Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Daily Coping 31 Mar 2010

    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 was interesting: Take give minutes to sit and breathe. Repeat often.

    It’s funny, I regularly practice yoga, and this is something we do in class. I’ve used my watch to track my exercise, and I can see when my heart rates rises, so I know we often sit for about 5 minutes quietly, or with a quote/thought from the teacher, before we get moving.

    I tried this a couple times last week. I set a timer on my phone for 5 minutes, stood up, closed my eyes, and tried to just be. No music, nothing to see, just see if my mind can quiet. Sometimes it didn’t and thoughts continue to swirl through my head, sometimes I relaxed, as I might do when walking or driving and my thoughts quietly flow.

    It’s surprisingly hard to just stop for 5 minutes, and I don’t know if I can do it more than once a day. So far, I haven’t, but I will be thinking about adding this to part of my routine.

  • Charting in Azure Data Studio

    The March 2020 release of Azure Data Studio (ADS) includes a charting feature for SQL queries. This is a quick look at the feature, which I think will have some value for users.

    SQL Queries

    This has been available with SQL queries, but now it’s in notebooks as well.  If I run a basic query in ADS, I see something like this:

    2020-03-23 12_52_07-Window

    I have a query and some results. These are numerical results that are easily graphed. However, in the results area, to the right, there are a few icons. I’ve added and arrow and oval in the image below to help you see them.

    2020-03-23 12_54_14-Window

    We have lots of options here for exporting results or visuals., The 5th one down is a chart icon. If I click that, I see this:

    2020-03-23 12_57_04-Window

    By default, a bar chart, but as you see on the right, there are lots of options. I’ll write more as I play with them a bit and get another ADS article at SQLServerCentral.

    Notebooks

    The charting experience comes to notebooks in a similar way. I can create a notebook and add a SQL cell. In there I have code and run it.

    2020-03-23 13_02_03-Window

    You can see the same icons here above the results. If I click the far right one (the chart), it changes to a chart.

    2020-03-23 13_02_40-Window

    If I save the notebook like this and reopen it, the chart is gone. The results are still there, as these are saved with the notebook, but the visual display is gone. I think this is fine, because the chart icon is there, but I wish the state was saved as I’d saved it.

    One note, once the chart appears, notice the right icon is now a table icon. Clicking it returns to the original view.

    This is a quick look at charting in ADS. I’ll do something more extensive at SSC soon.

  • T-SQL Tuesday Live–31 Mar 2020

    I’m hosting another live T-SQL Tuesday event tomorrow, which is really just a casual video meeting for anyone that wants to join and take a break from work, life, or anything else.

    In this time of difficulty, I think this is a great coping mechanism that might help you keep in touch with the community. I know it’s certainly good for my mental health.

    This week the theme is: Securely connecting

    Most of us are remote now, and we’re often at home. This can prevent some challenges. Networking aside, security is still a concern. What you are doing? Jump boxes, rdp to servers or your desktop at work or something else?

    We’ll start with this theme, but we’ll see where the conversation goes. We’ll also do a health check with people, talk about anything good that’s happened?

    I’ll use Zoom with this meeting URL: Removed (see the most recent post for the URL)

    The date: Tuesday, March 24, 2020, and time:

    • 13:00MDT
    • 15:00EDT
    • 19:00UTC

    Just an hour. Jump on, say hi, give us your thoughts, problems, or just listen.

  • Daily Coping 30 Mar 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.

    In the newsletter today, I wrote this: Share what you are feeling and be willing to ask for help.

    This is a tough one for me. I’m fiercely independent and hate asking for help if I can do something. I should be able to handle this myself. I’m not sick, my family isn’t sick. No one I know is that sick, and only a few are a little sick. I only personally know of two people that have lost their jobs.

    However, this pandemic has affected me. It’s all over the news, it’s heartbreaking and maddening.

    I am sad for those that have lost someone or are suffering.

    have sympathy for those losing their jobs, especially low income workers.

    I’m maddened by those that haven’t taken this seriously.

    I’m sharing here, and I’ve shared some of this with my wife and kids. We commiserate a bit and get things off our chests. I also have learned to ask my wife for help, to listen, to hold me, to just be there. It’s helpful, though this is still hard.

    I’m working to close off from news, but not from people, which is a challenge. I’m working to keep my temper and emotions in check. I’m asking you to help me do that. If I’m upset, I’d appreciate a gentle reminder that things will be OK.