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Daily Coping Tip

Share an inspiring idea with a loved one or colleague

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

Your Technology Budget

This editorial was originally published on 21 Oct 2016. It is being re-run as Steve is on holiday.

After I wrote about a home lab recently, someone was curious about the amount of money that others invest in their technology lab, habit, or hobby. I thought that was fairly interesting, so I decided to ask others to get an idea of what amounts people spend and even on what.

How much do you spend on technology in a year?

Let's skip cell phone and Internet service bills, but if you buy cell phones, tablets, computers, Kindles, or other gadgets, let us know. I'd be curious about your spending on your career, which might be travel and events, training, books, etc. versus the spending on technology for fun.

For me the amounts vary dramatically. The vast majority of my spending on technology is for replacement pieces and parts. I will buy hard drives or monitors or memory, but rarely anything more fun in most years. I don't spend too much on learning as I get a Pluralsight subscription, and of course, I read SQLServerCentral. I rarely take training, but my generous employer usually covers that. In fact, most years, my total expense for technology is likely a few hundred dollars at the outside.

I have purchased a few Kindle devices for reading, and I've gotten cases and batteries for my cell phones. I do go through keyboards and mice every year or two, sot hose are expenses, but rarely anything more interesting. I did buy a Pebble watch a few years ago. This year was an exception as I spent a bit to rebuild a desktop that has been aging. I didn't get everything I wanted, but I substantially improved the speed, which was the important thing. I'll also likely add in a new tablet next year to replace my aging iPad Mini (non Retina) to help with coaching volleyball. I'd like a drone for some fun camera work with kids and sports, but I suspect that is not likely to happen in the next year. Those gadgets are expensive for a complete indulgence.

Let us know this week what you're spending money on in technology and if any of those items have proven themselves really valuable, or just lots of fun.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

 
 Featured Contents

Using pw-inspector in Brute Force attack on SQL Server

anilkuhat from SQLServerCentral.com

In this article we're going to explore the world of brute force attacks and pwd-inspector for tests with SQL Server

Azure Data Factory Pipelines: Filling in the gaps

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

Azure Data Factory is a cloud based data orchestration tool that many ETL developers began using instead of SSIS. In this article, Rodney Landrum recalls a Data Factory project where he had to depend on another service, Azure Logic Apps, to fill in for some lacking functionality.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Synapse and federated queries

James Serra from James Serra's Blog

As I was finishing up a demo script for my presentation at the SQL PASS Virtual Summit on 11/13 (details on my session here), I wanted to blog about...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Using Durable Functions in Azure Data Factory - Support for long running processes in Azure Functions

Rayis Imayev from Data Adventures

(2020-Oct-14) Ok, here is my problem: I have an Azure Data Factory (ADF) workflow that includes an Azure Function call to perform external operations and returns output result, which in...

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Copying an Azure SQL Database with PowerShell

I have an Azure SQL Database that I want to copy for a point in time reporting requirement whenever I am asked. Since I need to do this regularly, I'd like to have a script that can do this easily with PowerShell. What is the easiest way to do this?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

 Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Required Environment Variables

When I start a Linux container running SQL Server, what environment variables do I need to provide?

Answer: The ACCEPT_EULA and MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD variables

Explanation: Only the ACCEPT_EULA and MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD variables are required. The MSSQL_PID defaults to developer and the MSSQL_TCP_PORT defaults to 1433. Ref: SQL Server Linux Environment Variables - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-configure-environment-variables?view=sql-server-ver15

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


SQL Server 2017 - Administration
problem for the log reader - Good morning all I have configured a transactional replication where the disstribution server is remote the snapshot   it works well while the subscriber part does not work I had this i have this eroor The concurrent snapshot for publication 'BR_Traceability_OtherR&D_Repl' is not available because it has not been fully generated or the Log Reader Agent […]
SQL Server 2017 - Development
Help with a query - Hello I am fairly new to SQL and tying to work out a code. I created the following query and it wont run. The RevenueCD field is located in the [Epic].[Finance].[UBRevenueCode] table and needs to be joined to the Epic.Finance.HospitalTransaction table. The common field in both tables is [UBRevenueCodeID]. When I tried to join them […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
who's connect using R? - Hi, I look after a server and have users connecting with R who are causing alot of performance issues. Is there an easy way to identifying these people. any help welcome:) Thanks, Eamon  
Drop table -   i need to delete  specific tables "_backup " which took before changes to the table, instead  of deleting the table one by one , any script is there to complete the task at ones.
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Filling Missing Weekend Dates - Hi and first time poster, so please be gentle! I have a table with the following sample data which excludes weekend dates for each employee:- Employee  Date              Hours John Doe  15-OCT-20   7.5 John Doe  16-OCT-20  7.5 John Doe  19-OCT-20  7.5 I would like to have the missing dates inserted […]
Un-queried tables - Hi, Is there a way to know which tables from a DB are NOT being queried? Context : We do a lot of reporting from multiple data sources (SAP, cloud based apps, etc), so from time to time we require the replication of a bunch of tables for our reporting. Our developers prepare the queries […]
Executing another stored proc inside of a stored proc - Hello, Wondering if anyone has any insight into how I can do this:  I have a lengthy stored proc which produces a number of metrics that I may need to use for other calculations.  This stored proc uses OpenQuery to gather the data.  I would like to create another stored procedure that calls this stored […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
Two Tables - Values from one in columns and other in rows w/ data from a third - I'm not sure why my other topic was removed (maybe too much code in the post) so I'll try again. I have two tables. We'll call them Subaccounts and AccountCategories. The Subaccounts table has just that - a list of Subaccounts and their descriptions (1 per row). See the attached file (Subaccounts tab). The AccountCategories […]
Identical indexes - one clustered PK, another non-clustered - I found a pair of two identical indexes, containing  the same column - one is clustered primary key and another is non-clustered non-unique. When I suggested to remove the 2nd index, developers explained that we need both of them. First - for queries with wide column listing in Select clause, and the 2nd one - […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Cannot get SQL Server 2019 MDS Model values to display in Model drop list on MDS - Cannot get SQL Server 2019 MDS Model values to display in the Model drop list on MDS Website Title Page. Was able to get Models to display in SQL Server 2017 MDS OK. Managed to configure both MDS 2019 Website and MDS 2019 Web Service and Excel MDS 2019 Add-in successfully connecting to SQL Server […]
Get list of databases from failed SQL Server instance - We recently had a major SAN failure and completely lost many of our SQL Server instances.   For many instances, we had no user database backups (this was by design due to storage limitations).   However, we have system databases for all of the lost instances.  I want to recover a list of the databases originally hosted […]
Find (Count) Joins inside Views - Good Afternoon All, I want to be able to count the number of joins used in views. We have a lot of views that are legacy and are awful. I was hoping to provide some kind of insight into what views could be improved or not used anymore -- using the number of joins as […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
SQL Agent and Windows Task Scheduler - Hi Guys, Has anyone used windows task scheduler with SQL Agent? I have a FTP which needs to be imported into a database every morning. At the moment we save the FTP as a CSV and currently import that into the database but I'm hoping to fully automate the importing process? I'm hoping widows task […]
SQL Azure - Administration
Azure SQL Database and AD Authentication - Quick Question. I have a Database that sits on-prem,  The database feeds a number of excel reports that are authenticated using the on Prem AD. I which to put this DB in Azure SQL Database keeping the AD authentication.  I am guessing ADFS is required from the on-prem to Azure AD but my knowledge is […]
Analysis Services
Only 90 Days of Data in Azure Analysis Services - I want to make sure there are only 90 days of data in my Azure Analysis Services (AAS) model. I'm thinking about using Power Query/M to only filter the most recent 90 days and then doing a Process Full. Is that the best approach to this? If so, how can this be implemented, especially since […]
 

 

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