Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Daily Coping 7 Jun 2022

    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 take a few minutes to chat, email, or talk with someone you haven’t contacted in awhile.

    It’s always good to spend time with someone that you care about and miss, but don’t see often. For me, that’s a lot of people that I encounter in my travels for work.

    I was traveling to SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022 recently. I flew from Denver to Houston and had about a 60 minute layover before my next flight. I posted a picture and then got a chat message back almost immediately. Ben Weissman, who lives in Germany, was actually flying to Houston at that time. He noted he had a bit of time and we arranged to meet in the airport and chat for a few minutes. Totally worth the time it took for me to make the meeting.

    20220513_105757

    As part of the same trip I went to Cambridge to the Redgate office. We have a chef that does lunch for people in the office. I’ve known him for years, and when I went for a late lunch with no one in line behind me, I took a few minutes to chat with him and catch up.

    Take time to keep in touch

  • Getting Neo4J Running in Docker on Windows

    I was doing a little experimenting with graph databases. My goal was to run Neo4j in a docker container, but it wasn’t quite as simple as I expected. I started with a How-To, but it wasn’t enough. This post covers a few things I did to get this working.

    In looking at the How-To, I got this command:

    docker run \
         --name testneo4j \
         -p7474:7474 -p7687:7687 \
         -d \
         -v $HOME/neo4j/data:/data \
         -v $HOME/neo4j/logs:/logs \
         -v $HOME/neo4j/import:/var/lib/neo4j/import \
         -v $HOME/neo4j/plugins:/plugins \
         --env NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/test \
         neo4j:latest

    That’s the basic command I was looking for to run. I tried it, but this doesn’t paste well into a Windows shell. I put the entire thing in a .CMD file to run, making it one long line in the file.

    However, when I ran it, I got this:

    2022-05-09 18_56_46-cmd

    What’s wrong? Well, $Home is a Linux concept, and it’s looking to map some volumes to folders. The Windows equivalent is %HOMEPATH%. If I check that variable, I see it’s /Users/Steve on my machine.

    2022-05-09 18_57_47-cmd

    I created the folders needed for the four volumes, as you can see here:

    2022-05-09 18_58_13-neo4j

    I tried again, but this didn’t work. I realized, I needed to edit $HOME to %HOMEPATH%. I should have done that immediately.

    The next attempt has me seeing this:

    2022-05-09 18_59_16-cmd

    Of course that isn’t the right path. I added a “C:” to each volume and things worked.

    2022-05-09 19_00_49-cmd

    The final command (For me): 

    docker run --name testneo4j -p7474:7474 -p7687:7687 -d -v c:%HOMEPATH%\neo4j\data:/data -v c:%HOMEPATH%\neo4j\logs:/logs -v c:%HOMEPATH%\neo4j\import:/var/lib/neo4j/import -v c:%HOMEPATH%\neo4j\plugins:/plugins --env NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/test     neo4j:latest

    If you want to play with Neo4j and don’t want to install things, you can try this. Of course, you still need a query method from an app or a client tool.

  • Daily Coping 6 Jun 2022

    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 find three reasons to be hopeful about the rest of the year.

    I am more hopeful every month. Early this year and Jan and Feb I was a little sad and worried about the rest of this year. Now I feel more hopeful. Here are a few reasons.

    SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022 was a fun, mostly normal event. Over 200 people, lots of sponsors, and many happy people that enjoyed the event. A few other organizers are excited and there are some other SQL Saturday events scheduled (or coming) for 2022. That makes me happy and hopeful.

    Travel is getting easier and smoother. I’ve traveled quite a bit in 2021 and planning on more in 2022. I think that seeing more options, more capacity, and more people make me more hopeful for the world.

    Lastly, we had a good season coaching kids. A number of them asked if we would spent 2022-2023 with them. My wife and I put out a request to 11 kids to see if they’d want to be on a team with them. 9 responded yes, so I’m excited for next season.

  • Goal Progress for May 2022

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

    A few days late, and I missed April, but I’m trying to get back on track for May.

    It’s been a hectic travel time the last couple months. April was mostly my second job as a coach and May was mostly work. June is a mix, and the in and out of a routine can be a challenge. I made a little progress, but the large amount of things I’m doing impact my ability to make much progress outside of work.

    Most of the things that I have done were in conjunction with things related to work. The limited progress is mostly around the limited opportunities to find a common item with work and goals, but I did manage a touch.

    I’m raising the goal slightly as I made progress despite the schedule.

    Grade: B-

    Here are the goals:

    Work

    • DP-900 – Passed
    • DP-300
      – Stated studying, practice tests around 80% correct, need to schedule
    • Demo with SQL Server – 20% – dev db set up, started on pipeline
    • Demo with PostgreSQL – 20% – Dev db set up
    • Demo with MySQL – 0%
    • Feedback book – 100% – HIGHLY Recommended
    • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – 40%

    Personal

    I made a slight alteration here. I didn’t try to hook up to Google Sheets, but instead pasted in some data and started to try and get this moving.

    • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 0%
    • Create Report – 40%  – I have a report working for some of my metrics.
    • Create Dashboard – 20%  – A basic dashboard up, but need to decide on what to show here.
    • Get people using it – 0%

    Community

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
      – 40%
      • CO Springs event set up
      • Meeting with Denver SQL about an event
    • Speak at 3 other user groups outside of Colorado – 66%
      • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
      • Spoke at Toronto SSUG
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
      • 6 scheduled or run in , 2 about to go live,  2-3 more close
    • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days
      • Not happy about this. Now with a surgery, this will be delayed for a few months.