SQL Data Partners Podcast

Have you ever found it difficult to explain how something works to a co-worker?  What about reading documentation?  We have all been there before and in this episode we chat with Ray Kim about his thoughts on how we can be better at communicating technically. What is interesting is the number of tools that are now available to help us with communicating ideas; however, we all still struggle with communication.

Perhaps you have heard about a runbook--the documented instructions you should follow in the event of a disaster or some situation where an outage occurs. They don't, however, include instructions for everyone--what about the folks that aren't tapping away on the keyboard?  In this episode, we chat with Greg Moore about his experience in emergency situations outside of IT and how we might apply these principles in our environment.

Listener Eduardo Cervantes wanted to get our take on what developers should do when they get admin access to a database.  We take on this challenge and I give 5 points you might consider if you are a developer with admin access to the SQL Server.  As spider man says, "With great power comes great responsibility."  We hope you use yours wisely.

Does not play well with others. Is this description appropriate for some of the queries in your database?  In this episode, we explore the role behind isolation levels--why they are important, what they help prevent, and why so many people try to get around the rules they try to enforce.

I have heard it said "People don't quit jobs--they quit managers".  At a recent event, I decided to ask people what they thought the qualities of a good manager are.  Perhaps you aren't thinking of getting into management; however, at some point in your career you will have the opportunity to lead.  We share your thoughts and comment on the challenges of having the qualities of a good manager.

Shouldn't they have fixed that instead of putting out all these new features?  That might be what you are thought when you saw the title for today's episode.  SQL Injection is still a big deal in today's databases and we are pleased to have Bert Wagner on the program to talk with us about how it can affect you and the applications you protect.

At first glance you might think our podcast topic is from way out in left field; however, as you think about it there are a number of reasons we should be talking about GitHub.  Even if you don't need a public source control repository for creating code, GitHub is becoming the preferred place for creators to publish their content and the ability to interact with other is extremely value.

After having attended PASS Summit and seeing all the new features coming it out, it can be very easy to overlook the basics--they are boring.  These features have been around forever.  This may be true, but they still play an important role and ignoring them won't help get you those fancy new features any time soon.

Have you ever had a week without a Wednesday?  Me neither, so for this episode, we recap our experience at PASS Summit and talk about all the amazing compañeros we met and give some thoughts around our very first meetup.  It was so much fun to meet everyone and both Steve and I gave sessions, which was a great experience--and a first for me.

If you have ever worked with Microsoft support, you probably came across the PssDiag tool they use to collect information about your environment.  My experience with the tool is it always seemed, well--a bit clunky.  Now, it does collect lots of information and seemed to be a bit overwhelming when I was first a DBA.  Fast forward a few years and PssDiag was not a tool I use anymore and was not sure if anyone outside of Microsoft was using it.

It was a beautiful idea.  Gather together with a group of our podcast listeners in a conference type format and find ways for us to connect and help each grow.  I had seen it down in other events; however, I wanted to add my own flavor.  I wanted this to be different.  While the event turned out great and we got good marks from the attendees, we didn't have the response we were hoping for.  In this episode of the podcast, we have our companero conference retrospective.

One of the advantages to a small conference is the ability to take attendee feedback and put it in place during the conference.  We actually made time for the attendees to pick topics they wanted to discuss and this episodes comes from one of our attendees Aaron Hayes.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."  Those words are attributed to Issac Newton and they are fitting for the way I was feeling recently as I thought back to those who have helped me in my career.  While we might always want things to be better, as technologies we have it pretty good.  There are unnumbered people who have dedicated untold amounts of time so we can have the tech available to us.

Episode 112: Keeping up with patching

Sometimes just getting approval to attend a conference is a challenge, but getting the green light isn't the only thing you should plan for. Sure, you want to learn some things--but a google search can teach you too. In fact this week we are hearing about new features and functionality from the Ignite event--and I am catching all of it in my bunny slippers. Why attend a conference then?