Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Don’t Forget Unique with FILESTREAM–#SQLNewBlogger

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    While testing FILSTREAM with SQL Clone the other day, I kept getting an error while trying to create a table. I’d click Execute and see this:

    2020-08-12 14_10_37-SQLQuery2.sql - ARISTOTLE_SQL2017.FSTest (ARISTOTLE_Steve (58))_ - Microsoft SQL

    My mind kept focusing on the ROWGUIDCOL part, and not thinking unique. It’s been a few years since I worked with FILESTREAM as it’s not an Azure feature and things have been going that way for me.

    In any case, after running this a few times, and then checking an old demo, I realized that I had forgotten UNIQUE as an attribute for the column. Once I added that, it worked.

    The docs for CREATE TABLE shows this that unique is listed as a constraint property, but under the FILESTREAM section, is does say this about the ROWGUID column: “This column must not allow null values and must have either a UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY single-column constraint.”

    Don’t forget this, but if you do, read the error message,

    SQLNewBlogger

    This post took me about as long to write as it did to realize I was being silly and forgetting to read. Overall, this was about 10 minutes to compile, take the screenshots, and get the references.

    When you write, look for places you’ve learned something, and then use those as ideas for blogs.

  • Daily Coping 24 Aug 2020

    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.

    Today’s tip is to cook your favorite food for someone who will appreciate it

    My favorite food is pizza, and no one really appreciates it. Margaritas are second, but I’m not sure those count as cooking.

    However, I do enjoy a number of foods, one of which is nachos. I don’t make them often, but I decided to end a week recently with a nice Friday night spread of nachos.

    20200731_200513

    I skipped making guac this week, but I did do half shrimp and half beef, since I have some vegetarians.

    A bit hit, quite enjoyable, and a nice way to end the week.

  • Social: Keeping Perspective

    I was lucky enough to be able to get together with some friends recently, outside, socially distanced, and relax with a few drinks. The few of us together have different types of careers, we’re different ages, we have much different perspectives on the world. We also end up dealing with people in the world in much different ways and places on a regular basis. While some of my friends are at home, some work in town and some go to an office.

    We talked a bit about the unrest in one of our local communities, Aurora, CO. It has been the site of protests, and unfortunately, violence against both members of the community and police. I support protest, I do not support violence.

    In any case, a few of my friends, who are white, noted that some police officers don’t like to go out in the community, even for things like groceries. People yell at them, or give them mean/bad/angry looks. One of my friends has a truck that looks like some of the undercover police vehicles, and he’s been yelled at by random people who think he’s a law enforcement officer.

    Their thoughts were that there are bad police, but to lump everyone together in one group isn’t fair.

    That’s a powerful statement. It’s also from a specific perspective. Someone that sympathizes with the change in the lives of the police, with their discomfort with the status quo not being the same. With police not being respected.

    My statement was, think about lumping everyone on the protester side, or the Person of Color side. How often have black people, or middle easterners, or asians, or women been lumped together? How often have you taken a stance based on your tribe, on who you identify with?

    Most of us do it often. Tribal identity is a human characteristic. We often choose to identify with others. We also allow a narrative, a story, a certain presentation to influence us. This has been shown in study after study. We often are less unbiased than we think.

    It is sad that police don’t feel welcome in their community. It’s also sad that many others feel discriminated against or oppressed. It’s distressing that we don’t all get along better, even with basic respect if there isn’t any reason to like each other.

    We all need to do better, both in our behavior and in the way we look at others.

  • Daily Coping 21 Aug 2020

    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.

    Today’s tip is to share an encouraging news story to inspire others.

    The news is full of bad stuff. I really enjoyed the SGN network, and I hope it comes back soon. In any case, I try not to check too often, mostly because there is lots of bad news.

    However, I have some good news. Or at least maybe, no news about something, which is good news.

    I coach volleyball and half our season was cancelled this spring. Sometime late in the spring, there was an opportunity for us to bring our team to the AAU national finals in Orlando, FL, USA. I had no interest in going, nor did the parents of the kids I coached, but some teams were interested. The club where I coach ended up sending 3 teams in mid July to Orlando.

    At a time when case, deaths, and more from COVID-19 were growing.

    The event ended up going fine, with no kids, coaches, or parents getting sick. Lots of precautions, lots of spacing, and things worked out well. A review of the event talked about some of the things that they did to keep everyone safe. So far, reviews from other coaches, news, etc., show that there haven’t been any outbreaks from this event.

    I wondered how things would work. We have held practice in Colorado since late May, sometimes girls masked, sometimes not, but without incident. There have been some people with fevers or other concerns, with those affected skipping events and getting tested, but so far no spread or positive cases.

    That’s good news.