It's spooky time again! I visited Salem, Massachusetts again this year, this time for a friend's wedding. I ended up in the same spot next to the Charter Street Cemetery that I filmed at last year! I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4WtTm3O4bA
I'm back in the home office to take your database questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://youtu.be/H70Iy6bX970?si=6UZJbG89FC6bVni4&t=15
Are your developers working with live production data, completely made-up synthetic data, or something in between? I posted a poll here on the blog and on a few of my social media feeds, and here were the results:
Note that the numbers can add up to more than 100% because folks could mark multiple choices if they had multiple teams with different approaches.
I got a few closely related Availability Groups questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and decided to do a half-hour introduction to AGs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faeOAugqxcs
I took a break from unpacking my SQL Saturday San Diego bags and re-packing for a Boston wedding long enough to take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://youtu.be/Z0GSjyK2bps?si=5u3bMm8MYFkHViBD&t=29
Let's start with the Stack Overflow database (any size will work), drop all the indexes on the Users table, and run a delete:
[crayon-6ab761325de0f533396159/]
Let's say we have a couple of update statements we need to run every 15 minutes in the Stack Overflow database, and we've built indexes to support them:
[crayon-6ab761325e654840876054/]
In my consulting work, I often find myself saying the same things to clients - but they're not the kinds of things I said when I was a database administrator. I call these "Consulting Lines", and I talked through 'em:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCA0Oz-uk-s
On an unbelievably calm sea day off the shores of Canada, aboard the Norwegian Jewel, I enjoyed a nice cup of completely alcohol-free coffee (as far as you know) and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NzgNMkQ8gU
When your developers work on new queries or testing complaints about existing queries, what database are they working on?
I put together an anonymous one-question poll that only takes a few seconds to respond. Let me know! I'll follow up with a blog post about the responses.
If you want to get a raise or stand out from a crowd of job hunt competitors, you need something to differentiate yourself.
Whenever you finish a training class - including mine - ask if you can get a certificate of completion. For example, here's what mine look like:
While in beautiful Haines, Alaska along the Chilkoot River, I stopped to take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://youtu.be/esrXsRZo_gU
I'm on a boat! We took an Alaska cruise with some friends aboard the Norwegian Jewel. En route to Icy Strait Point, Alaska, I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzlKubfSaDs
I recently asked you to leave a comment with your biggest database regret, and the comments were great! Here were my favorites:
Runners-Up
I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento while recovering from a late night of partying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iS1uJCDmMA
About 10 years ago, Microsoft made changes to the Cardinality Estimator (CE) which caused some problems for SQL Server upgrades. When folks upgraded to SQL Server 2014, they also casually switched their databases' compatibility level to the latest version, because for years that hadn't really affected query plans. They just figured they wanted the "latest and greatest" compat level, without regard to the effects. That backfired badly when they suddenly got 2014's Cardinality Estimation changes.
If you're using TRY/CATCH to do exception handling in T-SQL, you need to be aware that there are a lot of things it doesn't catch. Here's a quick example.
Let's set up two tables - bookmarks, and a process log to track whether our stored proc is working or not:
I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento plus hit live ones from the TikTok viewers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDx-OnTHezA
This week's Query Exercise challenged you to figure out why these 3 estimates went so badly:
[crayon-6ab761325fb64636804780/]
We all make mistakes.
I certainly have.
