#355 AI's Impact on Databases with Shireesh Thota, CVP of Databases at Microsoft

#355 AI's Impact on Databases with Shireesh Thota, CVP of Databases at Microsoft

From DataFramed by DataCamp

April 13, 2026 · 53 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of AI on databases with Shireesh Thota from Microsoft, covering topics like SQL, NoSQL, and cloud data platforms.

Cloud data platforms now offer hundreds of services, plus a growing menu of SQL, NoSQL, and open source options. Unified environments promise a simpler path, but the hard trade-offs—consistency versus scale, single-writer versus sharded, RPO/RTO targets—still matter. In daily work, you may be deciding between SQL Server, Postgres, and a globally distributed JSON store, while also asking AI tools to draft queries and spot issues. Should you still learn SQL if an agent can write it? How do you validate the intent, performance, and security of generated queries? And can monitoring agents actually reduce on-call pain without taking away needed control? Shireesh is the CVP of Databases at Microsoft. He leads product management, engineering, and cloud operations for Azure Databases as well as App Development for Microsoft Fabric. The products in his team’s portfolio include Azure SQL Database (on-prem, Hybrid and Cloud), Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, and Azure MySQL.\\n\\n Previously, as the Senior Vice President at SingleStore, Shireesh was responsible for end-to-end engineering and product vision of the company. Before moving to SingleStore, Shireesh was a founding member of…

People in this episode

Guest: Shireesh Thota

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Microsoft, SingleStore, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure MySQL

Places: Cloud, SQL Server, Postgres, JSON

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