Why Standards are Important
There is something in the tech mindset that simultaneously loves and loathes a standard. Having standards is important, what those standards are is less so.
2025-01-22
2,347 reads
David Poole
- Interests: Badminton, Cycling and Music. Keen piano player.
An introduction to Terraform
As a Data Engineer I found myself having to learn rather more about cloud infrastructure than I had expected.
2024-12-02
3,676 reads
JQ - Tool for Querying JSON documents using the CLI
Learn how you can query JSON data from a CLI to check it before importing the data into a database.
2024-02-16
8,363 reads
Managing Change
Time has brought clarity for changes which could and should have been provided by its instigators. We compare a change where clarity was sought to those that were chaotic and the approaches that were taken at their two poles.
2023-08-16
1,483 reads
Using pre-commit to prevent simple mistakes
Git hooks are a useful way of triggering code quality scripts. The pre-commit tool provides us with a way of doing this and tapping into the huge library of scripts already in existence to ensure our code complies with general linting and formatting good practice.
2023-01-13
6,509 reads
Design your systems and processes for auditability
I have worked in more than one regulated industry, and since the banking crisis of 2008, I have witnessed a sea change in the approach to regulation. The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) was seen to be a toothless tiger. The UK government replaced the FSA with two separate bodies, each with its own more […]
2021-10-25
1,583 reads
PostGres and SQL Server - Divided by a common language
A few lessons from a SQL Server DBA that is working on PostgreSQL. David Poole tells us where the similarities in the platforms can cause problems.
2021-07-30
4,075 reads
Soft Skills: Controlling your career
Technical skills come and go while soft skills will serve you throughout your life. They will have the greatest influence over your career, job and role. For some people soft skills come naturally. As an Aspergers person (Aspie) I have to practice my soft skills at every opportunity. Pure techies need not lose hope. Soft […]
2021-04-23 (first published: 2019-09-19)
6,619 reads
Re-oiling the gears for the data dictionary or catalog
Documentation is never a favorite task for developers. This article describes how you can use database system catalogs to make generating column descriptions less labor-intensive and also jump start a data dictionary or catalog.
2020-01-14
3,831 reads
Vagrant and SQL Server 2017 on Linux
Vagrant provides a mechanism to build and configure a virtual Linux box running SQL Server 2017
2019-08-16 (first published: 2017-11-14)
5,443 reads
Blogs
Upgrading SQL Server Containers on the Laptop
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I don’t have SQL Server installed on my laptop. In an effort to keep...
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Forums
SQL 2019 instance with AG, across 2 Windows 2016 OS servers - OSin-place upgrade
Hi all Can I get some perspective from the community please on performing in-place...
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
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