Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • T-SQL Tuesday #157–The End of Year

    tsqltuesdayIt’s that time of the month, and I’m late. I’ve been on holiday for a week, so this is a quick post for T-SQL Tuesday. This month is hosted by Garry Bargsley, and is a fitting topic for the last month of the year.

    Garry asks about end of the year data activities. Most of his examples are administrative, but I’m sure there might be some dev activities as well. I’ve got a few thoughts on each, some of which I’ve done, some of which I wish I’d have done in the past, but recommend now.

    T-SQL Tuesday is a great place to participate in the community and a great way to show your knowledge and skills off as well for potential employees. Write your own posts on a blog, or somewhere like LinkedIn, Medium, or another site. If you want to host, ping me @way0utwest or sjones at sqlservercentral dot com.

    End of Year Administration

    When I’ve been in the Operations side of data, there aren’t a lot of things I do at the end of the year, but I do find the downtime useful for some maintenance and cleanup. Usually we are doing well reactive stuff as business slows down, so I spend time on things that I’ve wanted to do all year, but haven’t had time to tackle.

    The things I try to do:

    • Index cleanup – look for dups, unused, etc.
    • archive/delete data or tables – I try to clean data where possible. Less always makes things faster
    • Chronic issues – Think about how I can solve something and prevent future problems
    • Space planning – look over trends and be sure we’re ready for next year.
    • Security – remove old accounts (or disable) as much as possible.

    End of Year Development

    Development tasks tend to be more tightly specified, and there often isn’t a good end of year list. However, similar to administration, one thing I have tried to do when times are slow is tackle things I’d want to change, but never have time. End of year is like this, as are some times after deployments.

    Apart from code I might want to refactor or change, the big things I might look at during the end of year are:

    • Branch cleanup – easy to have some of these hanging around.
    • Pipelines – Use time to improve these, or ensure that they are noisy. Either change something, reduce tests, or try to avoid any unnecessary things causing the pipeline to go red.
    • Learning – covered below.

    Bonus – End of Year Career

    This isn’t specifically for SQL Server, but it could be. This is a good time of year to stop and try to assess how things went. It’s also good to look forward, and use slower times to make the future better. A few recommendations:

    • Always have a list of things to read/learn/practice. Use slow times to work on something. If nothing else, tackle the Advent of Code.
    • Assess your career – is this the place for you? The job, the employer, the field? Think about what things excite you and what don’t, what make days drag, or go by quickly.
    • Plan for the future – Make a few career goals. I’ve done this for a few years, and it helps me continue to learn and grow.

  • Daily Coping 13 Dec 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to contact someone you can’t be with to see how they are.

    Maybe the one thing the pandemic did for me is make me think about other people more. More people and more often.

    I’ve been randomly contacting people for a few years. Often people I’d expect to see at some point during the year, but knowing I wouldn’t. It’s been good to chat and share a few messages.

    A couple weeks ago I found some old pictures from the past of various people. I sent them over in a message to say hi, remember a time we were together and check in on how they were doing. It was a fun few minutes out of my day.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.

  • Daily Coping 12 Dec 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to look at life through someone else’s eyes and see their perspective.

    I have my own views, beliefs, and thoughts about the world. However, I often do try and empathize and view things from others’ perspectives. I think that has been one of my strengths over the years, in that I don’t just consider my view.

    As an example, since it’s on my mind. While working with a customer recently, we were discussing the way in which they use our Flyway Desktop product. For them, then use nomenclature and a workflow that isn’t always what our developers think about. They also have a chaotic environment where work isn’t always completed in order. Or there are emergencies that need to be addressed.

    I’ve been in those situations, so I stop and imagine past situations, pressures from management, and more. I’ve used that view when I go back to our product developers and discuss the ways in which we want to ensure flexibility for our customers, and allow them to deal with complex situations.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.

  • What Do I Do to Relax?

    I’ve republished an editorial today from another author, called What do you do to relax after work?

    I’m thinking about that a few weeks ahead, because I needed to schedule things. I’m on vacation now, hopefully enjoying Lisbon, Portugal with my wife. However, I thought this was a great question, so I decided to write something.

    First, I’m not great at relaxing. I enjoy things, but I like to keep busy. Outside of work, I try to do some traveling with my wife when we can arrange things. Before the pandemic, we wanted to visit a new country together each year. We did that for a few years, before getting stuck at home. This year we visited Germany, Italy, and now Portugal together. We’d each been to the former two separately, but not together. This trip is new for both of us.

    I coach volleyball with my wife as well. Really a second job, and a busy one for about half the year, but it’s a lot of fun for me and I do find it relaxing once in awhile, but I’m a type-A, charged person, so being busy and working on the problem of managing a team is fun.

    I go to the gym a lot, I’m often fixing things around the ranch, and I practice guitar. Those can be relaxing, but not always.

    Maybe the most relaxing thing is to read. I usually get close to 100 books a year, often sneaking in a few minutes here and there are I go through life and I have downtime. With the Kindle app, I always have books with me and I enjoy escaping life with a great book.