Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

Daily Coping 14 Aug 2020
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.

Today’s tip is to ask someone how they feel and really listen to their reply.

I know far too many people that don’t listen in conversations. They may have an idea of what you said, but really they want to do one of two things:
- get away and not talk
- get back to talking about what they want to speak to
I’ve been guilty of both of these, but I try to be better, and I try to listen to others more.

As a result, I tried this recently. My wife and I had dinner with a friend, and rather than impose my thoughts, I listened more. I did ask them about how they feel about the pandemic, and their coping, since their situation is much different than mine.

I didn’t give advice, or evaluate what they said, I listened and supported them, expressing sympathy for challenges, acknowledging things were hard, and enjoying the bright spots they pointed out.
August 14, 2020
Daily Coping 13 Aug 2020

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.

Today’s tip is to treat everyone you interact with as though they are a friend.

This tip is a part of my world and life. I try hard to greet people warmly and treat them well. Whether it’s the cashier at the gas station, the produce person restocking the grocery, someone walking their dog in a park, and certainly people I meet at events.

It’s easy to get annoyed by life, or to retreat. It’s easy to be wary of others. It’s easy to assume things about another person based on their appearance. We all do it. We all have internal voices that pre-judge people and situations.

We sometimes have good reasons to do so. However, no matter what you worry, try to treat someone you interact with as a friend first. Greet them, talk with interest, listen, and enjoy their company.

You can always walk away. That’s a skill worth developing as well.

August 13, 2020
SQL Clone Works with FILESTREAM
SQL Clone is an amazing product that virtualizes your data, allowing multiple instances to share a read only image, but still produce writeable databases that look normal to SQL Server. It’s similar to how a container appears to a user, but this uses real SQL Server instances.

I need to write up a more detailed walkthrough of this, but someone asked the question today about SQL Clone and FILESTREAM and I didn’t see a proper article on the Redgate site, so I decided to run a test and post this.

Setting up FILESTREAM

We have some articles at SQLServerCentral on FILESTREAM, but essentially this feature uses a folder on your instance file system to store blog files, instead of putting them in the database. To enable this, you need to do it in Configuration Manager

and in SSMS

You do need to restart the database engine, but then you can create a database that includes a FILESTREAM filegroup.
```
CREATE DATABASE [FSTest]
 CONTAINMENT = NONE
 ON  PRIMARY 
( NAME = N'FSTest', FILENAME = N'D:\SQLServerData\SQL2017\FSTest.mdf' , SIZE = 8192KB , FILEGROWTH = 65536KB ), 
 FILEGROUP [FSFG] CONTAINS FILESTREAM 
( NAME = N'FSData', FILENAME = N'D:\SQLServerData\SQL2017\FSData' )
 LOG ON 
( NAME = N'FSTest_log', FILENAME = N'D:\SQLServerData\SQL2017\FSTest_log.ldf' , SIZE = 8192KB , FILEGROWTH = 65536KB )
GO
```
Once this is done, create a table and load some data.
```
CREATE TABLE Books
(   BookKey     INT              IDENTITY(1, 1)
  , BookTitle   VARCHAR(100)
  , FSGIUD      UNIQUEIDENTIFIER ROWGUIDCOL UNIQUE NOT NULL
        DEFAULT NEWID()
  , BookContent VARBINARY(MAX)   FILESTREAM);
GO
DECLARE @Document AS VARBINARY(MAX)
 
-- Load the image data
SELECT @Document = CAST(bulkcolumn AS VARBINARY(MAX))
      FROM OPENROWSET(
            BULK
            'E:\Documents\Using Local and Hosted Agents for Build with Azure DevOps.docx',
            SINGLE_BLOB ) AS Doc
 INSERT dbo.Books
     (BookTitle, FSGIUD, BookContent)
 VALUES
     ('Using Local and Hosted Agents for Build with Azure DevOps'   -- varchar(100)
    , NEWID() -- uniqueidentifier
    , @Document
     )         
 ;
GO
```
This gives you a database table with some data in SQL Server, in the Books table, and some in this folder, FSData, on your file system.

DO NOT mess with this folder, but the contents here will be included in any backup.

Now, I showed how to make an image and clone in a previous post, which I’ll do from this database.

When I get done, I’ll deploy this to another instance. In this case, I was worried about a folder issue on the same instance, but I’ll test that another day.

Whoops, I need FILESTREAM on the second instance.

I’ll follow the same config steps as above and restart this instance. this time things work.

If I script the table, I see it is a FILESTREAM enabled table.

That’s it for now, but I’ll get a proper article written for the Redgate Hub.
August 12, 2020
Daily Coping 12 Aug 2020
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.

Today’s tip is to send a positive message to someone you can’t be with.

I don’t see my middle son often. The oldest and youngest live at home still, but the middle one lives in another city and rarely comes home. He’s in the last year of university, he’s introverted, and very self sufficient. He wants to live his life, and I’m not a helicopter parent. I trust him to manage his life and handle things.

However, I also want to just let him know I’m thinking of him. He studies Japanese on his own, and I keep trying to brush up, so once or twice a week, I’ll just send him a question. Like:
```
お元気ですか
```
Just a note to let him know I’m thinking of him.
August 12, 2020