Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

Daily Coping 17 Sep 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 let go of being busy. Allow yourself to take some breaks today.

I’m on holiday today, a welcome break as I try to comply with my 60% taken by the end of this month. As a result, I’m not trying to be busy. I asked my wife if we could take a couple days and just relax. No horses, no chores, no plans.

We’ll pack a few clothes, which is really the biggest stress item today. Then we’ll put the dogs in the car and drive to the mountains to stay for a few days.

A welcome break.

September 17, 2020
Git Tricks–Getting a New Remote Branch–#SQLNewBlogger
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

This is probably more for me than anyone, but as I’ve been working in more team demos, I find I need to up my git skills. In this case, a fellow team member created a new branch, and I needed to get it on my local machine.

I know many git clients will make this easy, but I always like to see what happens at the CLI. This keeps my skills fresh, and I can see all the git output, some of which might be hidden in a client.

In this case, the team member had created a branch on Github. I’ll demo this by creating my own branch as feature/demotest. I see the branch online.

However, I don’t see it locally.

If I know the name, I get fetch this, or pull it, from the remote. In this case, either of these code items will work.
```
git pull origin feature/demotest
```
or
```
git fetch origin feature/demotest
```
Once I do this, I can checkout the branch, which will match the remote with this code:
```
git checkout feature/demotest
```
Now it’s a branch that is tracking the remote with my local copy.

SQLNewBlogger

This was a quick Google search to figure out how to do this, but since I’ve had to search a couple times in the last month, I decided to write this and cement the knowledge in my head. At least, I hope it does.

This took about 5 minutes to write and demo. A quick thing, but a good way to show some learning and knowledge on your blog.
September 16, 2020
Aiming for Better Data Governance

At Redgate, we have customers all over the world. I’m lucky that I get to work with, and sometimes meet, people dealing with all sorts of situations, environments, and even regional challenges. As a dev and DBA, I’ve never worried about anything other than varchar(). Now I have customers that have lots of languages and other issues that need to be accounted for in their designs.

One of the areas that has become more important in the last few years is Data Privacy and Protection. Between the GDPR and other legislation, and growing concern from customers, many organizations are starting to pay more attention to this area. Less so in the US, where we seem to be behind most of the rest of the world.

I saw a piece recently on the reasons why we might need more data governance in companies. Actually, the piece talks about needing more money for the Chief Data Officer’s budget, though I’m not sure most organizations have anyone in that role. A few do, and certainly I’ve seen some growth in companies worried about this, but it’s still a minority.

While regulations might change, and there could be a quick need to improve our processes in this area, I think the bigger issue is competition. More consumers are fickle, easily changing services whenever they are unhappy. More companies are building competitive services, and if you cannot satisfy your customers, they’ll go elsewhere. Increasingly consumers are considering data security and data privacy to be more important than in the past.

I’d urge you to think about these issues inside your organization, and try to be better in new projects. Ensure you could comply with the CCPA or the GDPR if necessary. That need could come quicker than you expect.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

September 16, 2020
Daily Coping 16 Sep 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 aim to be good enough, rather than perfect

This has often been how I’ve tackled my job. I do the best job I can, but I also need to get things done more so than constantly re-evaluating and refactoring something. My view has been that we can find time if this is important.

I know that can be a bad technique with regards to performance in code. Lots of issues in software can be traced to poor decisions that no one every makes a priority to fix. I’ve got more than a few of these in my past, and currently at SQLServerCentral.

However, what I want to do is to the best job I can with the information and knowledge I have. That also means that I need to adjust my habits and patterns as I learn more. It’s easy to fall back on old habits in a hurry, rather than actually using knowledge of how to do something better.

I am trying to do better there, but also trying to get things done which work, without berating myself for not making things perfect. Recently I had to put down baseboard trim (skirt boards) and some weren’t perfect with walls that had small concave and convex sections, and floors that weren’t level. I didn’t get perfection, and that was OK.

Plus, caulk and paint will fix some minor issues.

September 16, 2020