T-SQL Tuesday #184–Mentoring

Posted on March 11, 2025 by way0utwest

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party is hosted by Deborah Melkin, and it’s a good one that asks us where we are making the world better. The topic is mentorship and sponsorship, which is great. We all ought to pay it forward or pay it back, depending on how lucky we are. I believe strongly in this and am glad to see the topic posted.

I still manage the T-SQL Tuesday list, and I’m always looking for hosts. I have a few scheduled for 2025, but I can use more. If you’re interested in hosting, hit me up at one of these places:

The Mentoring Experiment

Andy Warren and I ran The Mentoring Experiment a few times in the past before life got too hard and we decided to pause. I wrote about mentoring as well, and didn’t publish a lot on the experiment as most of the conversations were private.

I’m somewhat sorry we didn’t continue this, but it proved to be a little overwhelming at that time in our lives.

My Mentoring Experiences

I’ve had a few mentors in my life, and while some I’m not comfortable sharing, there are a few that stand out.

In high school, I had a mentor who was a Navy Pilot. He was a client of my Mom’s and she asked him to give me rides to and from karate, where he was also a student. On our rides, he shared some advice, some thoughts on life, while taking an interest in me. A few things stand out, one of which I still think about today: before I send an email, how would I feel if this were made public? This keeps me from writing too emotionally.

For the last 20+ years, Andy Warren and I have talked most weeks of the year. We miss a few when we’re on vacation, or I’m traveling, but he has been a great mentor to me, helping me think through life’s challenges. I hope I’ve done the same for him.

Giving Back

I think part of what I should do is try and make the world better. Part of that is my trying to get a variety of people to write at SQL Server Central or host here. I’ve reached out through my network to find women or minorities that would participate in our data community, and give them a voice. I’ve been less successful than I would have liked, but I have had a little success.

I’ve also convinced a few people to speak. I usually look for people at events that are engaged, ask interesting questions, or just have good conversations with me. I’ve found it takes months, but if I encourage them, I’ve gotten some of them to write or speak for free to share their knowledge and grow their own skills. There are a couple successes who many of you likely know their name and a few more that tried it and gave up.

I think the more you encourage people to engage in life, the more they (and you) get out of it.

I also try to do this as a coach, getting them to grow and learn more than just the sport. I think it’s worked out well as many kids keep in touch over the years.

I think many of you can do the same thing. Help others grow and find their own success, with encouragement, support, and a friendly ear.

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Editorial Republish: Understanding a Database

Posted on March 10, 2025 by way0utwest

I’m either on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic or on the ground in London as you read this. Hopefully napping before a busy few days. I’m in town for the London Redgate Summit tomorrow, with some prep today, podcast recording, and trying to survive a 48 hour trip to one of my favorite cities in the world.

You get to re-read Understanding a Database today.

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A Quick Trip

Posted on March 10, 2025 by way0utwest

I’m sure some of you have gone on a quick business trip before, maybe even regularly. I’ve had a lot of travel over the last few years, and quite a few short trips to various cities for events or customer visits. I’m expecting a few other stretches this year that will be busy, but not like this.

I’m off to London today, actually I left last night, and I’ll be there around 940a local time today. I am jumping on an 1130a flight Wednesday to return, so this will be a 50 hours trip to London. I’m going for the Redgate Summit, and I’d usually make this a week trip and get to the office in Cambridge, but I am bookended by prior commitments.

Yesterday (Sunday) had to coach a team at a volleyball tournament in Denver. This coming weekend, I need to be in New Orleans Friday to coach over the weekend. I guess I could try to stay one more day and get to Cambridge, but I would like a minute to decompress at home. So back Wed and head to New Orleans for the weekend.

Fortunately this type of trip is a rarity, but it has happened a few times in the past and I’m sure it will happen again.

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Tracking Table Sizes

Posted on March 7, 2025 by way0utwest

Managing a production database can be a challenge for many reasons. However storage growth has been one I see often as causing issues. From full logs to filled disks, it seems that we can struggle with dynamic workloads where we have no control over who can add data to systems.

Many DBAs have some sort of alert set on data files or disks, but even with those alerts, an unexpected load or runaway query could still fill a disk. I know I’ve been called back into the office because some business person decided to load an unexpected amount of data. In fact, more than a few times someone thought their load didn’t work for some reason and repeated loaded a large amount of data, filling a disk or log file.

Recently, I had a customer ask about tracking table sizes daily in their databases. They were looking to watch table growth. Another person dismissed this as not valuable, which was interesting to me. I’ve done this in the past, and I’ve found it valuable. No knowing the size every day, but having an idea of the growth factor. I didn’t keep this data long, usually a week rolling older data off as I added more. That was enough for me to trend how quickly a table was growing.

This also allowed me to set an alert if there was unusual growth for a table, and often track down a potential issue quickly. Either I’d realize our workload changed and tables were growing faster, or I could debug a sudden growth issue down to some sort of data load. Often I could catch an issue before I received an alert (or phone call).

I wonder how many of you track table sizes and if you find it beneficial. Is this something that helps you better understand your system or is the total size of the database good enough.

Or maybe you have so much storage allocated you don’t worry about space. Lucky you.

Steve Jones

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

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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