SelecTViews
With Eric Johnson
Catch this in-depth interview as Eric Johnson hosts an interview with Ben Miller. These MVPs share their experiences working with databases. Both experts are also presenters at the Spring 2011 DBTechCon, which will take place April 20-22 and is the largest virtual conference in the IT field.
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More Outlawed Phrases
Sometimes you just need an opportunity to vent. In fact, I thought about starting a web site just for the purpose of allowing people the opportunity to vent. Your responses to the newsletter last Friday have confirmed the need to me. Here are some of your responses.
Sanjoy Malik
I believe the following phrase should be outlawed: "I also can." – If you do something, people generally comes up with comment "I also can" and criticize beyond limit. My message to them is: "If you can, then just do it and show to me."
Mark
"I/we didn’t change anything". This is almost invariably followed by my least favorite five words – "Well, all I did was…"
It applies to anything from solving a configuration problem to fixing a refrigerator.
Alan sends Two Phrases
“Nah, don’t bother backing it up, just run the update.” How many emergency restores could be avoided if this were outlawed? I don’t know either….
“Yeah, it should work.” Developers are the most noncommittal people I’ve ever worked with (myself included!). I’d love to meet the developer with the forethought, preparation and confidence to simply say “Yes, it’s right.”
Elizabeth
“It works just fine.” After a brief and very limited test.
Scott
"We don’t have [time/personnel] to do it the [best practices/solid design] way you suggest, so let’s do it the [quick-and-dirty/hardcoded/old-tech] way."
If I can get away with it, I always want to respond, "oh, you don’t have the resources to do it right but you DO have time to it OVER? Or live with it not working? Or live with it being expensive in production?"
Because I’ve seen MANY projects fail or become maintenance nightmares or need to be replaced because it was done with the schedule being more important than the quality. I’m doing a long-needed rewrite of one of those right now.
Sometime the response to my response is along the lines of "well, there are many different ways of doing it."
And my response wants to be, "yeah, and many, many ways of doing it wrong, and many, many projects that fail by the time they get to production."
Paul
Guys that say woot! (Editor’s note…not sure I get this one…guess you had to be there)
Markus
"I’m just being honest," is a phrase I could stand hearing less of.
What? Does that mean that they’re not normally honest?
Unfinished Business
David response to Windows Scheduling Using Parallel Schedules
I sometimes have the need to run multiple jobs on different SQL servers in a sequence, i.e. Job A must complete on Server X, then immediately after that Job B must run on Server Y. What I do is create both jobs, with Job B having no schedule. Then on Job A, the final step is to call a PowerShell script. The PowerShell script has some straight forward SQL code to connect to Server Y and start Job B, sp_start_job ‘Job B’. Works for me. Used in a number of scenarios, such as automated database backup file copy’s and restores, re-initializing replication and recreating a trigger on subscription database and some other scenarios.
I thought you may be interested in some code I’ve written. Shows overlapping jobs and job duration in floating bars in reporting services.
http://sqlautopowershell.blogspot.com/2010/03/viewing-sql-agent-job-history-and.html
Thanks to all who have sent in your "Phrases that should be outlawed." If you want to have a little more fun with this, send in your top phrases you would wish to hear more often…we’ll see what we can do with that. Knowing a little of human nature, I don’t think I’ll get many takers on that end. It’s always easier to complain than to be constructive. So, give it your best shot.
Drop me a note on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail at btaylor@SSWUG.org. It’s been nice getting to know some of you via Twitter and Facebook. Don’t forget to check out SSWUGorg on facebook to get news from SSWUG as it hits the wire.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
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