Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Advice I Like: Praise

    Don’t reserve your kindest praise for a person until their eulogy. Tell them while they are alive when it makes a difference to them. Write it in a letter they can keep. – from Excellent Advice for Living

    This is something I try to do more. Not the letters, though that’s not a bad idea, but I find myself reaching out with short messages or thoughts (text, FB, etc.) to touch base with people. Friends, sometimes people I see often, sometimes people I see rarely.

    In either case, as I age, I realize life is getting shorter and I ought to try and ensure I communicate more with people I care about.

    I I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

    To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

  • Using Customer Docker Compose File Names

    As I use containers more and more to run various things, I decided I not only wanted to set up docker compose files, I wanted to name them something other than docker-compose.yml. While I often have these running in separate folders with separate batch files to start them, I wanted to have the name mean more.

    This post shows how to do this.

    Creating the File

    Obviously the name is the only change. All the other items in your file need to match. For me, I created a new file with YML in it, which looks like the image below. I then saved this as SQL2025.yml, which is the version of SQL Server this container runs.

    2025-08_0184

    There’s nothing magic here, so I ran this:

    docker compose up –d sql2025.yml

    That didn’t work. I got docker errors, so I had to search and got a Google AI summary (which I don’t like) that noted there is a –f parameter. I tried this.

    docker compose up –d –f sql2025.yml

    That didn’t work either. I clicked through on Google to the docs, and I see the –f. However, I noticed that the –f comes before the command.

    I then changed this to

    docker compose –f sql2025.yml up –d

    and things ran. Of course, I needed to alter my “stop” command below, as you can see.

    2025-08_0185

  • BBQ in Dallas (and a little database talk)

    Who wants to get some great BBQ in Dallas next month? Last time I was there, I went to Terry Black’s BBQ. It was amazing.

    bbq

    In just a couple of weeks the PASS Data Community Summit goes on Tour in Dallas, with 2 days of learning on Monday and Tuesday. The next day is the Redgate Software Summit, where we discuss lots of important and pertinent topics with myself, fellow advocates, and industry experts. We also have a separate track for Redgate software demos, tutorials, and presentations.

    Come join me at one or both events, and tell your co-workers. It will be a fun few days in Dallas. I don’t know if I’ll get to Terry Black’s, but I’ll be looking for some pit BBQ.

  • The Book of Redgate: Meetings

    I think we might have forgotten this a bit, but on one of the pages, we have this title: A Meeting without an Objective is a Chat.

    You can see it below, with a few funny things.

    2025-05_0113

    I don’t get too many meetings, at least not too often when I’m working remote. When I’m in the office, I’m usually there for meetings, and if I get 5, 6, or more a day, that’s fine.

    I do think that most of the meetings I’m involved in (outside of sales) are worthwhile and helpful. They tend to focus on topics or work that needs collaboration in real time. There can be a few that get scheduled and aren’t needed, but I find lots of people quick to end meetings early and not trying to draw them out for the scheduled length.

    I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.