Problems displaying this newsletter? View online.
SQL Server Central
Featured Contents
Question of the Day
Redgate Community Circle

Community Circle

 

Together we learn

 

Redgate logo
The Voice of the DBA
 

Daily Coping Tip

Talk to someone else and get some advice from them on how to cope with life

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.

Getting Started Remotely

My middle kid is about to graduate from college and is starting to look for a job. I suspect he won't have too much trouble, as an aeronautical engineer near the top of his class, but I do think that it's going to be more challenging to find employment than it was two years ago. Though likely better than last year.

While my employer has continued to hire people throughout the last year, we definitely know it's been a challenge for some of them to get up to speed, build relationships, and get productive. It's likely easier for technical people, especially for those with experience, but not necessarily easy for those just getting their careers going.

If you were starting your career now, I'm sure many of you would be better prepared than when you did begin. I'm wondering if there were things you might recommend to those getting started if they were doing your job. Tips, tricks, or habits to build?

I was listening to a few people recently talking about this topic, and they gave advice that I followed early on. Keep working on your skills, growing your knowledge and ability to be better in your field. If you're a programmer, practice and learn more about how to better build systems. If you are on the admin side, be sure you are learning to script and manage with code, rather than GUI clicks. If you are in some other area, like marketing, learn to better analyze what you do and how to manipulate data.

No matter what, the one thing I always recommend to others is to learn to present an idea clearly to others. Communication, both written and spoken, is a prized skill, and one I find lacking in many people. Being able to present something in a coherent and cogent manner is important.

Along with that, I emphasize the other half of communication. Learn to listen well and process what others say. This is as important as being able to present your ideas, especially in today's world where much of our communication occurs with fewer body language and context.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents

Optimize Your SQL by Reformulating the Spec

jacobsp from SQLServerCentral

As SQL developers, we tend to think of performance tuning in terms of crafting the best table indices, avoiding scalar and table valued functions, and analyzing query plans (among other things). But sometimes going back to the spec and applying some properties of elementary math can be the best way to begin to improve performance of SQL queries which implement mathematical formulas. This article is a case study of how I used this technique to optimize my SQL implementation of the Inverse Simpson Index.

DevOps as a bludgeon

Additional Articles from Redgate

With both personal experience and the real world evidence to back it up, Grant Fritchey says, unequivocally, a well-implemented DevOps process helps the organization. But it's not always easy to bridge a siloed organization, and sometimes organizations adopt DevOps for the wrong reasons.

Getting Started with MLflow in Azure Databricks

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article we cover how to get started with MLflow using Azure Databricks which manages the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Altering a Computed Column in a Temporal Table in Azure SQL

Meagan Longoria from Data Savvy

System-versioned temporal tables were introduced in SQL Server 2016. They provide information about data stored in the table at any point in time by storing an effective dated version...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Basic OFFSET–#SQLNewBlogger

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. The other day I saw an article on...

 

 Question of the Day

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

 

Container Images

I've installed Docker on my Windows workstation. I want to get a list of the images that are downloaded to my local machine from which I can create containers. What command should I run? (choose 2)

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)

Concatenate Strings in R

I want to use paste to concatenate a few strings like this:

paste("can", "not")

However, I want to remove the space so that I get one word. What can I do?

Answer: paste(1,2,3,4, sep="")

Explanation: The sep parameter can be used to choose the separator. A space is the default, but you can use an empty string. Ref: paste() - https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/base/versions/3.6.2/topics/paste

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
SQL Server Collation - I have 2 node in an availability group which has been configured for the wrong collation. Now, I would like to change the server collation. No user db's are attached. So I am thinking to remove the availability group and then re install the sql server with right collation on the same server. Is that […]
Does creating memory-optimized tables require a lot of extra DBA support? - if I make 2 largest tables in our most transactional database a memory-optimized table with a columnstore index. or just a memory-optimized table -- how much additional DBA tasks/maintenance/awareness (of what?) should be expected? Compared to regular tables. And 2nd scenario: if we do same to all 50 tables (smallest is 2 million rows) in […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
Identify Indexes hurting performance - Is there a way of knowing Indexes: Which are not being used/used rarely ? Which are hurting performance ? Are there any predefined benchmark to mark an index as "good or bad or unused" ? Can we automate this process of identification. Ex:Like generate a weekly report of these 'bad' indexes. Thanks  
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
SQL 2016 - Need help with complex calculations based on paycodes ! - Hello Friends, I 'm in need of some SQL help please, I have SQL examples below with the following conditions: All REG plus SICK hours cannot exceed 40 hours in that week. The calculation for REG hours is: total no. of hours in a Cost Center Divided By Total REG Hours regardless of Cost Center  […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Dynamic Alert query - Hello, I have a requirement to send an Alert based on Silo Level data , when it hits  <= 30% This is more a process design question....I've  created a view of  silo level data, which is  called by a Power automate flow,  scheduled every hour to run. which is working well. except the problem now […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
SQL 2014 and above the Agent job text logs - how to redirect? - For each of our backup jobs in SQL, they are management jobs as SSIS, when they run they create text log files each datecoded. How/where do I make the change to redirect them (each job individually) to a different drive/folder? I looked at the SSIS package, the Agent job itself but can't find it.   […]
extended events bulk copy process - Trying to setup an extended event to capture bulk copy process. Was able to successfully capture some external applications but when I run manually the bcp command on server,  the event is not captured. Also, when run on ssms the bcp command using xp_cmdshell it fails to capture the event. Not sure what I am […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
XML Parsing Problem - I need to parse the following XML file into columns and rows: 147 1 A 2 1 A 13 I am using this query: SELECT Data.Col.value('(./PartyID)[1]', 'int') As Party_ID, Data.Col.value('(./CampaignID)[1]' , 'int') As Campaign_ID, Data.Col.value('(./Arc)[1]', 'varchar(1)') As Arc, Data.Col.value('(./TicPosition)[1]', 'varchar(10)') As TicPosition FROM @UsageFile.nodes('/PartyID/CampaignID') As Data(Col) […]
Database alert if no data added - Hi friends, I’d like to have your help. I have a SQL Server database, and a table dbo.OnData on it. I would like to receive an email alert from my database if: - within a range of 30mins from 8:00:00 a.m. opening time and default time per day - AND 30mins after the time of […]
Inserting a words from a range randomly into a table - Im in the process of creating test data Now I have a field in the test data called SerialNo this has the following allowed values  '111111','222222', '333333','444444','555555','666666' Now I want to be able insert rows randomly into a target table which can take any one of the values above but im not sure how to […]
How to find unique values in a table - Hello trying to find unique values on the following table First temporary table  query (Master Data) insert into #tempCOO select sk.CountryOfOrigin,im.partnumber,sk.Quantity,sol.id,lp.id,lpl.id,so.id,p.SerialNumber FROM  sk join  lpl on sk.LoadPlanLineId = lpl.id join  lp on lp.id = lpl.LoadPlanId join  sol(nolock) on sol.id=lpl.SalesOrderLineId join so on so.id=sol.SalesOrderId join im on im.id = sol.itemmasterid join pd on pd.content = sk.batchnumber […]
General
Variables - DECLARE @Var1 INTEGER = 12 DECLARE @Var2 SYSNAME = '@Var1' Is there any way to get 12 from @Var2? Thanks! P  
Powershell
Load .sql from folder - I'm using this process to load a folder full of .sql files there are Stored Procedures that I would like to add to a Newly created DB. It runs into errors but doesn't log with .sql file it had a problem loading. Any help finding which ones loaded and which failed in some sort of […]
MySQL
How to normalize? - Hello, friend. Excuse my bad English I'll try to explain my question. So, there is an example of database below. Currently i'm working on a bit more complicated DB, and i have created this example just for better (and fast) understanding of essence of the task. Imagine : we have some store.. In this […]
Microsoft Access
ODBC and use of output clause - i am at a loss and this is only forum that i know of. i am using AcuXDBC (genesis odbc) and am needing to gather output of a insert statement. i have tried to use insert into tablea values ('record one') @output record_number but i get a syntax error no matter what i try regarding […]
 

 

RSS FeedTwitter

This email has been sent to {email}. To be removed from this list, please click here. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com.
©2019 Redgate Software Ltd, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
webmaster@sqlservercentral.com

 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -