Early in my career when I worked for the U.S. DoD, I had the good fortune to experience the development of the Capabilities Maturity Model (CMM) first-hand and see how transformative its application was to our database and development teams. It made such a lasting impression on me that I try to share this roadmap for success in information management whenever I get the chance. If you’ve never heard of it before, you owe it to yourself to listen to the podcast and learn more. The CMM is literally a step-by-step guide to success for database management teams!

If that’s not enough reason, I was thrilled to read this comment from John Kerski on the podcast LinkedIn page:

So please give it a listen and share your feedback. Thanks!

-Kevin

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In no small way, 2023 was a year marked by innovation and change in the enterprise technology landscape. Companies of all sizes continue to accelerate their digital transformation efforts, to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered solutions, including observability tools, to keep up with today’s increasingly complex infrastructure environments. But to effectively manage GenAI and software products built to leverage GenAI, enterprises also badly need strong practices and workflows like DevOps and Data Governance.

To see what else I had to say, read the full article at https://www.dbta.com/Columns/Next-Gen-Data-Management/.

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I suggest you give it a review. Read the full article here – https://insidebigdata.com/2024/01/03/big-data-industry-predictions-for-2024.

For my part, I wrote…

AI Answers The Call for Help Managing Data Overabundance: Today’s data professionals have an overwhelming amount of information at their fingertips but many may lack the actionable insights they need. And, with the increase in data being categorized across distributed sources—328.77 million terabytes daily—organizations are grappling with the challenges of data management. Data is one of the most valuable assets an enterprise has, yet it’s fundamentally useless unless it can be leveraged, understood, and applied effectively. As we approach 2024, data management is rapidly evolving toward a future dominated by artificial intelligence. AI is the answer for IT teams as they navigate today’s increasingly complex distributed and hybrid digital environments.

Because these technologies process more information than any one human ever could, they support resource-constrained IT teams by ensuring applications and services are running properly without the need for human intervention. AI-powered observability and ITSM solutions, in particular, can provide a lift to IT teams by enabling them to automate tasks, detect security threats and performance anomalies, optimize performance, and make better decisions based on data analysis.

Yet our path forward in 2024 requires deliberate planning and a keen understanding of how and in what ways AI can help us. While walking the exhibit halls of several large IT conferences this year, I was surprised how almost every vendor’s booth was blazoned with AI captions. These frothy headlines won’t turn a poor or mediocre product into a good one. And organizations that begin their journey to AI by hurrying to implement the latest shiny new technology without analysis, are least likely to see long-term and sustainable success. Instead, carefully plan your AI strategy and you’ll reap the rewards long into the future. – Kevin Kline, Senior Staff Technical Marketing Manager from SolarWinds

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic! Cheers,

-Kev

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-Kevin

If there’s something you need to keep secure, it’s natural to want to keep it sealed away under lock and key. However, even keeping something in a vault, far from prying eyes and ill intent, may not be enough to offer peace of mind. After all, how can you have the peace of mind of knowing it’s safe if you don’t regularly check to ensure it hasn’t bolted, been burgled or broken down?

Now, multiply the volume and value of things being monitored tenfold — and you get a sense of the daily inefficiencies and anxieties IT professionals battle.

Instead of jewels, these teams safeguard, manage and maintain something far more valuable: The data that underpins everything from business transactions to system performance to threat detection to service delivery and beyond. To make matters more complicated, today’s digital ecosystems are more complicated, distributed and disparate than ever before.

Databases are critical to managing a successful IT department — and it’s time to discard the widespread industry’s perception of them as an unknowable black box. To be sure, databases represent the most difficult component of the IT ecosystems to observe, tune, manage and scale. But the database isn’t a Magic 8 ball in terms of its internal processes; We no longer have to shake the mystery toy and accept one of the six answers it’s designed to spit out.

The fact of the matter is that database specialists and IT teams need a clear view of database performance telemetry if they want any hope of maintaining the health, stability and scalability of their services….

Read the rest of article here: Observability: The Central Watchtower for Your All-Seeing IT Needs

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Back in July of 2023, I wrote about this idea in greater detail at DBTA.com. Click the link to read more.

Here’s a brief snippet of the article:

Data is the cornerstone of the modern digital business. IT teams, database professionals, and business leaders use data to make informed decisions, increase efficiency, and stay ahead of business objectives. Applications also need data to run efficiently to ensure teams don’t encounter any bottlenecks.

Harnessing the power of data is easier said than done, since today’s IT environments are becoming increasingly complex, driven by ongoing digital transformation efforts and cloud migration. Company data now lives in and is accessed through disparate pathways, including simultaneously on-prem, in private clouds, and in one or more public cloud environments.

I look forward to your feedback! Best regards,

-Kevin

The post The Top Six Benefits of Database DevOps for Streamlined and Stronger Database Operations appeared first on Kevin E. Kline.

Back in July 20, 2023, I had the opportunity to site for an open form interview with Alan Shimel, founder and CEO of the Techstrong Group, a media group with a host of excellent content sites such as DevOps.com and TechStrong.TV.

The abstract for the interview follows – After a brief hiatus, Kevin Kline has re-joined the SolarWinds team as a senior staff technical marketing manager where he serves as a subject matter expert on a variety of relational database management systems. Ahead of his participation in TechStrong’s DataOps Day, Kevin brings his experience, particularly with Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL, to TechStrong TV to share his breadth of knowledge on database observability solutions and challenges. The discussion focuses on SolarWinds’ database observability solution highlighting its cloud and on-premises capabilities and product offerings, which ensure service level objectives (SLOs) are exceeded for critical business applications.

If you’re interested in database monitoring and observability, take a few moments to watch the video or read the transcript of the interview here:

https://techstrong.tv/videos/interviews/solarwinds-database-observability-kevin-kline-solarwinds

Thanks so much for reading! I hope to connect with you soon. Cheers,

-Kevin

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“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

― Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has remained one of the most iconic and beloved stories of the holiday season. Part of the reason the story has stuck with us since its Victorian-era publication lies in the lessons it teaches us. At its heart, the story is about the need for kindness and charity, and most importantly, how we can use the lessons of our past to become better in the future.

In the 2023 holiday season, I had the opportunity to reflect on how we (the IT community) can use A Christmas Carol as a guide to visit our own past, look critically at our present, and see where we could be heading.

Read the full article here:

https://www.itprotoday.com/industry-perspectives/it-carol-how-ghosts-it-past-and-present-can-help-improve-future

And as always, I’d love to hear your feedback. Cheers!

-Kevin

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I’d love to hear your feedback! Cheers,

-Kevin

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of serving on the organizing committee for the DataTune conference in my hometown of Nashville, Tenn. Unlike many database-specific or platform-specific conferences, which tend to focus on analytics and data science, DataTune covers a wide variety of topics such as database engineering, development, admin­istration, and analytics. I was delighted to be joined on the committee by two friends, Dustin Dorsey and Cameron Cyr, authors of Unlocking dbt: Design and Deploy Transfor­mations in Your Cloud Data Warehouse.

Dustin, Cameron, and I spent more than a few moments dis­cussing the rising popularity of dbt (Data Build Tool). It was a conversation well worth having. dbt (notice that the lowercase letters are intentional) has gone from being an obscure field in 2021 to today’s de facto industry standard for data transformation and analytics engineering. dbt Labs has more than 4,000 custom­ers for its commercial dbt Cloud product, and more than 25,000 companies use its dbt open source product to create and manage data pipelines….

Continue to read the article here:

https://www.dbta.com/Columns/Next-Gen-Data-Management/Building-Modern-Data-Pipelines-Using-dbt-Tips-and-Tricks-163735.aspx

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https://vmblog.com/archive/2023/07/28/show-your-appreciation-celebrating-sysadminday-2023.aspx

Many other IT experts also provided quotes for this. Following here is the introduction of the article as well as my small part. I hope you enjoy!

-Kevin

Today, July 28, 2023, the tech world is gearing up to celebrate one of its unsung heroes—the SysAdmins! On this special occasion of SysAdmin Appreciation Day, we take a moment to acknowledge the vital role these skilled professionals play in keeping our digital world running smoothly. Often working behind the scenes, SysAdmins are the architects of our digital infrastructure, ensuring seamless operations, robust security, and prompt troubleshooting.

To honor and recognize their invaluable contributions, we reached out to a panel of esteemed industry experts from diverse domains, ranging from cybersecurity to cloud computing. In this exclusive VMblog article, we present a round-up of thoughts and well wishes to the SysAdmin community at large.

Join us as we embark on a journey of appreciation, where these industry leaders reflect on the significance of SysAdmins in modern-day technology landscapes and highlight the extraordinary efforts these professionals undertake day in and day out to keep our digital ecosystem thriving. So, let’s dive into this compilation of praise and admiration, and collectively express our gratitude to the SysAdmins who keep our digital realm secure, efficient, and up and running!

My Quote

Kevin Kline, Database Technical Evangelist at SolarWinds

“Managing applications, digital services, and data is tougher than ever before. SysAdmin Day recognizes the unsung heroes of the digital age. The global, interconnected, hybrid workplace model of today could not exist as we know it today without SysAdmins. System administrators are the stewards that protect the quality, integrity, security, and usability of IT infrastructure, despite the many layers and complexities that continue to emerge and evolve. We at SolarWinds salute all SysAdmins today.”

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Human beings are social creatures and though we as IT pros like to focus on hard technology skills first and foremost, I think we can all admit that having a great social experience at a conference like the PASS Summit in North America, SQLBits in the UK, or Data Platform Summit in India is at least as important as the technical learning.

Let me also point out that it’s never too late to talk about this topic. First of all, I’d love to hear further stories or links to your stories as comments here. But also continue to blog and write about your experiences on social media. Sharing your positive experiences can also uplift others by seeing you as a role model to emulate or offering examples of experiences that they too can enjoy.

Many of these writers I can now call friends. For me, this is the heart of great conferences and a great community – building lasting relationships that stand the test of time. Here’s what others written about had to say in response to T-SQL Tuesday 153:

Aaron Bertrand (t|b), one of the brightest lights in the SQL Server sky, tells us about a time where presenting at a SQL Saturday event led to a decision to relocate and how that impacted his life henceforth –
https://sqlblog.org/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153.

Rob Farley (t|b), full-time comedian, musician, and pastor also knows a thing or three about SQL Server. He has made many PASS Summits an extra-special time for me by singing happy birthday to me at first sight no matter how many people might be between us. (Fwiw, my birthday and the PASS Summit coincided for several years in a row). He shares his story about how conference speaking led to wider opportunities as an entertainer, and more. You can see his blog post at https://lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2022/08/09/conferences/.

Kevin Chant (t|b), an online friend but not yet an in-person friend, tells about SQLBits XIII where his experiences with the friendly community of SQLBits and meeting Steve Wozniak made a lasting mark on him for years to come. Read more here – https://www.kevinrchant.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-sqlbits-where-i-met-woz/

Andy Yun (t|b), SQL Server expert at Pure Storage and a friend for many years, has written about this topic before, under the fantastic title of Family Got Me Here, but adds another great stories here about the “kid’s table” – https://sqlbek.wordpress.com/2022/08/09/dont-forget-the-little-things/

Olivier Van Steenlandt (t|b), who I haven’t yet met in person but I hope to the next time I venture to Netherlands and/or Belbium, tells about how he became more involved in the wonderful SQL community of the Benelux region here – link: https://www.oliviervs.be/general/tsql-tuesday/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-conference-that-changed-everything-for-me/

Deepti Goguri (t|b), whom I’ve had several conversations with but only met online for the first time during the pandemic, tells us about the therapeutic and confidence-building power of attending and speaking at conferences. Read more here –
https://dbanuggets.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-life-changing-event/

Malathi Mahadevan (t|b), a long-standing fixture of the SQL Server volunteer community, tells us about several events, from SQLCruise to the PASS Summit 2006 where she won the PASSion Award for volunteer of the year. Mala’s experiences at events are many and heart-warming. Read more – https://curiousaboutdata.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-conference-that-changed-everything/

Shane O’Neill (t|b), a leader in the Irish SQL Server community and an organizer of the DBAFundamentals group, tells my favorite kind of story about the people he has met and the relationships he has formed by attending conferences. Read his story at https://nocolumnname.blog/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-conference-that-changed-everything/

Steve Jones (t|b), one of the greats of #sqlfamily and an abundant source of the best hugs, tells us a fun story about his first PASS Summit in 1999 and getting to meet one of the legendary figures of #sqlfamily – https://voiceofthedba.com/2022/08/09/the-conference-of-the-year-t-sql-tuesday-153/

Todd Kleinhans (t|b), both a VR expert and SQL Server expert, shares some great experiences he has had over the years and how the #sqlfamily is so much like a true family, a community where love and job abide –  https://toddkleinhans.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/t-sql-tuesday-153-looking-back-at-pass-2011-mvp-authors/

Greg Moore (t|b), who I only met for the first time about a year ago in a SQL Server online meetup, tells how attending a PASS Summit enabled him to meet the one and only Kathi Kellenberger and how that in turn led to the fulfillment of one of his dreams, becoming a published author. Read more at https://blog.greenms.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-the-conference-that-changed-everything-for-me/

Andy Levy (t|b) talks about finding his people, a refrain we hear quite frequently among #sqlfamily, and growing tight with DBATools team. He helps out the SQL Server community quite a lot in upstate New York region and is also quite active on the SQL Server community on Slack. Read the details here – https://www.flxsql.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-conference-changed-it-all/

Dr. Greg Low (t|b), one of the few celebrities of the SQL Server world who can entertain you with stories from just about every era of computing from mainframes of the 1970’s to the cloud platforms of the 21st century, shares some great stories including one in which he was privileged to deliver a portion of the keynote at TechEd Australia 2004. Over the years, I’ve learned that some of Greg’s best stories are the those that are merely hinted at, for example this line from his blog, “Let’s just say that I’m glad I wasn’t part of the SharePoint section <of the keynote>.” Um, wait, what the heck happened in the SharePoint section?!? :^D Read more at
https://blog.greglow.com/2022/08/09/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-conference-that-changed-everything-for-me/

Nigel Foulkes-Nock (t|b) is a familiar face to speakers like me who are only able to visit the UK for events like SQLBits. He is strikingly memorable due to his height and friendly demeanor, but don’t tell him that. He still doesn’t know how I remember his name every time I see him. :^D Read about his experiences as a member of #sqlfamily from the UK point of view –
https://www.nigeldba.com/t-sql-tuesday-153-the-conference-that-changed-everything-for-me-2

Tracy Boggiano (t|b) first burst onto the SQL Server scene back in 2015 with frenetic energy speaking at many events and blogging frequently, even organizing her own groups and webcasts. Tracy tells a story that warms my heart, how a tough childhood and mental health problems didn’t stop her from not only meeting her SQL Server heroes but also becoming a hero to others. Read on at https://tracyboggiano.com/archive/2022/08/t-sql-tuesday-153-sqlfamily/

Conclusion

There are many lessons we can glean from these blogs, but I want to highlight only of these – the SQL Server world might seem large and intimidating, but it is actually small and very approachable. Many of the writers above as well as speakers and writers everywhere in the #sqlfamily are thrilled to interact with those of us in the trenches working with SQL Server and related Microsoft products. If you have questions for them or simply want to meet them, reach out – you might just make a friend for life. Cheers!

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