The Voice of the Customer

This week I had the opportunity to join many of the U.S.-based Redgaters in Austin to talk about 2024 plans, hear from the product teams, and have some much-needed fellowship. One thing was particularly clear as I listened to various leaders and product managers – the customer drives everything we do. And I have to be honest, it was really encouraging to hear how much the work that our teams do is influenced by real customers, with real needs, trying to solve real problems.

Maybe your company or team are having similar meetings and conversations,too.

Although I certainly enjoyed hearing what the teams were planning to bring to our amazing line of Database DevOps applications, I actually enjoyed the second day of meetings more than hearing about product updates. (ok, it’s almost a tie, but still…)

For day two, we had a separate room for each product team, and the rest of us went from room to room in groups. It was here that we got to talk about customer journeys, their specific pain points and challenges managing their database estates and development. The goal was to help newer employees, and even some veterans, listen better as we support our users. Too often, it’s easy to jump to assumptions about what will solve a specific need, which usually means that it can take longer to solve their problem. We were able to hear, firsthand, how the support teams and product teams guide a conversation to really draw out the underlying causes, not just the symptoms.

Having been in the software business for more than 20 years, I usually think I've learned how to listen to users and knowing how to help steer them to a solution. But I learned, sitting in those rooms, that there’s always something that everyone on the team can do to improve in this area. I’m flying home today, excited to engage even more with our users and the community, so that I can continue to learn more.

What about you? Do you have a forum and training opportunities to improve your listening skills, particularly with your users? Depending on your specific job, these may be internal users, one-off consulting clients, or millions of external users for your SaaS application. If not, what can you do to influence change in getting this type of feedback? If talking with customers is a regular part of your job, what tips do you have to help others improve?

It’s the start of a new year. Take some time to listen and learn to the users and communities that you’re a part of. I promise it will be a valuable experience.

Ryan Booz

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

An overview of the challenges of database testing and test data management, reviewing the different types of database test that need to run during development work, what sort of test data they require, and how to manage all the required data sets, during development, in a way that allows rapid cycles of parallel testing.

Any organization that aims for reliable, online deployment of database changes needs a Test Data Management (TDM) strategy that allows developers to test the database early, thoroughly, and repeatedly, with the right test data. The benefits include more resilient database deployments, fewer bugs, and shorter lead time for changes.

This article describes how we implemented lightweight database provisioning, using clones, within an automated Flyway release process . It allows users to self-serve personal copies of a complex multi-database system, in a way that is transparent, supports flexible workflows and agile releases, but does not compromise data security nor add significant admin overhead.

Introductory Ramble Spark Connect In July 2022, at the Data and AI summit, Apache Spark announced “Spark Connect,” which was a way of connecting to Apache Spark using the...

ChatGPT was released just over a year ago (at the ...

Kendra Little lays it out: I’ve written a bit about SQL Server’s Automatic Plan Correction feature before– I have an hour long free course with demos on Automatic…

sp_QuickieStore: Find Your Worst Performing Queries During Working Hours Thanks for watching! Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love...

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz goes through a lot of work to replicate replication: This week, we addressed a service request from a customer who wanted…

R2 is Cloudflare’s own implementation of AWS S3 storage, with some big benefits – one of them being no egress fees, which is great if you want to publish...

Reitse Eskens writes up a roundup about abandoned projects: When I thought of this subject last year, I was really on the fence if it…

This may be an edge case issue, it may not. Or so...

It is always an afterthought. New objects are created that start off small and current. New feature development takes over and the recently architected data structures become old news....

While preparing for this career as an editor, my mind went to the joys of sitting at a computer editing documents. I expected this to include checking articles for technical accuracy, and proper English, formatting documents to meet the website standard, and posting the documents. I just knew that many of the firefighting skills I needed when doing administration and deployment duties would be gone.

This article describes the use of the tuple syntax in DAX expressions to simplify comparisons involving two or more columns. The DAX language has a tuple syntax commonly used...

I was recently working with a customer where I was...

Muhammad Ali plays matchmaker: PostgreSQL employs various techniques for data joining and aggregation in its queries, among which the hash-based method stands out for its…

There are some differences and secrets between the UI of a SQL Endpoint and the UI of a Lakehouse. I believe the lakehouse UI was changed recently, otherwise you can blame me for being distracted to this level. Let’s analyze the differences and pending points between these UI’s.

Following on from my previous post showing how you...

In this tip, we explain how Direct Lake mode works...

In podcast #286 we take the time to review an older video of John Cleese giving a talk about the Creative Process in Management. We thought this would be...

In my last post but one I showed how you could create a DGML file that contains detailed information on what happens during a Power BI Import mode refresh...

Colin Gillespie performs two of the three R’s: Apache Arrow is a cross-language development platform for in-memory data. As it’s in-memory (as opposed to data stored…

There are plenty of applications and tools available that allow for the movement of data in and out of SQL Server. Some tools are built by Microsoft, such as SSIS or Azure Data Factory. Others are created by third parties, such as Databricks or Snowflake. Still other available options make use of SQL Server features and rely on our own ability to write efficient code to get data from point A to point B.

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz diagnoses a problem: In the realm of SQL Server, certain combinations of commands and functions can lead to unexpected conflicts and…

Guy Glantser explains what schema binding is and why it’s important: In SQL Server, when we use the “WITH SCHEMABINDING” clause in the definition of…

Have you ever seen ANSI_NULLS being set to ON or OFF in a script or stored procedure? I’ve seen or heard it mentioned a few times recently and thought...

Sophisticated robots don’t have to cost a fortun...

For more than a month in total, 12 metric tons of molten salt coursed through pipes at Kairos Power in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company is developing a new...

Best Practice Tip #1: Beware of Best Practices It may sound contractionary that the first item of a best practices list is to be wary of... The post Best Practice Tip...

Following the latest legal defeat in Apple's ongoing patent infringement fight over blood oxygen sensors, the company is set to remove its blood oxygen measurement feature from its Watch...

Brent says: It’s really funny how the world work...