Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 13 Jul 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral 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.

    Today’s tip is to get the basics right, eat well, exercise, go to bed on time.

    I got out of my routine with a lot of travel. Then with getting ready for volleyball tryouts and catching up on ranch maintenance. I sometimes forgot to follow a good routine.

    This is my second week at home and I’m getting better here. I am trying to get to bed around 1030, up at 7, get a small breakfast and coffee and get to work. I’m having my protein smoothie snacks, eating a reasonable lunch and dinner and finding time to get to the gym or go for a walk.

    Tackling the basics while I can.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #152–It Depends

    tsqltuesdayA great invitation this month from Deborah Melkin. I thought this was very apt, as I use this phrase often. Many of us do.

    This was a tougher post to write because, well, too many choices. However, I sat down to try and give an example of where this comes into play for me.

    Everyone should write a post, or a few posts, on this topic. Your decision making and reasoning are important things to share with others.

    The Devil is in the Details

    I deal with quite a few proof of concepts and questions about altering database development practices. One of the questions I’m often asked is how does a particular group get started with automating their database deployments.

    It depends.

    That’s really the answer, and I have to start to ask them questions about their pains. What is the driver for change? What things don’t work well right now? The answers to what doesn’t work well will drive how we move forward.

    Is it failed deployments? If so, then is this bad code? Let’s test more. If it’s people not always running all the scripts, or the right scripts, then we need a test environment where we actually run scripts to see if they work.

    Do you lose track of what changes developers have made? Let’s make sure we have version control as a funnel to capture all changes, and from there we can look at manual or automated deployments of what’s changed.

    Are you struggling to get code that meets the requirements? Again, testing can help, but maybe you need to structure better communications between developers and business customers, and make small changes that your customers can actually see and test.

    If you can’t keep up with requests from developers, then maybe this isn’t about database development and this is more of a staffing issue.

    The devil is in the details, and to make a successful leap to a smooth DevOps process for database development, we want to adapt to your environment. Let’s address the pain, and minimize the changes we need to make.

    There isn’t a once size fits all. This is a set of tools and principles we want to use, but in a way that works best for your situation.

  • Daily Coping 12 Jul 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral 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.

    Today’s tip is to find something to look forward to today.

    It’s Tuesday, which isn’t that different from any other day of the week for me now. The winter is different as I’ll be coaching Tuesday nights, but for now, this is just a day.

    However, I like to go to yoga Tuesday mornings, and go through a class with an instructor that I enjoy. Waking up this morning, that’s what I am looking forward to doing after a little email and before a busy work day.

  • Rebooting for a Reason

    I’ve worked with computers for a long time. I’ve helped support various systems and applications, both desktop and servers. One of the most common tricks that has served me well is to press to oh-en-oh-eff-eff switch twice.

    In other words, reboot.

    This is advice that many tech support people use. It’s what is often recommended for everything from personal computers to mobile devices to watches to really any sort of microchip device. It’s been recommended for my Tesla and for a few appliances as well.

    It’s also incredibly frustrating advice to hear that when we expect a device to run constantly, like a watch. Why should I reboot it? Isn’t your code bad? Isn’t it the manufacturer’s fault? Isn’t this a cop-out to get me off the phone/chat/etc. and close out a call?

    This is likely bad code, and it might be a way to get you off the phone, but there is some rationale behind this troubleshooting step. I ran across this article on the unreasonable effectiveness of turning computers off and on again. It provides some reasoning why rebooting makes sense and why it can help. The short answer is this action returns the code and device to a known state. Often when things are broken, we’re in an unknown state.

    There’s also an interesting parable about writing a shell that is very strict with its evaluation of input and crashing when things aren’t right. The author wrote another shell that is loose in its evaluation of input. Read the piece to see which shell actually made more sense to the programmer.

    I found this interesting and fun to read, and it made me feel better about needing to reboot systems. Less excited about the need to reboot a car or a plane (I’ve been on a 787 when it rebooted), but since I’ve seen the former continue to work, I’m less anxious. Take a look today and let me know if this article makes you feel a little more comfortable with giving out the “reboot” solution to others.

    Steve Jones

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