DevOps is changing the culture of IT. This movement is bringing application development and operations teams to the same table and the same time, working to understand and overcome the challenges facing the entire application delivery process—not just their piece. Development and operations teams are forging new bonds and alliances in the spirit of accelerating software release cycles.
However, while quickness to market is paramount to success, businesses can’t forget about the internal implications of accelerated release cycles. With that in mind, there is one conspicuously empty seat within the “DevOps Inner Circle,” and that’s the database administrator’s (DBA).
DBAs hold the keys to one of businesses’ most important assets: the database. But database change innovation has not kept pace with agile development methodologies and DevOps tooling that enable continuous delivery of software updates and changes. The vast majority of enterprises are still updating databases the same way they have been for the better part of the last three decades: through manual script review, validation, execution and individual heroics. As a result, application release cycles ultimately slow down at the last mile—the database.
It’s time for a better approach. It’s time databases and their stewards, DBAs, be part of the DevOps Inner Circle. Including DBAs can create better, more efficient teams; save time and money; and even help companies create better solutions for their customers’ needs or their own.
Shattering Silos
One of the founding principles behind DevOps is the breakdown of silos between development and operations teams. Product managers can easily translate customer needs and communicate that feedback to developers in a way they understand—using epics and themes, for example. This helps bring everyone on the same page so that application updates or changes can be quickly coded, tested and delivered. But before application updates can be released to users safely and effectively, they have to be translated into the changes that will update the database. This is where the DevOps breakdown occurs. DBAs often have to rely on manually intensive, timeworn, error-prone processes and tools to make sure the right changes are made to the database.
By inviting DBAs into the DevOps Inner Circle, database updates that go against business policy and will ultimately lock the database or “break the build” (think inserting a new column with a default value when the row count exceeds a million) can be found faster and addressed by the development team well before that change reaches the database. Having DBAs involved in release cycles sooner can help ensure developers are coding with corporate compliance in mind, ultimately making changes to the database smoother while adhering to guidelines that DBAs have typically policed.
There was a time when databases needed protection from changes made by creative problem-solving in development, but DBAs simply cannot stand against the deluge of changes necessitated by accelerated cycles. Inviting DBAs into the DevOps Inner Circle enables teams to consider the implications of new changes and updates across the entire technology stack. Breaking down silos and making teams more aware of catchpoints in the last mile of the release process lets them anticipate and avoid database issues—which means faster releases and fewer headaches for everyone.
Saving Time (and Time is Money)
Faster release cycles are good for business, and not just because they get applications in front of end users sooner. Continuous delivery cycles are designed to cut costs associated with application development considerably by saving man-hours. Still, while development timelines keep getting shorter, the workload and time to deploy database changes gets longer.
Enterprises can have multiple database configurations, so each change needs to be checked for compatibility. As the complexity of data repositories grows, so too does the time it takes to review and approve changes. In a 2015 IOUG survey on database manageability, 41 percent of respondents said changes took a week or more to approve. With multiple change requests coming to DBAs each month, each week or maybe even daily, it’s clear that sheer manpower can’t keep up with continuous delivery forever. Relief for DBAs is nonexistent without automation.
Remember our earlier example, where we ran the risk of locking the database by inserting a new column with a default value when the row count exceeded a million? Database automation software protects against outcomes like this by forecasting the impact application changes will have on the database. DBAs can use forecast reports generated by automation software to pinpoint any issues without expensive hours or days of searching.
As part of a DevOps team, the DBA equipped with automation can do more than save time and headaches for themselves. Protecting against errors that could break the build saves teams from spending time to find and fix the source of a breakdown, and also saves a business from losing revenue while the fix is made. If so much time, money and potential frustration ride on DBAs’ ability to implement changes at the speed of continuous delivery, why are they still on the outside of the DevOps Inner Circle?
Freeing Up Time for Innovation
Flashes of inspiration rarely come about when you’re just trying to keep your head above water, and for so many DBAs, that’s the reality of work. Today, enterprises fight a war of attrition with the database, throwing manpower at the final hurdle of the release cycle. In addition to the attractive benefit of saving money on man-hours, bringing DBAs into the DevOps inner circle and automating some of their tasks also creates time and space for innovation.
The relational database is nearly a 50-year-old innovation, one that changed the way people and computers interface through data. After so much time, and with so much on the horizon, the next innovation seems imminent or perhaps even overdue. The advent of quantum computing may bring with it a fundamental change to the way databases interact with one another. It’s certain to bring a shift in the way data is stored and retrieved, though at this point experts expect only the most complex business processes will benefit from quantum computing. So, while future tech remains out of reach, DBAs will be vital in the effort to innovate faster, more streamlined ways for dealing with zeros and ones.
The first step to innovation, then, is addressing the needs of DBAs alongside those of customers and developers. Breaking down walls and increasing efficiencies between existing DevOps teams and DBAs will give teams more opportunity to create novel solutions to both their users’ problems and their own. Add another seat to the Inner Circle, save time and money, get quality applications to market even faster, and create innovative solutions to the problems of today and tomorrow.
About the Author
Derek Hutson joined Datical as CEO in 2015, bringing more than 15 years of leadership experience in enterprise software. Before joining Datical, he led multiple companies through extended periods of rapid growth and also held several executive roles at IBM. There he served on the leadership team for IBM’s acquisition of Telelogic, and was responsible for due diligence and integration of the acquired sales functions globally. He currently serves on the board of Hart InterCivic and Charity Dynamics. Other board or advisor positions have included CoreTrace (acquired by Lumension), Innography, StreamStep (acquired by BMC) and Phurnace (acquired by BMC).