Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Daily Coping 20 May 2020

    I’ve 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: Hand-write a note to someone you love and send them a photo of it.

    A good idea. I haven’t written a letter in a long time to anyone, but I have been reaching out to people randomly to check on them. I decided to send a note to someone I know, but haven’t seen in a few months since the lockdown. I was looking forward to seeing this person in late May, and a few times in April, and didn’t get the opportunity.

    It’s a private note, so nothing here, but it was a good exercise.

  • SQL Source Control Link Errors on a New Machine

    I replaced my desktop recently and installed new software through Chocolatey.. One of the things I installed was git. I ran “choco install git” and then started using it. I cloned some repos and everything seemed fine.

    Then I cloned a repo of a SQL Source Control database, created a new database and tried to link the repo. I got an error on screen, which I forgot to screen capture. The error was 128, which wasn’t helpful.

    Fortunately, I did manage to copy the error to the clipboard. I pasted it in Notepad and saw this:

    2020-05-14 14_29_25-Are you a gatekeeper_ - Evernote

    Aha!

    I never configured git. Since I’m mostly working in my own repos, committing back to places that I will access from another machine, I haven’t thought about this. I know I’ve done this on the previous machine because SQL Source Control worked a month ago.

    What’s nice about git, and what I wish more software did, is that it tries to help you. In this case, it tells me that it can’t detect an email address and therefore can’t populate the commit metadata.

    What do I do?

    Run the commands and config my environment. I copied and edited the commands in a command prompt. And typo’d things one time.

    2020-05-14 14_34_24-cmd

    Once this was done, SQL Source Control worked.

    2020-05-14 14_35_06-Link to source control created

    SQL Source Control is a fantastic way to easily grab your database code and put it into a repo. Give it a try today if you never have tried it, but you’ve ever scripted out your object code.

  • Rolling Back One Bug for Another

    I was working with a customer recently that develops software for use by their clients. They work in a DevOps style flow, regularly completing work and sending that to their clients. In one case, they released a hot fix quickly to resolve a bug in their software. In this case, the developers received the report, triage’d the bug, and released the fix in less than a week. Their clients were happy with the response and speed at which the fix was delivered.

    Unfortunately, they also released another bug with the fix. The new bug was in an unrelated area of the software, created by separate changes to the code. Now they had a dilemma. The hot fix helped some customers, but the fix also broke some things that other customers cared about.

    What do you do here? If you were in charge of this software team, how do you decide what to do? You can pull the patch, but that means some clients might have broken software. You can leave the patch out there, but then you risk other customers being upset by a new bug.

    There isn’t a good solution here, and the more clients you have, the more likely that you have a large split of customers wanting version 1 versus those wanting version 2. You could rebuild the hotfix to remove the new bug, or you could make another patch that just addresses the second bug. The latter idea is what DevOps would suggest, with a roll forward to a third version of the software. The idea being you keep improving things and fixing bugs as you continue to develop new features. You will release some bugs, but you can fix them quickly.

    The downside of this is that if you release too many bugs, customers are loathe to upgrade. When this happens, you start to find yourself having to support many versions of your software. If you respond to customers with special patches that only fix bugs without adding features, you may end up with many more versions than you can track, which can be a real nightmare for developers to manage.

    How do you deal with patches causing bugs? I recently re-read a piece by Eric Sink in which he recounts releasing three maintenance versions to his customers in a week. Embarrassing for a version control vendor. It’s a good (but long) read, and one that might give you some perspective. We can’t squash every bug, and we can’t test for everything, but we can work to continue to improve, chasing the dream of bug free software. Or at least, regression bug free software.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 19 May 2020

    I’ve 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 take a positive action to help in your local community.

    This is an interesting one. What can you do in your community? You can help someone, or try to help a lot of people. It’s could be a lot of work, or a little thing. I chose a relatively little thing.

    When I saw Tim Radney and Paul Randal printing ear savers, I was intrigued. I’ve been tempted to buy a printer, but honestly, I don’t have time to mess with it, and don’t need another hobby. Between trying to take care of myself, helping on the ranch, cooking for the family, and then spending time with family, I’m a bit worn out. In fact, I’m as busy as I’ve ever been.

    There is a nurse that comes here for lessons, and I chatted with her one day about wearing a mask all the time. She’s used to it, but was interested in ear savers. I pinged Tim and he sent me 6, which was incredibly generous. I gave them to my nurse friend, and she really liked them. I decided to donate more.

    This time, I contacted Paul Randal, mostly because he reached out on Facebook, noting he is looking to continue donating more. I sent him a donation and put in a request for 100. I’m looking to give some to my nurse friend to spread around, but I’m also giving them our randomly at grocery stores, since those people are wearing masks constantly as well, and I can see they sometimes struggle.

    Not sure how much of a difference it will make, but it’s something.