The document discusses the readiness of databases for DevOps, highlighting industry trends such as reduced IT budgets, database growth, and the necessity for automation in development. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration between DBAs and developers, addressing misconceptions about DBA roles in the agile environment, and the need for strategic DBA practices. Key recommendations include enhancing database operations participation in DevOps, integrating automation, and fostering a mindset change within organizations.

1. Is Your Database Ready for
DevOps?
Modern Application
Development and the Database
Craig S. Mullins
Mullins Consulting, Inc.
http://www.craigsmullins.com

2. This presentation was prepared by:
Craig S. Mullins
President & Principal Consultant
IBM Champion for Analytics
IBM Gold Consultant
Mullins Consulting, Inc.
15 Coventry Ct
Sugar Land, TX 77479
Tel: 281-494-6153
Twitter: @craigmullins
E-mail: craig@craigsmullins.com
http://www.mullinsconsulting.com
This document is protected under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries as an unpublished work. This document contains information that is proprietary and
confidential to Mullins Consulting, Inc., which shall not be disclosed outside or duplicated, used, or disclosed in whole or in part for any purpose other than as approved by Mullins
Consulting, Inc. Any use or disclosure in whole or in part of this information without the express written permission of Mullins Consulting, Inc. is prohibited.
© 2020 Craig S. Mullins and Mullins Consulting, Inc. (Unpublished). All rights reserved.

3. Agenda
– Industry Trends
– DevOps and Agile Overview
– The impact on database systems
• Database change management
• SQL quality assurance
– Guidance

4. Industry Trends
• Reduced Budgets and IT Headcount
• Database Growth and Usage
• Shorter Development Cycles,
Faster Innovation
• Automation is increasingly
important

5. Data Management Staff
“Growth”

6. Percentage of DBA versus IT Staff

7. Things Won’t Be Getting Any Better
v
By the year 2020

8. Industry Trends
• Reduced Costs and IT Headcount
• Database Growth and Usage
• Shorter Development Cycles,
Faster Innovation
• Automation is increasingly
important

9. 9
DBMS Market Continues to Grow

10. Most Orgs
Run Multiple
DBMSes
Source: Database Performance: The Need for Speed & Scale,
Database Trends & Applications, 2017
• Polyglot Persistence
• Multiple relational
• Pre-relational
• NoSQL
• Document
• Graph
• Key/Value
• Wide Column Store
• Hybrid
• In-Memory DBMS
• Not just DBMS…
• …but also Hadoop and Spark
• Commercial and open source

11. Industry Trends
• Reduced Costs and IT Headcount
• Database Growth and Usage
• Shorter Development Cycles,
Faster Innovation
• Automation is increasingly
important

12. Shorter Development Cycles
• Agile development is de rigueur
– Shorter development cycles
– Sprints
– Early customer feedback
• Higher ROI
• Quicker time to value

13. Faster Innovation
Source: Getting Agile with Database
Development, 2018

14. More Frequent Deployments
Source: State of DevOps Report,
DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment)

15. Industry Trends
• Reduced Costs and IT Headcount
• Database Growth and Usage
• Shorter Development Cycles,
Faster Innovation
• Automation is increasingly
important

16. Automating the App Dev Process
• GitHub – distributed source code
management, repository
• Jenkins – automated CI/CD server for
automating software delivery
• Docker – container platform (isolates
applications; secure & portable)
• Kubernetes – container orchestration
(automates deployment and scaling for
containerized apps)
16
• UrbanCode – automates continuous
delivery cross-platform; on-premises,
cloud and mainframe
• Puppet – cross-platform configuration
management – manage your
infrastructure as code (see also Ansible,
Chef)
• Nagios – DevOps infrastructure
monitoring

17. DevOps
DevOps is not a technology, it is a methodology.

18. But What is DevOps?
• The phrase is an amalgamation of Development
and Operations but it implies more
– Application Release Automation
• Continuous Development, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery
• DevOps implies Agile development
– DevOps applies agile/lean methods from source code all the way to
production
• But also:
– Any change anywhere throughout the organization can be
delivered into production quickly and accurately
• In a way that is safe, predictable, scalable and controlled

19. Shifting Left
• Traditionally, software development progresses from requirements to design to
development to testing and deployment through support, usually depicted in a
graph showing these tasks from left to right (see below).
– Requirements gathering and design are shown to the left, delivery and testing to the right.
• With a shift-left development mentality, processes on the right are moved to the
left, so they are performed earlier in the development lifecycle.
19

20. But There is a Mindset Mismatch
• Applications teams release code much more
rapidly than operations teams (infrastructure)
Source: The Need for Speed: Drive
Velocity and Quality with DevOps
Forrester Research, 2017

21. DevOps and the Database
• DBA is part of the Ops in DevOps
when databases are involved
– All too often, Dev is over-emphasized vs. Ops
• Common misconceptions:
– Developers become responsible for all database
development requirements
– Database “code” can be treated like program code

22. But Developers…
• Gather requirements
• Design application systems
• Write code
• Test programs and applications
Developers are not going to completely replace DBAs
DevOps does not negate the need for DBAs

23. The PacMan Effect:
Dev Eating Ops
Dev Ops OpsOps

24. Why is this Happening?
• Misguided belief that DBAs are roadblocks
• Failure to consider the value of DBA
– Misguided belief that developers
can do the DBA job in addition
to being good programmers
• Frequently w/o DBA training
– Lack of integrating DBA
tools into DevOps

25. Let’s Talk About the Database
• DBA is still required
even with DevOps
– The actions we take on
databases and database
structures are different
than those we take on
application code

26. DBA Practices & Procedures
• Database provisioning and configuration
• Automated backups and recovery testing
• Database design
• SQL expertise
• SQL testing and performance
• Test data management
• Database change management
– Continuous delivery of database schema migrations
• A good goal: DBAs no longer do repetitive tasks
– They need to be strategic and focus on architecture and
oversight

27. Database Changes
• Can’t be treated exactly like apps
– The database is stateful
– Application delivery copies code, executables
from environment to environment
– But the database is an entire configuration in
each environment and changes get migrated
• Some changes are very intrusive -> DROP/re-CREATE
• Each environment might be different (however so slightly)
• Differences can “drift” in
– Optimization changes, emergency changes, etc.

28. Application and Database Design
• DBAs and Application Developers must
cooperate
– DBAs are the database SMEs
– App Devs are the coding SMEs
• A developer can no more design
a database appropriately than a
DBA can code an application
correctly

29. SQL Expertise
• Write SQL correctly and efficiently
• Many application folks know SQL only at a
cursory level
• Continuous stream of new SQL capabilities
– DBAs have most up-to-date knowledge
• DBA and Apps must cooperate as a team

30. Production Data Volumes
Test environments rarely have
production-sized databases
• The relational optimizer can, and usually will, produce
different access paths for smaller amounts of data than for
larger
• What works nicely in test may crash and burn in production
– Requires skilled technicians that understand the nuances of SQL and
optimization

31. SQL Access
Paths and
Performance
SELECT deptno
FROM department
ORDER BY deptno;

32. A Word About Some Other DBA
Practices and Procedures
• Database provisioning and configuration
• Backup and Recovery
• Test data management

33. Some Guidance
Helpful next steps

34. More Database Focus is Needed
• More Ops participation in DevOps
– DBA and performance analysts
– Not oversight and bottlenecks, but real
participation
• More automation of database Ops
– Improve app dev release velocity
– Integrate with existing DevOps tooling and
practices
– Built-in intelligence and rules

35. A Mindset Change
• Within the organization
• With developers
• With DBAs

36. Thank You
Contact Details:
Craig S. Mullins
President & Principal Consultant
IBM Champion for Data & AI
IBM Gold Consultant
Mullins Consulting, Inc.
15 Coventry Ct
Sugar Land, TX 77479
Tel: 281-494-6153
Twitter: @craigmullins
E-mail: craig@craigsmullins.com
http://www.mullinsconsulting.com
This document is protected under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries as an unpublished work. This document contains information that is proprietary and
confidential to Mullins Consulting, Inc., which shall not be disclosed outside or duplicated, used, or disclosed in whole or in part for any purpose other than as approved by Mullins
Consulting, Inc. Any use or disclosure in whole or in part of this information without the express written permission of Mullins Consulting, Inc. is prohibited.
© 2020 Craig S. Mullins and Mullins Consulting, Inc. (Unpublished). All rights reserved.

37. Additional Supporting Materials

38. Source: The Current State and
Adoption of DevOps
Unisphere Research, 2018

39. Source: The Current State and
Adoption of DevOps
Unisphere Research, 2018

40. Source: The Current State and
Adoption of DevOps
Unisphere Research, 2018

41. 3 Critical Requirements for
Successful DevOps
• Automation
• Integration
• Measurement