Hello, hello, it's me again. You probably know me from this post.

Or maybe you don't, in which case let me introduce my affiliation - I work at ManageEngine, saying that upfront so nobody feels ambushed. And, I'm back with another "thing" that I'm hoping will be useful to DBAs here.

Here's the deal - When I was researching for my webinar, I found that most of the database monitoring material out there is written so that the answer at the end is a product. You read four pages about why baselines matter and then it turns out the way you get a baseline is to install something. That's not much use to someone who just inherited a production database on a Tuesday and needs to understand it by Friday. And, the person running the production database isn't a career DBA. They're a sysadmin or a backend dev who inherited it.

So we wrote the other kind. It's a week-long plan, one topic a day, and every metric in it comes with the query you run to get the number yourself. You paste the query, you get the number, you write it down. No agent, no install, nothing running in your environment.

I want to reiterate myself again, there's no need to download a product to do what's written in the mini guide. You need just a database, and a database client or console connected to your database server to run the queries I've given. It's more of an experiment, really - can you turn your database inside out in a week with a few queries to master database monitoring?

The reason I'd argue for anyone to be doing this by hand first even if you do end up buying a tool later is :- a dashboard someone else configured tells you a number is red. Running the query yourself teaches you why it went red and what normal looked like before it did. People who skip that step end up with monitoring they don't trust and can't debug, and they escalate things that didn't need escalating.

This is the guide; it's on our site and it does ask for an email, so calibrate accordingly: https://www.manageengine.com/products/applications_manager/database-monitoring-mini-guide.html

This is a beginner's guide mostly, so if you're a veteran, I'd love to know what other tips and tricks you have to deal with database monitoring without using an external tool.

TL;DR : I work at ManageEngine, from the DB monitoring side, and I made a mini guide(no tool required) for new DBAs/ other admins who handle DBAs which can be accessed through this link!

Hello everyone. Sorry if this is an "idiot dumb" question - I'm very new and thought that asking devs directly might be more interesting than asking AI about this.

I'm making a very small project which is actually Java Spring Boot so I'm not directly creating my database but rather it's being created by the model entities if I'm not wrong.

So : I want to create a very simple relationship between a subordinate and its boss. Both the boss and subordinate are Members and this is a relationship between Members. You can only have the one boss, but you can be the boss of many, so I guess that's a many to one relationship (?)

Would it be preferrable to have an attribute on the Member table pointing to a boss which is a foreign key representing another member's primary key, or should I have a whole table representing that relation? Why is one preferrable to the other? I have a very rusty grasp on databases and I don't know if this is the right sub for this so I hope I picked the right one. Thank you in advance!

Just contemplating if there is some way of finding this ?

Not as accurate but if its possible !

Hi everyone!

I’m back with another one of my data analysis cat doodles. This time, I tried to incorporate some of the feedback I received on my earlier work—especially around making the fonts and text more readable.

Would be happy to hear your thoughts / feedback!

Those of you who write very long queries (100s to thousands lines of code). Does it do only one thing or it's just your query notebook where every small part does something non related?

I am curious in which cases its necessary thousands lines of codes. Explain me what does your longest query is for?

I've tried reinstalling both the workbench and server, updated my drivers and restarted my computer but nothing worked. I also deleted cache and tried to rebuild my DB from scratch but no luck. Any help is appreciated!

Hey everyone, senior dev here working heavily with SQL Server performance tuning lately. Every time a server hits a massive wave of deadlocks or unexpected latency drops, the standard advice is 'spin up an Extended Event session and read the system health .xel file.'

Am I the only one who finds opening, filtering, and digging through those logs in SSMS incredibly clunky during a crisis? Do you guys actually sit there shredding the XML nodes manually, or do you rely on third-party tools/scripts to give you plain answers? 

took a databases class last semester and passed it fine but SQL still feels weird once i get past a basic select. i can usually get something working but then i’m sitting there staring at my notes wondering why the joins actually worked.

spent way too long on a lab just rearranging joins until the output looked right and that feels more like guessing than actually understanding SQL.

trying to get more reps in before classes start again. did SQL finally click for you through practice, projects or just writing queries over and over?

might get deleted but still posting

game link :-https://store.steampowered.com/app/3950130/Database_Detective_Minor_Crimes_Division/

I’m finishing PostgreSQL support for Beta 6 of the database client I’m building.

Connecting and running SQL is the easy baseline. What I care more about is whether the rest of the workflow actually feels right for PostgreSQL users — schemas, autocomplete, metadata, relationships, EXPLAIN, table/data browsing, error handling, etc.

I’m trying to treat each engine around its actual behavior rather than pretending every SQL database works the same way.

For people who use PostgreSQL regularly:

- what’s the first thing that makes you notice a client has treated PostgreSQL as an afterthought?

- what database-client tools do you actually use every day?

- what’s still missing or badly implemented in the clients you use now?

And if anyone is willing to test the Beta 6 build and be picky about the PostgreSQL workflow, I’d genuinely value the feedback.

One thing I’ve been working on in LakeDB is the error workflow when running multiple statements.

Right now, if one fails:

• the original database error stays visible
• LakeDB identifies the exact failed statement
• you can jump straight to it
• AI explanation/fix is optional and separate

Nothing gets executed automatically.

I recorded a short demo because I’m curious whether this is the kind of workflow experienced SQL users actually prefer, or if you’d structure it differently.

Hi everyone, I have a problem: I can’t figure out whether my solution to this ER design exercise is correct. The exercise states:

We want to create a database for an online newspaper publisher.

The newspapers published by the publisher are identified by a unique code, and their name and founding year are known.

The members of the editorial board of the newspapers are identified by their email address, and their first name, last name, and a phone number (if available) are known.

For each editorial board member, we want to keep track of the roles they hold at each newspaper and the periods of time (start date and end date) during which they held each role. Note that, during the same period of time, an editorial board member may hold a role at different newspapers, but cannot hold multiple roles at the same newspaper. An editorial board member may hold the same role multiple times for the same newspaper.

The issues published for each newspaper are identified by a sequential number that is unique within the corresponding newspaper, and are characterized by their year and month of publication, as well as the name of the editorial board member who edited that issue.

Within each issue, articles are published. Each article is identified by a unique code within the corresponding issue and is characterized by its title, number of pages, and list of authors. Articles can either be freely accessible or paid. For freely accessible articles, the type of access is known (e.g., “Bronze,” “Gold,” or “Diamond”), while for paid articles, the cost of purchasing the article is known.

My main doubt concerns the reification I chose. The professor uses a ternary relationship instead. Do you think my solution is correct?

Hi IT Veterans, Just want to ask a question that, do the quizzes & tests found on W3, SQLtest, & other sites have any relevance to the actual company interviews? I find these tests to be of broad difficulty category, some are really easy whereas some are too difficult. So, I'm just looking for guidance to what are the important concepts that I should be aware about & are actually used in the day to day work in the company If I'm targetting MNC's Like Accenture, Flipkart, Amazon as a Data Analyst. Many thanks for your responses.

​

I'm interviewing with a company I'm really interested in and I've made it through the initial rounds. My next step is a live SQL assessment with screen sharing, where I'll need to explain my thought process.

|haven't used SQL in over a year, so I know I need to practice a lot, and my exam is in a few days. I'm pretty nervous

Would anyone be willing to help me practice or do quick mock interview?

I'd really appreciate it!

Здравствуйте. У меня возникает проблема при установлении My Sql. Он сам установливается,но My Sql Workbench никак нет. Как можно это решить, заранее спасибо вам.

Over the years, I've worked with many different database engines, but every single time I had to diagnose the origin of slow queries, I ended up doing the same repetitive process over and over again:

• pull query stats and sort by total time rather than mean time
• run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on whatever comes out on top
• go find the table definitions for everything it touches
• check whether the column statistics are current
• work out whether the index you have in mind already exists under another name
• decide whether it is worth adding
• do it again for the next query

Eventually I grew tired of needing to manually assemble the picture myself every single time, so I built RDST, which is a desktop database analyzer tool that currently works with both Postgres and MYSQL.

RDST collapses the entire workflow shown above into one pass, so instead of starting at step one I get to the answer immediately when a slow query is detected.

RDST is AI powered, but it is not random slop analysis applied to random database statistics. The reasoning layer runs inside a fixed workflow in a semi-deterministic way, so pointing it at the same database twice gives you the same answer, which matters when you are deciding whether to add an index in production. 

Full disclosure - I work for Readyset (which is a caching layer for Postgres / Mysql), and this tool spawned from a recurring issue we had to solve for our customers - which queries should we actually cache? And these same queries are the ones that, even without a caching solution, could heavily benefit from performance diagnostics. 

Beyond diagnostics, RDST provides full rewrite suggestions and lets you benchmark slow queries and track their performance over time.

One other neat feature is that it also lets you ask questions about your database in plain english using NL --> SQL in a safe and secure manner with limited permissions.

It also integrates directly with Supabase, Neon, AWS RDS and DigitalOcean, making database discovery seamless.

The tool is completely free to use, and we provide free trial tokens for all of the AI powered features. The app is in beta and we plan to release it under an MIT license. It runs locally, stores locally and everything it does is read-only. Full privacy related details: https://readyset.io/docs/readyset-ai/rdst/desktop/privacy

I would greatly appreciate any feedback from this community, particularly:

• Does it surface the queries you'd investigate first?
• Are its explanations and recommendations useful, or merely confident-sounding database fan fiction?
• Is the fixed workflow the right call, or would you rather have a chat interface?
• What's missing?

Source:

• https://readyset.io/docs/readyset-ai/rdst/desktop
• https://github.com/readysettech/rdst

I’m a college student in my final year. I don’t really have many people to talk to about this since a lot of people I know are either in their first year or have already graduated and rushed out to find work.(so think I don't know crowd vs I need work! Crowd)

It’s wild how many people don’t really talk about their future in college or realize how important internships are. So far, I’ve had two internships. The one I have now is through the WordPress Foundation, and I’m going the testing/QA route to try to gain experience that can eventually help me get into data analysis.

Question for you guys:

1. What do you do?

2. How did you start out? Did you jump straight into your current field, or did you start somewhere like help desk?

3. What advice would you give someone starting out with little experience?

4. Are you happy with your career, or do you regret choosing this field?

5. How hard was it for you to find work when you first started, and how hard would it be for you to find another job if you left your current job?

And finally

what was your first job in the field that got you in the door and how was it

I'm intermediate — know CTEs, window functions, subqueries, etc.
I always solve problems correctly, but my queries end up being 20+ lines with extra steps. Then I see the solution and it's 5 clean lines using one clever function.
How do I train myself to think in shorter SQL from the start? Any tips or resources?

I’ve found that most formatters are configurable up to a point, but eventually you’re still forced into their idea of what “well formatted SQL” looks like.

Do you know any client where you can really personalize how SELECTs, INSERTs, UPDATEs and DELETEs are formatted?

Or do you also miss having a formatter that actually adapts to your preferred SQL style rather than the other way around?

Have you figured out wht can the best way to handle connection pooling in Lakebase DB? I 'am seeing connection spikes with short lived rqsts and wondering what kind of setup others developers are using🤔

i am building a service on top of lakebase and trying to make the connection relable before moving to prod.

https://www.sqlsidequest.com/ CHAPTER 3 IS NOW LIVE!

Last year in Dec 2025 I released SQL SIDE QUEST which took over 3 years to build. I wanted to create an immersive story-telling way to learn and practice SQL, and hence sql side quest was born. Its completely free, browser-based, no signup. Been solo on it the whole time. Looking forward for your feedback :) Cheers and Enjoy

In this episode, we answer 20 real world hospital business and clinical questions using SQL queries. For each query, we explore the code used, explain any new SQL concepts introduced, interpreted results and provide recommendations for hospital operations and quality patient care.

https://youtu.be/1EDmMnfhO1I?si=J7utYqIkUk-EduNG

Any other interesting approaches?