Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

Daily Coping 11 May 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 drink an extra glass or two of water today.

Denver is a high desert, so this matters, but really this is something most of us could be better at in our lives. Our bodies could use more water, it refreshes is, cools us, can make us work (drink cold water), and can slow down our other eating and drinking.

I used to drop 4 large water bottles on my desk every morning. Since I’ve started doing some things outside and going to the gym more, I’ve gotten out of the habit. This tip was a good reminder to me, and I drank and extra bottle, trying to get back to my gallon-a-day habit.

May 11, 2021
T-SQL Tuesday #138–Technology Changes

This month the topic for T-SQL Tuesday comes from Andy Leonard, whom I reached out to be a host. I was running low on hosts last year, and Andy agreed to help me out. I had expected something on ETL, but I was surprised with this one.

Andy asks us about managing technology change. He does mention how SSIS changed as he was writing a book, meaning that things he’d learned while a project was underway no longer applied. That’s a scary place to be, and it’s one I’ve rarely experienced.

Avoiding Shifts

One reason I don’t like to test beta software, especially from Microsoft, is that the APIs, the functionality, the effects can change. I prefer to have something fairly well settled before I spend time on it.

I took a chance early on with Windows 7, when they had the “skydrive”, which become OneDrive. I could sync files from my desktop to laptop, and for someone that travels a lot, this was fantastic. It worked through the beta and until a few years later. At some point it stopped and I moved to Dropbox. I still use DropBox, even though this was reborn as OneDrive and enhanced to allow me to have personal and business “OneDrive” running at the same time.

Moving on from Immature Software

I don’t like to abandon software, and sometimes I can’t. For me, I’ve been involved with some of the products that Redgate Software has built. I often see things early and test them to give feedback to developers. This means I sometimes see things before they work well, or even before the development teams might know what they want to build.

This has happened a few times, but a couple years ago we were evolving one of our products to expand capabilities for customers. I thought we were moving in a good direction and spend quite a bit of time evaluating how the software worked. I was even starting to incorporate this into some automation pipelines and build demos, when the product direction shifted.

A fair amount of code I’d written had to be abandoned. I felt as though I’d wasted some time, but as I stopped to think, I realized that I’d been learning and growing in this area. I’d understood how things worked, and while I had to write new code, I was able to write it quicker because I understand the general problem space already. Even though I had to expend other effort, I’m not sure my early work was wasted.

Fortunately, I didn’t have deadlines for a deliverable. If I did, I might have been more upset. If it happened in the future, while needing to work more to get things done might annoy me, I’d likely understand that the growth and knowledge mean I don’t have to double my investment, and likely I’d be better positioned to write better code the second time around.

May 11, 2021
Basic XML Queries–#SQLNewBlogger
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

I ran across a question recently on querying an XML document. While I think XML is a pain and it’s not the future, there is a lot of it out there that you might need to deal with in a database. Legacy stuff will be there for awhile.

In any case, someone was struggling with this code.
```
DECLARE @x XML = 

'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <PartyID>
     <PartyID>147</PartyID>
     <CampaignID>
       <CampaignID>1</CampaignID>
       <Arc>A</Arc>
       <TicPosition>2</TicPosition>
     </CampaignID>
     <CampaignID>
       <CampaignID>1</CampaignID>
       <Arc>A</Arc>
       <TicPosition>13</TicPosition>
     </CampaignID>
   </PartyID>'
SELECT

Data.Col.value('(./PartyID)[1]', 'int') As Party_ID,

Data.Col.value('(./CampaignID)[1]' , 'int') As Campaign_ID,

Data.Col.value('(./Arc)[1]', 'varchar(1)') As Arc,

Data.Col.value('(./TicPosition)[1]', 'varchar(10)') As TicPosition

FROM @x.nodes('/PartyID/CampaignID') As Data(Col)
```
The person got results where the Party_ID was NULL. Some of you might get what’s wrong, but it’s a question of understanding your context.

In this case, the FROM clause helps us understand this. When we specify the node() method, we choose a path in the document. The path we pick is PartyID/CampaignID. This puts us here in the document:
```
    <CampaignID>1</CampaignID>
       <Arc>A</Arc>
       <TicPosition>2</TicPosition>
     </CampaignID>
     <CampaignID>
       <CampaignID>1</CampaignID>
       <Arc>A</Arc>
       <TicPosition>13</TicPosition>
     </CampaignID>
```
If we are trying to specify paths on the current position with the period (.), we can only see these values. There is no PartyID here.

However, similar to a folder navigation from the command line, if I use two periods (..), I move up one level. From here, I can get the PartyID. Therefore, my code is:

SQLNewBlogger

As soon as I saw this question, I knew the issue. It was a good reminder to me to watch the path, which is why I thought this was a good thing to post about. It cements this in my memory.

In 10 minutes, I did this, just as you could.
May 10, 2021
Daily Coping 10 May 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 listen to your body and be grateful for what it can do.

I wasn’t great at listening to myself, physically or mentally, as a younger man. I pushed hard, I bulldozed through issues. I just moved on, ignoring issues.

That worked OK as a younger person, but as an older man, that causes issues. While I do think movement helps get through some minor issues, I do need adjustments. A few examples recently.

My ankle, the right one, is getting worse as I get older. I complained enough that my wife bought me a compression sleeve that I’ve carried in my laptop bag. My sister-in-law got me another one when I stopped using the laptop bag and forgot the brace on a trip. I put that one in my travel bag, which I do use for trips of all sorts.

I was in Philadelphia a little over a month ago coaching. Our hotel was on the river and it was about a mile and a half uphill walk to the convention center. I wore my brace because I needed it. Walking up there to register was a little painful. My ankle ached. My wife noticed and got us an Uber on the way back, which I appreciated and accepted. Not something I’d have done years ago.

I did wear the brace while coaching, which helped while standing on that hard cement floor. I also walked a bit more than I wanted, because my wife likes walking, but listened to my ankle and went slower.

When we returned, I went back to yoga class, and a few times the ankle was sore and not too stable. Rather than do a one-legged mountain, I kick-standed my left foot against the right, allowing some work, but not too much.

I appreciate what I can do, but I am listening more to my body.

May 10, 2021