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The Voice of the DBA
 

Breaking Down Your Work

I saw an interesting LinkedIn post on Kyler Murray and how he goes about approaching the game of American football. I don't know if this meme is true, but certainly, this has been a reported issue across his career. The post deals with sales and analyzing the reasons for success or failure in deals, something I've been able to witness at Redgate the last few years. It's interesting to me to see how the process gets examined, even though I don't really make sales.

Incidentally, one of the comments is one I love, referencing Kobe Bryant and the Mamba Mentality. I like that approach better.

Most of us technical people aren't thinking of sales, but to we break down and re-examine how we do our jobs? Do we aim to improve the skills we have and develop more depth in the areas we work? I know lots of technical people like learning new skills but is looking at the improvement (or refinement) of existing skills on your list?

My experience has been that most people don't look to grow deeper in many ways. They learn a thing and then often use that skill, but don't often re-examine to see if they could actually do that thing in a new way. Technology changes, and it's easy to think that the way your write SQL, or build servers, or implement security is good enough. It can pay to not only learn new things, but re-examine your existing patterns and practices to see if there are better ways to accomplish those tasks.

This is where the one year of experience repeated ten times comes about with candidates who often don't interview well. They've been repeating patterns without improving them.

I promote the idea of regularly improving your skills, sharpening your tools, and growing your abilities in a way that provides value for your employer and ensures you have a successful career.

This is going to be more important in the future, especially with AI impacting how many managers view technical work.

 

 

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

SQL Art 2: St Patrick’s Day in SSMS (Shamrock + Pint + Pixel Text)

Terry Jago from SQLServerCentral

Last time we turned SQL Server into a Christmas tree. Every year around St Patrick's Day I find myself doing something I can't fully justify. This year that thing was using SQL Server's spatial viewer to draw a shamrock and a pint of Guinness. Hope you have a happy St Patrick's Day and a few […]

External Article

I’m Not Gonna Waste Time Debunking Crap on LinkedIn.

Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Blog

LinkedIn is full of absolute trash these days. Just flat out b****** garbage. (Oh yeah, that – this post should probably come with a language disclaimer, because this stuff makes me mad.)

Technical Article

Webinar: Compliance Without Compromise: Test Data Management That Finally Fits

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from SQLServerCentral

You know you shouldn't have production data in test environments. But every time you look at fixing it, the options feel impossible: enterprise tools that cost six figures and take months to implement, or DIY scripts that sort of work until they don't. Join this webinar on Mar 18 to learn more.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Flyway Tips: Multiple Projects

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

One of the nice things about Flyway Desktop is that it helps you manage your database code as a project and see what changes are being built. However, many...

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - What DevOps Look Like in Microsoft Fabric

HamishWatson from The Hybrid DBA's Blog

Microsoft Fabric (not to be confused with the more general term “fabric” in DevOps) is an integrated data and analytics platform designed for modern data-driven workloads, such as data...

Delta Lake: The Definitive Guide: Modern Data Lakehouse Architectures with Data Lakes

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Ready to simplify the process of building data lakehouses and data pipelines at scale? In this practical guide, learn how Delta Lake is helping data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts overcome key data reliability challenges with modern data engineering and management techniques.

 

 Question of the Day

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

 

Restoring On Top II

I have a database, DNRTest, that has a number of tables and other objects in it. The other day, I was trying to mock up a test and ran this code on the same server:
-- run yesterday
CREATE DATABASE DNRTest2
GO
USE DNRTest2
GO
CREATE TABLE NewTable (id INT)
GO
Today, I realize that I need a copy of DNRTest for another mockup, and I run this:
-- run today
USE Master
BACKUP DATABASE DNRTest TO DISK = 'dnrtest.bak'
GO
RESTORE DATABASE DNRTest2 FROM DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' WITH REPLACE
What happens?

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)

Upgrading Admin Queries

I have a query from a former DBA that we run on SQL Server 2025 to check on database metadata. This query references sys.sysaltfiles. I want to refactor this code to be more modern. Which DMV should I reference instead?

 

Answer: sys.master_files

Explanation: sys.master_files is the DMV to reference instead for this information. Ref: Mapping System Tables to System Views - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/system-tables/mapping-system-tables-to-system-views-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver17

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 2019 - Administration
Can an Azure App Service Managed Identity be used for SQL Login? - I'm fairly certain I know the answer to this from digging into it yesterday, but would like a second opinion. We're (finally) moving some applications to cloud-native, using Azure App Services and the developer would like to, if possible, use a Managed Identity and Key Vault for the application to connect to the SQL Server […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
how to write this query? - hi everyone I am not sure how to write the query that will produce the expected results.  Basically, I need to convert data found in columns and put them into rows.  I have provided sample data and screenshot of expected result.  Can someone please help me with this? Thank you Sample Data drop table if […]
SQL Azure - Administration
Azure Synapse database refresh - Hi Team, I am trying to refresh the Azure Synapse Dedicated pool from production to lower environment. Is there a standard documented process which we can follow similar to Azure SQL database. I have searched in various forums but none of them were worked in our environment due to policy restrictions. Please do the needful. […]
Editorials
I'm thinking about submitting some articles - I've written some documentation on using different Markdown types of files on GitHub. It's a series of documents. Some of them are long, but others are short. Anyway, what I don't know is if I should just submit them as separate articles or if they would qualify as a Stairway. Would someone with SQL Server […]
Not Just an Upgrade - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Not Just an Upgrade
Why End-User Testing Is Even More Important with AI - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Why End-User Testing Is Even More Important with AI
Writing as an Art and a Job - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and a Job
Rollback vs. Roll Forward - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Rollback vs. Roll Forward
Article Discussions by Author
Restoring On Top I - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Restoring On Top I
Designing Delta Tables with Liquid Clustering: Real-World Patterns for Data Engineers - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Designing Delta Tables with Liquid Clustering: Real-World Patterns for Data Engineers
String Similarity II - Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II
Supervised versus Unsupervised Training of an Artificial Neural Network - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Supervised versus Unsupervised Training of an Artificial Neural Network
Foreign Keys - Foes or Friend? - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Foreign Keys - Foes or Friend?
Fun with JSON I - Comments posted to this topic are about the item Fun with JSON I
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Dynamic Unpivot - I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in it... here's an abbreviated version: USE tempdb; go CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Toxicity2]( [RecordID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [PatientID] [int] NOT NULL, [Cycle] [tinyint] NOT NULL, [ANEMIA] [tinyint] NULL, [Causality1] [tinyint] NULL, [Relatedness1] [tinyint] NULL, [ALOPECIA] [tinyint] NULL, [Causality2] [tinyint] NULL, [Relatedness2] [tinyint] […]
 

 

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