Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Visiting the New Jersey Office

    I’m in the Redgate Software New Jersey office today (actually yesterday as well) for the first time. This is a new location for us, and Grant, Ryan, and myself are trying to visit the offices regularly to meet with other employees, do some training, and help them become more successful in their jobs. Regularly seems to be 1-2x a year in each office, but that’s better than zero.

    We also do some company wide training, and we’re doing this month’s from New Jersey, which is kind of cool. While lots of attendees are virtual, it’s always nice to have a few people in the room.

    I’m also going to spend a few hours at a PostgreSQL conf in New York, which isn’t something I’ve done. Redgate is doing more cross-db platform work, so this is a new area for me.

    I’m also taking advantage of the opportunity to take Friday off and go see my daughter in upstate New York. I’ll be back next Wed Winking smile

  • Speaking at SQL Saturday Boston 2023

    I’m heading to Boston next week for SQL Saturday Boston 2023. I went to this event last year and I’m glad to be going again. It’s a great event, well run, and I have a lot of friends in the area.

    I was honored to be selected, and I’ll be delivering my Architecting Zero Downtime Deployments, so if you’re in the area, register and come see me and others.

  • SQL Prompt Quick Access to Helper Code

    We’ve been doing some events as part of the Redgate Roadshow, and at one of the events, we had a customer ask about something that we demo’d. This post looks at quick access to snippets.

    This is part of a series on SQL Prompt that I’ve written. If you’ve never tried SQL Prompt, it’s amazing. Download an eval today.

    The Command Palette from the Query Editor

    When typing a query in SSMS, I can hit the CTRL button and get the palette on the side. Here’s a basic query:

    2023-09-04 04_39_35-SQLQuery3.sql - ..dlm_1_dev (WAY0UTWESTHP_way0u (89))_ - Microsoft SQL Server Ma_thumb[1]

    I might want to add the begin and end around my code in the proc. If I highlight some code and hit CTLR, I see this:

    2023-09-04 04_40_25-SQLQuery3.sql - ..dlm_1_dev (WAY0UTWESTHP_way0u (89))_ - Microsoft SQL Server Ma_thumb[1]

    On the left, I have opened the palette where I can down arrow to pick something relevant or search for a command that helps me. As you can see, the first one is the very common “add begin end” to the code. If I pick this, it will surround my code with begin end, as seen here:

    2023-09-04 04_43_07-SQLQuery3.sql - ..dlm_1_dev (WAY0UTWESTHP_way0u (89))_ - Microsoft SQL Server Ma_thumb[1]

    I can also get other helper code, like the CTE outline, as you can see below:

    2023-09-25 15_16_58-SQLQuery14.sql - ARISTOTLE.sandbox (ARISTOTLE_Steve (75))_ - Microsoft SQL Serve

    SQL Prompt is amazing, as this video shows. Download an eval today.

  • A New Word: Ghough

    ghough – n. a hollow place in your psyche that can never be filled; a bottomless hunger for more food, more praise, more attention, more affection, more job, more sex, more money, more hours of sunshine, more years of your life; a state of panic that everything good will be taken from you too early, which makes you want to swallow the world before it ends up swallowing you.

    I think most people have some sort of ghough, longing for more. It’s a human, and a very America, thing. There’s never enough. You wish you had something more.

    As I age, I have less of this, though I do feel the passage of time. No panic about passing away yet, but I can imagine I will at some point. It’s why I find myself more willing to have adventures in life, even at a slightly uncomfortable financial cost. I never know how long I’ll be here.

    Of the list above, I think money sometimes intrudes. I think about travel with my wife, or things that have to be fixed on the ranch, and I think “more money” would solve things. However, I know that’s not really the case, and I try to calm my psyche down, reminding it that I need to manage and live within constraints, enjoying and appreciating what I have.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows