Daily Coping 2 Nov 2021

Posted on November 2, 2021 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to identify three things that give you hope for the future.

I have a lot of hope for the future. Here are three recent things that make me believe the world will be better in 2022 than 2021.

First, going to a live conference was great for me. I had another one last week, SQL Saturday Orlando 2021, and I have two more on my future schedule. While the movement for many free events seems slow and tentative, I am hopeful that we’ll start to see more SQL Saturdays or Data Saturdays in 2022.

Second, kids sports seem to be working well, and that’s an important hobby for me. I’m hopeful after coaching during the pandemic last year that my efforts will look more normal this year.

Third, I’m both surprised and pleased by the number of people around the world and in various countries getting vaccinated. I’m also pleased that many private organizations are starting to require proof of vaccination or a negative test. Those types of efforts will go a long way towards moving us to normality and a better future.

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A Version Control Primer for Databases

Posted on November 1, 2021 by way0utwest

This is a talk for database people that might not be familiar with version control and how it can be used with database code.

Abstract:

With modern DevOps software development, there is a need for the database code to be tightly integrated with application code, and this requires the use of a version control system (VCS).

This session will examine the basics of version control, the different types of systems, and how we can use them for database code. There is an emphasis on Git, as this is the most popular VCS in use today.

Level: 100

Slides: vcs_primer.zip

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Quick CSV Import with dbaTools – #SQLNewBlogger

Posted on November 1, 2021 by way0utwest

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

Recently I was searching around for some sample data for a project. I stumbled on a CSV of data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). I wanted to quickly import this into a database to play with and query. I decided to use dbaTools since my csv python skills were a little rusty and I thought this would be quick.

This post looks at how easy this was.

Disconnected from the Internet

I had downloaded the CSV before getting on a plane, but once I was ready to import this, I had no access to the Internet. This meant I had no access to looking up commands or documentation. As a result, I decided PowerShell and dbatools would be the easiest way to do this.

I ran a quick Get-Help command and got the name of the command. Using wildcards, I could see the dbatools result below.

2021-10-27 20_30_29-cmd - powershell

I then ran “Get-Help Import-DbaCsv” to get the syntax. Using the results below, I wanted to see how quickly this would run.

2021-10-27 20_31_16-cmd - powershell

A Quick Experiment

With the docs above, I created a database and then entered this command.

$movie = Import-DbaCsv -SqlInstance localhost -Database IMDB -AutoCreateTable -Path "IMDB-Movie-Data.csv"

This was my experiment. Just try some values and see what happens here. This ran in less than a second, and from ADS, I could see the data had been imported.

2021-10-27 20_33_42-● SQLQuery_1 - ._SQL2019.IMDB (Integrated) - Azure Data Studio

When I checked my variable, I saw that things had just worked with the 1000 rows imported in less than half a second.

2021-10-27 20_34_30-cmd - powershell

Success!

This wasn’t my main task, but using some tools and some past knowledge, I figured out how to accomplish this task quickly and get back to the process of writing SQL code to query the data.

SQLNewBlogger

My entire purpose here was to write some queries against this data, but I needed to import the data. Either ADS or SSMS have import wizards, but I’ve had various levels of success at times with them. I didn’t want to work through an ETL process. Once I saw how quick dbatools made this, I decided to write this post, based on the ease of getting something done.

You could easily duplicate this post, noting why you needed to do an import and how easy this was. You could compare this to SSMS or ADS, or even write about starting to use dbatools for this purpose.

This took me less than 10 minutes.

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Daily Coping 1 Nov 2021

Posted on November 1, 2021 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to remember I can’t do everything. What are the top three priorities this week?

For me, we’re starting November, and life gets a little busy. This week I’m aiming to (in no order):

  • Work on studying for DP-900. It’s a personal goal, but work asked me to do this, so I get a 2-fer here, and I can use some work time.
  • Volleyball starts, so this week is evaluating players a bit after their high school seasons, organizing some positions and deciding who goes to which positions this Saturday.
  • Go on a date with my wife. The last couple weeks have been a bit hectic, and we need to take some time together one night this week.
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