State of the Database Landscape Survey 2023

Professional Development
As data professionals, of any stripe, we should, as much as we can, where we can, base our decisions on data. After all, in theory anyway, we're the experts at making that possible for others. We should lead the way on it. However, how do you know how others are implementing, oh, I don't know, cloud migrations, or multi-platform database management? What kind of success are they having? Where are they facing challenges? Well, one mechanism for answering these questions this is to simply ask. State of the Database Landscape Survey 2023 Yep. That's exactly what we're doing. We're asking you, and your peers, how you're doing. More, we're asking you how you're doing it. Please, help us out. Follow this link and fill out your information. Whether you're literally…
Read More

20 Minute Sessions: A Couple of Thoughts

Professional Development
At the most recent SQL Bits, I gave two 20 minute sessions. I also gave one last year. There is a little bit of controversy around these (nothing real, come on), and I'd like to take a moment to record a few thoughts. Let me say this up front, and then we'll go from there:I'm not a fan. 20 Minute Sessions Can Be Challenging Most conferences have a 60 minute session as the default. Quite a few have 75 minutes too. The standard session at Bits is the 50 minute session (which, can be mildly uncomfortable when you're used to 60, but is honestly no big deal). So what are the 20 minute sessions for? You'll also see a lot of shorter sessions, usually 5-10 minutes, sometimes called lightning talks.…
Read More

Presenting On Basics Is Difficult

Professional Development
Over the last year, at work and after work, I've been teaching myself a lot of brand new technologies. As such, I'm reliant on others to have put together coherent, approachable, documentation, classes and videos. Let me tell you up front, that is not always the case. There are a lot of videos out there, that have the information you need, but it's presented so poorly that it's almost incomprehensible. Let's talk about it. Mea Culpa Please let me start with the full knowledge that I've frequently failed in this myself while presenting. I'm not talking to you now from the top of the mountain. I'm absolutely talking to you as a peer who is suffering along side you. I've spent my entire tech career teaching others (more than 30…
Read More

Getting Help Online

Professional Development
I spend a lot of time in the forums on various web sites, trying to assist people with getting help online. It's shocking how hard they make it. Let's talk about it, just a little. Tell Me the Real Problem One thing you see a lot is that people, for whatever reason, will absolutely not simply state what the actual problem is. You'll get stuff like "What SQL Server internal behavior prevents dynamically naming local variables?" And you're left scratching your head, why on earth would someone want to dynamically name local variables? Only to find out, after lots of comment & discussion, they thought that you needed to rename variables when changing values. When you get stuck, take a moment to describe the problem, but aim for the root…
Read More

Look Into Chocolatey

Professional Development
Just a suggestion, but I'd say you should look into Chocolatey. Let me explain why. Sabbatical For those who don't know I was recently on a six-week sabbatical from work (thank you Redgate) and I tacked a week of vacation to that. While I did clean out email during that time (can you imagine coming back to seven weeks worth... <shudder>), I didn't do software updates of any kind. In the meantime, Docker was updated. VSCode, SSMS, a whole slew of others. Not to mention, the busy little beavers at Redgate released umpty-million updates. My machine needed love, so I typed the following: choco upgrade all -y Then I went to get some coffee. Why? Because all that software that was out of date, it was getting updated, automatically by…
Read More

Sabbatical!

Professional Development
Redgate Software has a policy wherein every 5 years, employees receive a 6-week paid sabbatical. Well, I'm up to year 11 (I skipped a year my first time), so it's that time for me. First, thank you Redgate. I've loved working for you for 11 years. I'm looking forward to just as many more. Second, I've already written and scheduled a bunch of blog posts, so you'll still be seeing activity here. Third, I'm supposed to completely disconnect, but I won't. I'll be checking email, posts & messages, but I'll be slow on the response. Apologies if I don't get back to you quickly. See you in 7 weeks (I tacked on some vacation time. HA!).
Read More

Goodbye to Good Morning!

Professional Development
For two years and three months, since April 2020, I've posted a tweet saying "Good Morning!" on every workday. I think I missed one. I was late for a couple. The messages were meant to be helpful. I used the word kind a lot. A lot. I tried to avoid lectures, and still did it sometimes. I tried to always be uplifting and positive, yet was still a downer occasionally. I've received many thanks for the tweets, in public and private. I cherish every one. Thank you! I also received quite a few "how dare you" and "you're not qualified" messages. For those, my answers are simple. I dare fine. You're right, I'm not qualified, doing it anyway. However, I'm drawing all that to a close. See, I'm going on…
Read More

Two Years of “Good Morning!”

Professional Development
Two years ago at the start of the pandemic, I wasn't feeling great about things. I saw that quite a few others weren't all that thrilled about how things were going either. So, to help my own mood, and to try to be a service to others, I started tweeting a little "Good Morning!" post every work day. I filled them with happy thoughts, tips I'd read on handling depression, suggestions I learned on health, anything that would help people, just a teeny amount, at the start of the day. Now, I'm not some licensed therapist or anything like that. I just wanted to do something to help others where I know I needed help. That's it. Two years later and I've written a bunch of tweets. Based on feedback…
Read More

PASS Data Community Summit 2021: I’m Excited!

Professional Development
I sincerely hope this isn't the first time you're hearing about the Pass Data Community Summit that's coming up in just a few weeks on November 8-12, 2021. But, just in case you haven't heard, let me tell you about a few things I'm personally excited about. Networking! There is a ton of stuff getting worked on to make this an interactive event. Even though this will be an online event (and a free one), we're doing everything we can think of to get you a community experience. We're providing mechanisms for all sorts of different networking. You'll be able to give a few virtual hugs to those you've missed. Learning! Check out the list of sessions. Everything from straight up, good, old fashioned query tuning in SQL Server, to…
Read More

A Year of “Good Morning!”

Professional Development
Just a little over a year ago, I started posting a "Good Morning!" tweet on Twitter every work day. I've kept it up for over a year and I'd like to take a moment to discuss it. Why did I do it? How has it gone? What are the plans for the future? Why "Good Morning!"? I remember deciding to start doing this. We were barely two weeks into the initial lockdown here in Massachusetts. I was in the dumps. Everyone looked to be in the dumps. My very first tweet, not officially part of the timeline, but let's be honest with you all, was a complaint: So glad my son decided to play videos really loud while getting ready for work. I didn't want to sleep at all. GOOD…
Read More