Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Intermediate T-SQL: Writing Cleaner Code

    This session is an intermediate T-SQL session that helps users learn how to write better T-SQL code by covering a few items that many database developers might not be aware of. In an hour, users will lean how to:

    • write and use CTEs to simplify complex queries.
    • learn basic error handling, including recommendations for SQL Server 2012 and beyond with THROW.
    • use templates to store common code elements
    • tricks in SSMS to speed up code development
    • understand what a tally table is and how to use it to perform a few common tasks.

    This is the beginning of a three hour series I have on intermediate T-SQL code.

    Slides: TSQL_WritingCleanerCode.pptx

    Code: TSQL_CleanerCode.zip

  • Fun Data Analysis

    The first part of this article is very true: “… correlation doesn’t always equal causality.” It’s a fun look at statistics and there’s a short video from a news station that contains this other great quote: “… numbers can be tricky.”

    As data professionals, we are often tasked with helping business people understand the information hidden in data. We look to identify patterns and relationships between the data that our applications collect or our companies purchase. However it’s not as simple as it might appear.

    This week, I’m wondering if you have some fun stories, or perhaps some scary stories, on conclusions that you or others have reached with data.

    When has a correlation been mistaken for causation by you?

    I know that most people in business don’t have extensive statistics backgrounds, and I’ve often seen people fooled by finding simple or obvious patterns in data that didn’t necessarily match reality. I’ve seen plenty of money lost because of bad decisions made by incorrect data interpretations.

    I once worked in a restaurant where a new chef decided to use sales data from the previous year to predict how many meals would be served. Using a growth factor from sales over the previous year, he increased his purchasing as the summer season approached. A month into summer, we realized that we were wasting almost twice as much food as we had in the past. I had a similar story where purchasing managers used a straight average of the previous three months that left is woefully short on imported wood.

    Let us know this week if you’ve seen mistakes made from naive interpretations of statistics.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. 

  • SQL in the City 2014 – Two countries in two weeks

    I have had a fairly busy travel schedule the last few years. While I don’t love sitting on airplanes and being away from home, I do look forward to the events and seeing the amazing #SQLFamily and community we have for SQL Server. I’ve also learned a few tricks to make travel smoother, which reduces stress.

    It’s a good thing since the SQL in the City 2014 event schedule is going to be short in duration, but long in miles. We have two days coming this fall: London and Seattle. We open in London on Fri, Oct 24, 2014 and then a little over a week later will be in Seattle on Mon, Nov 3, 2014. It’s a packed schedule that has me flying 6,000 miles to the UK before returning home and getting ready for a 1,300 mile trip up to the Pacific Northwest.

    However I’m excited for both events. London draws a bit crowd, with a variety of SQL Server professionals that are excited to learn new ideas, tips, tricks, and tools to help them in their professional work. We’ll once again be near the center of town, at St Grange, just off the St Pauls and Blackfriars Underground stations.

    Seattle is a great town, and while I’m sure I’ll see some Summit attendees, I look forward to meeting lots of local SQL Server data professionals that won’t attend the Summit. I hope that if you’re in the area, you come to our event. After all, how can your boss say "no" to a free day of training? Especially if you’re not attending the Summit later that week. We’ll be at McCaw Hall, near the Space Needle.

    It’s a short tour this year, but an exciting one. We’ll also continue to expand our SQL in the City seminars to other cities in the future, and hope we get the chance to meet more of you as we look to support, educate, and participate in this amazing SQL Server community.

  • Continuous Delivery for Windows?

    I read a bit about the next version of Windows, which is coming in 2015 as Windows 10. I’m not sure how much I care about some of the changes coming in the OS, though having CTRL+V working in a command prompt is very welcome. However I did read this piece about the people testing the Technical Previews and was a little intrigued by one quote: “… Threshold testers … will have those features and fixes pushed automatically to them…”

    Does that mean that Microsoft has re-engineered Windows to be integrated with a Continuous Delivery process? If so, then I think this is a good move. We’ve already seen SQL Server move to a pace that releases new versions every two years and bimonthly patches to fix issues. Imagine that we could get patches even more often, as bugs are fixed.

    Also imagine that we could get those bugs quickly rolled back and patches pulled if there are issues.

    I think that’s one of the interesting things for me. There have been patches in the past which caused, issues and were sometimes hard to remove. If new changes can be pushed out quickly, I’d hope they could be removed quickly. And with all the feedback that Microsoft gets from existing installations, I could even start to see custom patches built that are deployed to only certain configurations that are compatible with the patch.

    Of course, that’s an ideal view. I suspect that we’ll still see overworked developers releasing patches that not only fix issues, but cause other problems, and at times, can’t be removed. At least we’ll probably get the patch to fix the patch, a little faster than in the past.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.