As discussed in my blog and book “Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh” (Amazon), organizations are often challenged with choosing the right data architecture to meet their business goals—especially as AI and data-driven decision-making take center stage. To help clarify, here’s a quick review of the four core architectures, followed by guidance on when to use each. Each architecture includes five stages of data movement – ingest, store, transform, model, and visualize (described here).Modern Data Warehouse (MDW)A Modern Data Warehouse architecture combines a data lake for storing raw, unstructured, and…
Author: drweb
I was recently asked if you can restore multiple differential backups in preparation for a migration. I responded that yes, technically you can restore multiple differential backups, however it will not speed up your cutover. I explained that the last differential will still restore all the differential data since the full backup. They were thinking that the last differential restore would skip data that was previously restored from an earlier differential restore. I could understand their logic and they wanted to believe what I was telling them, but sometimes it is easier to believe something when you can see it…
System administration often involves repetitive tasks such as file management, user account creation, service monitoring, and system backups. While Linux-based operating systems like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offer various tools to manage these tasks, automation can help save time, reduce human error, and improve overall efficiency. Python, a high-level programming language, is an excellent tool for automating system administration tasks. It is easy to learn, has a rich set of libraries, and provides flexibility to perform a wide range of administrative operations. In this article, we will explore how to use Python scripts for automating common system administration tasks…
Pulumi today previewed an internal developer platform (IDP) through which DevOps and platform engineering teams will be able to access reusable building blocks that can be used to create templates and blueprints to build applications.Scheduled to be generally available later this year for self-hosted environments or via a software-as-service (SaaS) application, Pulumi IDP will be made available at no extra cost to the company’s existing base of more than 3,500 customers.The overall goal is to make it simpler for DevOps teams of any skill level to set up golden paths for building applications using an IDP that provides drift and…
Appending text to files is a common task in systems administration and development, especially when dealing with large datasets or logs. This can be efficiently accomplished using a Bash script, which is a powerful command-line shell in Unix-like operating systems, offering a range of utilities and operators to manipulate files, including the ability to append text. In this article, we will walk you through the process of appending text to a single file and then expand that to appending text to multiple files using a Bash script, which is a useful skill when you need to automate text insertion in…
OpenAI is buying artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted coding tool Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, for about $3 billion in its largest acquisition to date.The long-rumored deal, reported by Bloomberg News on Monday, should significantly boost ChatGPT’s coding functionality as well as put OpenAI in position to more effectively compete in the fledgling market for AI-powered coding assistants, tools capable of writing code based on natural language prompts. OpenAI has been steadily rolling out upgrades in coding with the release of each of its newer models.The Pro version of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s signature AI chatbot, includes features specifically for developers such as a…
Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools remain primarily in the hands of early adopters, but broader adoption is accelerating. Alongside this growth, MCP security concerns are becoming more urgent. By increasing agent autonomy, MCP tools introduce new risks related to misalignment between agent behavior and user expectations and uncontrolled execution. These systems also present a novel attack surface, creating new software supply chain threats. As a result, MCP adoption raises critical questions about trust, isolation, and runtime control before these systems are integrated into production environments. Where MCP tools fall short on security Most of us first experimented with MCP tools…
This month, I am hosting T-SQL Tuesday for the very first time. T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party originally created by Adam Machanic in 2009 and currently curated by Steve Jones.Each month, a new topic is chosen, published on the first Tuesday of the month and the following month, contributors post their own takes. Anyone can participate. Please publish your post by the end of Tuesday, May 13th in your timezone and on your platform of choice, then leave a comment below or tag me on Bluesky, Mastodon, or LinkedIn with a link to your post and I’ll include…
Tricentis has extended a cloud-based testing service to make it easier to ensure that test cases are designed to continuously validate business workflows against mission-critical business objectives, not just technical functionalities.In addition, the latest version of Tricentis Tosca also makes it simpler to make use of reusable test step blocks using a set of elastic execution agents that enable DevOps teams to consume infrastructure resources more efficiently at a time when there is greater sensitivity to the total cost of IT.At the same time, Tricentis has revealed it plans to add a set of generative artificial intelligence (AI) agents to…
Introducing Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit: The Simple and Secure Way to Power AI Agents with MCP Model Context Protocols (MCPs) are quickly becoming the standard for connecting AI agents to external tools, but the developer experience hasn’t caught up. Discovery is fragmented, setup is clunky, and security is too often bolted on last. Fixing this experience isn’t a solo mission—it will take an industry-wide effort. A secure, scalable, and trusted MCP…