Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • My Stats from 2023

    I’m a data guy, so I decided to drop some numbers in a post. I did this last year, so this one includes a few comparison points.

    Music

    From Spotify Wrapped with the 2022 numbers in parens:

    • 36952 minutes (30135, up 23%)
    • 1668 artists
      (1440, up 16%)

    • 75 genres
      (68 in 2022, up about 10%)

    • 3809 songs
      (2946, up 29%)

    • Top Songs: Something in the Orange, 3×5, Sun to Me, Look At Us Now, Joy of My Life
    • Top Artists: John Mayer,  Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton, U2, The Beatles
    • Top day, 491 minutes on Sept 2, I was working in Cambridge before the DevOps Tour

    Music is something I like, and I listen often. Travel had me upping the listening this year. I also listened to a lot more country, and learned some songs on the guitar.

    Writing and Speaking

    It’s my job. A few stats, 2022 in parens:

    • Editorials written – 141 (151)
    • Coping Tips – 61 (257)
    • Speaking sessions delivered: 30 (34)
    • Events: 24 (19)
    • Blog views – 61,000 (74,000+
      )

    • Blog Posts: 393
    • Visitors: 44,000 (55,000+)

    Workouts

    Taking care of my health is important to me. I’ve always exercised regularly, and at one point I ran every day of the year for a few years. I’ve relaxed a bit, and settled into more of a routine. I miss a few days and I don’t stress about it, but I make my best effort to work by body a bit most days.

    Stats from 2022. I might have missed some, but these are the gross totals. This adds up to more than 365 since I do two things some days. A lot of weight days have cycling or walking or something as a warm-up

    • Yoga: 79 (92)
    • Cycling 71 (indoor and outdoor): (84
      )

    • Weights 52 (63)
    • Walking 21 (20)
    • Elliptical: 14 (22)
    • Swimming: 7 (7
      )

    • Cardio classes: 1 (2)
    • Rowing: 27 (2)

    Total workout days: 272

    The total days is still low for me. My aim is 75% of the days, but I spent way too much time on the road with travel and missed working out some of those days.

    Driving

    I don’t know exactly how much I drove, but the Tesla give me some stats and I’ve been tracking a few. For the Tesla,  show about 17k miles this year, which is mostly me. For all the times my wife might drive (or the kids), likely I put miles on the X5 or Suburban (or a few in the Ram 3500), so this is not a bad set of mileage for me.

    I also got to drive in two countries and a few states. Rough stats:

    • Miles driven 17,000
    • Countries: 2 (US and Portugal)
    • States: 5 (Colorado, New York, California, Florida, Nevada)
    • Top driving locations from the Tesla: Lifetime Fitness (135), Safeway (98), and a local gas station (89). Yes, I have a diet soda addiction.

    Reading

    I spend a lot of time reading books. They are an escape for me from life, and a way to improve myself. In 2022, I finished

    • 104 books
    • 35000+ pages
    • Avg. screen time on Kindle app for Dec: 10 hours/week

  • Friday Flyway Tips–Linking Commits to an Azure DevOps Work Item

    Recently I was doing a demo and a customer asked how I had linked my commit in Azure DevOps to the work item that existed. It’s easy, and tldr; it’s with the commit comment. This post shows how that works.

    I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

    Creating a Work Item

    In Azure DevOps, there is a board menu. Under here, one of the subitems is Work Items. You can see these below:

    2023-12-13 17_52_28-Work items - Boards

    I tend to work from the “Boards” item, which looks like this:

    2023-12-13 17_52_22-Westwind Team Features Board - Boards

    Let’s assume we have a new item, so I’ll click the “New Item” at the top of the left column. This gives me an edit box, which I’ll type in a name.

    2023-12-13 17_54_25-Westwind Team Features Board - Boards

    When I hit enter, this gives me a new work item, which you see below, as 250 create products entitty.

    2023-12-13 17_55_19-Westwind Team Features Board - Boards

    Since I don’t want to leave a spelling error, I’ll edit the title to look better.  Now I have a work item.

    Linking A Commit in FWD

    In SSMS, I’ll create the products table. Once I do this, I’ll go to Flyway Desktop and refresh the schema model. When I do this, I see my change. I’ll select this and save to the file system.

    2023-12-13 18_01_48-Flyway Desktop

    Once this is done, I’ll go to the Version Control tab, and I again see my file changed. Here my file is selected, and I’ll enter a commit message, but I’ll include the work item number after a #. This creates a link.

    2023-12-13 18_02_45-Flyway Desktop

    I now click commit and push. In Azure DevOps, in the Repos –> Commit item, I see my commit.

    2023-12-13 18_04_15-Commit 1421f994_ #250 create products table - Repos
    Note the details item under my cursor. If I click that, I see commit details and near the bottom, a link to the work item.

    2023-12-13 18_04_21-Commit 1421f994_ #250 create products table - Repos

    If I click through to the work item, or I access the work item from Boards, I will see my commit linked on the far right of the work item.

    2023-12-13 18_04_32-Westwind Team Features Board - Boards

    This is very handy to have your actual code linked to the work that it relates to. If I have PRs or multiple commits, as long as you use the #nnn, where nnn is the work item, you’ll have everything linked together.

    This is less a Flyway Desktop feature than an Azure DevOps one, but you can access this from Flyway Desktop by writing good commit messages with work item numbers.

    Try Flyway Desktop out today. If you haven’t worked with Flyway Desktop, download it today. There is a free version that organizes migrations and paid versions with many more features.

    Video Walkthrough

    I made a quick video showing this as well. You can watch it below, or check out all the Flyway videos I’ve added:

     

  • The 2024 Plan

    Today is the last working day of 2023. Next week we start with the New Year’s holiday on Monday and then many of us go back to work, starting a new year. This is the time of year where many people make New Year’s Resolutions, most of which will be abandoned by March. Some of you might keep to your goals, but it is hard to make substantial changes in your life all at once, especially based on a calendar date.

    Instead of making a resolution this weekend, I would suggest that you think about your career and sketch the outline of a plan. Having a plan is a good way to approach the new year, one that I think might be better than setting goals without a plan. It’s easy to set goals, but without a concrete approach to attacking those goals, I think it becomes difficult to meet them, and more importantly, difficult to drive your career in the direction that makes it better for you.

    I heard some good advice from Brent Ozar at SQL Saturday Boston 2023. He said a good way to build a plan is to think where you would like to be in a year. What would you like to know? Or what skill would improve your career? What do you think would impress your boss? I’m sure most of you working in technology would like to make more money or find a better employer but those are the results after becoming a better data professional, not the plan.

    In a year, I think you can easily spend 50 hours working on your career, in an hour a week. Two hours a week is doable, but it can be hard to do more with a busy life, especially if you have family. However, you can make a couple of scheduled times a week to spend 15, 30, or 60 minutes on something in your career. Consider it a hobby and discuss how and when you’ll find time with your partner and family. Put the times on your calendar and take the time to sit at a computer.

    As for what you work on, look at my questions above, and pick a technology/language/framework/tool/platform/etc. and start typing. Write code, build a server, read what others have written, and practice answering questions that others have asked on your topic, even if you don’t post the answer in a forum.

    In the beginning, it will be hard. You’ll feel like you aren’t accomplishing anything. You might feel like you’re just wasting time, but you’ll learn things and slowly you will be able to actually get something done. Whether you want to train AI models, write better T-SQL, or learn to manage Availability Groups like an expert.

    My last piece of advice is to write. Journal, blog, make notes, but write about what you’ve learned. Whether these are notes for yourself to review before an interview or published blogs that build your brand. Document your journey and I am sure you will be very proud of yourself on this date next year.

    Steve Jones

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

  • A New Word: Koiniphobia

    koinophobia – n. the fear that you’ve lived an ordinary life.

    The last one of the year. I’ve enjoyed reading through this dictionary, learning new (made up) words, and thinking about life. Hope you have as well.

    What’s an ordinary life? I think that’s what life is for many of us, though we have lots of little ups and downs, joys and sorrows, important events to us.

    When I was younger, like many, I think I wanted to be a professional athlete or a rock star or a movie star or someone famous. Later, as I went through school and the tech booms, I wanted to be a rich tech person.

    None of those happened, but I’ve had an amazing life. I think in many ways, it’s very pedestrian, and I walk through my days doing ordinary and simple things. I work at a desk, I shop for groceries, I go to the gym, I fix things around the house, I feed horses on the ranch.

    I am also blessed to travel for work and stand on stage in front of many people. However, lots of my friends do the same thing.

    I know I’m famous in a very narrow, weird way, but I also very much enjoy my anonymity in most of my life. I appreciate the time I have with others in my family, friend group, and community, as someone just participating in life with them.

    I have no koiniphobia, not because of my life, but because everyone I know has their own interesting, unique, exciting things in their life. We don’t need to be on stage or in the media to live a very unordinary life. That’s what life is.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows