Are We Dinosaurs?

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Are We Dinosaurs?

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • Great article and great to read from you, Sir.

    You know I used to make a joke that we changed the meaning of the acronym NoSQL from "No Structured Query Language" to "Not Only Structured Query Language" when we realized the shift wasn't that easy.

    I heard of a bank in South African still using COBOL, where the techies, unwilling to touch the core code, built integrations around it. Imagine what an 80-year-old COBOL consultant might charge to help them transform that platform. 🙂

    Autonomous databases came into my last employ with everyone getting excited and all DBAs getting worried about losing out on exciting performance tuning tasks but alas, it was not that simple.

    While I do agree that we should not be complacent, I also agree that full adoption might take longer than we think across the industry. And maybe some bright ideas might be discarded or modified.

    PS: Agile, SAFe, Disciplined Agile [let me not open that can of worms lol]

     

     

    Br. Kenneth Igiri
    https://kennethigiri.com
    All nations come to my light, all kings to the brightness of my rising

  • Great article and great to read from you, Sir.

    You know I used to make a joke that we changed the meaning of the acronym NoSQL from "No Structured Query Language" to "Not Only Structured Query Language" when we realized the shift wasn't that easy.

    I heard of a bank in South African still using COBOL, where the techies, unwilling to touch the core code, built integrations around it. Imagine what an 80-year-old COBOL consultant might charge to help them transform that platform. 🙂

    Autonomous databases came into my last employ with everyone getting excited and all DBAs getting worried about losing out on exciting performance tuning tasks but alas, it was not that simple.

    While I do agree that we should not be complacent, I also agree that full adoption might take longer than we think across the industry. And maybe some bright ideas might be discarded or modified.

    PS: Agile, SAFe, Disciplined Agile [let me not open that can of worms lol]

     

     

    Br. Kenneth Igiri
    https://kennethigiri.com
    All nations come to my light, all kings to the brightness of my rising

  • Couldn't help but notice the succession of articles the past two days.  Yesterday, Steve wrote about the "Vast Expansions of Hardware" which took me down memory lane, and now you write about "Dinosaurs".  I, for one, see men (and women) like us who have lived the life of technology all these years as very WISE.  No doubt our work ethics were forged in a manner long forgotten.  Our years of experience culminate in WISDOM that cannot be packaged and transferred in bullet points or KT sessions.  Our ability to persevere through technical difficulties to solve problems makes us rare individuals.  Regardless of the fad and trends spewed out by the non-technical world regarding process, methodologies and synergy, we will always be sought out and envied for our wisdom and experience.  Instead of thinking of retirement, we should be planning for our most productive years ever - maybe with a little less work and more of life (to offset all the previous years for our workaholic behaviors).

  • 💯 I've known this about myself for awhile and fortunately this, my last job before I retire, is all about cloud, azure, which I wanted to learn but not had the chance....although a couple of years in AWS along the way. We do have Mongo on the side but all the new, non relational stuff will be for some younger folk. In science and tech, everyone becomes a dino some day...even Einstein. BUT, there are things that are transcendent over time and space and culture...and these things remain relevant to the Human condition. I see my faith as one. So I'm a dino but also a human soul...and that's not and never will be, irrelevant 😊

  • Grant, if 61 is old, I'm not sure what category I'm in.  Old Plus, maybe?

    Just like you can still find apps built on Cobol and dBASE II, you will not in any of our lifetimes completely replace SQL and the relational database model.  It is solid, efficient, and in such widespread use that even something much more elegant or energy efficient will be around for the lifetime of the youngest among us.

    People still use fax machines.

     


    Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither

  • Man, this piece hit hard. Really hard. Thank you, Grant, for saying what probably a lot of us have been thinking. SQL is such a powerful and beautiful problem-solving tool.

    But why use that when you can simply use an arbitrary, ever-changing stack of 10 flavor-of-the-month open-source plug-in panaceas instead? Wait, make that 11: a hot new incubator in SF is blowing up my IG feed with an app that allows me to use 10 different hot new programming languages in one script! Sign me up!

    Sorry, just needed to vent. At least the dinosaurs didn't see the meteor coming.


    "If I had been drinking out of that toilet, I might have been killed." -Ace Ventura

  • I started in COBOL which was very dependable but not flexible and ultimately transitioned to databases, Sybase/ASE, SQL Server, Oracle, and finally Azure SQL Database.

    Just yesterday I read about a provider of DBA services being contacted because of a full transaction log.  I might be harsh in my old age, but the scenario had the flavor of a developer (or power user) who became the accidental DBA and really did not understand the larger picture.  The other issues found with the organization's database environment, when combined, had the potential to put them out of business due to total data loss.

    We have more life and work experience than so many and to some that will be a problem because they might somehow infer the old dog can't learn new tricks. But a dog who has learned to learn won't stop learning.

  • Although looks like NoSQL mostly turned into SparkSQL. The relational database still seems to be working 50  years on.

  • Grant, congratulations on having reached 61.  I wish you continued success and happiness approaching your retirement.  I do understand that we DBA's mostly have actually earned our retirement.  As I have commented before on here, I hope you have adequately prepared, so you don't need to continue the grind.

    As far as the idea of being dinosaurs in our field, my thought is that while the means of access might keep changing that the basic relational structure concept may continue for some time.  I think we've done a fairly thorough and workable means of storing data in relational structures.  From here on for some time I foresee more effort spent on data compression, manipulation and presentation than on storage concepts.  I think there is massive work ahead in reducing data size while maintaining the NEEDED level of detail.

    I admit that as an 81 year old veteran of working with data, I probably overly obsess with maintaining detail and exactness over summarization and presentation. But that most likely comes from the massive increases in available storage for the money during my years.  However, we must also consider the timely availability and accessibility.

    My days actually go back before CRT terminals to when we read cards, tapes, or disk files sequentially, created 'work files' that were subsequently fed into an actual SORT utility program to create the desired sequence of data, and then prepared for presentation, almost exclusively by printed reports.   Master data was pretty much created by tape-to-tape merging of temporary disk files of new data.

    I do think that the ability to determine appropriate levels of summarization are critical to the whole concept.  This may be why we dinosaurs still have some value.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • My thinking is that you need to be “relevant”.  Regardless of what you know or do, if business is moving in a different technology direction, you may not fit into that unless you change.  I used to work for a consultancy and we were responsible for introducing new tech all the time.  Whilst I did not always use and gain experience with the tech, I remained relevant by understanding it, knowing its capabilities and being able to work with people who had the deep knowledge

  • Thanks everyone for the feedback. Sorry for the late reply, I've been visiting Persian War battlefields in Greece the last couple of days (I love my job, yes, I'm in Greece for work).

    Anyhoo, no arguments. I would add here, separate from the editorial, I personally think relational databases will last another 50 years, minimum. That said, you never know when that paradigm shifting technology is going to arrive. I sure haven't seen it in any of the new shiny. However, you never know, so I keep an eye out.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • I totally agree that relational databases will continue to be used for decades. Used wisely, they are far more utile and efficient than many people realize. However, as I'm sadly finding at present, people with expertise in that field are simply not as desirable anymore. So while our skills may still be relevant within a certain subset of companies, it's increasingly difficult to leverage them into finding a good job nowadays (SQL Server in particular). Very sad state of affairs to me, but I know things change and we need to adapt. But the speed of that change is certainly accelerating of late. 🙁


    "If I had been drinking out of that toilet, I might have been killed." -Ace Ventura

  • OK, Auto, your screen name got my attention.  Can you explain?

     

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • @skeleton567 Sure, are you asking about my screen name or my comments? 🙂


    "If I had been drinking out of that toilet, I might have been killed." -Ace Ventura

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