Many developers are afraid of databases. No matter how much we work, things may break in production. We may deploy buggy code, take the database down with slow schema migration, or simply face an unexpected edge case.
When things break around databases, developers often feel like they are at a loss.
Developers might not be familiar with the inner workings of databases. They could lack the necessary permissions, technical know-how, or even awareness of the queries running within the database. Regardless of how well-established their CI/CD pipelines are or how fine-tuned their IDEs may be, they do not have direct control over databases. Let’s see what scares developers.
Seeing Behind The Scenes
Developers often struggle to address issues simply because they lack visibility into what’s happening. Just as they rely on debuggers and profilers for their code, they need tools that provide insight into everything occurring within and around the database. To resolve this, observability must be incorporated throughout the SDLC. Developers need a clear understanding of how their SQL queries are executed, with access to execution plans and detailed database activity. Instead of waiting for load tests to finish, they need immediate feedback during development to ensure their queries are efficient.
OpenTelemetry can help address this need. By integrating with developer environments and databases, we can capture queries, extract execution plans, and analyze them to offer actionable insights. This allows us to predict how well queries will perform in production. Additionally, we can apply the same approach in production environments to extract execution plans from live queries.
Things Are Manual
Manual intervention isn’t feasible. Developers are afraid of databases because they need to do things manually. To accelerate progress and boost efficiency, automation is essential. We need to establish comprehensive observability across all systems and databases. This includes continuously capturing execution plans, statistics, configuration changes, schema migrations, and any factors that could impact database performance.
With this data, we can apply automated analysis to detect anomalies and identify the root causes of performance degradation. Once this framework is in place, we can implement self-healing mechanisms, allowing databases to automatically resolve issues. This is possible because we have all the insights needed to pinpoint problems—whether it's adding indexes, adjusting configurations, or optimizing slow queries.
The Right Mindset
Lastly, we need to foster a sense of ownership. Developers often feel like they don’t own their databases and may be criticized for working on them. Developers must shift their mindset and recognize that they are capable of managing databases. This empowers them to ensure database reliability and prevent system downtime.
It might appear like this adds extra responsibility for developers, but that’s not true. With automated observability and actionable insights, they are simply trading one type of work for another. Issues can be automatically resolved, allowing developers to focus on what truly matters. However, they must embrace this new approach and take full ownership of their databases from start to finish.
Use Metis and Get Control of Your Databases
Metis provides everything you need to gain control over your databases. It analyzes your queries and builds observability by capturing execution plans, configurations, schema changes, and other factors impacting database performance.
With Metis, monitoring is automated. It detects anomalies and resolves them on its own. If an issue requires further attention, Metis will alert you when business decisions are necessary. Ultimately, Metis empowers you to take full ownership of your databases from start to finish.
