Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Daily Coping 20 Apr 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 get active singing today (even if you can’t sing).

    I can’t sing. My wife says I’m not too bad if I’m not trying to hit the notes, but I don’t think that’s an endorsement.

    Fortunately, I am often in the car alone running errands. I have a few playlists, but here are the ones I’ll sing out loud today:

  • Daily Coping 19 Apr 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 relax your body and mind with yoga, tai chi, or meditation.

    I love yoga, and I tell the kids I coach that I wish I’d gotten into it at 20 years old. I haven’t done tai chi, though I would like to try. I struggle with meditation, but I have friends that love it.

    I try to practice yoga 3-4 times a week, most of the time in a group class. I see beginners in there all the time, and I applaud them. I can’t recommend it enough. If you don’t want to invest in a class somewhere or you feel embarrassed, try a Yoga with Tim or Yoga with Adrienne class in the privacy of your home.

    For me, I’m heading to the gym for a yoga class.

  • Visualizing SQL

    While I think SQL is interesting, I know some people struggle with the way the language work. Someone at work posted a link to this site: https://animatesql.com/

    I think the idea is this site helps you visualize how a SQL query works. It’s not free form, and I can’t just write any SQL, but you choose a keyword and then a sample query is shown. If you press Visualize, it walks through how this query is processed.

    Below, I choose the WHERE keyword and then pressed visualize. The sample query had a NOT before the parenthesis, which I removed.

    2022-03-30 09_13_50-Animate SQL

    The animation then works through each row, showing whether it fits the criteria. Here I have captured what things look like in the middle:

    sqlviz

    Eventually this goes through the process again with the SELECT part of the query and pulls results from the yellow rows, according to the columns listed in the query.

    If you try the different keywords, you see different visuals and queries. You can modify them slightly, and the comments in the query window let you know what you change. The modifications are small, but they do let you see how well things work in different ways, such as if you change the value or remove a logical operator, as I did.

    As I tried a few different items, it made sense to me, but I wonder if it would for someone that was learning. I think that this ought to have some explanation of what is happening (i.e. comparing the name and rating in each row to be null or not, and matching the criteria). For the GROUP BY, I really think someone might not understand what they are seeing without some explanation.

    I also think the lack of NULL in the data, and showing a blank, is highly misleading as well.

    This looks like something a developer built, and I think it is creative and helpful, but like many 1.0 things, this needs some evolution and improvement.

  • Daily Coping 18 Apr 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 set yourself an exercise goal or sign up for an activity challenge.

    I use Garmin Connect with my Forerunner watch to track my activity. I think I’ve been doing well this year overall. Here are the activities I’ve done this year, as of last week:

    2022-04-11 16_22_55-Garmin Connect

    I tend to do my thing, but with this tip, I decided to join a challenge. There are some available, and I decided on this one:

    Screenshot_20220411-162105_Connect

    With a bum ankle, I didn’t want to do any walking challenges. For April, the challenge is cycling, which is something I do 2-3 times a week, either as a warmup for lifting or just to burn calories. I need to go 675km before June 30.

    For April, I have a few indoor cycling activities, but I need to start doing more and adding some distances. I tend to cycle inside for now, especially as my ankle acts up. I can go slower without the pressure of guessing how far away to ride based on how I feel. I tend to go 5-7 mi before lifting and 12-15 on ride days, which gets me into the 8-12km range or 19-24km. If I say I’ll often go 12km, I need 56 days of riding. That’s going to be tough as I bet I lose 3 weeks for surgery.

    I’ll see what I do, and try to post some updates. My aim here is to work harder in April and early May, especially as I’ll be on the road a bit and riding a bike is easy in a hotel. I don’t know when I’ll be able to ride more in June with rehab, but I’m hoping I can get some km in.