The other day, I was in a Twitter discussion interviewing people for technical positions. This reminded me of one of my favorite things to do in interviews… reading the list of qualifications/skills and asking questions about its contents. If you put it on the resume, I assume you know something about it and are willing […]
2023-07-15
124 reads
As computer scientists, it often feels like our job is to tell the business user, "No, we can't do that because the software you asked for, and we built, doesn't allow it ..." Then, after a long and relatively silly meeting where your soul dies a little, the business user typically gets 80% of what […]
2023-06-10
94 reads
An old sport saying goes like this “I could beat them with one arm tied behind my back.” Well, after six weeks with my arm in a sling, I am in awe of whoever tries that because everything is a lot harder. Like washing your hand and then drying it, becomes more of a challenge […]
2023-05-20
97 reads
Several years ago, I was brought in on a project to review a database design. I was provided a time for a meeting. No written requirements were available, but I generally knew what the system was supposed to do. No before/after schema images showed what was being changed were available. Still, I was assured that […]
2023-03-25
100 reads
The first time I spoke in front of a group of people over 20 years ago about a programming topic, I was scared to death. I could barely sleep the night before, obsessing about the material and practicing it repeatedly. When I finally did sleep, it felt like minutes before I awoke, and it was […]
2023-02-25
76 reads
Fear and aging. Two of the things that most human beings have in common is that we are scared and getting older. Most of us we fear getting older, but that is a very different conversation altogether. I want to talk about the fear of what if. Today I have two things I am keenly […]
2023-02-06 (first published: 2023-01-28)
214 reads
Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a […]
2021-08-14
236 reads
Leaving aside, for a second, Freud’s psychoanalytical definitions, the term “ego” generally refers to a person’s sense of self, and their self-esteem. In casual usage, however, it usually appears in the adjectival form, “egotistical” (most often followed by “jerk”). You don’t need to be a jerk to be a DBA; humility is important. However, ego is important […]
2021-06-26
281 reads
Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA, from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary, foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the […]
2021-05-15
304 reads
I started in the early days of SQL Server, when having a gigabyte of disk storage was unheard of, much less a gigabyte of RAM. My watch has more storage space than the mainframe we replaced with an early version of SQL Server years ago. The technical possibilities and amounts of data we are capable […]
2020-02-15
128 reads
By Steve Jones
amoransia – n. the melodramatic thrill of unrequited love; the longing to pine for...
By Steve Jones
One of the things that I like about the Data API Builder (DAB) is...
By DataOnWheels
Hey data friends! This blog is to discuss an edge case I’ve run into...
How it is implemented? I have installed, tried, it is free for dbs <=30...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Technical Pain Behaviors
Hello, trying to call a powershell file I created, locally on the server, but...
What does the BIT_COUNT function do in SQL Server?
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