Explained: Page Splits, Logical Reads, and What to Do
BCP on Linux - Comments posted to this topic are about the item BCP on Linux
You Probably Don't Need a Vector Database - Comments posted to this topic are about the item You Probably Don't Need a Vector Database
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
Alamat Kontak BCA KCP Comal Tlp,Cs:0821-8154-393 - WA:08218154393 Grand Comal Residence, Jl. Raya Ahmad Yani No.20 Blok EA A19, Dusun II, Purwosari, Kec. Comal, Kabupaten Pemalang, Jawa Tengah 52363
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Finding 'bad' characters - Hi All I am trying to find 'bad' characters that users might type in. My query is finding them as expected, but the results include records that I think my query should not return. Here is my query select NOTES  , ascii(left(NOTES ,1)) from trip with(nolock) where (patindex('%[^ !-~]%' collate Latin1_General_BIN, NOTES ) > 0 […]
Increment a number in a SQL Query based on a value - I have an issue where I have a Bill of Material list of items where some of the item numbers are blank. I need to give them sequential numbers from a beginning number like 9000000. then the next blank would be 9000001 and so on. I thought I could create a table and store the […]
 

 

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