Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Daily Coping 4 Jan 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral 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.

    Today’s tip is to set a career goal to focus on this year.

    I have to admit this one is hard. I’m in my 50s, near the end of my career. I honestly hope this is the last job that I have where I need to work. I hope I find things to keep my busy in retirement, which might be paid jobs, but I’m hoping this is my last full time, need a paycheck job.

    I do usually set some goals to help me keep working on myself, but seeing this as a “career goal” makes me think I ought to be more ambitious.

    I don’t worry or aim for too many technical skills, but I would like to get better at helping my employer do well. As a result, I’m going to set a goal this year to brush up on Oracle and learn about PostgreSQL. In doing this, I want some way to measure this, so here it is:

    • Set up a git repo with folders to SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.
    • Create 3 pipelines that will CI changes for each platform.
    • Have a release pipeline to each platform, likely hitting a container somewhere for each platform.
    • Ensure that I can demo this and that I know enough Pl/SQL and pgsql that when I write T-SQL, I can duplicate it in the other languages.

    Not really a high bar, but something to work on this year.

  • Getting Started with KQL

    I saw an episode of Data Exposed with my good friend, Hamish Watson. He talked about KQL (Kusto Query Language) being the next query language you need to learn. I was skeptical of the title, but I decided to give this a try.

    In the episode, Hamish points out a cheat sheet from Microsoft, which I thought was a good resource. However, while watching the video, I browsed over to the demo site Microsoft has at https://aka.ms/lademo. You need an Azure account to log in, but this is a demo site where you can query some Log Analytics data. The new query window below is what appears when you go here:

    2021-12-22 14_37_43-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    Hamish shows some sample items, and I noted that to query a table, you just include the name. The query window in Azure has intellisense, and I used Hamish’ example to look at perf data.

    2021-12-22 14_38_36-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    The structure of queries is that you choose a table, then you can add a pipe (|) and add a where clause or other structures. I glanced at the cheat sheet, but really I played around a bit.

    For example, I saw in the demo there was a “take” option, so I tried this:

    Perf
    
| take 6

    This gave me six results, so it’s like a TOP clause in T-SQL.

    2021-12-22 14_42_19-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    Next, I tried a WHERE. This is also structured as a line after a pipe. I picked a value I saw and then ran the query.

    2021-12-22 14_45_03-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    I noticed there was a summarize option, so I tried entering this. What I liked was that I had some intellisense options to help me with the various aggregates.

    2021-12-22 14_46_15-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    I ran this query, and got an average of the free space across all disks.

    2021-12-22 14_47_04-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    That isn’t a number that really means anything. I tried GROUP BY in a few ways, but eventually had to look at the cheat sheet to see just “by” is needed. I ended up with this query to get space by disk.

    2021-12-22 14_48_54-Logs - Microsoft Azure

    In some ways, I found KQL to be easier to work with than SQL. It’s cleaner, and logically follows what I’d do when writing a query. I build this in a way similar to how the query is executed, which is unlike how SQL works.

    I don’t know if KQL is going to be that important to me, but I will play around with it a bit more.

  • Daily Coping 3 Jan 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral 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.

    Today’s tip is to make a resolution that you can keep this month.

    Update: I wrote this before I went on holiday the last week of the year. However, I managed to tear a calf muscle and haven’t been able to do much. I’m going to need to delay this by a week and aim for Jan 10-Feb 10.

    I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. I think often we pick things are too hard to sustain across a year. I typically set some goals, but don’t look to make major changes.

    However, focus is good, especially in this time of not really being in a familiar world. Many things are semi-normal for me, but plenty of things are not.

    I’m going to resolve to do two things. First, weekly calls back home to my Mom. I don’t do that enough.

    Second, I’m going to resolve to workout every day this month, barring injury. I like working out, and I find it keeps me feeling level headed. I’ve gotten close a few months, but I’m still often missing 7 or 8 days. I want to get back into the habit this month, knowing that I’ll miss some days, but hopefully less in 2022.

  • The Snow Tire Search

    This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

    I’ve been looking for winter tires for about 6 weeks, checking the local inventory and the online places. It’s been hard to find tires, or at least any that are rated well. I found 3 of a few brands, but no sets of 4. My plan had been to get 4 tires and swap them on the same wheels for 4 winter tires. I’d do the same thing again in the spring and use these tires.

    I haven’t been in too much of a hurry, mostly because it’s been 50s and 60s in Denver, and it doesn’t seem like snow is coming. However, we got a surprise sleet storm the other day as I was leaving for the gym. Not too bad, but definitely moisture coming down. I could see a white surface on the paved roads as I drove through the neighborhood.

    Turning onto the main road was tricky. No cars coming, which was good, because I need to accelerate from a hill, and the car slipped. Not a lot, but enough that I know these tires aren’t going to be good.

    Brands

    I’d been looking for a few different brands. The Continental Extreme Contact DWS, the Pirelli WINTER SOTTOZERO 3, and the Michelin X-Ice 3 tires were on my list. A few local people recommended some others as well, but those were the main ones I was searching for from places.

    The Tesla uses a strange size, 255-45-R19, which is not good for a time where supply chains are messed up. Even looking at Nokian and Bridgestone, I wasn’t finding much.

    After my incident, I searched a bit more and saw that there might be some at Big O Tires, so after the gym I swung by the store.

    Big O Tires

    They didn’t have them, but the salesguy and I had a good talk. He told me the inventory system online doesn’t always track well with what is in the stores. He also had a Suburban he was restoring and needed tires that were hard to find, and I mentioned I owned one as well. He showed some pictures of his and became a bit more invested. He said they had swapped tires a few times for Tesla owners and always struggled to get tires in, but he’d look around more.

    I got a call to come back later and we talked a bit more. He noted that he had found some 245-45-r19 tires, so slightly narrower, but they’d fit on the same wheels. These were the Michelin X-Ice 3 ones, so I just bought them.

    I paid for the tires and made an appointment to drop the car off the next day. I got a ride with my son and we left the car there about 945. I went home and then headed back out to a doctor’s appointment. At 11:15, I got a call the car was ready.

    They had bagged up the old tires and left them in the back of the Model Y. I’d lowered the seats and 4 tires fit in there fine. Without the wheels, they also weren’t too heavy, and I put them in the shed with the BMW summer tires when I got home.

    Performance and Noise

    I have no idea about snow performance as its still 50F and dry in Denver. Even the day we went out for a long drive (about 90m) in 10F weather, it was dry.

    However, the car seems to drive the same, and my wife didn’t notice any noise difference. I hadn’t told her I had swapped tires, so I was curious if she’d see a difference. We got up to 90mph on the highway at one point and no real noise difference.

    We’ll see how they perform in snow, hopefully, but I’m confident as quite a few people run these tires.

    Total cost was about $1500 for the tires, mounting, and a warranty. After the issue with the nail, I think $150 for a tire shop warranty makes sense.

    Now, hoping we get some snow so I can test the tires.

    A video of this post is available.