Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Give Hugs

    Tomorrow I fly away again. Next week is our first 2019 SQL in the City Summit and I need a couple days to adjust to the time and prep, hence the trip starting tomorrow to get to the UK by Sunday. I’ll ensure that I say good bye to my wife and kids, and give them hugs before I go. I’ve done this dozens of times, and things always work out well. I’ll be back Wednesday and more hugs will ensue.
    I don’t usually worry about travel, or really any major issues affecting my family. They do happen, and we’ve had our share of ER visits because of something, but I don’t worry about the potential issues. I do, however, appreciate every day I get with family as I have seen tragedy befall others. I have had too many friends die in their 40s to not respect the wonderful life I have.
    I was reminded of this recently as I read Jim Donahue’s post about his father. It’s a look back at a trying year in his family. I won’t repeat things here, but it’s worth a read, and maybe send him a virtual hug and support. I can sympathize with both Jim and his father about the struggles of aging. I feel it often myself, and I know that life will continue to get tougher through the years, both for me, my family, and friends.
    I strive to enjoy the small things in life. The little parts that pass me by each day and I can appreciate. The joy of our dogs, the satisfaction of a success at work, even the wonderful pictures I see friends post online. As busy as life can be, it’s important to stop and enjoy many parts of it, smile at the world when you’re happy, look forward to better times when you’re not, and make time for family and friends.
    I’ll be away this weekend, but I’ll communicate with my family, enjoy some time with friends, and hope to smile and chat with some strangers in my travels. Life is amazing, but so much more so when you make an effort to appreciate how beautiful the world can be when you stop and smell the roses.
    Steve Jones

  • A Cool Image

    Maybe we can get Chris Spalton to do some of these for all our events? I really like it.

    Just a few days until SQL in the City Summit – London

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  • The Database Giveth and Taketh Away

    How many of you have ever run a database query with the wrong parameters and produced a report that you sent to fulfill a request? How quickly did you send another note to ask the report be discarded as a new one was coming? Probably a few of you. I know I have been in that situation during my career. If not a bad query, perhaps some of you incorrectly gathered data from other sources or made the mistake of killing the wrong session or updating the wrong data. Database errors occur, and often we have to decide how to pick of the pieces from a mistake.
    Recently there was a fairly high profile database query error with Southwest Airlines. Apparently a mass email went out to let customers know they had been awarded the valuable “Companion Pass” from the company. Many customers with a heavy travel schedule aim for this to allow a companion to travel for free with them. After receiving the email, many contacted the company as they didn’t expect the award. As someone that travels a lot, I know most of us do know exactly when we achieve some status and when we’re short of the level.
    Southwest admitted this was a “database error” and gave away a few coupons to customers, but this an embarrassment as well as an annoyance for customers. Most probably got the notice and didn’t feel bad when it was taken away, but a few people were probably close enough to try to change plans and book another person, only to find they weren’t getting a reward. I know, this is a first world problem, but still somewhat embarrassing for Southwest IT.
    I doubt this was a database error, unless a DBA updated some rows incorrectly. That’s certainly possible as an UPDATE with the wrong (or missing) WHERE clause is a common occurrence. My guess is that this was likely either a bug in some software that posted mileage completed or it was a poorly written query used to send out emails to customers. In any case, this likely wasn’t a big issue, but it is something that has occurred before. Sometimes with worse consequences.
    There will always be data entry errors, and certainly query mistakes in what we run. I don’t know of how we’ll eliminate more of these mistakes, other than to create more alerting that looks for anomalies and let’s someone know to double check that the values are correct. Actually, to me this is one area where AI is useful. It can detect things that look wrong, as it does with spell check or next word suggestions, and then let a user decide to keep or change the data. That might be something we would appreciate in SSMS. It could offer to correct my “selcet” to “select” while also letting me know that setting a price to $150 might be wrong when all other prices are $1500 or greater.
    Steve Jones

  • What’s the Mashup Engine?

    I was testing something the other day and ran sp_who2 on a test instance. I saw this in the program listing:

    2019-04-22 10_52_34-SQLQuery13.sql - Plato_SQL2017.sandbox (PLATO_Steve (57))_ - Microsoft SQL Serve

    I had never seen the Mashup Engine listed in a program list, and I certainly don’t have any program installed by that name.

    Or do I?

    I actually do. It’s embedded in Excel 2016, as part of Power Query. Fellow MVP, Reza Rad, has a good introduction to what this actually is. Apparently it’s the engine that makes it easy for data movement and transformation. Kind of an SSIS light, that’s a part of Power BI as well.

    If you see this on your instance, you’ll know that someone is connecting with another tool. As to which one it is, that might be harder to determine.