Snowflake and Databricks FinOps: 7 Controls for Cost, Performance and Reliability

Seven measurable controls for Snowflake and Databricks FinOps: attribution, idle, sizing, spill, SLOs, alerting and guardrails, with the SQL for each.

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Valkey consulting and support view of Valkey 9.1.2: release changes from the Valkey project mapped to the configuration block that protects each gain

Valkey 9.1.2 Performance and Scalability Improvements: 7 Proven Tuning Blocks and the Configuration That Keeps Them

Valkey 9.1.2 performance and scalability: what the release changed, an annotated valkey.conf in seven blocks (I/O threads, memory, persistence, clients, cluster, kernel, measurement) and a staged rollout plan.

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Expensive SQL on Exadata 26.1: Read the Offload Numbers Before You Build the Index

The Exadata ticket we see most often is not about a slow query. It is about a cluster that runs hot for hours, an IORM plan that somebody keeps re-tuning, and a licence conversation about [...]

SQL Server 2025 Expensive Queries: 7 Proven Ways to Find and Fix Them by Latency and Resource Cost

"Expensive queries" is a phrase that hides two different problems. One is response time: a statement the application waits too long for. The other is resource efficiency: a statement that burns CPU, logical reads and [...]

Db2 13 for z/OS Index Efficiency: 8 Proven Troubleshooting Techniques

Most index efficiency problems on Db2 13 for z/OS are not I/O problems. They are CPU problems that look like I/O problems from a distance. Index efficiency is measured in getpages, and a four-level index [...]

AlloyDB pricing, internals and FinOps: performance per dollar on Google AlloyDB

AlloyDB Pricing and Internals: 2026 FinOps Best Practices Guide

AlloyDB pricing is simple to read and easy to get wrong, because every line on the invoice is driven by a piece of the engine's internals that most teams never look at. Compute is billed [...]

Google AlloyDB Architecture, Internals and Performance: 2026 Best Practices Guide

AlloyDB is the one managed PostgreSQL service where the interesting part is below the SQL layer. The query engine, catalog, extensions and wire protocol are PostgreSQL (16, 17 and, since 25 March 2026, 18). What [...]

SQL Server 2025 Performance, Scalability and High Availability: What Changed On-Premises and in the Cloud

SQL Server 2025 went generally available on 18 November 2025 and, as of this writing, sits at Cumulative Update 8 (build 17.0.4075.5, 13 August 2026). Strip away the AI features that took most of the [...]

Oracle Exadata to PostgreSQL 18 Migration: An Airline Operations Case Study from the MinervaDB Data Migration Team

This is the MinervaDB Data Migration Team's write-up of an Oracle Exadata to PostgreSQL 18 migration for an airline operations platform: crew scheduling, flight status, aircraft rotation and the reporting that hangs off them. The [...]

Valkey 9.1 Performance: What Changed Inside the Engine and How to Measure It

Valkey 9.1 performance work is the reason the 9.1 line exists. The 9.1.0 release (2026-05-19) reworked the I/O threading queues, doubled the embedded-string threshold, turned the processor clock on by default, embedded sorted-set elements in […]

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