Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Daily Coping 2 Sep 2021

    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 a way to pay it forward.

    Paying it forward is a way of doing something for others that you’d want someone to do for you. You are hoping to inspire someone else to do something for others, not for you.

    I’ve had a few people do this for me, sometimes buying me something or doing some favor without this being a trade. Without me doing something for them. They were looking for me to continue things forward.

    I’m in town regularly, but not often with crowds. I tend to go when there are less people around. Often I get coffee after yoga, but it can be late morning, so rarely is someone behind me in line.

    The other day that wasn’t the case, so I just decided to pay for the person behind me. this was in the drive through, so I told the person taking payment to let them know I was paying it forward, and I hoped they’d do the same.

    No idea if it worked, but it was a small thing. About US$12 to cover their order.

  • Daily Coping 1 Sep 2021

    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 share an article, book, or podcast that helped you.

    Lots of stuff helps me, but I‘ll pick an item that really got me to stop and think for a minute.

    Scott Hanselman interviewed Abel Wang a few months back. I never had the chance to meet Abel in person, but I have watched him present and speak many times over the years. I did host a webinar with him last year and had the chance to sit and talk with him beforehand. I always assumed I’d run into him at some event or at Microsoft and get to shake his hand.

    That won’t happen. Sadly, Abel passed away after a battle with cancer earlier this summer. Re-watching that interview, re-posted the day he passed, was a good reminder to me to not wait for some time to do things I want to do.

    I am trying to tackle parts of chores, not waiting for a big block of time. I’m making small strides in areas I am interested in without putting things off. I’m learning that there are some things I don’t care about, and I shouldn’t spend time there. I’m also starting to travel where I can and enjoy the time that I get with my wife. As limited as it is during the pandemic, I’m trying to just get busy living.

  • Daily Coping 31 Aug 2021

    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 give others the gift of your full attention.

    We have a team meeting every couple weeks. We update each other on things that have changed, but it’s not a heavy concentration meeting. However, I’ve been making it a point to close applications on other screens, put my hands on a cup of coffee or glass of water, and just pay attention to others.

    It’s not always that interesting and it was a struggle at first, but I am working to be more present for the time I spend with others, rather than multitasking in some way.

  • Delaying Code Execution with Waitfor–#SQLNewBlogger

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    One of the rarely used commands for me is the WAITFOR command. This is a command that intentionally introduces a delay in the execution of your code. I sometimes use this when I need to pause code for a brief time, but I never remember how this structure works.

    Hopefully this quick post helps me remember this in the future.

    WAITFOR

    This command does what it says; it waits for something. You have two choices here in what to wait for: a period of time or a specific time. The structure of the command is:

    waitfor <type> <time>

    The type can be either of the keywords TIME or DELAY. I often use DELAY, which is a period of time to wait for. When you use TIME, the execution stops until that specific time of day.

    As an example, if I want to pause code for 5 seconds, I use this:

    WAITFOR DELAY ‘00:00:05’

    If I run this in SSMS or ADS, the query time for this will be 5 seconds. The default is ‘hh:mm’, so remember that if you want seconds, you need to include the hours and minutes.

    For time, the parameter is a datetime format, so enter this as the time you would want to start code execution again.

    Practical Usage

    The main place I used this recently was in this code:

    EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_start_job @job_name = ‘Second Job with Two Errors’, @step_name=’Fourth Step’
    WAITFOR DELAY ’00:00:02′

    I was testing some job tracking, and needed a job that failed. It usually runs in less than a second, but without the delay, sometimes the failure isn’t picked up from the job history table.

    This is the type of place, often in testing or in some dependent process, where I want a delay.

     

    SQLNewBlogger

    This post too my about 10 minutes to write. I couldn’t remember how WAITFOR works, but SQL Prompt helped. As I worked through my testing, I stopped and took 10 minutes to write this up.

    You can do the same thing. Show your example, and how you use it. Be creative and impress someone who might read your blog before they interview you.