Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Syndication on SQLServerCentral

    I have a few people ask about this recently, so I thought I’d blog about it, and maybe get an explanation out there.

    When we started accepting bloggers on SQLServerCentral, it was a challenge to get people to move their blogs. We had some people that just started blogging with us, but others that were already blogging elsewhere. At first I wasn’t sure what to do, but when SQLServerPedia started syndicating bloggers, using feeds, I requested similar functionality for SQLServerCentral.

    We built it, and while it’s a little crude, and we’ve modified things a few times, here’s how it works:

    • You send us a note with
      • Your SQLServerCentral registered email
      • A feed URL
    • You blog in English (sorry, English only)
    • We read the feed and publish your blog on SQLServerCentral.

    The Scary DBA has syndicated his blog, so you can see how the different things look on our site v the source. Some things don’t come across cleanly, and I’m working on getting some of those things fixed.

    Frequency

    We used to read feeds once a day, now we do it once an hour. So if you blog about something, it ought to be on the SQLServerCentral site in under 2 hours. If you think there is an issue, please contact the webmaster.

    Hints

    I use Live Writer to actually publish this blog on Blogspot. It lets me test things, but also gives me a backup of my blog and control over what I write. I think it’s a good idea to own your content, as well as keep a backup of it on your own blog.

    Live Writer is a great piece of software for drafting blogs, scheduling them, working offline, etc. I actually sync my Live Writer folders  across my desktop and laptops. That gives me some additional capabilities to draft stuff on one machine and finish it on another.

    I highly recommend people tag stuff they want to syndicate with a specific tag and then send us the feed of that tag. That allows you to still blog about something that you want to publish, but not syndicate it if you don’t want to. I know some people do this to publish other stuff in other languages, or they mix their personal/career blog and don’t necessarily want to send everything to SSC.

    Setup

    If you want to get setup, send a note to the webmaster at SQLServerCentral.com and we’ll get you syndicated.

  • SQL Saturday Advice – Work with Sponsors

    The hardest thing, I think, for most new organizers of a SQL Saturday is the fundraising. A few years ago I heard Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, give his 5 rules for being a good salesman.

    Number one is ask for the money. He couldn’t remember the other four 🙂

    I think that’s a fine set of rules, but for many people, it’s really hard to ask for money. Surprisingly they are scared to do it. Maybe not surprisingly since I find it hard as well. It’s not though, as I’ve learned over the year, but I still feel trepidation that I’m asking for more than I’m giving at times.

    I caught a great blog from one half of the Midnight DBA, Jen McCown (Blog|Twitter) on SQL Saturday sponsorships. It’s a great read, and there’s another good one from Ryan Adams. Sponsorship is important to a degree because there are some costs with a SQL Saturday. You might get free space, but often have to pay insurance. There’s lunch, though you can charge people. There’s signage, badges, other incidentals, but they still cost money and your significant other might not be thrilled with you paying out of pocket.

    I don’t think it’s hard to get some sponsors, and I know that my company, Red Gate, is usually happy to help out some, PASS gives a little, a few other vendors will likely chip in. There are two keys that I’ve seen from talking with people.

    1. Communicate often and clearly
    2. Negotiate and be willing to take less (and give less).

    You might think if you don’t get a response that your email was clear and that someone just doesn’t want to sponsor you. I will tell you that if you send 10, I bet that 7 of them aren’t clear to the receiver, or they aren’t read. 2 or 3 people might need to think about it and then will forget it. That means maybe one positive response from your email.

    What do you do?

    Send more emails. Send them repeatedly. Not botheringly-often like every day, but every week to ten days repeat them. Try new sponsors, try making a call or setting up a 10 minute meeting to talk about it. Use clear materials like Jen lists, and then be willing to work with them. Someone might not want to sponsor you for $1000, but they might be willing to do $200. If that’s the case, offer less. Be willing to shift slightly on your rate card, and negotiate with them. Ryan has good advice for being sure you deliver on your promises, keep them happy, and have them sponsor you again.

    And have fun with it. It’s not the end of the world if someone walks away, and there are usually lots of sponsors to choose from. You don’t need a huge budget, and I’d plan for a small one. You can add things in easier than taking them away.

  • It’s the Platform

    I keep seeing lots of debate about Android v the iPhone 4. I have friends talking about how cool Windows Mobile 7 will be, and even some talk about Nokia making a comeback. However it seems that so many people are just missing what’s cool about the iPhone.

    It just works.

    Not perfectly, not all the time, but it’s just so simple to make things happen. And if you want to try something else, there’s likely a dozen apps that do that one, quirky thing you want, and you can pick the one that works for you.

    70618861[1] As an example. I was on the phone with a friend today and they recommended Career Warfare to me. He told me the author and while he spent 2-3 minutes explaining what he’d learned from it and why he’d recommend it, I surfed over to Amazon, found the book in a Kindle edition, selected my phone, and shot the book to it. A quick $12 purchase for me, some money for the author and Amazon, and befoer I got off the phone, I clicked the Kindle app and saw it download through wi-fi.

    There’s nothing magic here, and Kindle is on Android now, but that platform, with things being that easy, is what makes the iPhone cool. Most apps are that easy to find, and I can find them in iTunes, see large screenshots and read reviews easily in a way that I couldn’t in the early Android Marketplace. Maybe it’s easier now, and maybe I can “send” things to my phone, and if so, they’re learning.

    That cool, simple, seamless platform that just seems to work so often and intuitively, is the reason I love the iPhone.

  • The Sequence Table – Inline Assignment and Update

    One thing I learned years ago in C programming was the elegance of using operators and simplifying expressions. This sometimes involved doing two things in a single statement, if it makes sense. For example,

    x=y++;

    Those of you that have done some programming will recognize this as incrementing y and assigning a value to x at the same time. Well not the same time, but in one line.

    I knew that you could some things like this in T-SQL, but it didn’t trigger in my mind when someone asked about building their own sequencing table. This person wanted to update a table with an incremented value and return the value to the calling program without causing any locks/blocks.

    Paul White posted this fantastic piece of code that illustrates this:

    UPDATE  dbo.GPK

    SET     @NewID = next_value = next_value + 1

    WHERE   table_name = @table_name;

    In this code the GPK table is being updated, with the next_value column being incremented. At the same time, @NewID, a variable that is an output parameter for a stored proc in this example, is assigned the value from next_value.

    The value assigned is the incremented value, so if next_Value contains a 1 before this is run, @NewID will get 2. The increment/update occurs first, with the new value being assigned to the variable.

    I think this is really cool, and it’s something I need to remember for future T-SQL problems.