Database

Slow Queries? Move Fast to Fix Them

01/17/18 What Are the Effects of Slow Queries? Slow queries can have serious negative impacts on your business. The impacts will vary depending on your architecture, industry, or a…

2017 Year in Review for SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor

01/04/18 It’s easy to observe (pun intended) in the rear-view mirror. Hindsight bias aside, 2017 was a big year for SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor (DPM) and our customers!…

Top 7 Things Every DBA Should Do Before They Go On Holiday

12/19/17 Everybody wants to take a relaxing holiday from time to time, whether you are a veteran DBA standing watch over million dollar mission-critical database systems or a jack-…

The Future is Always Bright

12/15/17 In my last couple of posts, I’ve tried to paint a picture of the past and present of database management and monitoring. We’ve seen that good database performance has ever…

Is Compliance Something I Should Be Thinking About?

12/15/17 Over the past 12 months, I’ve heard the word “compliance” thrown around quite a bit. Only now does compliance depend on what department or industry you are in. From ISO to…

Committed To Security: SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor and SOC 2 Type 1

12/13/17 Security has always been a priority at SolarWinds® Database Performance Monitor (DPM), and we have architected and built our product for security from the beginning, frequ…

The Only Source of Knowledge is Experience…

12/06/17 The title of this post is a quote that might be (or not be) from Albert Einstein. I first thought the title of the post would be something like: “why root cause analysis i…

How Can I Become A Microsoft MVP?

12/05/17 This is such a common question that, were I to write a FAQ of questions I get after speaking, it should sit somewhere in the top 3 positions. (Update 19-Dec-2017: This pos…

Monitoring, Analytics, Diagnostics, Observability, and Root Cause Analysis

12/03/17 Monitoring is a hopelessly overloaded term in tech culture. The term now carries decades of inaccurate and imprecise use. The result is that several people can be engaged …

My Life as IT Code: Part 5 – Walking the Wall

11/27/17 In this, my fifth and final post about life hacks, I’ll talk about the communication process, clarifications across all key personnel, and a big approach in how some of th…

The Unifying Force of Data

11/27/17 Someday, we may look back on IT as a subset of social science as much as a technological discipline. Because it sits at the intersection of business and technology, visibi…

My Life as IT Code: Part Four – Exercise and Sandbox

11/16/17 In previous posts in this “My Life” blog series, I’ve written quite a bit about the project management/on-task aspects of how I keep my focus and direction top of mind whi…