Twelve years of field notes from running Oracle, SQL Server and cloud database estates. Pick a thread below, or read everything in date order.
Oracle
The bulk of the archive — from 11g through 23ai and AI Database 26ai. Vector search, data pump, schema design, background processes, and the error messages that cost me a night.
135 posts
Backup & Recovery
RMAN cloning and recovery scenarios, table point-in-time recovery, Data Guard standby builds, flashback, and archive gap chasing.
17 posts
Security & Auditing
Read-only accounts that weren’t, password profiles, audit trail management, KMS keys on RDS, and unified auditing in 21c.
9 posts
SQL Server
SQL Server 2025 — the native JSON type, Intelligent Query Processing at compatibility level 170, and a week of GitHub Copilot in SSMS.
3 posts
Administration & Maintenance
CPU patching on primary and standby, scheduler jobs, tablespace and storage management, listeners, ASM, RAC and the Linux housekeeping around it all.
17 posts
Cloud & Migration
Planning a migration that actually lands, transportable tablespaces, KMS on Amazon RDS, and keeping cloud database spend from quietly compounding.
4 posts
Performance & Tuning
Turbocharging data loads, AWR and ADDM automation, statistics gathering, shrinking tables and reclaiming the space nobody noticed was gone.
4 posts
PostgreSQL & Aurora
Aurora PostgreSQL 18 upgrade notes, B-tree skip scans, and fixing replication lag with parallel logical replication.
2 posts
