Voice of the DBA

Tag: Friday Poll

  • Memories of 2013

    the holiday season and are not too busy at work.  I hope most of you had a great year in 2013, and with that in mind, I wanted to ask you a simple question:

    What’s your best SQL Server memory of 2013?

    Maybe it was when you solved a problem or completed a project successfully. Maybe it was an event that you enjoyed, like a SQL Saturday or conference? Maybe it was a talk or a conversation you had with another SQL Server professional. Perhaps it was some social event involving SQL Server.

    It could be something you laughed at, a situation that taught you something, or an inspirational moment. Share it with us today, and remember what you enjoy about working in this field.

    I hope you had multiple great memories in 2013 and will make more in 2014. Happy Holidays.

    Steve Jones

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    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

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  • Checking Up on Developers

    This editorial was originally published on May 8, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.

    The other day I was reading Brad McGeHee’s post on duplicate indexes, and it struck a chord with me. That same issue is one I’ve seen many times with in house applications. Developers don’t understand indexing, they create one clustered index (CI) as the PK, and then they create the same index as a nonclustered (NCI) one. Either they don’t realize that the PK is an index, or they are ignorant of the differences between a CI and an NCI.

    What’s worse is that I see it in third party applications as well. If you’re selling a product, I think you ought to know how to tune it for a database. If you don’t, I’d like to see some recourse for clients. Maybe some common settlement in a lawsuit. A few of those and I bet you’d have more DBAs hired by software firms.

    Or a little more training for developers.

    For this Friday’s poll, I wanted to pick on developers a little. I like developers, I appreciate the work they do creating some great applications I use, but I also think they make some silly database mistakes. So this week:

    What are common mistakes developers make in SQL Server?

    Indexing is one area, but what other things do you see a lot from developers? I’m thinking a good list of mistakes here might be a nice checklist to go over with developers as they complete an application. It could be in code reviews, QA, pre-purchase requirements, RFPs, any number of places.

    I’ll add one more indexing issue that I’ve seen often in third party applications. Too often I’ve seen developers create a separate index on every single field in a table. For all tables! I realize that indexes improve query performance, but it does create an issue with inserts/updates, and space. Space isn’t an issue as much as it was in the past, but as data sizes get larger, I would not be surprised to see this becoming a problem in some applications. More indexes also impact backup time and size.

    Give us a response this Friday of the common mistakes that you see developers making, and that you wish they’d learn to avoid.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are available atsqlservercentral.mevio.com. Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    You can also follow Steve Jones on Twitter:

    Overall RSS Feed:  or now on iTunes! 

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

  • What Do You Want to Learn?

    This is a busy time of year for me. Between September and October, I’ve attended 11 events in 7 cities and given 23 talks on 8 topics. It’s been a hectic time and I’m looking forward to snow falling in the Colorado mountains and taking some time off to relax and enjoy life away from work.

    It seems that every year I’m working on and delivering 3 or 4 new sessions on a variety of topics. I find the challenge of learning more about a technology or feature of SQL Server to be exciting, and it seems there’s no shortage of new things I’d like to learn. As I watch different presentations, I find myself itching to work with the topic and learn how it might be useful for me. I often end up taking some area of SQL Server that interests me, and I think will interest other, and building a talk.

    However I rarely hear from the rest of the community about the topics they’d like to learn about. This week I’d like you to think about the topics that you wish someone would present at your next user group, SQL Saturday, or conference:

    What do you want to learn?

    Let me know this week. I don’t know that I’ll tackle many of the ideas, but I’m sure there are speakers out there that will examine your opinions and consider building a presentation that might be in demand.

    Steve Jones

    Video and Audio versions

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
    Steve Jones Windows Media Video ( 13.4MB) feed

    MP4 iPod Video ( 15.7MB) feed

    MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB) feed

    Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

    To submit an article, rant or editorial,
    log in to the Contribution Center

  • The T-SQL Paradigm

    This editorial was originally published on Mar 21, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.

    I ran across this post ranting about T-SQL. It’s got going pretty quickly with some less that professional responses. It’s cleaned itself up a bit, but it got me thinking for this Friday.

    My first programming was done in BASIC. From there I played with a little assembler before going on to Pascal and C in high school. The came LISP, APL, Fortran, more assembler, C++, and a little ADA in college. My professional career had me programming in Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, FoxPro, C, VB, and finally SQL with minor dabbling in HTML, XML, ASP, and some .NET.

    I think I’ve had a decent amount of programming experience in my life. In that time, I’ve found that most programming languages to work fine, and while I’ve enjoyed some more than others, I haven’t thought that any “sucked.” I wouldn’t want to write most modern apps in APL, but I don’t much think there’s any thing wrong with picking VB.NET v Java v C#. So for this Friday’s poll:

    Is T-SQL really a strange paradigm?

    Or SQL in general? Is it really messed up? Would the structures used by LINQ make more sense to anyone? Hardcore developers seem to like a different structure, but is it because it seems more natural to them? Or is SQL really such a strange beast.

    Many people seem to have trouble with SQL. Just read the forums here at SQLServerCentral to see all the issues that come when people try to query the database. But is it just hard to learn or is there a better way to build a query language?

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    Everyday Jones

    The podcast feeds are available atsqlservercentral.mevio.com. Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted, and you can get feeds from there.

    You can also follow Steve Jones on Twitter:

    Overall RSS Feed:  or now on iTunes! 

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

    I really appreciate and value feedback on the podcasts. Let us know what you like, don’t like, or even send in ideas for the show. If you’d like to comment, post something here. The boss will be sure to read it.