Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

Goal Progress Report for March 2020

I made goals at the end of February, when I returned from sabbatical. Since then, the world has been turned upside down with a pandemic, and I’ve been struggling to cope.

However, here is the progress report.

Reading

As I write this, I’ve had a reminder from Outlook on my screen for two days. The reminder is to work on goals, but I’ve managed to not do this. Mostly because I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time to actually combine career work with work work.

In addition, at the end of the day, I’m worn out. I’m not looking to tackle another project. Even on weekends, I’ve been taking care of some other things and haven’t wanted to work on something. I haven’t had the mental focus.

That being said, early in March, I did get through 4 chapters in Pro Power BI Desktop, actually following along and building my own reports.

No other progress. I’m falling behind here.

Projects

One of the things I wanted to do was build a Power BI report. I actually started, though not from a database. That’s easy to correct later, but for now, I just used Excel. I got a partial report completed, but I was struggling with display v aggregates. As a result, I stopped for now, hoping to do more Power BI work.

Falling behind here, but the whole world is. I’m giving myself a break and hoping to get more momentum in April.

March 31, 2020
When Will Privacy Matter?

More and more people are becoming concerned about data privacy. There’s more advocacy, and this shows in more laws being passed around the world. Those are good steps forward, but those rules and restrictions are just the lowest bar of what I’d hope for. Regulation will always lag behind best practices and technology, and I’d hope that organizations look to do better.

I expect more competition to crop up again in the future as the world grows, and I wonder if some of these businesses will start to take privacy seriously. Not because of regulation, but because it might provide some competitive advantage. I ran across a short piece that has a few ideas on how you might be more competitive in your niche if you take privacy seriously. These are ways that taking privacy seriously might make you more competitive.

I think the big one for me is transparency. Showing customers that you are open and up front with data will pay off. Most of us know that our data is being collected. We know it’s being used for marketing. Many of us don’t love the idea, but we also do get used to the value we do get from services. A few people might balk, but once they realize everyone is collecting and using data, they’ll appreciate those that are more transparent.

Certifications are nice, and having employees work on security can help, but for privacy, we need to help customers understand how and why we use data. We need to respect their data, and learn to remove it when a business relationship goes away. It can be tough for many data pros and business people to get rid of data, but it’s prudent, it reduces the strain on live systems, and it helps build trust with customers. Plus, if you are treating customers well and they appreciate it, they’ll come back over and over, which usually means you won’t ever need to trim much of their data.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

March 31, 2020
Daily Coping 31 Mar 2010

I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today was interesting: Take give minutes to sit and breathe. Repeat often.

It’s funny, I regularly practice yoga, and this is something we do in class. I’ve used my watch to track my exercise, and I can see when my heart rates rises, so I know we often sit for about 5 minutes quietly, or with a quote/thought from the teacher, before we get moving.

I tried this a couple times last week. I set a timer on my phone for 5 minutes, stood up, closed my eyes, and tried to just be. No music, nothing to see, just see if my mind can quiet. Sometimes it didn’t and thoughts continue to swirl through my head, sometimes I relaxed, as I might do when walking or driving and my thoughts quietly flow.

It’s surprisingly hard to just stop for 5 minutes, and I don’t know if I can do it more than once a day. So far, I haven’t, but I will be thinking about adding this to part of my routine.

March 31, 2020
Charting in Azure Data Studio

The March 2020 release of Azure Data Studio (ADS) includes a charting feature for SQL queries. This is a quick look at the feature, which I think will have some value for users.

SQL Queries

This has been available with SQL queries, but now it’s in notebooks as well. If I run a basic query in ADS, I see something like this:

I have a query and some results. These are numerical results that are easily graphed. However, in the results area, to the right, there are a few icons. I’ve added and arrow and oval in the image below to help you see them.

We have lots of options here for exporting results or visuals., The 5th one down is a chart icon. If I click that, I see this:

By default, a bar chart, but as you see on the right, there are lots of options. I’ll write more as I play with them a bit and get another ADS article at SQLServerCentral.

Notebooks

The charting experience comes to notebooks in a similar way. I can create a notebook and add a SQL cell. In there I have code and run it.

You can see the same icons here above the results. If I click the far right one (the chart), it changes to a chart.

If I save the notebook like this and reopen it, the chart is gone. The results are still there, as these are saved with the notebook, but the visual display is gone. I think this is fine, because the chart icon is there, but I wish the state was saved as I’d saved it.

One note, once the chart appears, notice the right icon is now a table icon. Clicking it returns to the original view.

This is a quick look at charting in ADS. I’ll do something more extensive at SSC soon.

March 30, 2020