Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • T-SQL Tuesday #154–Thinking about SQL Server 2022

    This month is an interesting T-SQL Tuesday party, as Glenn Berry hosts and asks us to think about the upcoming new release of SQL Server. Sometime later this year, I expect SQL Server 2022 to be released and Glenn is asking us to talk about our experiences.

    If you haven’t looked at this new version, which is in RC0, you might take a few minutes to play with it and see if the language (or other) changes might be useful in your organization.

    If you want to host a T-SQL Tuesday yourself, ping me on Twitter.

    My Work with SQL Server 2022

    I first saw some demos of SQL Server 2022 in 2021, at various conferences. Microsoft showed off some new capabilities, some of which were very interesting. I was lucky as an MVP to get some access to private, pre-CTP builds and experiment a bit with new features.

    This spring Microsoft publicly released CTP 2.0, then 2.1, and now RC0. I’ve upgraded to 2.1 on my desktop, and was waiting the docker container to update before moving to RC0. just after Glenn’s invitation, I saw the container was up to date, so I pulled a new one.

    I’ve run some of my old demos on the platform, just to check that they work. That’s really work to see if there are any regression bugs. I have rarely found this to be the case, but it has been interesting to do this with 2017, with the linux version, and more. I’ve only been lightly interested in this release, as a few of the changes aren’t applicable for the work I do with Redgate. Others might be interesting to the community, and I need to spend more time on them.

    Really, I got mostly interested in the T-SQL language changes. I had been using Window functions and the OVER() clause quite a bit and find writing them cumbersome, but I was excited to see the SELECT..WINDOW clause. I’d also liked the STRING_SPLIT enhancements with an ordinal.

    There was an article sent to SQL Server Central that got me to look at more of the features, and I think that while most of these aren’t changes I’ve been needing, they do improve and round out the language. I look forward to experimenting with them a bit.

    I’ve reproduced a few performance demos, looking at the query optimization features, and those seem good, but for me and many other developers, these will just be things that should work. Not something to get too excited about. Unless you’re on call, then you might really want to upgrade and hope these fix some of your problems without creating other ones. Maybe the thing I’m most excited about is the granular UNMASK permission, which has been overdue for a couple of versions.

    I don’t quite know what to think of this new version. While there are more changes than I expected, it feels like a lot of small changes and not much of a fundamental shift in the product. I suppose it’s a major release, but kind of like SQL Server 2014, this feels more evolutionary than revolutionary.

  • Daily Coping 13 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to focus on the basics today, eat healthy food, drink water, get exercise.

    I’m trying to make all of these a lifestyle change. In January, I worked on all of these, trying to lose weight. Which I’ve written about before. I was down about 25 lbs this year, then a bunch of travel, hormone therapy, and vacation had me up around 10lbs, but I’ve gotten back down to my 22-23lbs down from Jan 1. Not quite the goal, but close.

    I wrote this a few days ago, but my routine for the day was to do the following:

    • up early for work, make some black coffee, eggs, spinach, and turkey bacon
    • take a large water bottle to my desk and drink it by lunch
    • work and have a mid-morning protein smoothie
    • more water and a break at 1130 to go to the gym.
    • lunch, ground turkey in a salad with avocado
    • more water and an afternoon smoothie around 400p
    • break from work and cook dinner around 6-630p. Tonight I did chicken fajitas over cauliflower rice for me.

    That’s my routine most of the time I am at home. Some variation on recipes, but the pattern is pretty close. The gym is sometimes earlier or later, but for the most part, this has worked well for me. Made coping with the transition out of the pandemic better.

    Wish I’d started this earlier in 2020 or 2021.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

  • Daily Coping 12 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to forgive yourself when things go wrong.

    A theme of being better to myself, starting with last Thur and Fri.

    What’s gone wrong for me? I was working on some ranch chores, setting up a new gate opener. Some hard, physical digging, but also some planning and preparation. I also had to buy a few things, and in the process of the work, I mis-aligned one set of brackets and had to replace them. I had trouble with the digging and had to change tactics and re-do some work. I also chopped an underground wire, which I had to replace.

    All of this made the process take longer, and also meant we manually opened and closed the gate for awhile. Getting out of a car in bad weather to do so is really annoying. I was annoyed with myself for inconveniencing myself and others, and making simple mistakes.

    However, I’ve learned that this isn’t my full time job. I will make mistakes. I need to be ready to deal with them without getting upset or beating myself up. I tried to forgive myself and overall that helped, but not completely.

    Something I need to work on more.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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. All my coping tips are under this tag.

  • The Redgate 100

    The Redgate 100 is a list of 100 people that are influential in the database world in a number of categories.I made the list in a few places, which is pretty cool.

    Redgate 100 Social individual influencers (35)

    Disclosure: I do work for Redgate as an advocate, and I helped with some discussion of the list and nominations. I didn’t pick the list, vote, or make decisions.

    This is a marketing effort, as are many of the “best of” awards and notices you see out there. In many case, those are often paid placement, as I’ve been offered the chance to be on those lists if I paid a fee. I always decline, or at least to date I have.

    In this case, Redgate are in the business of database software and tools. We sell them, but we also support a lot of community efforts as well as are constantly researching to better understand what people need and want. Sometimes we build products in those areas, sometimes we just publish research results.

    In any case, I thought this was a pretty neat idea and a great list. You can read about the selection process, which doesn’t tell a lot, other than they took some nominations, calculated some score based on what people do in the community.

    While Kathi, Grant, and I work for Redgate and are on the list, part of the reason why we work for Redgate is that we do a lot in and for the community. I could say the same for Kendra who used to work for us, and if we’d have done this list before we were hired, I think we’d have been on it anyway.

    This doesn’t imply that everyone who is an influential database professional is on the list. With 100 slots, there were decisions and choices, and there are some experts and incredibly valuable community people who didn’t make the list.

    Thanks to all of the people who blog, speak, volunteer, and otherwise help drive the database professional industry forward.

    It’s an honor, and I hope Redgate continues to do this in the future.