Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

T-SQL Tuesday Live 14 Apr

Last week was a bust, which was disappointing for me. I look forward to touching base with a few people and seeing friendly faces. Somehow the meeting had an error, which must have been an issue with me editing the recurring meeting to add a password, a Zoom change, or something else. My money’s on Steve making a mistake.

In any case, I’d like to do this again this week. I created a new meeting and tested it from a VM with none of my credentials. It appeared to work, so my fingers are crossed.

Details

Date: 14 Apr 2020

Time: 13:00MDT/15:00EDT/19:00UTC/20:00BST (1 hour)

Meeting: https://redgate.zoom.us/j/420898102

Password: Cast this as in int – 0x000E418E (you should get a number starting with 9 and ending with 6.

Issues: DM me on Twitter @way0utwest

April 13, 2020
Cleaning Up Registered Servers

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

I was working with Get-DbaRegServer from dbatools and got some errors. When I dug through the errors, I noticed some interesting items listed in my server list. This is what I saw:

While all the servernames are valid, the names are a little silly. I initially thought some of these were the reason for my errors with the cmdlet, but they weren’t. Still, I want to remove a few of these.

I can likely find these in the registry or elsewhere, but there’s an way way to see this: SSMS. Under the View menu, there is a Registered Servers item.

Clicking this will get me a new pane, where the Object Explorer lives.

If I expand this, I see a few categories, including my Azure Data Studio (ADS) connections and groups. It’s a nice way to see what’s registered.

For the Local Server Groups for SSMS, I can highlight an instance and click “delete” to remove it. You get a confirmation dialog, but it’s removed. I can this in PoSh. Instance001 and 002 are gone.

I can’t, however, remove the ADS ones. I get this with a right click (nothing with Delete).

The integrations between SSMS and ADS do not extend to altering the connections.

Simple stuff, but handy to have around, especially over time as you add lots of registrations over time.

SQLNewBlogger

This took about 3-4 minutes to figure out as a part of other things I was doing, but I made a few notes and then spent 10 minutes writing this up and taking screenshots.

This is a good place to start blogging if you want to get going.

April 13, 2020
1000 SQL Saturdays

One thousand is just a number, but it’s also more than a number in this instance. One thousand is a milestone that I couldn’t have imagined a decade ago when thinking of SQL Saturdays. PASS has announced that SQL Saturday #1000 will be on October 24, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. Congrats to the team there, they’ve were one of the first to hold an event, have had many over the years, and I hope I have the opportunity to attend.

I wrote a few thoughts for the PASS blog, as did my fellow SQLServerCentral founders, Andy Warren and Brian Knight. The three of us have spent a large portion of our careers trying to educate and help others become better data professionals, and we’re all proud of the way all the organizers have worked to plan and run SQL Saturday events. We’ve amazed that so many community members have stepped forward to share their knowledge and speak at the more than 100 SQL Saturdays that occur each year.

Reza Rad produced a PowerBI report that shows we had 4 people speak at a 100 or more events. Kevin Boles (134), Kevin Feasel (115), Janis Griffin (107), and Rob Volk (100), all of whom deserve a virtual round of applause for all the time and resources they’ve donated to the community. Many others are on the list with dozens of events and hundreds more have spoken at a few events. If you scroll down the speaker section of the report, it’s an amazing and impressive number of people that have spoken at more than one event. An amazing way to support this community.

We’re data people, and numbers often have an impact on us. While we’ve had 20 PASS Summits, we’re about to have 1000 SQL Saturdays in a fraction of the time it took for those 20. I hope that more of you get the chance to experience one in your area sometime in the next decade. I also hope more of you decide to step forward and help organize or speak at one of the next thousand.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

April 13, 2020
Do You Have a Mentor?

It’s partway through the year 2020 and I’m wonder if many of you are continuing with your resolutions at this point? I know that the yoga classes at my gym were already thinning before the COVID-19 crisis as people that started out coming regularly at the beginning of the new year slowly started coming less often or dropping out. I see that every year as resolutions start to fade in importance.

Goals are good drivers, but also stern taskmasters, especially for those of us that are more type-A and driven. I sometimes avoid putting down goals because I’ve struggled to accept my inability to attain them. I’m working to accept the fact I miss some goals, but it’s a hard balance to strive. The goal has to mean something to work towards it, and it should be hard enough to stretch me, but I can’t be upset for not making it. I also can’t just accept not trying. I am never quite sure how to best tackle this.

Earlier this year I was reading the sqlSkills newsletter and saw an editorial from Paul Randal. In it he talked about improving yourself, the different things you might try, and also the need to post-mortem your previous efforts. One other thing he mentioned was the value of having a mentor.

I wonder how many of you have a mentor that you can call on. I know I’ve tried to help in the past with The Mentoring Experiment, Paul does some mentoring, and there other efforts out there. I think it’s valuable to get some mentoring at different times in your life, and from different people.

I have a couple people that I know I can ask things of with regards to my career and personal growth. I’ve leaned on them at times, asking for advice or feedback on different ways to change my life. My wife is one, but there are a few others that have had quite a bit of influence on how I move forward.

If you don’t have a mentor, I’d advise you to seek one out. Or maybe more than one. Ask someone you like, you trust, that isn’t directly supervising you (spouses excepted here), and that you think can give you honest and supportive feedback on your career, life, or something else. It’s a valuable tool to help you cope with the world and assist you in achieving your goals.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

April 10, 2020