I posted a couple of messages on twitter over the weekend giving any new bloggers advice that was given to me when I was starting out writing and struggling to find topics: –

William Durkin (b|t) then added: –

This is a really really good tip. I’m very guilty of posting screenshots of errors: –

When really I should be doing this: –

Msg 50000, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
This is an example error

If you’re writing about an error you’ve encountered and how you fixed it, of course you should quote the error instead of taking a screenshot. People won’t just randomly find your blog, they’ll be googling the error and they won’t come across your blog if it’s only in a screenshot.

Have a good week!

Nice to be back after a week off. I’ve been writing three posts a week (sometimes more) since the beginning of the year so decided last week that I’d take a (albeit short) break.

It got me thinking about actual time off and how different people deal with taking a break from work. I have to admit, going on leave for me end up with me working more in the lead up to it in order to get everything done before I go and then working more to catch up once I’m back.

It shouldn’t be that way, should it?

I know I’m not the only one who this happens to and I don’t really have an answer for it. I don’t think I could just drop everything before going on leave but maybe there’s an answer to playing catch up when I’m back.

I once saw a senior manager in a previous company come back from leave, highlight all his unread emails and, promptly delete them. When I asked him about it (I was standing at his desk when he did it) he said that anything that was that important would be sent again.

I like that approach as he’s exactly right. We shouldn’t be expected to trawl through (sometimes hundreds) of emails once we’re back from holiday.

Ahh, what am I saying. There’s no way I’d do that, I’ve have kept up-to-date with my email whilst on holiday 🙂

Have a good week!

Over the weekend I saw a few tweets about the role of the DBA. These tweets (and corresponding blog posts) come around once every so often and are generally along the lines of “Is the DBA role dead?” (or something to that ilk).

Here’s my two cents on the matter, the DBA role is nor ever will be dead.

However that doesn’t mean that I don’t think the role will change. It’s definitely changing, DBA roles twenty years from now will be very different just as DBA roles twenty years ago are very different to what they are now.

And that’s a good thing right? Who wants to be doing exactly the same thing for their entire careers?

I think DBAs are probably one of the best IT roles to cope with change. We have to learn a broad spectrum of skills, from system administration to database development which allows us to move into other areas as focuses change.

With all the new technologies that are coming out we have options to specialise in Data Science or even say, Linux administration as our priorities shift away from the traditional backup/restore, query tuning etc. tasks.

I personally think it’s the most exciting time to be a DBA and I look forward to the changes of my role continuing.

Have a good week!

I had an interesting question on twitter last week when I published my post on Running Linux Container on Windows: –

“Does that container support Microsoft ML yet?”

I have absolutely no experience with Machine Learning so really had no clue. But as I had the container up and running I thought I’d give it a quick test by seeing if I could run a Python script. However I didn’t get far: –

The required services are not installed in the container so no luck. It’s the same with the SQL Agent service, you can enable it and create jobs but when you try and run them: –

The SQL Agent service is there in windows containers but if you try and start it up you’ll get a whole bunch of errors.

So it seems, for now, that it really is just the Database Engine that’s available in containers. That’s really useful on its own but there are a lot of people out there who require the other components of SQL Server. If Microsoft want to see people running SQL in Containers become widespread, then more functionality really needs to be available.

I actually have high hopes for this, especially with the announcement of the Agent running on Linux. Hopefully we’ll see this in containers soon.

Hmm, could try to build a custom image with the Agent…

Have a good week!

Starting at 12pm (UTC) this Wednesday is the online event 24 Hours of PASS – Summit Preview

For anyone out there who doesn’t know, PASS is the world’s largest community for professional who work with SQL Server. PASS is the organisation which all SQL Saturdays are affiliated too and they have a huge online community in the form of virtual chapters.

Every year they also run PASS Summit in the Autumn, one of the biggest technology conferences in the world.

In the build up to the Summit, the Summit Preview online event offers a “sneak peek” at the content that you’ll find at the Summit with many of the Speakers running one hour webinars over the course of the event.

The full line up is here and it’s completely free, I highly recommend that you check it out.

See you there!