Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The Command Line is Back

    I grew up using a command line for all of my computing. I started with a Commodore VIC-20 as a youth, moving on to Apple IIs, TRS-80s, and then OpenVMS in university classes. It wasn’t until I started doing graduate work that I started to enjoy graphics in the X Window System, though many of my windows just ran bash and korn shells on SunOS. Since that time, I’ve mostly made my living in Microsoft Windows and OSX, using graphical programs. I’ve still been quick to open a command shell at times, but not too often.

    However there have been times when I’ve needed PuTTY to access remote machines, or I’ve had to struggle with some PowerShell remote commands. What would be nice is to have some of these tools on every machine. I love PowerShell available, but it’s often a pain when I encounter a new machine.

    However things might be getting easier. Apparently OpenSSH may be coming to Windows. It’s not there yet, but I think this will be a nice addition to allow remote access. I can see the day when I need to access an overloaded SQL Server and can use SSH to get a remote terminal and make a DAC connection with SQLCMD quickly. Or I can access any *nix machine without having to download and install a utility.

    I’ve often used command lines because the speed of getting processes to run and fail quickly is under my control, not some programmer that might not be responding to keyboard and mouse events. I love the command line cut/copy/paste in Windows 10, and I look forward to being able to make SSH connections quickly and easily for a variety of tasks, including secure version control and software development tool connections.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • Rebooting SQLNewBlogger in November

    I ran into Ed Leighton-Dick last week at the PASS Summit and we were chatting about the SQLNewBlogger challenge he started in April. I enjoyed it and while a number of people started, it seemed like most waned away. I tried to keep the challenge going with my own posts, adding notes to the posts on how much time I spent to give you confidence you could successfully blog yourself.

    Ed wanted to kick off the challenge again, and he did earlier this week. There’s a November SQLNewBlogger challenge, asking you to get four posts done this month. One is due each Tuesday, which means the first was four days ago, on Nov 4.

    Don’t let this discourage you if you didn’t write a post.

    Start now. Write a post today. Look through the ones I’ve written. Heck, write about the same topic I wrote about. Have you written about defining a FK at table create time? If not, write that post now, reference mine, and show how to do it. Give us a sentence or two on why you would do this.

    Write about using the DAC. Write about PowerBI. that one’s still on my list. Ed has ideas as well, and feel free to use one.

    The idea is to just write. Take some time this weekend, reflect on something you did this week, jot some notes, and write a short piece to showcase your knowledge.

    This is your chance to showcase your knowledge for your next employer, or even your review at the end of the year.

    I know I’ve been inspired, knocking out 5 posts this week, which I’ve scheduled each Thursday. I’ll be late to Ed’s challenge, but that’s OK. I’m continuing to write short pieces about my knowledge. In fact, a few changes to a PoSh script today gave me two posts, looking to specific skills I worked on.

    You can do the same. I look forward to you blogging, and seeing your posts appear in the #SQLNewBlogger hashtag on Twitter.

  • The Lost Laptop Crisis

    I wrote about the dangers of travel awhile back, where I had concerns about information when crossing the borders of a country. However that’s a case that most of us encounter rarely. However many of us do move information around on a regular basis with our devices, carrying them wherever we go. Each time we change locations, there’s a chance we’ll forget a device, or that one might be stolen from us.

    There is a limited amount of information in our phones and tablets, but in many laptops, we can carry more information, and often do. No shortage of us keep database backups or imports/exports of data for development purposes. Our clients certainly have reports or data in Excel, but often that’s a limited amount of data compared to what some of us might keep on our machines. In thinking about this, I wanted to ask this question:

    What would you do if you lost your laptop?

    I’m talking about the main laptop that you use for work. What’s on it? What’s important? How would you react? Have you even thought about it?

    I have, and I’ve had laptops die, though never stolen. However I have taken some precautions. When I get a new laptop, the first thing I do is enable the whole disk encryption in Windows or OSX. I keep backups of the recovery codes at home and I make sure I’ve taken advantage of strong passwords and other encryption for information I carry. I don’t have passwords saved for any VPN or other secure connections to banks or work.

    It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a start. Let me know today if you take other precautions.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • The SQL Source Control Frequent Updates Channel

    One of the things we do at Redgate is release software often. It’s not just that we want you to release your software often (and develop better), but we do it ourselves. Different teams release at different cadences, which is both cool, and hard to keep track of. The SQL Prompt team is really amazing, releasing hundreds of times in the last year. A pace of almost 4 times a week!

    SQL Source Control is a product I’ve been using fairly often lately. There is a team working on updating the code regularly, and I recently found out that they had two different streams of software releases. This is so the development team can get early feedback on some new features, but also so you can get access to the new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes as soon as they’re available.

    As a result, we have a normal, mainstream channel for releases, and a frequent release channel. The frequent channel offers new updates every Wednesday whereas the normal channel releases are less regular. The releases tend to be every few months, depending on the feature set being worked on. The regular channel also rolls multiple frequent releases into one larger update.

    Enabling Frequent Release

    If you’re interested in getting frequent releases, then open SQL Source Control (SOC) and then click the help item. The “Check for updates” item is there, which is what you want to select.

    2015-10-22 11_15_18-SQL Source Control - Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

    The update screen appears, and you may or may not have updates available. I don’t, as I updated this morning. However in the upper right corner is a “Configure visible updates” button. Click that.

    2015-10-22 11_15_28-SQL Source Control - Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

    Once you do that, you’ll get a dialog that tells you that you might get more updates, every few weeks and get new versions. If you check the box, as I have, you get updates quicker.

    2015-10-22 11_15_36-OneNote

    One note. This isn’t for beta versions. This is for code we are sure is ready, but we’re hoping to refine how it works and this gives us a chance to essentially have a additional test audience view the code and let us know. This is over and above the automated CI process we use and rigorous testing already completed by the development team.

    My experience is that I turned this on in early September to get the new Git support. I got the release with push/pull about three weeks before others (this has since been released to the regular channel). Since then, I’ve gotten two other releases that changed minor items, the same ones available to everyone else on the frequent release channel. The next regular channel release isn’t due until early 2016.

    If you want to see more frequent changes, enable the updates. If not, you’ll get updates on the normal schedule you do now. If you’re trying to understand what version you’re on, or what the features are, we have release notes:

    And if you want to shape the product, please vote on UserVoice for the things that you’d like to see in the future.