[Video] Office Hours: 15 Answers in 30 Minutes
The first few questions from this week’s crop at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are very much about what-problem-are-you-trying-to-solve, but they get more complex from there.
Here’s what we covered:
- 00:00 Start
- 02:49 My Erik is Strong: Do you suggest any steps after an upgrade to SQL Server 2022 in particular? I mean 2022 features to try, enjoy, or tweak. I’m not asking for generic migration advice.
- 05:12 Pock Mages in Lemory: All of my SQL VMs only run SQL Server. How do I know when it’s time to turn on Lock Pages in Memory? How can I know that it’s safe?
- 07:02 That’s_Not_Chocolate: On our Azure SQL Database park I discovered that most of the compatibility_levels are at 140 and 150. I will try to move to 160 hoping to make the query run faster. Is this a false hope?
- 08:13 paul: Hi, multiple client’s outsource their infra support to us in a shared model and I’m on the DB team. With limited knowledge of their system design , how should I troubleshoot when they report the DB is slower than usual, so I can suggest next steps?” I have sys admin access.
- 09:46 MyTeaGotCold: Your recent post resonated with me. I’m wondering: are DBAs doomed to misery? My experience is that any DBA job opening means the estate is unhealthy and will probably take YEARS of pain to fix. Is it worth it?
- 11:36 chandwich: I’ve worked with SQL Server & T-SQL for 6 years (tuning, coding, backups, design, ETL, automation). I blog, post on LinkedIn, but can’t land a DBA job. At 28, I’m considering data engineering or DevOps instead. How do young professionals break into DBA or consulting roles today?
- 14:04 NotaSqlQuestion: Sorry if this too off topic, you travels have me wondering, of all the places you haven’t been to, what’s top of the list to visit?
- 15:26 That’s_Not_Chocolate: A few query are very slow and presents sometimes locking and blocking. After investigation I discovered with horror that the tables involved have over 1’000 columns. Can columnstore index be the low hanging fruit for now while we normalize the database?
- 17:02 Simon Frazer: Hi Brent, late last year, I mentioned how much I’d love to see SQL Cruise make a return, and you hinted that you might be working on something similar, though more geared toward consultants. I was wondering if that idea has gained any traction since then?
- 18:02 Dario-L: Hi Brent. Have you ever experienced a problem with multiple OPENJSON evaluations (evaluation occurred as many times as there were rows in the joined table) in a query? Changing (temporally) OPENJSON to WHERE IN speedup the query from 1m to 50ms. Unfortunately, we need this.
- 19:30 Culloden: My company is looking to hire some BI consultants to design new analytics environment in fabric. I’ve lost the fabric battle! However, What questions would you ask consultants when interviewing them for potential work?
- 22:13 Fuzzy: In the cloud consulting world, what are your pros / cons for acquiring deep knowledge in a specific database technology vs broader more shallow knowledge across multiple database technologies?
- 23:51 Avi: Hi Brent, How do you see Database development changing with AI. We are seeing lot of AI tools are able to provide good database designs and SQL queries.
- 26:20 Rob: Hi Brent, what is a common approach you’ve seen for hosting SQL Server databases for vendor applications. Suppose the database is less than 20GB. Do you think a dedicated Azure DB on a lower tier could be a good fit for this use case?
- 27:57 Jrl: I am thinking about transitioning from working on database performance to a broader performance engineer career. With the limited facts I’ve given, does this strike you as a bad idea? Do you know of anyone else who has made a similar transition?
2 Comments. Leave new
Culloden: When you engage with a consultant you are not only discussing the buzzword that started the conversation but you are linking yourself to the liability of their limitations. As a former CIO I applied something from one of the wisest people I worked for – my grandfather (later echoed by 1 business owner). It is not what someone (some organization) can do that will hurt you but what they can’t. Here is how I applied it: 1)Assume if someone gets to the interview process they have some capabilities you can utilize. 2) Build your question sets in threes. Based on assessment of needs and goals of engagement ask one question about capability, one that explores their skill limitations and one that addresses your fears/past failures in that area. 3) Always interview with someone else in the room whose job is follow-up questions, note taking and analysis. Two if you have the personnel. Immediately capture your analysis after the interview. It is incredible how successful you can make engagements this way. It is a non-confrontational way of informing your team and level-setting with prospective participants.
11:36 chandwich: What Brent describes is exactly what happened to me. Schooled as a developper, worked for 2 compagnies as a developper, had the de-facto DBA role as noone else had any interest managing DBs, ended up in a 3rd company having the same Programmer/DBA limbo status, then company offered to officially create the DBA job position spcifically for me. Most old DBAs I know all started up as an “Involuntary-DBA”.