This weekend was SQL Saturday Albany 2020. This was my third time attending the Albany event, my second time presenting, and my first virtual SQL Saturday. As always, Ed & his team did a terrific job with organizing it. Communication for both attendees and speakers was excellent, and as far as I can tell, everything ran very smoothly.

My Presentation

I presented Keys to a Healthy Relationship with SQL Server in the 3:30 PM session block. I’ve uploaded my slides to the SQL Saturday site. This is targeted primarily at application and database developers and I had a pretty good-sized turnout for the session. I promised folks answers to questions they asked in the session so let’s address those right now:

A little while back, I offered up a one-liner to scan your SQL Server instances and report which ones are out of date. But what if you need to take the next step, determining which updates need to be downloaded? That’s exactly what Josh asked on the SQL Community Slack recently.

Can Test-DbaBuild also bring back the KB number? From reading the docs it looks possible as it does return the compliant version form the .json file, or at least I think it does 😀. The intention is if the KB is returned, then one could pipe it through to Get-DbaKbUpdate and/or Save-DbaKbUpdate to have the KB’s automatically downloaded to the desired path.

Just because we aren’t all together in Houston doesn’t mean we can’t have a #SQLRun at this year’s Summit. It might even be easier for some folks as there’s no luggage space/weight limits, jet lag or a late night out on Tuesday.

So here’s the deal. A while back, I created a SQLFamily group on Strava. If you’re not already a member of the group, no problem - anyone can join! You can even sync your activity from Garmin and some other platforms if you track things elsewhere.

Taking it back to SQL 101 today because I recently saw something that floored me. I’m a big fan of temp tables. I use ’em all over the place to stash intermediate results, break a dataset down into more manageable chunks, or even share them between procedures. And as it turns out, there’s more than one way to create them.

The Traditional Way

If you’re planning out your temp table usage, you’re probably creating them just like any other table, then populating them.

For the second consecutive year, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Albany 2020 on July 25th, 2020. I will be presenting “Keys to a Healthy Relationship with SQL Server” at 3:30 PM.

Abstract

Developers and DBAs have had a long, sometimes strained relationship. Some developers see DBAs as roadblocks standing in the way of getting their work shipped; some DBAs see developers as agents of chaos bent on ruining their perfect database environments.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community blogger each month, and this month Kenneth Fisher (blog | twitter) asks us for non-SQL tips & tricks.

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How about for this months TSQL Tuesday let’s do another month of tips and tricks. But just to be a bit different, nothing to do with SQL Server (in fact let’s say nothing related to a DBMS). No SSMS tricks, no T-SQL tips, something completely unrelated. For example did you know that, in Windows, if you grab a window and shake it then all of the other windows will be minimized? And then if you shake it again they all pop back up.

Setting up a home office can be a daunting task. Doubly so when you don’t get an opportunity to plan it out and you have to set things up with no warning and items on hand. Since starting to work from home on March 17th, my desk has been through 3 major versions.

A word of warning: I struggle to keep a tidy desk, and I didn’t clean up before taking the pictures seen here.

It turns out I was doing this all wrong for months.

For the longest time, I’ve been checking my SQL Server instances to see what needs patching with Test-DbaBuild from the dbatools PowerShell module. But the result was always the same - it never returned a Service Pack or Cumulative Update target. I glossed over it because I knew what the right answer was already, but recently I decided that wasn’t good enough. We need a reliable report to give to other people.

We’re at least five weeks into this thing here in New York and while there are some encouraging signs, it’s more likely than not that “non-essential” workers aren’t at the halfway point yet. I’m preparing myself for a few more months, both mentally and in terms of my workspace. Here are a few resources that might help you as you settle into doing this long-term.

Written

Scott Hanselman’s Remote Work blog category. Scott has been a remote employee at Microsoft for over a decade, writing (and speaking) about it with some regularity.

A little while ago, Ray Kim (blog | twitter) asked a few folks who organize SQL Saturday events a few questions for his blog. The results are in and he’s compiled them all into one big post.

Check it out: What goes into organizing a #SQLSaturday? From the words of #SQLFamily