Tag: T-SQL Tuesday

After missing the last T-SQL Tuesday, I’m back for the latest invitation from Alex Yates. In this one, Alex asks us to write about something in IT where you changed your mind. Some belief you held, and then decided to go a different way. It’s a good topic, especially as the world has both dramatically changed and also stayed the same in many ways.

A Strong Belief

As a young man, I used to think strongly about lots of technology topics. Many of those have been argued about on the Internet in forums, chat boards, and even at times at events. I had my own thoughts, and often argued my own views.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to hold those strong opinions a little looser. I still have them, but I also know that sometimes things might not be as clear cut as I imagined. I also have learned that my own knowledge is often incomplete, or my application of a technique might be more narrowly focused than I assumed.

I change my mind constantly, but I’ll give you a relatively recent one that has started to move my career.

Containers

I’ve been learning and talking about containers with people for nearly 10 years. It was in 2010 that I met a company using them extensively, and while enamored by the technology, I wasn’t sure how useful it was for me. This company uses Java, where versioning is an issue. In .NET, it’s less of a problem.

When Microsoft started to work towards containers in the 2015 timeframe, I had a change to take part in early discussions with program managers. These were casual, but I wasn’t convinced that this would really make a difference in SQL Server. I kept an open mind, but most of their arguments and thoughts felt self serving for Microsoft’s business rather than good technical arguments.

That changed sometime late last year. The work that’s been done on SQL Sever 2017 and 2019 to allow upgrades/downgrades, the scale out capabilities coming in 2019 (and with Hyperscale) and the possibilities of Kubernetes (or some other orchestration tech), make me rethink containers.

Containers are the future of SQL Server. I’d bet on it, though it’s going to be 5 or 10 years for most of us to get there. However, I’m spending more time learning and working with them because I think this is where databases will move.

I wouldn’t have said that two years ago, but my mind has changed.

The summary from my fourth T-SQL Tuesday hosting for #117. This time I was scrambling a bit, but since I’ve worked with a few customers in the last year that use MOT tables, I thought this might be a good topic.

Either everyone is on vacation or not many people think about them. Or maybe they aren’t interesting. In any case, here’s the roundup.

Rob Farley has a win with user defined table types that are used in MOT objects. Never knew this was a possibility. Extra points for mentioning source control and DevOps.

Kevin Chant notes he studied them for his MCSE, but hasn’t really found them useful. Mostly because of older versions and restrictions on the feature. Kevin likens this to filtered indexes, which are a nice feature, but rarely used.

Jess Pomfret writes about some of the limitations for a feature she hasn’t used. A good summary of what they are, but don’t let her turn you off of the feature. It has its place.

Ken Fisher has a few notes about why he hasn’t used them. Not enough memory in his systems, older versions, and he doesn’t write the code. Apparently I’ve given him some things to think about and play with, and I’m sure I’ll see more blogs from him soon.

Johan Ludvig Brattås explains how he improved performance with a MOT table.