Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

The Devil is in the Details

Some of us have run into perplexing technology problems, where we had to dig deep into an application to solve a problem. We might need to work with our own staff, vendor support, perhaps even coordinate people across multiple different organizations. This can be even more challenging when we don’t have access into the internals of all the code.

I ran across a neat story from Netflix, where an engineer had to dig into an issue with one of their partners. In this case, there were hardware and software components, and four different companies involved. The problem involved a playback issue, with deadlines and finger pointing over the issue.

Eventually the root cause discovered was a thread level issue in the Android OS, but the tale of how the engineer asks questions, looks at good, sets up tests, and more is a good examine of how to dive into an issue. While many of us wouldn’t get involved in threads on the data platform, we do need to understand the code and use metrics and data to narrow down the issues. It’s certainly possible we could discover a bug, but most of my experience is that I’ve found a problem in developer code or insufficient hardware resources.

The story is a nice read, and the final paragraph made me smile It had this quote: ” This story really exemplifies an aspect of my job I love:…” It’s always inspirational to find someone truly enjoying their job, and I find myself thinking about the things I love about my job, with problem solving being one of the best parts.

Steve Jones

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

January 5, 2021
Daily Coping 5 Jan 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 call a relative who is far away to say hello and have a chat.

This is an easy one this time of year. If you didn’t make time during the holidays, do so now. For me, I try to call my Mom every week or two and chat a bit. We also email and text, but it’s good to keep in touch.

My brother is busy, with three kids in high school now, and we don’t talk enough, but I reached out a few times across the last few weeks to chat and say hi. We even had a family video chat on Christmas day.

I also joined my wife in reaching out to her sisters, who we haven’t seen in a long time because of the pandemic.

I’m not a big talk-on-the-phone person, but it was good to reach out and touch a few others.

January 5, 2021
Dread or Desire

Today is the first business day of the new year. We’ve made it, and we’ve left 2020 behind, though I suspect some of the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic will remain for some time. Vaccinations are occurring, but there are a lot of people that need them, and until the world finds many people protected, I don’t know how back to normal things will get.

One thing I wonder about is the business office. Those of us working in technology may not have been too disrupted with the shift to remote work, but we also didn’t have a choice. Recently I saw an article, Dreading or dreaming of a return to the office in 2021, that piqued my interest. I wonder for many of you, do you desire or dread the return to an office?

I suspect the majority of people want some sort of hybrid situation, a few days in the office and a few days at home. Among the friends I’ve asked, office time ranges from 4-5 days a week in the office to 1-2 days a month. I don’t know many people that never want to go to the office, and relatively few that want to be there full time.

Personally I’ve been in the hybrid situation for years. I work most days at home, usually spend about 40 days on the road in various other locations and then get to the Redgate office for about 12-15 days a year. That works out well for me, and it lets me keep in touch with people, build bonds and trust, and enjoy life at home. I hope that I’ll be able to get back to the UK in 2021, but who knows how life will change.

I do think many businesses will look to use their offices in some way. As they do, I know that there will be another period of disruption and adjustment for employees. From having others around to the commute time to the finding the things I need (either digital or physical items), I would suspect that it will take weeks for everyone to feel comfortable again. I also wonder if most of us will be happy with the way our situation works out.

Steve Jones

January 4, 2021
Saving PASS Pro Videos

PASS will close down their websites on 15 Jan 2021. That’s just a couple weeks away, and if you’re someone that paid for a year of PASS Pro access, like me, you might want to save the videos so you can still go through the courses. I have no idea if someone will buy the assets and make them available, but I did contract for a year of access, so I believe I can save them for personal use.

NOTE: DO NOT PUBLISH OR DISTRIBUTE THESE TO ANYONE ELSE. That would be illegal and a copyright violation. It may also break other laws.

Here’s what I did to save off my own personal copies.

First, you need to log into the PASS site. In your dashboard, you should see a PASS Pro section. Click that.

This take you to the PASS Pro site. Here, you need to click “Learn” and then pick the item you want. I was more concerned with the current videos than older ones, so I chose the Educational Series.

From here, I pick one. For example, I was interested in Dr. Greg Low’s Cloud Transformation. For the series, you need to go through it quickly, but there are some assessment gates. For example, I couldn’t easily pick Item 4, because I hadn’t started item 3.

Design issues aside, click on an item and view the video.

This opens a popup with the video. Click Play, and once it starts, you can right click and “Save Video As”.

If you don’t click Play, you’ll be saving the HTML page, which isn’t what you want.

I went through the series, and it took just a few seconds to start a video and save it off. I could then close it and do the next one. Once I’d started a video, even for 3-4 s, I could get to the next one.

The caveats here are that there are assessments, and you cannot get past them until you go through them. Take some guesses, as you have a few chances, but note your answers. Maybe you can answer well enough to get past them. If not, here were my quick guesses on module 1 for cloud:

I passed:

On to module 2.

Hopefully this helps. If someone gets an automated way to grab these, I’ll update this post.

January 4, 2021