Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Using Technology in New Ways

    heat map of made shot attempts
    Apparently Kevin Durant doesn’t make his shots from everywhere.

    There are some amazing things that we accomplish with technology. For example, there is a system that can track a missile, moving at incredible speeds, and report this information to other applications that could potentially be used to react in some way. That’s pretty amazing, and whether or not you agree with the purpose of the system, the technical achievement is pretty incredible.

    There are other people that can take that technology and apply it to a more benign use. SportVU has used missile tracking technology in sports to gather additional statistics on the various games and the players. They started using this with soccer, but have brought it to the US and the National Basketball Association, implementing the system in 10 arenas. The linked article looks at the way in which this technology can be applied to player performance, and uncovering patterns that might not be otherwise recognized.

    It’s incredible to see the the heat maps of attempts v makes for one of the most exciting young shooters in the NBA. Watching his Kevin Durant in some games, I was sure that he could make any shot from anywhere on the floor. The data proves me wrong. If I were a defender, I’d be looking to force Durant outside of a few areas near the three point line and let him take his shots from elsewhere. At least until the data showed he was getting better from other spots.

    So many of our decisions these days are based on hard data, but are we collecting the correct data? Could we find other data points that might uncover data within data? This article shows that there might be other technologies out there, even in completely unrelated fields, that might help us find new data points to capture, and new patterns that can help us make better decisions. If you are using any type of unusual technology in your business, let us know.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Geeky Books

    Goodreads
    Goodreads is a neat place to track your reading, and see what others think of books.

    I love to read. It’s one of my hobbies, and I usually go through 50-100 books a year, depending on the subject and the rest of my life. Usually I’m also keeping an eye on Paul Randal, who probably reads more pages than I do in a year, just less books. So far this year, I read 47 books through June 30, though 5 or 6 of those were re-reads from previous years. I have a page on GoodReads that notes a lot of what I read, but it’s not always completely up to date. I’m trying, but I read a lot.

    I recently saw a list of geeky books for the summer. It’s a mix of fiction and nonfiction, science and technology, but all geeky type stuff. As I look through the list of 23 books, I found:

    • Two I’ve read
    • Two on my list to read
    • Two I don’t want to read
    • Nine that I added to my ever growing list of books

    This year I’ll probably get to 100 books. With lots of travel planned, and lots of reading while I’m in the air, it shouldn’t be a problem. I highly encourage people to read, and constantly bug my kids to read more. It’s a good habit to get into, I think it improves your thinking and engagement with the world, it’s fun, and it’s a great habit to build. Both for your career and your life.

    If you’ve got your own geeky recommendations, let us know.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Time Zones

    Visual Studio Lightswitch
    Designed to make developers’ lives easier. Shouldn’t we do that in T-SQL?

    I ran across this article on time zones, and was surprised that it was such a complex topic. It seemed to me that there should be an easy conversion function built into SQL Server that would do this:

    DECLARE @dt datetime
SELECT @dt = GETDATE()

SELECT CONVERT( DATETIMEOFFSET, @dt, 'CST')

    and I’d get my current time in Central Standard Time (CST).

    It’s 2012. We’ve learned that time zones are a part of applications. SQL Server is built for work with web applications, which usually span time zones. Developers can code around this, but don’t we want to give them tools to save time? Isn’t that the whole idea behind Lightswitch, ORMs, and most of the new languages in the world? To make developers more productive?

    CONVERT still has crazy numeric codes for conversion. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do this:

    DECLARE @dt datetime
SELECT @dt = GETDATE()

SELECT CONVERT( datetime, @dt, 'dd.mm.yy')

    than this?

    DECLARE @dt datetime
SELECT @dt = GETDATE()

SELECT CONVERT( datetime, @dt, 104)

    Time zone abbreviations are well known. Shouldn’t they be built into SQL Server?

    Sometimes I wonder if we are looking too much into things we can add to an application rather than the things that we can improve. Especially those things we use constantly.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #32 – A Life in the Day

    tsqltuesdayIt’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, delayed a week this month, so I had  a whole extra week to get ready. This month the party is hosted by Erin Stallato, fellow MVP, runner, and a SQL Server expert. Such an expert, she was recently hired by SQL Skills, one of the top SQL Server consulting firms in the world.

    The T-SQL Tuesday party is the brainchild of Adam Machanic and it’s been a lot of fun to participate over the last few years. If you’re like to host one, you just need a blog, and then contact Adam for a month with your topic.

    A Life in the Day

    This month’s topic is a life in the day of your job. Erin’s plan was to track your life on Wednesday, July 11 or Thursday, July 12. That won’t work for me, as you can see from my tracking on Wed and Thur.

    Wed, July 11

    Wake up, check email, kiss the wife and kids and drive to the Denver Airport. Board a flight for London.

    Thur, July 12

    Arrive in London, clear customs, get a tube to Central London. Leave my bags at the hotel, find some food, read, run in Hyde Park, nap, practice SQL in the City presentations, dinner with Red Gate people, sleep.

    Travel

    This is a travel/talk week for me, so I don’t have a lot going on those days. So for this post, I’m going to track Monday, July 9, 2012 as it’s a semi-normal day for me.

    Mon, July 9

    It’s summer, and I work at home, so that means that I can sleep in a bit. A party with friends last night, so I wasn’t up until 8:30. I usually wake up, and reach over to grab my phone. I can check email and lay there for a few minutes, slowly getting going. Today there weren’t any big items to handle. No meetings, a few updates for my SQL in the City talk, and regular mix of reported posts, new content submitted, newsletters, etc. I also usually check Twitter to see if any news is breaking in the SQL world.

    Make coffee. Usually the first thing I do, heading downstairs before I walk into the office. Then I walk up to my standing desk and log in, checking the site.

    Most mornings I have a bit of a routine. I double check email to see anything new since I’ve walked downstairs and then start to handle any of the items I read in bed. Usually that means removing SPAM posts, answering questions from Red Gate or members of the community. I get a fair number of normal business queries each day, and try to get them answered. Today I had a note about travel in London with my reservations and questions about my dinner order Thur (we are well taken care of at Red Gate). I had a few notes about my talks I responded to and a few posts to remove.

    Go get coffee.

    Next I flip through all my post notifications. I have my daily editorial thread, but I also answer or participate in about 80-100 threads a month on SQLServerCentral. I answer some as I sip coffee, usually spending 30-60 minutes on discussions.

    Moar coffee (as Jes Borland would tweet)

    I flip through a few newsletters, just to see what others are doing/writing about. I get a lot of editorial ideas from here (and Twitter, and Google, etc), so I subscribe to 20-30 different newsletters. The SQLskills and Brent Ozar, PLF newsletters come out Monday, and I usually read through them. They are always interesting to me.

    Water.

    I’m doing the Body for Life diet with my wife. We’ve done it a few times, so lots of water throughout the day. I also eat every 2-3 hours, smaller meals. These have some good matches with the standing desk. I need to regularly hit the bathroom, or break for 10-15 minutes to cook something. Those breaks are good for the standing desk. If I ever run out of water, I walk away to fill it.

    This Friday and Saturday I have to give two presentations each day for SQL in the City. I’m traveling Wed/Thur, so my first step is to get newsletter scheduled for the week. I am usually 2-3 days ahead on podcasts and 4-5 days on editorials. Last week I scheduled a few re-runs for Thur/Fri, so today I edit down a podcast for Tuesday and upload it. Wed is a guest, so I schedule out newsletters through Friday.

    Now it’s practice time. These are new presentations, so first I run through the demos I have. I want the demos working and then backed out and ready. I go through each one with a setup and a reset script for the demo. Most of these are with Red Gate tools, so they’re easy.

    Once demos are ready, I’ll go through the presentation here, incorporating the demos and checking timing. The SQL in the City events are packed and scheduled fairly tight, so I don’t want to go over my time. Today I’ll do two rehearsals of each presentation to be ready.

    Throughout the day I have Twitter up (using Twhirl). I’ll glance at the stream periodically, but I rarely scroll back or look at things. It’s a nice break, and it lets me see what’s happening in the SQL world. Between run throughs of the demos and decks, I’ll glance around.

    I keep email open, but I don’t check all that often, maybe once every couple hours. With Pandora on headphones, I can concentrate on looking over my demos and notes. Not a good day. My VMs ran slow, and I blew up each demo twice, which was slightly worrisome. However I made a few notes on how to smooth things out for the actual delivery, and I’ll go over them live, on the laptop, tomorrow. The contained databases demos were especially problematic as I found a few problems with my reset scripts. I’ll clean those tomorrow as well.

    After two runs, that’s enough. I glanced at the forums on SQLServerCentral to see if anything much had popped up, then spent an hour working on a few editorials. I polished off 2 that were mostly written. I’ll give those a review tomorrow. I started two new ones, getting about 2-3 paragraphs written. Those are mostly done, but I ran out of thoughts. I copied in 2 other links, with just draft titles. I’ll try to work on those while I’m traveling.

    6:00 and I’m calling it a day. Time to run.