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Daily Coping Tip

Be creative, cook, draw, write, paint, make, or inspire.

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.

Challenging Yourself

I saw this posted on Twitter recently: "If you're always right, you're not learning. If you're never failing, you're not reaching. The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed. But if you're always winning, you're undershooting your potential." –@JamesClear

I found that to be a very interesting view, especially as I think about moving my career, life, business, or anything else forward. I think about this in terms of the goals I've set for myself each year for work, or each season of coaching. In the past, I've sometimes tried to pick those items that I think I can accomplish.

After all, it's nice to check off everything at the end of the quarter/year and note I did everything I planned to do.

However, is that playing it safe? Since I know roughly what my workload is, how busy I expect to be, am I just picking things that aren't pushing me to do better? Or perhaps more importantly, should I be optimistic, push, and if I fall short, examine reasons why. Life sometimes changes in unexpected ways, and I don't always have control over what things might come up in my schedule across a year. Heck, I might not anticipate everything that comes up this week, or even today.

When I set my goals, I try to review these monthly and examine what I've done. Usually, across a year, I realize that some of my goals feel less important across time, or that they are such a low priority (nice-to-have's) that other work or life constantly is more important. There also is the case that my mood changes and sometimes I just don't want to do some things and keep procrastinating.

My life often looks different in May than it did in January. It looks even more different in November, and as I write this, I think back to the decisions I made in January. I can barely remember the why, which is probably another hole in how I challenge myself. I ought to set out a basis at the start to remind myself of the reasons for these goals when I look back periodically when I assess my progress.

I ask others to push themselves, so I ought to do more of that myself. Taking on a challenge is a good thing, and since life is more than work, I am looking forward to finding a better balance of challenging how I look to advance my career, as well as my personal life, and pick a variety of things that are both important to me, but are also in keeping with the spirit of balance. Time with my wife, hobbies, friends, and even myself are important as well. I don't look to schedule those, but I do want to remember that while I want to challenge myself, I also need to balance that with living and enjoying my life.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

How to get IO statistics of SQL Server database files

Manvendra Deo Singh from SQLServerCentral

This article shows how you can query your database files to get metadata about them and use that to get the reads, writes, and other IO statistics.

External Article

Try Before You Commit in Flyway

Additional Articles from Redgate

Sometimes we want to check whether it is possible to run a Flyway migration without error, but not actually make the changes. We might just need to 'sanity test' the performance of a migration on the Staging server, for example. By using a placeholder 'switch' to trigger a SQL Exception, we can get Flyway to roll-back its transaction, and therefore the migration, on demand.

External Article

Refresh a Power BI Dataset using Microsoft Power Automate

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

Learn how to refresh a Power BI dataset by integrating Power Automate into the report.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-31-2022

SQLBalls from SQLBalls

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week was Halloween and I hope you all had a fantastic time.  Halloween has long been my favorite holiday.  The cost of participation is imagination,...

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Data Manipulation with Word and Excel

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

Recently I had to go through some training that asked me to evaluate some text. I needed to tally some data up, and decided Word and Excel were quick...

 

 Question of the Day

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

 

The SQL Variant Types

I run this code on SQL Server 2019:
CREATE TABLE sqlvariantdata
( myid INT IDENTITY(1,1),
 mydata SQL_VARIANT
)
GO
INSERT dbo.sqlvariantdata (mydata) VALUES (1)
INSERT dbo.sqlvariantdata (mydata) VALUES ('ABC')
INSERT dbo.sqlvariantdata (mydata) VALUES (CAST('2022-11-09' AS DATE))
GO
SELECT top 10
 s.mydata, SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(s.mydata, 'BaseType')
 FROM dbo.sqlvariantdata AS s

What are the values returned from the SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY() function?

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)

The External Pushdown

One of the options for query options available in T-SQL is the EXTERNALPUSHDOWN option. When is this used?

Answer: With Hadoop to use part of the WHERE clause in the map reduce job

Explanation: This is used to help Hadoop use the WHERE clause in the map reduce jobs. Ref: Options - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/option-clause-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

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 2017 - Administration
Db is slow - Hi SQL Gurus, One of our production database is running very slow. I checked blocking , I didn't see any blocking. Also, check for running processes and look for any waittype. I see null. How to get more insights on a running sql server for a specific databases? What all can he checked in this […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
Transaction Logs and Service Stop - Hi! If the SQL Server service is manually stopped (not task killed) does that commit transactions?  Could you theoretically then take the MDF files of a database to a new server and use them to start the database up there without having to bring over the existing LDF files too? Thanks for your thoughts!  
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
SQL - How to get rows for a unique object which are not processed even once for - I have a scenario, wherein I want to return the Zuora Object name from my log table of MSSQL 2016. It should only return in result if it is not processed even once for the current date. For example, Account object out of 3 runs was not processed in the first, processed in the second […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
SQL Scheduled Job Performance - I am currently trying to write a query that tells me when a SQL agent job ran last and also how long it took. This is my code currently with cte2 As (select j.name as 'JobName', j.job_id as 'JobID', msdb.dbo.agent_datetime(run_date, run_time) as 'RunDateTime', run_duration as 'RunDurationSeconds' From msdb.dbo.sysjobs j INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory h ON j.job_id […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
How can I refine my query in a best way with optimum results (for large database - How can I refine my query in a best way with optimum results (for large database tables) ? I tried to optimize the query with same results. please see my query. I used two inner join by using the same derived tables which is fine. Our client is now experiencing the slow performance issues by […]
SQL Server Replication - I am setting up SQL Server replication (transaction) with below steps and configuration: Configuration: 1. Publisher on Machine A 2. Distribution on Machine B 3. Subscriber on Machine C Steps: 1. Created a common sql server user with same password on both machine A and B 2. On machine B set up the distributor by […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
SQL Syntax for BETWEEN any dates and specific time - hi all i want to ask how to select from any dates and spesific time id          date 1            2022-01-01 00:00:00 2            2022-01-02 05:00:00 3            2022-01-03 09:00:00 i want to select from 00:00:00 - 06:00:00 how to […]
Refinement of my query in a best way with optimum results (for large data) - How can I refine my query in a best way with optimum results (for large database tables) ? I tried to optimize the query with same results. please see my query. I used two inner join by using the same derived tables which is fine. Our client is now experiencing the slow performance issues by […]
Float - Hi, I am having problem with generating a Float which generates a output of adding 1 every second month. Currently, I have a solution of dividing the target by 365, but then I wont get the value to change exactly when the month starts. My data consists of date, employee id and target Hope one […]
SQL Server 2008 - General
SQL query but bad performance - Hello, I have the below query working properly by but very slow, the sub-query is the cause of slow but I don't what is the best way to replace it. SELECT TblStyle.StyleCode,TblColor.Ename + '('+TblColor.Code+')' Color, ISNULL (TblQCDecisionStatus.Ename, 'Need Sample') Status,TblQcbrandManagerColorDecision.CreationDate, TblQcbrandManagerColorDecision.Comment, supplier.Ename Supplier, SUM( TblQCPackingList.Quantity) TotalQuantity, --Sum of all sizes quantity of the same color […]
T-SQL (SS2K8)
Analyzing a huge ( more than 10600 lines )stoc proc using cte - Hello commuty, Need your help,  your support and proposition! I'm analysis a huge stoc proc in sql server including a list of cte , but it's very complicated to understand the differents dependencies, Are there any tools or code that help to display a list of tables used in each cte ! Or to show […]
SQL Azure - Development
New to Azure - which IDE tools? - I've been working as a developer within SQL Server for over 15 years now (DWH and transactional) and think it's time I added SQL Azure to my toolbelt. I've created an account, server and database etc in Azure. Which tools are commonly used in organisations for doing the actual development? I've got Azure Data Studio […]
Azure Data Studio Intellisense Cache Notebooks vs SQL Files - Hi, I've noticed that my SQL notebooks will take a long time to refresh the intellisense compared to a .sql file. When I create a new object, no matter how many times I "Refresh Intellisense Cache", the object will not show up in intellisense until I close the notebook, reopen, reconnect, etc (and even then, […]
Azure Data Factory
How to copy ADF pipeline from one subscription to another and change the config - Hello, I have a pipeline which is a chain of several sprocs, activities etc... My ADF uses user assigned managed identity of the relevant subscription, let's call it ArchiveUser that accesses several Azure sql servers and azure blob storages. Pipeline in Dev Dev subscription ArchiveUser set up in dev subscription Azure sql servers in dev […]
SSRS 2016
Definition of the Report is invalid when Deploying Report - I'm a little new to SSRS and I hope I can get some direction. I have a Report which consists of 4 different Subreports all in their own rectangle to facilitate page breaks (See attachment). Some of the Subreports were copied and slightly altered (new text) and some are used as is. They all run […]
 

 

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