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RDS Optimized Reads and Optimized Writes: What NVMe Instance Storage Actually Buys a Temp-Table-Heavy Workload
Continue reading →: RDS Optimized Reads and Optimized Writes: What NVMe Instance Storage Actually Buys a Temp-Table-Heavy WorkloadA reporting job crept from 22 minutes to almost an hour as data grew. The fix wasn’t a bigger instance, it was RDS Optimized Reads moving temp table I/O onto local NVMe storage. Here’s what we measured.
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Enhanced Monitoring vs Performance Insights on RDS: Why You Need Both
Continue reading →: Enhanced Monitoring vs Performance Insights on RDS: Why You Need BothPerformance Insights shows what your database engine is doing. Enhanced Monitoring shows what the operating system underneath it is doing. Here is why an incident can hide in the gap between the two, and how to set up both correctly.
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RDS Parameter Groups: The Default-Group Wall and the Static-Parameter Trap
Continue reading →: RDS Parameter Groups: The Default-Group Wall and the Static-Parameter TrapDefault RDS parameter groups cannot be modified at all, and static parameters will not take effect until a reboot no matter what apply method you choose. Here is how to avoid losing time to either gotcha.
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RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ: Mirroring, Always On, or Block-Level Replication
Continue reading →: RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ: Mirroring, Always On, or Block-Level ReplicationRDS automatically picks one of three different replication mechanisms for SQL Server Multi-AZ based on your engine version, and you do not get to choose directly. Here is how to find out which one you are actually running.
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Oracle 23ai Read-Only Users: Locking Down Accounts Without Breaking the App
Continue reading →: Oracle 23ai Read-Only Users: Locking Down Accounts Without Breaking the AppGranting only SELECT never actually guaranteed a read-only account. Here is what Oracle 23ai’s account-level READ ONLY flag enforces instead, and the ORA-28194 error that caught a report job I didn’t expect to break.
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A Week With GitHub Copilot in SSMS: What Natural-Language T-SQL Got Right (and Wrong)
Continue reading →: A Week With GitHub Copilot in SSMS: What Natural-Language T-SQL Got Right (and Wrong)I spent a week actually using GitHub Copilot in SSMS on real report requests and blocking investigations instead of ignoring the badge in the corner. Here’s what natural-language T-SQL got right, and the one warning in Microsoft’s own docs worth…
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Migrating Off NVARCHAR JSON Hacks to SQL Server 2025’s Native JSON Type
Continue reading →: Migrating Off NVARCHAR JSON Hacks to SQL Server 2025’s Native JSON TypeA malformed webhook payload sat undetected for three weeks in an NVARCHAR(MAX) column before it blew up a batch job. Here is how SQL Server 2025’s native json type would have stopped that, and what the ALTER TABLE migration, EF…
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Fixing Replication Lag with Parallel Logical Replication in Aurora PostgreSQL
Continue reading →: Fixing Replication Lag with Parallel Logical Replication in Aurora PostgreSQLOur nightly batch job kept freezing a downstream reporting dashboard for several minutes, and it turned out our Aurora PostgreSQL subscription was just waiting for one giant transaction to commit. Here’s how turning on parallel logical replication fixed it.
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SQL Server 2025 Intelligent Query Processing: What Changed at Compatibility Level 170
Continue reading →: SQL Server 2025 Intelligent Query Processing: What Changed at Compatibility Level 170Bumping our database to SQL Server 2025’s compatibility level 170 quietly changed how two of our worst-behaved queries got their execution plans. Here is what Parameter Sensitive Plan optimization’s new DML support and Optional Parameter Plan Optimization actually did, and…
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Priority Transactions: Letting the Database Roll Back Its Own Blockers in Oracle AI Database 26ai
Continue reading →: Priority Transactions: Letting the Database Roll Back Its Own Blockers in Oracle AI Database 26aiA hung transaction used to mean tracking down the blocker and killing the session by hand. In Oracle AI Database 26ai the database can roll back a lower-priority blocker automatically, and I walk through how to set it up and…
Oracle ACE Pro · AWS Community Builder
Arvind Toorpu
Oracle Certified Professional and Cloud Ops Database Manager at a financial services firm. Fourteen years architecting and running Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MySQL estates, including migrations of hundreds of databases to AWS, Azure and OCI.
This blog is the tuning, recovery, security and migration work behind that — written up as it actually happened, errors included.
Oracle ACE Pro 2026 · AWS Community Builder 2026 · Oracle Certified Professional
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Arvind Toorpu
I am a Database Admin/Architect with over 14+ years of experience managing multiple DBMS systems
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