January 21, 2020 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Knowing What You Don’t Know
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 21, 2020 at 12:32 pm
I subscribe to a lot of blogs and mailing lists, but I don't necessarily read them all in-depth every day. I skim the contents, read the editorial, open and skim articles that look interesting or cover new features. This gives me a quick overview of the topic and moves it from the "Things you don't know you don't know" list onto merely the "Things you don't know about, but know exist" list. Knowing that something is possible is the first step, I can always dive farther down that particular rabbit hole later if the need arises.
January 21, 2020 at 1:19 pm
Sounds like a great methodology. Well done.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 21, 2020 at 1:46 pm
I have a good idea of what I don't know by reading SSC. There are things I know well, things I know well enough, things I should know better, and things it would be helpful to learn. As someone just said, it helps to know what exists.
I will also reinforce your backup and restore example. Sometimes system people drive me nuts when they say the whole server is backed up. That doesn't necessarily protect the database. None have been willing to demonstrate that it will work. Fortunately I haven't yet had the situation where it must work.
January 21, 2020 at 2:27 pm
I will also reinforce your backup and restore example. Sometimes system people drive me nuts when they say the whole server is backed up. That doesn't necessarily protect the database. None have been willing to demonstrate that it will work. Fortunately I haven't yet had the situation where it must work.
Ooh. Have you defined a RPO & RTO with the organization management? Will that "whole server" backup meet that, especially the RPO? If they say it will, I'd demand a test to prove it, for the management. If they can't, time to set up more traditional recovery options.
Man, I'm cool with new, better, technology. Just SHOW ME that it will work. If you can't show me (yeah, actually was born in Missouri), then we're not using it.
Sorry, total side note from the topic, but it's one that spins me up.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 21, 2020 at 2:45 pm
I do this same process with all the newsletters and blogs I subscribe to daily. I could spend the entire day finding interesting topics that I didn't know I didn't know given my love of learning, however, I do have work that my company expects me to accomplish. Some days I do dive deeper into one or more of those topics or I will bookmark certain articles and come back to them later in the day or week when I need a break from whatever it is I am working on at the moment.
January 21, 2020 at 4:40 pm
I think there's a different angle to this that I've been trying to exploit. unknown bugs
I travel most days by bus (I hate cars and my motorbikes come out in the summer - plus it costs me less than £50 a month to go anywhere within 10 miles and my daily commute is less than 10 minutes) - but working for a company with somewhere between 1100 and 1500 employees out of a working age population of around 60,000, we get a lot of people on the same bus to work.
These are a goldmine of unknowns. I can sit next to a person who uses the stock control and despatch systems that i TRY to keep running.... i have profiler traces, run all the reports etc etc... but when the guy on the bus tells me that the stock system broke for 20 minutes today (dont ask) - I asked him why no-one had reported it....
his response "we're so used to it breaking we've stopped complaining" - these are really valuable unknowns that we need to start knowing. my personal opinion is that getting this info is more important than sending all of our teams on MVC or SQL2019 training
MVDBA
January 21, 2020 at 4:48 pm
I subscribe to various sources, SQL Server Central being one of them, for daily emails describing the technology involved, new items, etc. I save those articles for later reading. (Yes, I've got a lot of 'em.) If I have the time, I'll practice one of two of them to make the training sink in. Of course I ask online. On various Slack workspaces I'm on. MSDN Forums. Stack Overflow, only if I can't find someplace else to answer (SO is getting so acrimonious that I have come to hate ever posting anything there.)
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
January 21, 2020 at 6:14 pm
his response "we're so used to it breaking we've stopped complaining" - these are really valuable unknowns that we need to start knowing. my personal opinion is that getting this info is more important than sending all of our teams on MVC or SQL2019 training
Oooh. I agree. Great job. That's extremely valuable.
Although, stop using profiler and start using extended events. Ha!
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 21, 2020 at 6:17 pm
Thanks for the feedback @rod at work. I've pulled back from some online communities because of the negativity. Life is far too short and painful on it's own to intentionally place yourself in ugly spots.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 21, 2020 at 9:16 pm
What was the name of the book with a "fascinating history about Audrey Hepburn?"
January 21, 2020 at 9:18 pm
What was the name of the book with a "fascinating history about Audrey Hepburn?"
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 22, 2020 at 9:32 am
MVDBA (Mike Vessey) wrote:his response "we're so used to it breaking we've stopped complaining" - these are really valuable unknowns that we need to start knowing. my personal opinion is that getting this info is more important than sending all of our teams on MVC or SQL2019 training
Oooh. I agree. Great job. That's extremely valuable.
Although, stop using profiler and start using extended events. Ha!
but profiler's user interface is so much nicer 🙂 - and I only care about proc duration most of the time (or the odd deadlock graph, so I can print screen it and send it to a naughty developer)
MVDBA
January 22, 2020 at 5:38 pm
Sharing what we think we know with others (external validation) is a good way to learn what we didn't know before. Even the "resident SQL Server expert" in an IT organization may discover their knowledge base and point of view about certain topics are lacking when they step outside their day to day environment and start interacting with the broader IT community.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
January 22, 2020 at 6:44 pm
Agreed. Excellent point.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
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