Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 3 May 2021

    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 go outside and spend a few minutes appreciating the weather.

    It’s spring here, though I know the Southern Hemisphere is preparing for winter. In either case, I suspect most of us don’t have extreme weather on some of these days, so getting outside should be possible. I had a 25C day and a –10C day in the same week not long ago, and I took advantage of the 25C day to get out, do a few things outside, and enjoy the day.

    I also walked around in the –10C day, bundled up, but enjoying the snow coming down. It’s a beautiful sight when the ground gets covered, especially without much wind. Wind makes things much worse.

    However, the weather is one of those things that helps me appreciate how big and amazing the world is, and taking a moment to enjoy it, no matter what is happening, is a part of life I’ve learned to appreciate.

    Update: Today I drop to 3 newsletters a week at SQLServerCentral, as a way of coping a bit. I’ll still do daily coping tips here.

  • No-code Software Engineering

    Low and no code applications have been around for a long time. In my career, I’ve seen Access, Delphi, PowerBuilder, and various 4GL packages used to build software for business users. Some worked well, some didn’t, and often many didn’t scale. Not all, but many.

    The problems in many of these tools, at least to me, was that many of the “developers” using them weren’t developers. They were business people trying to get something done quickly. Often these weren’t people thinking about performance or software engineering in the way that many developers think of those topics.

    Arguably, there are plenty of Java, C#, and other developers that don’t think things through either. However, many developers do want to solve problems and build interesting solutions. They don’t (often) want the drudgery of moving around UI elements or reinventing CRUD data operations.

    I saw an interesting piece this week noting that No-code doesn’t mean we avoid software engineering. The author praises some of the no-code platforms because they allow developers to do the fun part of building logic and solving problems without the tedious nature of writing an IF statement with the correct syntax. There are a number of reasons given, which sound good.

    I don’t know that I think that no-code is the way to go, but I do get the idea of using lots of proven and tested components, features, services, and more rather than reinventing them. I think that connections to database objects, RDBMS or NoSQL, ought to be easy, and lots of the mundane work of plumbing systems together could be centralized and reused. I certainly think that LINQ or simple query languages make sense, though likely having a way to more quickly and easily build/test/refactor and deploy database methods as well as make them more flexible (select col from @table, anyone?) might simplify database coding.

    I doubt we’ll get rid of C#, Java, or other fairly low level code anytime soon. I write about better programming languages recently, and I can see us moving to more succinct languages over time, but that will take decades. There is far too much invested in current codebases by developers and organizations to think about quick switches.

    The best way to build better applications is to have developers continue to learn, practice, test, and change their coding. They need to seek to be better, which I think most of them do, but management and leaders need to demand this and invest in staff (time and money) to help them improve. Then I suspect that whether you use lots of code or none, all your applications will work better.

    Steve Jones

  • Remote Work

    This is going to be the first time I’m working remotely today in over a year. I’m in Omaha, and while I’ve gone to a few cities, I haven’t actually worked remotely on a trip in over a year. I did broadcast from my condo in the mountains last summer, but that was because there was too much noise at home from some construction.

    However, this time I had a few meetings I can’t avoid and didn’t want to move. I have to coach later today, but I had time this morning, so I decided to not take holiday and work. I’ll have to do a little other work this weekend to make up time, but that’s fine.

    It’s interesting working in a hotel again, and carrying all the things I need to work. Laptop, cords, headphones, mouse. Actually, I forgot my mouse since I dropped the laptop in my coaches bag, so I’m dealing with a trackpad.

    It’s a pain, but I am looking forward to being able to get to an office again. It looks like that might be possible later this year, and my fingers are crossed.

  • Daily Coping 30 Apr 2021

    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 meet a friend outside for a chat, and hopefully a walk.

    A couple weeks ago I actually met someone in my local area that I hadn’t seen in over a year. We had been on a few video calls, but nothing in person. We met outside and went for a walk for an hour, chatting about life and the local area.

    It was a great way to spend part of my afternoon.

    Today, I’ll do more of that, but with my wife and potentially a few others. I’m in Omaha today, coaching kids this afternoon in a tournament. However, before that I’m hoping to take a short walk, with some kids and parents. There’s a nice bridge by the convention center, the Bob Kerrey bridge where you can stand on the Nebraska/Iowa line.

    At the very least, I’ll get the chance to walk around quite a bit from the hotel to the convention center and be outside with others.