Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Colorado SQL Server User Groups – May

    I saw a post from Marc Beacom on the presentations this week for various groups. You can get the info on them all from Marc’s post, but basically this is user group week in CO.

    • Tuesday – Boulder
    • Wednesday – Colorado Springs
    • Thursday – Denver

    I’m not sure I’ll be at Denver on Thursday. I’d like to go, but I’m having a busy week. I definitely can’t make the other two with my wife out of town this week.

    In terms of the presentations, I haven’t seen Mike Fal (Boulder) talk before, but permissions can be a little hairy and this could be a good session. I do like Tom Norman, and he works in the payment/credit card industry, so I am sure that his Encryption talk on Wed will be good. Thur I’d like to see Jason Horner do the short spatial piece since it’s an interesting topic and I’ve been bothering Jason to talk for a few years. Glenn Berry’s Hardware talk is a good one, especially for people that don’t track that stuff. It’s all just “stuff to me” and Glenn is the person I tend to ask for advice if I’m looking for new hardware. Worth going to see.

    Enjoy the SQL week in CO, and if you would like to come speak, give a ring. You can do a one week tour, hitting all three group sometime and we’ll line up some hosts to ensure you have fun. If you want to come ski from Nov-Apr, I’ve love to have you.

  • Clean Code is Easier to Read – SQL Prompt

    I saw a post recently that had query that looked like this:

    select a.*,name, b.*
 from sys.database_principals a, sys.database_permissions b

where permission_name = 'INSERT'
and
b.grantee_principal_id = a.principal_id

     

    Ugly to read, at least to me, and in a poorly written format. The table, table format isn’t ANSI compliant and isn’t recommended. So I did this:

    formatsql

    A little better, and easier to read, but not great.

    SELECT  a.* ,
        name ,
        b.*
FROM    sys.database_principals a ,
        sys.database_permissions b
WHERE   permission_name = 'INSERT'
        AND b.grantee_principal_id = a.principal_id

    However now I can make a few quick edits. Remove the comma between tables and add “INNER JOIN” and then move the AND clause up to an ON clause to give me this:

    SELECT  a.* ,
        name ,
        b.*
FROM    sys.database_principals a
  INNER JOIN sys.database_permissions b
    ON b.grantee_principal_id = a.principal_id
WHERE   permission_name = 'INSERT'

    Much better, and easier to read.

  • Patch Week

    My email account started getting notices of Windows patches yesterday, indicating it’s patch week again. If you manage Windows devices, be sure you are aware of the patches that came out. The May Bulletin on Technet shows 2 issues, one critical, one important.

    I tend to apply patches late, probably a month after release, just to see if anyone reports an issue. It’s up to you, but be aware of the patches, and if you could be affected, make sure you test machines and then schedule the downtime.

  • Networking and Connections

    This quote says it all:

    connections

    It’s from an article on the 9/11 memorial and how an algorithm was used to inscribe the names in particular places.

    That could easily be applied to your career as well. The connections you have, with people that know you, respect you, like your work, like you, etc. are the most important things you have.

    Your skills matter, but the skills help build those connections.

    Learn to network.

    Cross posted to The Modern Resume