Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Stairway to Development–Coming to Oregon

    SQL Saturday #265 is coming to Portland, Oregon on Nov 16, 2013 and the day before, on Friday, we have another SQL in the City Seminar. Grant and I will be in the city talking about database version control, automated build and test, and database deployment best practices.

    This is another of our SQL in the City Seminars. We’ve had 4 this year so far and we’re looking to do a few more this year and even more in 2014. This is a free, half day event where you can come and learn about some of the tips and techniques that Red Gate has learned about database development.

    I’m not sure who will be covering which sessions, but we have three that all build on the theme of better deploying software. We’ll be presenting:

    • Team-based Database Development with Version Control
    • Automated Build and Test
    • Best Practices for Database Deployment

    We walk through the steps for better tracking code, testing it, and then moving it from one environment to the next.

    These are intermediate level concepts and suitable for DBAs, developers, managers, anyone that wants a smoother software delivery process.

    Join us if you’re in the Portland area on Nov 15 by registering today. It’s free, but we have a limited amount of space.

  • Three Trips

    I’m down to three trips, with most of my busy month behind me. It’s been a hard year at times, easy at others. This month I was in Vegas, LA, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Charleston, with one more trip to Vegas next week. The travel is hard, and in addition to wearing on me mentally, it compresses the rest of my time at work. That adds some stress, which bleeds over into family life for me. Some people separate well; I don’t.

    That’s OK, Despite the hard travel, I’ve enjoyed seeing so many people I know and meeting new ones. Across the 11 talks I gave this month, I enjoyed them all. I met at least one new person at each, if not more, and had some great conversations.

    Three trips left.

    The next one is SQL Intersection in Las Vegas, which will be a fun trip as my wife is coming along. Then it’s Portland for a SQL in the City seminar and a SQL Saturday in November, and a repeat in Washington D.C. in December.

    Plus vacation. I desperately need to take time off. Both for mental health, and because I’ve accumulated too much that needs to be used before the end of the year. After searching out a bit of balance last year, I didn’t do a good job this year, and need to pay more attention to things. I love my job, and I enjoy going to work, but the last month+ has been hard.

    I’m just making a note here, partly to remind you to take your own time off from work, but also to warn you I might be gone in Nov/Dec a bit from work.

     

     

  • Solving Problems at Midnight

    I couldn’t sleep last night. I was tossing and turning, struggling to rest, and it seemed I was waking up every 20 minutes.

    My demo broke. I have a talk that I’m giving at the Denver SQL Server User Group on Thursday, as practice for the same talk next week at SQL Intersection. After returning from my travels, I fired up my virtual machine on Monday and went through the talk. I’ve given a version of this as recently as 3 weeks ago, but I like to refresh myself. When I got to the third demo, I couldn’t get it to work.

    I tried a bunch of things, but the test I was sure would fail, wouldn’t. This is a significant part of my demo, and it shows how data volumes affect things. I reset the snapshot. I dropped and rebuilt the database and process. I even took a 3 hour break, going for a walk, picking up kids, and hitting a yoga class. When I returned at night, while my kids were doing their homework, I couldn’t get mine to work. I even faked the test, and caused a failure, but that wouldn’t work with an audience.

    I gave up around 9:30 and went to bed shortly thereafter. At least, I tried to, tossing and turning. My mind was all over the map, thinking about work, some projects at home, kids’ school, etc. At 2am, it hit me. All of a sudden I realized why the test wouldn’t fail. The join that was supposed to be slow, wasn’t, because it was missing some data. I was generating a large volume of data in two of the three tables, but in the third, I hadn’t linked it to my version control system. That’s why it failed.

    I don’t always have such great inspiration at night, but I have found that sometimes walking away from an issue and taking a break can help. I’ve even walked to a colleague’s desk and helped them with their own issue, and all of a sudden I realize how to solve my problem. I’ve learned to learn to be productive in other ways when I’m stuck on a particular problem, letting my subconscious mind analyze things in the background.

    This morning I linked my table and the test started failing. I have rarely been so happy to see red errors on my monitor.

  • Speaking at the October Denver SQL Server User Group

    I have a talk this Thursday at the Denver SQL Server Users Group. I’ll be talking about Continuous Integration for databases, looking at ways you can automate database builds and perform some automated testing as you move forward in your development.

    If you’re in Denver, come out and do some networking. I’m happy to do either talk, or even something else if people want.