Vela Blog
Simplyblock's blog brings you the latest of storage, cloud, and thought leadership
Michael Schmidt
Oct 15th, 2025 | 11 min read
Why SQL Still Rules the Data World in 2025
SQL is Dead. Long Live SQL! I have been in Enterprise IT for 30 years. Long enough to see many hypes come and go, and a graveyard filled with failed promises made by sales reps and consultants promisi
Michael Schmidt
Oct 09th, 2025 | 7 min read
Business-Led Development: A Double-Edged Sword for Enterprise IT
The enterprise IT department has long walked a tightrope between enabling innovation and preserving stability. Today, with generative AI and low-code/no-code tooling, that balance is under extreme ten
Rob Pankow
Oct 03rd, 2025 | 9 min read
Why Platform Engineering Should Own the Database Experience
Recently I have spoken to many cloud-native organizations with strong platform engineering teams. I’ve seen a clear pattern across those platform teams. They build golden paths on Kubernetes, automa
Chris Engelbert
Sep 18th, 2025 | 19 min read
Underrated Postgres: Build Multi-Tenancy with Row-Level Security
Building multi-tenant applications requires developers to ensure correct queries at every step along the way. Typically, we’d fall back on using WHERE clauses and pass along necessary constraint
Chris Engelbert
Aug 28th, 2025 | 10 min read
Faster Feedback for Database Changes – How Real Database Branching Changes the Game
TLDR; Database change management process is a great solution to keep track and automatically apply database schema changes. This process doesn’t eliminate the human factor, though. When writing
Rob Pankow
Aug 19th, 2025 | 8 min read
Database Branching – The Antidote to Production Surprises
Every CTO knows this story. The release passes every automated test, the staging sign-off is green, and confidence is high. Yet hours after deployment, dashboards flare red. Performance tanks, custome
Chris Engelbert
Aug 14th, 2025 | 9 min read
Why Mock Databases Kill QA Confidence
TL;DR: Mock databases are great for quick unit tests, but they fail to catch the real-world issues from production environments. For reliable database testing, you need database clones that mirror you