Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 22 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to ask a trusted friend to tell you what strengths they see in you.

    On one hand this would seem easy. On the other, it feels very narcissistic. That means for me, this is tough to do. They might say something I didn’t expect, or not appreciate something I think I do well.

    A conundrum, but I’m taking a chance. I’m asking someone I know well what they think are the characteristics of me that are positive and useful. Here’s what I got back:

    • Someone who is analytical
    • Someone who gets things done
    • I bring people together
    • I can flex when needed
    • Good technical and business IQ
    • Not afraid to fail
    • Doesn’t need oversight
    • Passionate
    • Gives good hugs

    I particularly like the last one.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

  • Custom SQL Server on RDS

    One of the challenges in moving to the cloud is achieving a similar level of performance to what you would get with dedicated hardware on-premises. The cloud is someone else’s computer, and you are limited to the choices that the vendors allow you to rent. In many cases, you might even share the physical hardware resources with other customers, though many cloud providers have started to allow dedicated hardware reservations in the last few years.

    One of the challenges of choosing a PaaS cloud database platform is that there are often restrictions that differ from a similar platform on-premises. This is often to ensure that one customer doesn’t affect another, or that customers don’t make changes that might prevent the vendor from supporting the system. Azure SQL Database gives us a database only, no instance features, though we do see a virtual master database.

    AWS, however, is changing its RDS offering to allow customers to customize their database software. They started with Oracle and then added SQL Server. For the SQL Server offering, they will let you not only change the instance config with things like CLR and install drivers in the host OS. They’ll continue to manage the overall service, and handle backups, DR, etc. You can focus on your database, but if you have special configuration needs, you can set them up.

    This is a nice evolution of the cloud by giving customers more control and meeting their needs, but not forcing them to handle everything. While a lot of technologists don’t think the OS adds a burden to a DBA, I’d disagree. I think the popularity of RDS and Azure SQL Managed Instance show that a lot of customers feel the way I do. Paying for a service to be managed is valuable, and it allows your staff to focus on more helpful tasks, like performance tuning, finding data quality issues, etc.

    Of course, your staff has to take advantage of that extra time. I see plenty of companies that don’t culturally change how they work with their systems, and that means that a lot of the benefits the cloud offers aren’t being seen by the company.

    Steve Jones

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

  • Daily Coping 21 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to leave positive messages for yourself to see regularly.

    I could use post-its, or something else, but something that has worked well for me with these coping tips throughout the pandemic is make a short meeting in my calendar. It’s a good way to have something pop up on my phone/laptop with a note.

    Here are a few repeating things I’m adding to my calendar (personal, not work), that aren’t taking up time, but just are reminders.

      • I am getting better and better every day.
      • I am having a positive and inspiring impact on the people I come into contact with.
      • I am grateful for everything I have in my life.
      • I am getting healthier every day.

    These are good messages for me to remember. I’m repeating these some random number of days for 30 periods to see what I think.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

  • Checking Database Compatability = #SQLNewBlogger

    Recently I needed to check the compatibility level of a database and SSMS didn’t work. This is what I did in T-SQL.https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/alter-database-transact-sql-compatibility-level?view=sql-server-ver16

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBRloggers. Here are some hints to get started.

    Querying the System

    I would have assumed I could use the DatabaseProperyEX() function to get this, but as I look through the list of properties, the compat level isn’t in there.

    When I look through the Docs for the compat level, I find that the page for database compatibility, the page mentions that querying a DMV is the way to check this. Seems strange, but I guess that’s what you do.

    Here’s the query:

    SELECT name, compatibility_level FROM sys.databases;

    Y0u can filter this by database name if you need it.

    I needed this as I was testing SQL Server 2022, but my SSMS version (18.10), didn’t recognize level 160. I assumed that was what should have been there, but I needed this query to verify.

    Now, hopefully I’ll remember that I just need to query the DMV.

    SQL New Blogger

    This was a quick post, really just over 5 minutes to write. It’s not super technical, but it does show that I can research something and solve a problem. And I have an alternative when my main tool doesn’t work.

    Good skills to showcase on a blog.