Daily Coping 7 Dec 2020

Posted on December 7, 2020 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 discover your artistic side and design your own Christmas cards.

I’m not a big Christmas card sender, but years ago I used to produce a letter for the family that we sent out to extended family and friends. It was a quick look at life on the ranch. At some point, I stopped doing it, but I decided to try and cope a little this year by restarting this.

While we haven’t done a lot this year, we have spent time together, and life has changed for us, albeit a bit strangely. I’m here all the time, which is good for family. So I gathered together some photos from the year, and put them together with some words and a digital Xmas card.

I’m not sharing the words here, but I’ll include the design with the photos.

2020-12-01 12_59_04-Document1 - Word

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A Technology Collapse

Posted on December 5, 2020 by way0utwest

This past week the Arecibo radio telescope collapsed, with cables and instruments falling into the massive dish. You can see images of the devastation, which saddens me. I doubt this will be rebuilt, though one can keep hope alive. there were reports of failures a month or so ago, with the intent to shut down the telescope, remove instruments, and institute a controlled demolition.

The facility was featured in a few movies, notably GoldenEye and Contact. The latter is one that first showed me the telescope, which I first thought was a movie magic trick. When I found out this was a real facility, I was amazed that humans could conceive and build such a structure. Even more amazing is that it was built in the 1960s.

That’s quite a lifetime for a piece of technology. While I’m sure lots of wiring, electronics, computer systems, and more were added or upgraded, the core of this telescope remained the same. The ongoing engineering effort, fitting new capabilities around legacy systems and structures, was likely a study that many would find interesting.

I don’t know many database systems that have survived that long, but certainly there are some long lived legacy applications. The Sabre reservation system for airlines is one that stands out to me. The history of this one is fascinating, especially as it’s a system I’ve depended on in my travels.

Many of us that work with databases likely feel that everything we do is a legacy system. The dependencies our objects have on various applications, scripts, reports, and more can limit how much repair, improvement, or replacement we can make to schema.

There are good techniques for modifying our objects, and helping to ensure we don’t break systems, but we often do need some cooperation and collaboration with application developers to implement those changes. Much of DevOps avoids talking about the database, but we shouldn’t. Instead, we ought to embrace database refactoring patterns, both at the database and application levels, ensuring that our systems can survive for as long as we need them while adapting to the changing requirements of our clients.

Steve Jones

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Your Favorite IDE

Posted on December 4, 2020 by way0utwest

SSMS is, well, it’s what we mostly have from Microsoft. It’s been around a long time, but it is getting regularly released. There are new versions about every quarter, and there are bug fixes and minor enhancements. Azure Data Studio appears to be where Microsoft would like most of us to move, but I, and many others, somewhat resist this because it’s not quite as full featured as we’d like.

Recently I was watching one of Brent Ozar’s Ask Me Anything recordings, and some people asked about SSMS and other IDEs. I think Brent is mostly an SSMS fan, and deals with issues, but he mentioned some other IDEs, like DataGrip.

I’ve never used that one, but I used to use RapidSQL when it was Embarkadero, mostly because I had offline editing. Once Microsoft added that, I didn’t see a reason to buy it anymore. At Redgate, we’ve been asked to produce an IDE, but that’s a ton of work for limited commercial appeal. At least, that’s been what I think.

Today, I’m curious. What’s your favorite IDE to work with SQL Server, or maybe the Microsoft data platform? I’d like to know what you use for SQL Server, but I’d also be curious what you use for other code. PoSh, C#, anything else. Are you a Visual Studio person? Do you like VS Code, and if so, is ADS a complement for databases or do you prefer SSMS?

Let me know. Maybe you’ll convince me to try another editor.

Steve Jones

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Goal Progress–November 2020

Posted on December 4, 2020 by way0utwest

This is my report, which continues on from the Oct report. It’s getting near the end of the year, and I wanted to track things a little tighter, and maybe inspire myself to push.

Rating so far: C-

Reading Goals

Here were my goals for the year.

  • 3 technical books
  • 2 non-technical books – done

Books I’ve tackled:

I’ve made progress here. I have completed my two non-technical books, and actually exceeded this. My focus moved a bit into the more business side of things, and so I’m on pace to complete 4 of these books.

The tech books haven’t been as successful, as with my project work, I’ve ended up not being as focused as I’d like on my career, and more focused on tactical things that I need to work on for my job. I think I’ve learned some things, but not what I wanted.

My push for December is to finish Team of Teams, get through Power BI Desktop, and then try to tackle one new tech book from either the list of them I have, or one I bought last winter and didn’t read.

Project Goals

Here were my project goals, working with software

  • A Power BI report that updates from a database
  • A mobile app reading data from somewhere
  • A website that showcases changes and data from a database.

Ugh. I’m feeling bad here. I had planned on doing more PowerBI work after the PASS Summit, thinking I’d get some things out of the pre-con. I did, but not practical things, so I need to put time into building up a PowerBI report that I can use.

I’ve waffled between one for the team I coach, which has little data, but would be helpful to the athletes, and a personal one. I’ve downloaded some data about my life, but I haven’t organized it into a database. I keep getting started with exercise data, Spotify data, travel data, etc., but not finishing.

I’ve also avoided working on a website, and actually having to maintain it in some way. Not a good excuse. I think the mobile app is dead for this year. I don’t really have enough time to dig in here, at least, that’s my thought.

The website, however, should be easier. I wanted to use an example from a book, so I should make some time each week, as a personal project, and actually build this out. That’s likely doable by Dec 21.

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