Changes, Happiness, and a Few Tears

Posted on June 19, 2026 by way0utwest

Change is inevitable for most of us. The jobs we hold, the places we work, the people we know, even our families grow and change over time. As I get older and live longer, I’ve learned to accept, appreciate, and flow with changes. I might resist, delay, embrace, or anticipate tomorrow, knowing there is always a positive and negative side to things.

This week, one of my colleagues retired. Annabel has been a part of Redgate nearly as long as I have, and we’ve worked together for many years. If you’ve ever attended a Redgate event, live or online, she likely had a part to play in the planning, organizing, execution, financing, and every other part of the process.

My colleague, Allison, made a wonderful post yesterday, on Annabel’s final day with memories and thoughts from their time together. I wrote my own post with pictures and memories of our time together. There are so many more, and every time I think about our history, I’m touched, blessed, thrilled, and sad.

At PASS Europe last week, we said goodbye to Annabel at the last event she’s worked on. We toasted, laughed, and cried. She shed tears, which is a rarity, but Grant and I probably cried the most. She’s been a part of our lives and careers for many, many years.

Even typing these words brings tears to my eyes.

The future brings opportunity and excitement. It also brings sadness and wistfulness of the past. I can enjoy the memory of what I’ve experienced, miss the way things were, balancing those feelings with the my view forward to what is coming.

I can also think about what didn’t go well previously. We’ve had some issues at events, challenges, stressful times. Both at events, and while working with others in technology. I can learn from the past, be proud of the war stories, be glad we got past the failures, celebrate our successes, and plan to do better tomorrow.

The thing I miss most about growing older and moving forward are the people who I enjoyed spending time with. Those are the memories that stick with me more than the projects, the successful tech solutions, the elegant and fast code, the awards, bonuses, and achievements.

I miss the humans who have touched my life, and hopefully, whose lives I’ve touched.

I wish Annabel the best in retirement, I’m excited for where she journeys tomorrow. I hope those of you reading this make, cherish, and enjoy the great friends in your life.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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A Career of Memories

Posted on June 19, 2026 by way0utwest

Annabel retired from Redgate Software this week. Across most of my career at Redgate, I’ve participated in many events, some we hosted, some we sponsored. At most of these events, Annabel has been a part of organizing, financing, executing (or all three) the events with me. From SQL in the City to SQL Saturdays to Redgate Summits to the PASS Summit, she and I have been in so many cities and venues around the world.

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She has become a dear friend, and someone I look forward to seeing. A friendly face, a supportive friend, a joy to be around.

I’m happy for her future, sad she’s moving on, and grateful for the time we shared together. I look forward to quiet lunches and drinks, but will miss the chaos of travel and events.

I have so many memories across the years. Annabel might be the person I’ve worked with the most in my career. We’ve stood on stages together. I don’t have a picture of us, since I’m often on stage, but here she is with Kendra.

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We’ve prepped for broadcasts

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and she’s delivered the openings.

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We’ve celebrated after events in the US

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In Australia

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We’ve had so many smiles, together

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and with friends.

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We’ve sat in meetings (clearly she’s not as excited a Becky)

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We’ve had so many group shots

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We’ve had fun

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We’ve worked ourselves hard

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We’ve celebrated family

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And we’ve even gone to a deserted island

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If you’ve enjoyed a Redgate event, you likely have Annabel to thank.

I wish her well in retirement and I look forward to hearing how wonderful life is over lunch in Cambridge this fall.

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Follow Your Hunch

Posted on June 17, 2026 by way0utwest

For a while, I kept seeing that the cost of writing code was approaching zero. So many people felt that with an AI LLM, the costs would go way down to produce software. I’m not sure that’s true. In fact, some companies are finding they spend more on AI tokens than salaries.

However, the ability to produce more code, experiment with ideas, or generate proof of concepts has gone up. Whether it’s worth the cost or not depends on the engineer, but some organizations are finding that they can try more things than they would ever had time to try in the past. The time of engineers was the constraint, and if you can afford the cost, AI LLMs can relieve that time pressure.

Maybe the ability to get more done with agents means you should follow one of your hunches in software. Maybe you should try something.

Be thoughtful in your approach, use the LLM wisely, and learn to guide it efficiently, but use it to try an experiment that you might not think you have time to explore. Try an alternative. Implement something in a new way. OR implement it yourself and set the AI loose, asking it to work in a different way. You certainly could tell the LLM not to use your approach and try something different.

To me, the big advantage of an AI agent is it gives me time, something that I see as the most impactful constraint in my life. I’d like to get more done, but I’m not willing to work a lot more. Using an AI agent with a measured approach lets me tackle things that I might not otherwise get done. Certainly not as quickly as I get them done, and certainly not without stealing some personal time.

I get more done at work, without working more. I’m not working less, but I’m more effective. That’s what I’ve always aimed to do.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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No Shortcuts for the SQLCMD Batch Terminator: #SQLNewBlogger

Posted on June 17, 2026 by way0utwest

I was messing around with SQLCMD and I realized something I hadn’t known. I’ve never tried it, but the batch separator has to be separate, which I’ll show.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

The Batch Terminator

The default batch terminator in SQL Server tools is “GO”. We tend to use this in SSMS, and many of us know to type this in SQLCMD when we use it. In SSMS, we sometimes need it. Here’s an example where I create a proc and add a RETURN, which some people think means the proc ends.

It doesn’t.

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The SELECT @@VERSION is a part of the proc. Now, if I drop the proc and then add a GO at the end of a line, , I get this:

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Makes sense. Let’s try two commands. In this case, the GO is skipped and I get two results.

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Using SQLCMD

If I run SQLCMD and enter that code, I get a new prompt. That’s because the batch separator in SQLCMD is a batch terminator. This is in the SQLCMD docs, and since I haven’t terminated a batch, nothing happens.

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If I hit enter, I get a new prompt. This continues until I enter a go.

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Once I enter Go, I’ll see my results.

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A good thing to know, as you might think you can enter “select * from @@version go” and think it might execute. It won’t, as you see below:

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This isn’t likely a problem for most people as they’ll instinctively enter GO if something doesn’t run, but newbies might miss this.

SQL New Blogger

This was about a 10 minute post, based on an experiment to see if I could get something to run quickly. Since I ran the experiment, I captured some screenshots and built this post.

Showcase continued learning, especially in this era of AI where you might need to guide an LLM along a better path.

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