Specialized Database Observability: Is it THAT Important?

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's pretty important if we ask anybody around using an application, it really is dependent on how fast it processes its data. And other arguments can even be made around, whether or not data actually has the most robust or occupies most of the compute footprint in an actual transaction or service, like an important service, like delivering pizzas online, getting out and buying something on Amazon online, making sure that I can change my seat online. All those things are done because we're able to process data even now faster than ever before, fractions of a second. So what I would tell the procurement team is that how important it is, that data, meaning how well it's managed, but how much is it costing you? You know performance has a cost. Downtime has a cost. Development time has a cost, all those things. So the APM, they're right. I mean, they're providing the broad view of things. And no one's here to dismiss that notion. But again, the argument we need to make, we have to advocate for data. And its relevance in, again, the delivery of a service, the delivery of a transaction to a user. And if we're saying that it has this much of the compute, it's dependent on this much of the compute, then I think we need a little bit more or deeper observability. So in other words, as a data professional, I would ask my management team, how am I able to support decisions around cost, decisions around latency, decisions around platform choices, and for example, how many platforms have we implemented? Where are we still using them five years later? And a lot of that can be researched when you have depth in observability. So no, I mean, I'm not here to tell you that the APM solution is not important. Everybody needs to see overall how the service is operating. But again, if we're saying that most of its compute dependency is in the data and the processing of the data, is that instrumental to the overall conversion of a transaction and the viability of a service, I think it's a big risk if you don't have that observability built in because even the APM vendors will tell you that they don't have that level of observability in the database, right? So their solution-- think about the roles that are using APM solutions. So it's certainly not suited for a data professional.