Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Amazing Margaritas in Austin – SQL in the City US Tour

    Photo Sep 17, 9 44 23 PMThe last time I was in Austin was last year, for a weekend trip with my wife to see Stevie Wonder and Kanye West (on separate days) at the Austin Music Festival. My wife and I have been trying to see Stevie Wonder for over ten years, and we finally got the chance and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It’s something I’ll never forget, and I’d be tempted to go down there again for the ACL Festival weekend.

    On that weekend we stopped by Guero’s Taco Bar near the Festival and had some amazing margaritas. The food was great, and we enjoyed our time there. As I arrive in Austin on Sept 30 to get ready for SQL in the City 2012 – Austin, I’m hoping to get two things done.

    • Run along the Red River
    • Get some great Texas margaritas.

    I arrive in Austin around 1:00pm in the afternoon and I should be able to get both done before some prep for my sessions on Oct 1.

    If you’re in Austin on Oct 1, come join me, Grant Fritchey (b | t), Aaron Nelson (b | t), Tim Radney (b | t) and a number of developers from Red Gate software for a free day of training – The Red Gate Way.

    We had fantastic events last year in LA and London, and this year we’re touring the US. Austin is stop #2 after New York and I’m looking forward to it. Red Gate throws a first class one day event, with plenty of knowledge, discussion, debate, SQL Server tips, tricks, great food and drinks. It’s a great one day event, and it’s free, just register to come.

    We’ll be at the AT&T Executive Education Conference Center and we’d love to have you come and meet us. We’ll talk about things you do every day, or should be doing, in your environment. We’ll give you ideas about how you can improve the way you work.

    If you want to run with me, watch Twitter around the event. Once I get to the hotel on Sunday, probably around 1:30-2:00, I’ll post some details on where I’ll be running. Perhaps near Zilker Park around 2:30-3:00. Join me for a short 2 mi run if you’re so inclined.

    Register today and come shake my hand in Austin.

    This is part of my SQL in the City series, covering a few thoughts on the US tour.

  • Learning about Driving with Big Data

    This is nice, a year long safety pilot from the University of Michigan. Quite extensive, using 3,000 cars to gather data. I don’t know what they’ll get out of this, and if you read the comments, there’s all kinds of speculation, but it’s a good idea, in my opinion.

    Many of the commenters are trying to come up with results before the data in this case. Do we need better driver training? Better design? Driverless cars? Who knows? We should get the data and then decide how to proceed.

    This study is a good idea, because I think we realize there are some things about driving we don’t know enough about, but there are also a lot of things we don’t know we don’t know. The unknown unknowns are likely going to impact how we interpret this data later.

    I like to see more studies along these lines, but with really anonymous data. Do some work to try and disconnect people from the data, which will be hard and likely not work well. Perhaps we just need to map the coordinates of the cars and their interactions to a neutral space, maybe some coordinate system that doesn’t necessarily correspond to lat/longitudes.

    However there will be good data out of this that can help us understand how we might better change driving. I just wish this were with more than 3,000 cars. That seems like too few to me. I’d like to see more like 300,000 cars in a study.

  • Disabling DDL Triggers

    Suppose you want to stop using a DDL trigger for a short period of time, such as the login trigger I created recently. If you want to disable an index, you use

    ALTER INDEX xxx DISABLE

    That doesn’t work for triggers. The ALTER TRIGGER syntax is used for changing code.

    You could use ALTER TABLE on DML triggers, but not for DDL triggers. The DISABLE TRIGGER DDL can be used.

    To stop tracking user logins, I can use:

    DISABLE TRIGGER CatchLogins ON ALL Server
;

    There is an ENABLE TRIGGER syntax as well to turn the triggers back on. These two commands allow you to save the trigger code, but have it enabled or disabled as needed.

  • Running in Central Park at SQL in the City New York

    I just booked my tickets for New York City. I’m coming into the city on Sept 27, at 2pm, with just enough time to get to my hotel, drop my bags, and then hit Central Park for a run. I love to run, and Central Park is great. It’s on my list whenever I get back to the city.

    SQL in the City is coming to New York City on Friday, Sept 28, 2012. It’s a free day of training from Red Gate Software, and I’m delivering two out of many SQL Server sessions there. Mine are one on database essentials, and one on preparing for disasters. In addition, Grant Fritchey (b | t) will deliver a few on development, we will have Red Gate developers talking about tools, and a few Friends of Red Gate will have sessions on development and administrative topics.

    Red Gate is sponsoring a mini-tour of free training days across the US this fall. We did this last year in Los Angeles, and recently finished a two events in London. This is a chance to learn about topics that are important to SQL Server professionals, just like so many other one day conferences. We’ll feed you, provide coffee and snacks, and good conversation, knowledge, and debate on different ways to attack the challenges you face at work.

    We’d love to have you attend. Registration is free, and I hope you’ll join us at the Concierge Convention Center in New York City on Sept 28. Come meet all of us, and please feel free to stop any of us and shake our hands.

    You can even join me for a run in Central Park on Thursday night if you’re inclined. I’ll post details on Twitter once I figure out how quickly I can get there. I’m guessing I’ll be at the park around 4:30, SE side, but we’ll see.

    I love New York, and my kids keep asking if they can come. I’ve been there many times, from road trips in college to taking my oldest to see a Broadway play one weekend. I’ve toured much of the city, and one fond memory is standing on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center in 2000, looking out over the Hudson. I wish I could take a kid and spend a few days there, but this is a quick trip, starting off the US SQL in the City tour.

    Register today if you can come. I hope to shake your hand in New York.

    This is part of my SQL in the City series, covering a few thoughts on the US tour.