TSQL Tuesday
The second Tuesday of the month comes to us a little early this month. That means it is time again for another group blog party called TSQLTuesday. This party that was started by Adam Machanic has now been going for long enough that changes have happened (such as Steve Jones (b | t) managing it now). For a nice long read, you can find a nice roundup of all TSQLTuesdays over here.
The Why?
This month, Todd Kleinhans (b | t) invites us to share something personal about ourselves. Well sort of. The invitation to each of us is to share a little about databases that we use in our personal lives or that we have created in our personal lives to help us in some fashion or another.
I think this is a really cool idea. Data and databases are very integrated into my life. The integration is enough that it would be difficult to un-blur the line where personal life and professional life begins when talking about data and databases.
Take a moment and reflect on the importance of data and databases within your life. At a minimum, you have taken the approach that data is your profession of choice and hopefully it is a career for you and not just a job.
If you have taken it down the career path, then you probably study your craft in your personal time to try and make yourself better at your trade-craft. Often times, if you are like me, these studies lead to trial and error, experiments, and possibly rabbit holes. If data is just a J-O-B, it is quite likely none of this will apply to you. Those are the types that fall into a category Steve Jones wrote about recently, and I would urge you to change that sooner rather than later. (Side note, I read that article as if it applied to me directly because I really do need to learn and practice more about my craft too!)
Personal Databases
Over the years, I have had sooo many personal databases that I have created for one reason or another. Some still need to be finished. Here are some examples of what I use a database for in my personal life.
Finances: A simple little database to track (sort of like a checkbook yes) credits and debits. More importantly, it tracked bills and due dates with dollar amounts for each bill. This is useful both for reminders for bills but also to see if there are any noteworthy trends with spending or increased costs. Now, many banking (and credit card) sites offer the same types of services – so long as the spending is done with their card.
Exercise: Back in the day, I tracked all of my activities in a database. I would track the duration, activity type, effort level and various biometric measures after each activity. Once again, this is something that is now tracked by so many different apps and databases that it seems counter productive to maintain my own system in favor of something that works more easily on a wearable device.
I have also previously done databases to inventory books, movies, track personal studies and link thoughts about studies from day to day, or even track routine chores (calendar reminders don’t offer much for tracking details). The short of it is, a database can be created to manage so many things as a part of everyday personal life.
Wrapping it Up
If you can use a database to create automation routines to help sustain your work life, you can certainly do the same to sustain your personal life. Databases are an essential piece of both my personal and professional life. Not only do I use them to create automation (such as this or this) for things, but I stand databases up to test numerous things from corruption to recovery to performance tuning to help improve my personal abilities and craft in the realm of data.