Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Goal Progress–November 2020

    This is my report, which continues on from the Oct report. It’s getting near the end of the year, and I wanted to track things a little tighter, and maybe inspire myself to push.

    Rating so far: C-

    Reading Goals

    Here were my goals for the year.

    • 3 technical books
    • 2 non-technical books – done

    Books I’ve tackled:

    I’ve made progress here. I have completed my two non-technical books, and actually exceeded this. My focus moved a bit into the more business side of things, and so I’m on pace to complete 4 of these books.

    The tech books haven’t been as successful, as with my project work, I’ve ended up not being as focused as I’d like on my career, and more focused on tactical things that I need to work on for my job. I think I’ve learned some things, but not what I wanted.

    My push for December is to finish Team of Teams, get through Power BI Desktop, and then try to tackle one new tech book from either the list of them I have, or one I bought last winter and didn’t read.

    Project Goals

    Here were my project goals, working with software

    • A Power BI report that updates from a database
    • A mobile app reading data from somewhere
    • A website that showcases changes and data from a database.

    Ugh. I’m feeling bad here. I had planned on doing more PowerBI work after the PASS Summit, thinking I’d get some things out of the pre-con. I did, but not practical things, so I need to put time into building up a PowerBI report that I can use.

    I’ve waffled between one for the team I coach, which has little data, but would be helpful to the athletes, and a personal one. I’ve downloaded some data about my life, but I haven’t organized it into a database. I keep getting started with exercise data, Spotify data, travel data, etc., but not finishing.

    I’ve also avoided working on a website, and actually having to maintain it in some way. Not a good excuse. I think the mobile app is dead for this year. I don’t really have enough time to dig in here, at least, that’s my thought.

    The website, however, should be easier. I wanted to use an example from a book, so I should make some time each week, as a personal project, and actually build this out. That’s likely doable by Dec 21.

  • Daily Coping 4 Dec 2020

    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 enjoy new music today. Play, sing, dance, or listen.

    I enjoy lots of types of music, and I often look to grab something new from Spotify while I’m working, letting a particular album play through, or even going through the works of an artist, familiar or brand new.

    Recently I was re-watching The Chappelle Show online, and in the 2nd or 3rd episode of the show, he has Mos Def on as a guest. I do enjoy rap, and I realized that I had never really heard much from Mos. The next day I pulled up his catalog and let us play through while working.

    I love a smooth, continuous rap artist that brings a melody and a rhythm to the words. Mos Def does this, and I enjoyed hearing him entertain me for a few hours. If you like rap, and haven’t gone through his stuff, give him a listen.

  • Catching Minor Issues

    This seems like something out of a thriller that Hollywood made for a spy. Someone switches two cables in a rocket and then it crashes. However, it’s what happened recently, not from a spy, but an employee somewhere connected two cables to the wrong connectors, resulting in reverse commands being sent to the rocket.

    That sounds crazy. Who would plug cables in backwards, and how is this not caught? Surely we wouldn’t run into this in software would we? With all the unit testing? Well, we did once have an English->metric error.

    Actually, I’ve seen this in software. I’ve seen someone pass parameters in backwards to a method or stored procedure. I think I’ve done this before as well. While I hate typing out named parameters, I do appreciate SQL Prompt for ensuring I connect the right value to the right parameter by spelling them out.

    Do you type out parameter names, as in EXEC myProc @Param1 = @value1, @param2 = @value2? It’s a good habit to get into to prevent simple mistakes. In fact, this is where some simple, quick tests can catch errors. Not only will this catch some weird changes, this can ensure that your procedures are backwards compatible. That’s often a concern in refactoring, where someone might not think a parameter is being used, or wants to replace it and then breaks other code.

    Testing is something that has improved in software dramatically over the years, though not as much in databases as I’d like. I urge you to use more procedures, but also add more tests and ensure that you don’t make simple errors that should be caught.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 3 Dec 2020

    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.

    Today’s tip is to join a friend doing their hobby and find out why they love it.

    Joining someone else isn’t really a good idea or very possible during this time. Colorado is slightly locked down, so it’s not necessarily legal, and likely not a good idea to join someone else.

    However, my daughter picked up some supplies and started knitting recently. I decided to sit with her a bit and see how the new hobby is progressing. It’s something I’ve been lightly interested in, and it looks somewhat zen to sit and allow your hands to move along, building something while you sit quietly. I remember reading about Rosey Grier picking up the hobby years ago.

    I have done some minor paracord crafts, usually making some bag pulls for the kids I coach. This was similar, and while I don’t need another hobby now, I enjoyed watching her work.