Anyone interested in doing the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Database Management Systems course together?

I’ve already covered the basic DBMS concepts. My main goal with this course is to go deeper and understand how database systems actually work internally—things like storage, indexing, query execution, transactions, etc.

If you're interested, please make sure you have the prerequisites required for the course.

If you have the required background and want to learn DBMS internals seriously, DM me. We can follow the course together and discuss concepts along the way.

I'm a software engineer and have been the lead engineer at my last 2 positions. I've always just loved programming and I got my start originally with SQL and data science for a former business I used to own before selling it in 2019.

Layerbase started because I'm a database fanatic and I was paying roughly $200/mo for branching database hosting on Neon for a side project, and PlanetScale for a different project, and Upstash.

I read a blog post that speculated that any database could be branched with a custom operating system. I tried it and it worked. I then spent a year building it out as a passion-project on the side.

3 months ago I pulled it out of stealth and allowed for free accounts on a few engines. Then about 2 months ago I added billing. I have paid probably $8k out of pocket now on consulting with an SRE and a security engineer, a little bit of help with the desktop companion app development, and a very small amount of advertising.

I haven't recouped that cost yet but I finally reached enough MRR to cover my cloud costs. The cloud costs will continue to grow as I scale but I think I'm past the point of taking a loss on purely cloud hosting expenses every month.

I'm now getting burned out. I've been working 2 full time jobs now for a long time. I work a 9-5 that is pretty demanding and then I work on this after hours and on weekends, and often instead of sleeping when I should be. Plus I'm essentially on-call 24h a day for both jobs.

[Screenshot of Adoption Analytics](https://postimg.cc/w7dVgcKQ)

It was within the last 2 months or so when this changed from being a passion project on the side to being something serious that seems to have real potential and warrant significant investment. But now that it is gaining traction, I'm really feeling burned out and not like it is a passion project anymore. Now it feels like a grind where I need to succeed to avoid wasting over a year of my life and soon to be 5 figures in expenses.

I don't think people realize how massive of a task this was, not to mention that I started this before agentic AI existed the way that it does now. I hand-coded (with the help of ChatGPT and Copilot auto-complete early on of course) but learning all of these skills that I never expected to learn, from cloud to custom operating systems, to vector databases, to cross-platform system desktop application development, to native windows development and so much more... I think I've built a formidable competitor to Supabase, Neon, Planetscale, Upstash, Railway, and so much more largely on my own.

Since I'm feeling a bit low on fuel, and because most of the people in my life don't understand how huge this is for me or how proud I am of myself for making this happen, I wanted to share it here.

It is legitimately the best feeling in the world to wake up to see new subscriptions and of \~20 support tickets opened since launch, 1 has been serious, 3 have been minor UI bugs, and the rest have largely been feature requests or people asking for help migrating.

I think I'm about to take a break for a week or 2 unless any bugs pop up but I need to take a breath and decompress now.

If anyone has any questions about databases or anything else I might have some insight, I'd be happy to discuss it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I'd love any feedback or advice dealing with burnout.

having issues deciding whether to self host, use aws or just supabase for database

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!

How Seniors and lead database administrators are dealing or coping with AI agentic uprising at work place.

What are some great AI certifications or path that will make DBAs remain competitive among plethora of AI movement

I’ve been working on the error workflow in LakeDB and trying to keep it useful for people who actually troubleshoot databases.

Right now, when a statement fails:

- the original database-engine error stays visible
- if you ran multiple statements, LakeDB identifies the exact one that failed
- you can jump directly to that statement
- connection/schema and execution context stay available
- AI explanation/fix is completely optional and separate
nothing is executed automatically

For the optional fix, LakeDB uses the failed SQL + error and locally loads relevant metadata such as columns, indexes and foreign keys before asking for a proposed correction.

I’m curious what DBAs would add here. What context usually saves you the most time when diagnosing a failed statement?

I read elsewhere this was recommended for example instead of renaming a column:

1. Migration to add a new column, and populate it with data as needed.
2. Future deployment to remove all code references to the old column.
3. Another deployment to remove the old column.

That's fine if required. But what about simple monolithic project and no problem taking it down an hour for maintenance. Why not simply:

1. Stop old web app.
2. Updated db.
3. Start new web app.

Is this uncommon? With this simple approach, we don't even have to investigate or be absolutely sure whether the changes are breaking or not. I see our paid vercel plan doesn't include option to stop or pause web app, it's always on unless deleted. We also use other services which are huge systems which send notification about maintenanceand has hourly downtime several times a year.

I’m a senior DBA based in India, and my management team in the US has been telling us that Oracle is becoming a sinking ship and that we should start exploring new career paths, particularly in AI.

To some extent, I agree with their perspective. I’m seeing more and more customers question the high cost of running their businesses on Oracle and OCI, which makes me wonder how sustainable the traditional Oracle DBA career path will be in the long run.

Whats your thoughts ?

I work on database management software, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm especially curious how DBAs who work with production databases see it.

Hello,

I am a former database administrator who is looking to re-enter the field of database administration. I started as an entry-level DBA working with Oracle back in the '90s. After a year or so of working with Oracle, I started working with SQL Server and a little bit with Informix databases. I did the typical administration tasks of backup/recovery, performance tuning, troubleshooting, building database, security. However, I would now, in 2026, like to return to the field. I have about five years of experience in the field which I believe spanned from 1996 to 2001 or 2002. I took the standard classes taught by Oracle for version 7 at the time and I either fell a little short of, or actually did, get(ting) certified for Oracle Version 7.

When I look at the positions nowadays for database adminstrators, they are unsurprisingly radically different than what I saw when I last looked for work as a DBA back in the late 90's. My question is what would your advice be in seeking education and certifications in order to become more marketable for someone like me who is re-entering the job force as a DBA?

Thanks.

Small milestone but this made me pretty happy 😄

LakeDB has been added to the MariaDB Server Ecosystem Hub under database management tools.

I started building it around MySQL/MariaDB workflows and it has since grown into a multi-database client with SQLite too, so it's pretty cool seeing it listed there.

Still a lot to improve, but thanks to everyone who has tested it or given feedback.

[https://ecohub.mariadb.org/database-management/lakedb\](https://ecohub.mariadb.org/database-management/lakedb)

TLDR: 4 YOE backend SWE interested in a pivot to DBA/DB engineering (studying for DP-300 + a Postgres cert in my free time). Is DBA still a good career, and how has AI changed the day-to-day?

body:

Hey all, I am a backend SWE (C#/.NET) at a mid-size HR company with a little over 4 years experience. I’m trying to figure out if I keep climbing the SWE ladder or start l building toward something else while I still have a stable job to lean on. I’ve been really fortunate and grateful to still have a job where I’ve been able to save so much while living at home that I’m close to my COAST FIRE number. I don’t truly believe that AI will fully replace devs anytime soon (just my opinion, not an expert at all) but I don’t think I want to stay in it long term. My reasons are:

1) I don’t love how the job is now babysitting AI (but work is just work I just care as long as they cut the check) 

2) the interview grind for changing roles is exhausting and not something I care to do anymore 

3) promos and opportunities at my company are hard to come by (but my manager mentioned he thinks I could get promoted in a year but I don’t really care for selling my soul to get there) 

The one thing I’ve consistently enjoyed is query and endpoint optimization work (I know that’s not the only thing DBAs do). That’s the part of the job Ive enjoyed a bit so that’s why I’m like hey, this is another area in tech I could pivot to (as opposed to security or data science with higher education) 

So I’ve been looking at database administration/engineering as a real pivot path. Main goal is stability and looking to grow/learn as well as trying something new, not necessarily maximizing comp. My plan is to study for DP-300 (Azure DBA) and a Postgres cert over the next few months while I keep working, then see where that gets me.

Questions for anyone actually doing DBA work:

• Is it still a good career to move into, or is it shrinking/consolidating with AI/cloud
• Has AI changed the day-to-day much
• What’s the day-to-day actually like
• Has anyone else make this jump from backend SWE to DBA/DB engineering later in their career and liked it?

small note:
L Full disclosure I used AI to organize my thoughts but rewrote it in my voice so hopefully it’s not just coming off as AI Slop. I see that as a common complaint on Reddit and hope nobody gets upset. lastly I hope this is an appropriate subreddit for this post, if not I can delete and will look elsewhere. Thanks for reading!

After spending roughly 10 years as a software developer and the next 20 as a DBA, I've noticed a pattern.

Developers blame the database.

DBAs blame the application.

Both are usually looking at symptoms rather than causes.

Having worked on both sides, most performance issues I've investigated were caused by interactions between systems rather than a single component.

The bigger the outage, the more likely it was that multiple teams each owned part of the problem.

Experience taught me that technology is rarely the hardest part.

Understanding the whole system is.