Five Years and Counting

Posted on June 17, 2024 by way0utwest

I almost called this “chasing a new laptop” since that’s what I’m doing, but I decided to add the date because the current laptop I’ve using was built in March 2019 and got to me in May 2019. I’ve had an HP Spectre x360, my second HP Spectre, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m also amazed it still runs. On the last few trips, the two rubber strips that run along the bottom (acting as feet) started to peel away. I’ve never seen that before and I tried to re-attach them a few times, but that didn’t work well.

Not a big deal, and I can live with that, but then during my Australian tour, the laptop started pausing and freezing a few times. It might be that there is too much software on there and needs a pave-and-reinstall, but I decided to check the age on the machine. That was when I realized it was five years old. It’s been a great machine, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a work laptop last that long with daily use. Of course, there was about a year during the pandemic when it was rarely used, so maybe its life lengthened during COVID.

In any case, I started looking around for a new one. My initial glance at smaller laptops has me considering these: another HP Spectre x360, the ASUS 14, the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and the DELL XPS 14. That’s the short list, since I really want a Windows PC that can run SQL Server and tools locally. I’ve had a Macbook before, and in the past I could run a VM with Windows tools. I can run SQL Server now, but not SSMS, and I like running SSMS.

I’m just starting to look at some reviews, and think about what I need. I’ve had a i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD, which have served me well for the last 5 years. I don’t think I need more, though 32GB is tempting for a memory upgrade. I don’t do a lot of heavy development, so it’s more about having the things I run be snappy in presentations with customers and at conferences.

What machines do you use and like? I’ve appreciated the durability of the last two HPs, so I’m leaning towards another. I do like the pointer on the Lenovo, so that’s tempting. I’d like a touch screen as I use it regularly, though I don’t need a folding 2-in-1 machine. A normal clamshell is fine.

If you have a recommendation, let me know. If you have a dream machine, make me drool over it.

Steve Jones

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Poor Database Design Realities

Posted on June 7, 2024 by way0utwest

One of the interesting things that I see at Redgate Software is how idealistic our developers and engineers can be. They often build our database DevOps products with the idea that customers will use well-designed databases. The systems will have primary keys, foreign keys, defaults, constraints, indexes, and more. Developers will use coding standards, and naming conventions, and will understand what data is stored in tables. Not in every case, but often.

After all, that’s how we build software at Redgate, as teams, sharing information, publishing documentation for others, and following best practices.

It’s cute and endearing, and unfortunately, not often true. In most cases, I find databases built by developers, accidental DBAs, or even experienced DBAs to be full of inconsistencies, lacking constraints and keys, and even duplicating some indexes and forgetting others. I often joke during one of my presentations that the main thing people should learn is to add primary keys to their tables. However, I’m not really joking.

During a recent design session on our masking technologies, there was a discussion on masking data in tables without PKs, which is a challenge. We’re working on it, and also on being able to mask PKs themselves, as some people use the PII data as a PK. This could be a tax ID of some sort, but could also be an email address.

When one of our account executives (Rob Boswell) heard that we were enhancing our capabilities with regards to PKs, he joked that we will soon be “primary key agnostic.”  It was a great line, and in one sense it’s true. In another, it’s sad that we need to design tooling around such poor practices.

The reality of the world is there is a lot of bad design, bad architecture, and bad code out there. I applaud those who work to improve things in their environment, am saddened by those who don’t (either improve code or their skills), and frustrated by management not supporting efforts to be better. At the very least they should support efforts to teach your staff to code things right the first time, which helps improve future code. The next best thing is to refactor and improve older code, which can help you spend less in the cloud, or run longer with the resources you have on-premises.

The reality is the reality we are in, but that doesn’t always need to be our future reality. We can change the future, each of us, by learning to write better code and improve how we approach our work tomorrow.

Steve Jones

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Using AI for the First Draft

Posted on June 5, 2024 by way0utwest

At the Redgate Summit in London, I ran a panel talking about Platform Engineering and how we can make developers more productive. One of the questions from our audience revolved around AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies and how they might assist. As a note, AI tech includes a lot of different things, like machine learning (ML) among other things, but a lot of people seeing the media and hype around LLMs (large language models)  think those are AI. They see AI as what is implemented in ChatGPT and Copilot, which is correct, but incomplete.

One of the panelists, Jeff Smith of Redgate, said that he views the output from AI as a first draft, something that bootstraps further work by a human. This can save time and can help someone be more productive, but it’s a starting point and a boost, not a final product.

I had not thought of AI this way, even though I expect to have to test, refine, and edit the results I’ve gotten from various assistants. While it might be possible for me to keep refining my prompt and perhaps generate better results (code and/or text), I don’t know that it’s often worth the time to do much of this. I might do a little, but it’s much easier to take the result of AI as a first draft and then make it fit my requirements.

In much the same way I use Stack Overflow or SQL Server Central for code snippets. They often give me a starting point and something I can then adapt to my needs without all of the time and effort spent on reading an API or SDK, experimenting with the syntax, and then actually using this in some code I’m writing. Similarly, I can get a head start on writing a summary or a pitch, though I’ll admit I’ve found it less useful there. In fact, for many of my editorials, I’ve tried to use it to summarize an article or web link, and it does a very poor job (IMHO).

Some of you might be concerned or worried about this, and some might not. To me, the average-to-poor code produced isn’t any different than the legions of Stack Overflow developers or SQL Server Central DBAs who take code from an online forum and fail to test it. Anyone using any code (or prose) should test (proof) it and verify it works appropriately in their situation. We have a lot of people who don’t do that now and AI might exacerbate that with more code, but I don’t know if we are in a worse situation. We certainly seem to be able to produce lots of average tech professionals now who turn out plenty of average code.

Ultimately AI is a tool that does exist in the world and will continue to exist. We have to learn to work with it and use it to our advantage. Good developers and DBAs will do that. I’d like to think that many organizations will look to hire and use those people as their staff and use fewer of the people who don’t bother to test and improve the results from their tools.

Steve Jones

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DBCC CLONEDATABASE is Semi-Discontinued

Posted on June 3, 2024 by way0utwest

I saw a tweet that DBCC CLONEDATABASE was being discontinued for production databases, which both scared me and didn’t make sense. I’ve used this a few times for a quick copy of a database and like how it works. Discontinuing it seemed strange to me.

Then I read the blog post, which notes that it’s not being supported for production deployments. The post doesn’t explain why, but I’m guessing this is because all the stats and other metadata moves, and this might mess up the optimizer if different data is added. I don’t know who deploys production databases like this, but I could see people who have federated or sharded databases using this to create a new blank copy and then uploading data into it. Or maybe people who need new databases that are distributed onto remote office/edge devices used it? If you use this to create production dbs, let me know.

This command will still be used for generating schema-copies for diagnostic and troubleshooting purposes, which is what it’s there for. I assume this means Microsoft Support will support you using this to investigate strange query issues or if you create a database at their request. However, there isn’t a mention of this being used for development and test environments, which is where I use it.

Specifically, I’ve used it quite a bit lately with Redgate’s subsetter utility. I need a target that’s shaped like the source, and dbcc clonedatabase gives me that. I don’t really care about stats or anything else, I just need schema set up to move data around. It’s useful there. It’s also useful for a quick test of a deployment, where I can ensure I get the latest production schema and then run a deployment against it (hopefully using Flyway), looking for errors.

If you use this command, don’t worry. The tool isn’t going away, and the restriction against production copies doesn’t take place until March 1, 2025. That’s nearly a year from now to change your process. If you’ve never used it, well, I don’t have a good reason to start using it, but you ought to be aware of how it works. Learning about new features is handy, as you might discover a problem the knowledge can solve. However, if you don’t know it exists, it will never enter your mind as a solution.

Be curious and try things. It’s easy, and it’s fun.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

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