Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • The BBQ Crawl at SQL Saturday #300

    This weekend is SQL Saturday #300 in Kansas City. I’ll be traveling Friday for the event, hoping to arrive in time to go on the pre-event barbeque crawl that the organizers set up every year. It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 years since I was last in KC. I still have, and often wear the shirt I got from SQL Saturday #53 when I travel and was surprised to note recently that it’s a 4 year old shirt. How time flies.

    Kansas City is a neat city, and the event is a lot of fun in a very unique setting. An old river casino, converted to a training center. I still remember driving up and being unsure if it was the right place, and then enjoying the view inside.

    This week I’ll be talking about Continuous Integration for Databases, so if you’re in the area and have time Saturday, then register and come by,

  • The Real Scary DBAs

    I ran into someone recently that told me they were scared at their job. This person had built a number of ETL jobs to move data around between systems. They were trained as a developer, but had a little experience, got sucked into working with SQL Server, and had made a career without really considering themselves a DBA. They seemed a bit bewildered that they hadn’t messed up the data in any of their employer’s systems.

    I’ve met quite a few people like that, who seem amazed to be trusted to accomplish the work they do on a regular basis. It’s good that many people can go through a career in SQL Server and successfully accomplish the things their employer needs done. However there’s no shortage of “scary DBAs” out there that are in over their heads and do cause damage to data and systems.

    I see questions at SQLServerCentral on a regular basis that scare me. Not because the question is particularly hard, but because the person asking the question seems to be trusted with way more responsibility than they are capable of handling. I’m glad they’re asking questions, but often the additional questions they ask, or the lack of understanding they display about the answers have me worried. It’s not that these people are stupid, but often they don’t have the experience to do the job they’re assigned.

    All of us have things to learn. Many of us continue to learn on the job, often as we’re getting work done. I think that’s a valid way of going through your technology career and I hope most of you continue to improve your skills on a regular basis. However there are quite a few people that have little aptitude for their chosen field, learn the barest minimum to get by, and often implement code and configurations without understanding what they are doing.

    Those are the really scary DBAs and I’m amazed that so many of them are trusted by their employers to actively manage organizational data.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

  • Better Presentations–Fonts

    This is part of a series of tips for speakers to make your presentations better.

    Please, please, please, learn how to set up your machine to look good on screen.

    I saw Brent Ozar write a few notes on how to make your presentations better recently. This was primarily for the people presenting at the PASS Summit, with a few specifics to that event. Buck Woody also had a mini rant about sizing the fonts on your laptop.

    Both are worth reading. The visual display of your work can overcome some poor speaking habits. Likewise, great speaking performances overcome some poor visual displays. Having both fail means your presentation may fail.

    Note by failure, I mean that the attendees don’t like the talk and lose out on information because they’re bothered by the way your session appears. This could be at a conference, a SQL Saturday, or a lunch and learn at work.

    Increase Fonts

    To move on from Buck’s post, change the defaults in SSMS. Paul Randal has a nice post on configuring SSMS. Read it and try it.

    I go for 14 point fonts, but note that you need to set Text and Grid results separately and restart SSMS. Do this before you walk in front of people.

    It’s easy to do in SSMS. Click the Tools and then Options menu items. You’ll get a dialog like this, and on the left, under Environment, there’s a Fonts and Colors selection. Click it.

    badpresent4

    The top drop down on the right controls the section of SSMS. Query Windows are the Text Editor items. Below this, I have a font (Consolas) and a size (14). Below that on the left I have the various items in the Text Editor I can change fonts for. There are so many settings that this could be a weeklong project.

    I usually just change the “Plain Text” to 14. I don’t’ worry about the others, but if you use other items in your presentation (like line numbers), change them.

    If you select the top drop down, you’ll see this

    badpresent5

    These are the other places you can change fonts. The two I want to point out (I use them) are the Grid Results about 2/3 of the way down and Text Results a few below that. Change both of these font sizes, though you’ll have to restart SSMS.

    If you make these changes, your attendees might not thank you, but they’ll be less likely to complain. Even in the largest rooms, 14 points seems to reach to the back of the room. And if it doesn’t, learn to zoom.

  • Silicon Valley is a different world

    I spent the last couple days at Flowcon 2014, a conference that is bringing people together to talk about growing their organizations with continuous delivery and design, and lean product development.

    It does some of that, but it wasn’t what I expected. The attendees for the most part were people that already believe in continuous delivery, in lean principles for their organization, and in flow. If you don’t know what flow is, read the Phoenix Project, Martin Fowler, and other lean, agile methodology books. It’s a concept from labor and manufacturing, with the idea that we can increase the rate at which we get work done.

    I believe in it, it’s a tenet of DevOps, and I think it works well. The conference features people from Netflix, Nordstrom, Etsy, Thoughtworks, and other companies that are already using these ideas. They believe, and they are looking for ways to better smooth out their own groups.

    However they also have ideas about rapidly changing and adaptive groups and organizations, which isn’t where most of us work. Far, far too many people are still stuck performing waterfall work, or even waterfall-like work.

    It’s also a world where people are looking for startup ideas, looking to move quickly and build something new. It’s a world that’s quite unlike my own. While there’s a buzz and energy from many people, it also feels somewhat shallow and hollow from some that are searching for riches. It’s also a bubble of thought that is so far away from most of my experiences, that it feels sheltered and idealistic.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting, and there is a passion some of these people have for their craft that’s inspiring. I’m just not sure it’s a place I’d want to be every week.

    However I do wish more and more people would look to better develop software. If we are to improve as an industry, I think many of the ideas and techniques that are invading the software development world related to flow need to be adopted.