I have never been to the South Florida SQL Saturday. There have been a bunch of events, but for some reason I’ve never been to one. I was excited when I saw this event planned and the date worked out.
I found out that I was picked and I accepted. Now I need to plan a trip and get organized.
I’ll be talking about Database DevOps, so if you can get to the Miami area in early June, I’ll see you there.
watashiato – n. curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of your harmless actions or long-forgotten words might have altered the plot of their stories in ways you’ll never get to see.
I found this word in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which is excerpted at this site. This book includes new words that describe emotions in great depth. One of the descriptions was the word above, watashiato. Of the few dozen I read, this was the one that stood out to me, and it’s something I’ve experienced. Maybe more than just being curious, though.
As someone that does a lot of writing and speaking, I know that my words and actions have an impact on others. I’ve had many people write to me or tell me in person that I’ve affected them. Usually, this is very positive, and I’m grateful for the kind words. I am proud and happy for the positive impacts I’ve had in people’s lives.
However, I know I must have had negative impacts. I’m sure I’ve written or said something incorrect that upset someone, or messed up their day at work, or perhaps caused an outage and they had to work late. I hope I haven’t gotten anyone terminated, or even chastised from management for something they learned at SQL Server Central, but I don’t know. I try not to dwell on this, but at times I think about whether or not I’ve changed someone’s life for the worse.
I might have treated someone poorly. I know I did early in my 20s, as an arrogant young man, but I’m sure I’ve done things that meant nothing to me but affected others. Perhaps even deeply.
My life has gone well, my career is a success, and I am grateful for that. I try to appreciate the small moments in life, and embrace dés vu (the awareness that this moment will become a memory). My wife had trumspringa and made it come true, leaving her corporate job to train horses. I’ve watched others do the same thing.
These days my goal is to live my life in a way that makes the world better. I work, I need a paycheck, but I try not to be driven by that. I appreciate time with loved ones and experiences. I appreciate the conversations, the handshakes, and the hugs. I look to enjoy the laughter with others and the hard times, appreciating them as a part of life. I try to leave the world a little better than I found it, and hopefully, lessen the chances of future sorrowful watashiato.
Steve Jones
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I wrote recently about finding multiple backups in a file. This post looks at how to restore one of those. The one you choose.
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.
In the previous post, I did these things:
If I restore the default last backup, I get my table without data. You can read that post to see how I got here.
Let’s restore things.
I cheat with restores. I remember some syntax, but typing it in and trying to remember the order is a pain, even with SQL Prompt. So I click restore database in SSMS and fill out the dialog. I pick the device and when I change the name in the Destination database, the file names change. Once I have the dialog below, I click “Script” at the top.
This gives me code in a new window. In my case, I get this code:
USE [master]
RESTORE DATABASE [sandbox2]
FROM DISK = N'D:\SQLBackup\sandbox.bak'
WITH FILE = 3,
MOVE N'sandbox' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\sandbox2.mdf',
MOVE N'sandbox_log' TO N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\sandbox2_log.ldf',
NOUNLOAD, STATS = 5
By default, this gives me file=3, which is the third backup. If I run this and then query the new database, I see this:
That’s what I expect. The third backup had the table with no data. Let’s restore the second one. First delete the database and then change File=3 to File=2. Once I run the restore and the same query, now I see data:
If I restore file=1, then there is no table.
Alter the FILE parameter to pick the backup in the file.
This post took less than the 10 minutes of the previous post. I basically restored my database a few times with a query. The code was a couple minutes to generate and modify in SSMS, and this writeup was short.
The key was doing this immediately after the previous post and reusing the setup and code. Plus, the concept was in my mind.
As with the previous post, this is a good way to show knowledge and learning, and in this case, 20 minutes got me two posts.
I saw someone noting that AIs shouldn’t write obituaries. Since I maintain sqlmemorial.org, I wanted to see what would happen for me.
This is part of a series of experiments with the ChatGPT and other AI systems.
First, a simple prompt. This was delayed for about 20s while the AI was processing data. I assume it was looking over the sites for my name.
When it started to write, I thought it did a decent job.
I then tried for an obituary.
I very much appreciate the first part of the response. It isn’t good to do this publicly, though for figures, there are people who have to write and update these things so they are prepared. Not that they won’t edit this if someone dies, but often journalists are prepared.
However, I also appreciate the kind words in the second para. I am not quite sure where/how this data was assembled, but it isn’t a part of any bio I’ve written.
Not bad, ChatGPT.
Voice of the DBA 