Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

A New Word: Proluctance

proluctance – n. the paradoxical urge to avoid doing something you’ve been looking forward to – opening a decisive letter, meeting up with a friend who’s finally back in town, reading a new book from your favorite author – perpetually waiting around for the right state of mind, stretching out the bliss of anticipation as long as you can.

Sometimes the anticipation of something, good or bad, is more impactful than the thing. I certainly can understand not wanting to take a call or open a letter because the result might not be positive, or what I wanted.

The one place I certainly see this is with books. I have a few authors that I just buy their new books, often pre-ordering them. Lee Child is one and I often pre-order his books weeks or months in advance. However, when they come, I don’t always start reading them.

Sometimes I might be in the middle of something else, but quite a few times I’ve saved the book for my next long flight. I tend to take a 4+ (or often 8+) hour flight every quarter, so I’ve saved a few books until I knew I’d be stuck in a seat. In fact, the latest one, The Secret, was one of those. It came in late Oct 2023, and I knew I had a few trips scheduled in the next few weeks, so I delayed reading this until I was headed to the PASS Summit in November.

To help build my own anticipation and feed my proluctance, I re-read a couple of his older books in the meantime

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

February 23, 2024
Adding Git LFS Support – #SQLNewBlogger
I got this message recently while committing some changes:

This post shows my work in adding Git LFS support to GitHub.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. You can see all posts on Git as well.

Downloading Git LFS

The first thing to do is follow the URL from above: https://git-lfs.com/

Once there, I clicked the download link. I also saw this message: Git LFS security update: Windows users should update to 3.1.3 or newer. I had never installed this, but there is a security issue, so if you are using this, or know someone, let them know to patch.

This is a simple install, so I ran it and the installed quickly completed. There are no choices here, just accept the EULA.

Once this is done, I followed the instructions from the site. First, I had to close and re-open my CMD window to detect this. Once I did this, I could run
```
git lfs install
```
This worked fine.

Once this was done, I changed to one of my repos where I have a large PowerPoint file. I added this for a conference that didn’t have download support, but I may do this in other repos to make it easy for attendees to see code and PPT together.

In the repo, I added lfs tracking for all PPTXs. I likely will add a few other decks in here for different conferences, so I’ll includes this as a general tracking item.

This alters the .gitattributes file, so that needs to be tracked and added to the repo. I’ll do that and commit my changes.

There you go. I’m not commited and tracking large files, or at least PPTXs with lfs support. Hopefully my laptop survives as I did this on an airplane :).

What is LFS Support?

This is an extension to git that makes storing large binary files, and diffing them, more efficient. Large files can be inefficient to transfer and store compared to small files, and many file systems, and tools, sometimes adjust the way they work to manage these differently. SQL Server did this with FileStream/FileTable, which works well for some sizes of files, but it inefficient for others. In fact, if you have smaller files (< 256kb I think), those are better just stored in varbinary columns and streamed through TDS.

The extension says this should allow you to keep your repo at a more manageable size. I’m assuming this means some sort of compression and diff storage for binaries, as opposed to complete copies of the entire file(s). This should be faster to push/pull as well.

SQL New Blogger

This post was interesting to me. As soon as I realized this was something that might improve the way git works for me, I decide to shoot some screenshots as I enabled this. I downloaded the binary and sketched a few sentences on this post before I got on a plane.

I’d saved the web page for the extension, and so I took about 15 minutes to do the install, shoot the screens, and then type up the above description.

This is s a good example of adding something to my development toolbox that might benefit my team, and make it easier for others do deal with large binary files. You can do this as well to show you’re learning and growing. Even more bonus points if you go through your IT group for permission, document some of those interactions, and show that you know how to work with other teams.

Fortunately, I don’t need to do that as this isn’t a domain managed laptop 😉
February 21, 2024
Visual Design for Safety

I drive a Tesla Model Y and love it. They’re not for everyone and not for every situation, but I think it’s the best car I’ve owned. My wife feels the same way, and if we had a need for two cars, we’d likely get another one. The car is fun, and I look forward to getting in and moving around town. If you have questions about owning an EV or a Model Y, please feel free to ask.

The car isn’t perfect, and there are things I wish I could change. There have also been a few recalls on the car, which is interesting for a Tesla. A few of these recalls meant that I got a software update a few days or weeks later and something changed. There was another recall recently, which affects most Tesla vehicles in the US. I’m sure that by the time you read this, I’ll have a software update applied and the issue will be resolved.

This particular recall was because a font was too small. That might seem like a minor thing, but as someone who needs reading glasses all the time, I do think this is an issue. In fact, I appreciated that Tesla sent an update in 2023 that let me set all font sizes larger on all screens. I wish they were slightly larger, and I wish they’d check the UI for a few things as the text is cut off in minor places, but I can usually squint while driving and make out what’s there.

I also keep reading glasses permanently in the car in case I really need to grab them and see something.

Many of us work with data, and we may build reports (or edit them) to help our customers consume data and make decisions. Hopefully, some of you have learned how important good visual design is to creating an impact with your reports. Even if you report on something as simple as uptime, the way you showcase the data makes an impression on those who consume it. In case you’re sending your boss a message, I hope you want to ensure he or she receives the same impression you want to send. Remember, communication is what is heard, not said.

There are lots of resources out there about visual design, and lots of places where you can ask questions about what you’ve done and see if someone has hints or ideas to create a better presentation for your data. Even if you aren’t designing for safety, you’re often designing for impact and you want to do that well.

We’re lucky in the digital world in that we can adjust the way things appear easily, and relatively cheaply. Imagine if Tesla had created a dedicated sensor or physical light to let us know about a brake issue. If that were too small, the recall wouldn’t be a software update. It would likely be hundreds of thousands of hours lost by them and customers on a simple design correction.

Update: A couple of days after I wrote this, I got an over-the-air update, which fixed this.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

February 21, 2024
Getting Away from Work

A bit over a week ago, the volleyball team my wife and I coach won their first tournament of 2024. We’ve had an up and down year, and been close to one win, but the kids hadn’t been able to put together enough good things to win until then.

Today we’re finishing the annual three day local President’s Day tournament. As I write this on Friday, I have no idea how we’ll do. We have a couple kids recovering from illness, and one from injury, so fingers crossed things go well.

Actually, things will be great. I’m not overly concerned about wins or losses here, and however things go, kids will learn some lessons, either from success or failure.

And that’s life.

A lot of the skills I’ve learned at work in communicating, teaching, getting along with others, they come into play here. At the same time, the coaching skills I’ve learned, are applicable to work situations.

The key thing is this isn’t work (not really). It’s a break away from technology. I take stats on paper, I’m in a room with a lot of others, and we’re laughing, crying, having fun, struggling, but in a very different way from the time at my desk.

Hopefully you have some nice breaks away from work as well.

February 19, 2024