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Daily Coping Tip

Set yourself an exercise goal or sign up for an activity challenge

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

A Third Space

It's 2022, two years into a pandemic, and it finally seems that many things are returning to the way they were in 2019. Life outside of work is fairly normal for me, and I have a number of trips. Work is starting to pick up and we've seen a few conferences and SQL Saturday events pop up on the schedule.

Work is still mostly remote for many technology workers. Not all, and some companies are starting to require workers to come back to the office, part or full time. My son got a job as a software engineer and he has to go to the office every day for six months. After that, if he proves himself reliable, he can work at home 2-3 days a week.

For many tech people I talk with, there is a still a mostly remote atmosphere. The feelings about this situation vary dramatically from person to person, and from role to role. I find as many managers love remote work as hate it. I find more tech people prefer remote work, but not all, and certainly not all like working at home. Depending on your environment, and how many others might be at home (and their ages), you might find remote work more stressful than commuting to an office.

A friend pointed me to an article on someone that doesn't love working at home and needs a third space. My friend feels the same way, as the isolation and quiet can be hard to cope with for long periods. As much as I have loved working from home for nearly 20 years, I haven't done this for 20 years. I've traveled regularly and when I have long stretches at home, I usually spend some periods in a Starbucks or another space just to be around people. Talking to my dogs isn't bad, but they often don't talk back in a way that satisfies my need for background noise.

My friend's company has a subscription to WeWork, which allows remote employees to get some social interaction, or just ambient noise, as needed. We've experimented with this at Redgate as well, and while I don't know I'd go to WeWork over a coffee shop or restaurant, I do appreciate the ability to have a space where 5 or 10 of us could gather in an ad hoc manner periodically. If I had more employees in Denver, I would look forward to doing that a few times a month.

For those of you working at home, do you want a place to gather on a regular or periodic basis? Do you miss interacting with live people? Or do you love being alone at time. I certainly like the latter many days of the week, but I miss interacting with people on a regular basis. I look forward to regular trips to Redgate offices and more events where I can talk technology with people whose hand I can shake.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Incremental Data loading through ADF using Change Tracking

Sucharita Das from SQLServerCentral

Learn how you can use Change Tracking to incrementally load data with Azure Data Factory

External Article

SQL Server Graph Tables – Cross Database Surprises

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

Louis Davidson explains how to get around an interesting issue when doing cross-database queries involving graph database tables.

External Article

Webinar | Kick start your DevOps Initiative

Additional Articles from Redgate

Without someone on your team experienced at putting DevOps into practice, it can be difficult to know how to get started. Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP, and AWS Community Builder Grant Fritchey to discover his top tips on how to kick start DevOps in your organization.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Query Tuning and Easy Solutions

Grant Fritchey from The Scary DBA

TLDR: There ain’t one. I was privileged last week to be able to present a couple of sessions at the SQL Server and Azure SQL Conference (great event, I...

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Setting the Container Name–#SQLNewBlogger

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I had started a Stairway series on containers (which I need to get back to), and I got a question. How do we set the name of a container?...

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Collins):

 

Scalar function string replacement

You create the following scalar function in SQL Server:
create function dbo.scalar_string_replace(
  @stringnvarchar(max))
returns nvarchar(max) as 
begin
    select @string = replace(@string, v.str_key, v.str_val)
    from (values (N'a', N'x'),
                 (N'b', N'y'),
                 (N'c', N'z')) v(str_key, str_val);

    return @string;
end
You run the following:
select dbo.scalar_string_replace(N'abc');
What is the output?    

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)

Choosing Business Continuity Options

Which of these business continuity topics are deprecated in SQL Server 2019?

Answer: Database Mirroring

Explanation: Of these technologies, only database mirroring has been deprecated. If you are using this, you ought to change to Availability Groups. Ref: Database Mirroring - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/database-mirroring/database-mirroring-sql-server?view=sql-server-ver15

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 2016 - Administration
Column Level Encryption In SQL Server 2016 - Hello, I'm planning to use different certificate instead of self signed certification while implementing Column level encryption in SQL server 2016. So, it is like we have to create a Symmetric key but in order to secure a Symmetric key, we should have a 'different ( not self signed) digitally certificate. How can I accommodate […]
Possible to Side Load a DB to AOAG then rename - Hi, I have a large database within an 2016 AOAG that needs to be refreshed quite  in a test environment from a copy in production. In order to minimise restore time due to tight maintenance windows, i was looking at an option to restore a copy of the database alongside the existing database in a […]
Failover Clustering Queries - Hello, We are planning to setup  failover clustering on windows server. We are currently having sql server 2016 standard edition. I have few queries in mind. Do we need to move on to enterprise edition/ sql 2019  before configuring clustering nodes, in case we want to move on future so is it better to move […]
SQL 2012 - General
Filter clause query - Hi, I need help on a query to extract all rows between the period - 01/04/2021 and 31/03/2022 based on last_modified_date column. However, the problem is I need to include all rows where balances are above 0 but the last_modified_date is out of the above range. This is because the balance has remained unchanged in […]
First post here - help with installation of 2012 or 2019 Sql Server Express - Hi everyone! This is my first post on this subreddit. I'm absolutely new to the Sql world and I just signed up for a Udemy course to start learning about SQL. The first thing the teacher requires us to do is to install Microsoft Sql Express 2012 from the Microsoft website. However, when I went […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Comparison in the WHERE condition - Hi all, I would like to add some condition to the query but not for how it will be correct. For example, my query: SELECT Product_Id, Product_Name, Created_Date FROM Product I want to add condition: if product_id are 1 and 2 them created_date < 20220301, if not - any filtering. Could you please help me? […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Service Master Keys with Group Managed Service Accounts - Hello, for anyone familiar with group managed service accounts and SQL Server. The Microsoft docs for Group Managed Service Accounts state that ...When a gMSA is used as service principals, the Windows operating system manages the password for the account instead of relying on the administrator to manage the password... and for SQL Server's Service […]
Transactional Replication [CLOUD Publisher/Distributor] to [OnPrem Subscriber] - We are on the planning stages on moving our production servers to the [C] (Cloudwave). This includesa replicated DB that we use for all reporting needs. Before we do a cutover, we wanted to test any issues with TR so we setup a copy of our [C] test sql server and another [OP] sql server […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Parsing / importing Costco Receipt data - OMG. I think CostCo doesn't want anyone to do anything with their own purchase data. If you've ever tried to read a Costco receipt, it's some brutal horrible shorthand. If you try to import it, it's even worse. So I asked Costco to e-mail a PDF of my last 6 months of purchases. Either that's […]
SS2019 Running Extremely Slow - Hi everyone I got a new computer and copied over the DB from my old machine.  I backed up the DB from the old machine onto an external drive and then restored it on the new computer.  I ran one stored procedure and it is super slow on the new machine.  On the old machine […]
Having a case or if statement in where clause on Max Date - The issue is that I need to select the MAX date when: If the Max Date from my_column is equal to today's date, I need to select the Max Date from yesterday. If the Max Date from my_column is not equal to today's date, I can select the Max Date from today. I am trying […]
SQL Azure - Development
Should I use Azure for this? - A friend of mine owns a bakery. His data needs are pretty simple, so in theory I could use Access (shudder)... It's basically Recipes, Recipe Ingredients, Ingredient Purchases, and Sales of finished product. He uses Square for sales, and Fillet (ingredient costing, inventory, etc) and a funky Dough Calculator to scale ingredients, and Quickbooks for […]
Azure Data Factory
Any good resource to learn Data Factory ? - I just joined a company and I'm new to Azure. It's a powerful tool but I don't like Data Factory because it reminds me of SSIS and I think it's just clumsy and quite difficult to create pipelines, let alone debug them. Although, I don't know of I hate it because I don't know how […]
Powershell
make script more robust - This script works, but I would like to add a few more things to the process, and need some help. 1) Search multiple folders 2) Search for multiple strings patterns  (error,failed) 3) use a dynamic error log filename  instead of hard coded in the export-csv 4) Email results. Get-ChildItem ` -Path "\\ftpsrv\logs\" | ` Select-String […]
Integration Services
dynamic excel connection in ssis - Hi Expert, i wanted to user variable name in connection string . I tried [User:IntegrationFIle] in table or variable name property of excel connection string but did not worked   also tried entering in connection manager properties but did not work Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=@[User::IntegrationFile].xlsx;Extended Properties="EXCEL 12.0 XML;HDR=YES";  
 

 

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