Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Daily Coping 11 May 2020

    I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

    Today’s tip is tell someone about why your favorite music means a lot to you.

    You’re the someone today.

    I love music. In fact, I avoided Android as a mobile OS for years because my early experiences showed it to be a much worse experience for music than iOS. At one point I had an Android phone and every picture I took interrupted my music. As someone that travels a lot and enjoys music, I switched back a few weeks later to an iPhone.

    Even today, I think the iPhone is still much better as a music device than Android, but without a headphone jack, I won’t go back. Of course, I might lose that on Android soon, so maybe I will go back.

    In any case, music has been a big part of my life. I fondly remember listening to 45s as a kid, hanging out in record stores, trying to learn songs on my guitar, and spending hours and hours with a single album. Some memorable long sessions:

    Music evokes emotion, excitement, inspiration, and escape for me. Even now, I listen to music often while working, constantly while traveling, and usually in the gym.

    Music is something that enriches and enhances my life.

  • The 2020 Desktop Upgrade

    It’s been a few years since I upgraded my home hardware. Being stuck at home, doing more work here, and trying to help with The #SQLFamily Folding@Home group, I’ve been contemplating some upgrades. I also have a guilty pleasure of playing Doom.

    I first ran into the DOS version early in my career and even joined in some lunchtime LAN tournaments at work with Doom and Quake. When my son was about 12, we bought Doom 3 and upgraded my desktop to work through the game together. We had hours of fun and I’ve been tempted to recreate that. I decided not to upgrade my system when Doom 2016 came out,  but I posted a note that I was tempted to get Doom Eternal and escape a it from the sameness of this quarantine time at home. Glenn Berry suggested I upgrade a few things if I was doing to change video cards, and I decided to treat myself a little.

    Tl;dr: I spent about $800 to get to a place where I could comfortably play Doom Eternal.

    Current Hardware

    I built my own machine in 2016, upgrading from the previous generation of hardware. I don’t love building hardware, though it can be fun to get things working. However, I’m more of a “I want it working” person than someone that enjoys building. In any case, I have this:

    This has worked well for me, but it’s been a number of years. I have SQL 2014-2019 running, VMWare, and lots of other apps that could use a little more horsepower and cleanup.

    The CPU-Z data is here:

    The Upgrades

    I hadn’t really planned on upgrading everything, but a friend offered a deal on an AMD  Ryzen 7 2700 X system with 32GB of RAM. Since it was already in a system with an SSD, that was attractive. This gives me more cores, a slight CPU boost, and I can move things from system to system without being rushed. I like that.

    Specs:

    Upgrades:

    • RAM: 32GB for $154 gives me 64GB
    • EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming, 6GB GDDR6 – $305
    • Mini Displayport to DVI adapter (my monitors are VGA/DisplayPort only – $13
    • Samsung EVO 860 1TB – $160
    • USB Wi-Fi adapter – $12
    • Power Supply Corsair RM 750X (Swap from the old to new machine) – $0

    Total cost for a second, upgraded desktop was $994. That’s a pretty good deal for me, slightly more than the $600 I thought I’d spend, but I ended up with more RAM and disk space than I’d planned on initially.

    For me, the hardest part was switching out power supplies, which is easy in terms of unplugging things and removing a few screws. It’s a royal pain in terms of trying to disconnect things in a tight space. I don’t have the smallest hands, but I managed to get things set up and the new machine booted the first time. That doesn’t always happen when I remove and reinstall motherboards.

    Once the new machine was up, I installed chocolatey first, Dropbox second, and then use choco install to start grabbing other things. I my case, I disconnected one monitor from the old system, added a second keyboard and mouse (temporarily) and started to install things as I was working. I’d glance over at the new machine, so what icons were on the old machine or what I was doing and then install more software.

    Across a few days, I managed to get most software installed. During this time a few pieces of hardware arrived, and I installed them piecemeal.

    Performance

    The newer CPU-Z info is here:

    New desktop CPUZ

    Windows Experience Scores

    Area Old Score New Score
    CPUScore 8.5 9.2
    DiskScore 8 9
    GraphicsScore 8.1 8.9
    MemoryScore 8.5 9.2
    WinSPRLevel 8 8.9

    Next Steps

    Moving machines is always a bit of a chore, but in this case, I don’t have to be in a hurry by adding a second machine. I have enabled remote access, so that I can move the old machine into a headless configuration and still access things I might need.

    This is a big job, as I’m migrating data, apps, VMs, and more, so this will be an interesting process across the next few weeks as I slowly get setup on the new system.

  • Daily Coping 8 May 2020

    I’ve started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

    Set yourself on a kindness mission. Give your time to help others.

    I’ve been doing this a few times across the last month. My family hasn’t always been thrilled, but I’ve tried to help others cope by inviting a family over once in awhile. Outside, with them bringing their own refreshments and chairs, but getting the chance to just be outside, have some space, and get away from their routine.

    I always appreciate when I can do that, and I’m trying to bring some kindness to others.

  • TSQL for Beginners–#RGCommunityCircle

    As a part of the Redgate Community Circle, giving back in this strange time, each of the advocates for Redgate is teaching a free course. We’re doing this live each week, according to this schedule:

    I decided to watch a class of each of the others’ work and write about it. This post looks at the first class from Kendra Little on basic T-SQL.

    Basic T-SQL

    I know a lot of T-SQL, but I also don’t know a lot. I’m good, maybe above average, but not a great query writer. I learn all the time from others, and often find something interesting in basic presentations. I’m also always looking to see how others teach basic topics to improve my own skills.

    Kendra has done an interesting thing with putting her course on GitHub. That’s a great idea, though for mine, I am following articles on SQLServerCentral. Having a good outline and resources for students is a good idea, and everyone ought to be able to use a VCS, including GitHub, so I like putting pages here and code in a repo.

    Why is that good? This is what I did to start following Kendra’s class:

    2020-05-01 10_15_26-cmd

    Now I can open the first script in ADS. On top of seeing how Kendra teaches, I get to practice some ADS stuff.

    2020-05-01 10_17_28-1_SelectAndAlias_Demo.sql - disconnected - TSQLBeginners - Azure Data Studio

    I like the doorstop at the end, and I’ll have to think about that for my demo scripts. I’ve accidentally run the entire script too many times.

    Kendra walks through a number of query concepts with a series of basic SELECT statements, including an emoji for a column alias. I’m glad she lets you know which items are not recommended.

    The first course is helping you understand some of the ways in which you can get data from tables. You do need to have a slight understanding of what a table is, but Kendra helps you learn some of the strange ways that you can put together a statement. There is a lot to cover, but this should help someone that wants to learn some basics get started.

    There is also homework, included as part of the scripts in the course. The questions are at the bottom, and called out. A good way to get you to practice. I should do this for my work in places as well.

    2020-05-01 11_09_20-1_SelectAndAlias_Demo.sql - Plato_SQL2017.sandbox (Integrated) - TSQLBeginners -

    Pass this course along to someone that needs to get better at T-SQL. It’s not too fast or hard, and will let them be sure they have a grounding in good ways to write queries.