Episode 255: Automate Complex CRUD with sp_CRUDGen

As you work with other people, you will experience resistance when you suggest changes and want to implement something new.  Why is this? One podcast listener shared an experience where a problem was occurring.  The suggested a solution.  The idea was rejected.  No solution presented itself and the idea was submitted various times.  When nothing else was working, the idea was finally implemented. The suggested change successfully helped the situation.  Victory! Later, another issue arose and a similar suggestion was made.  The expectation was the suggestion would be well received; however, this was not the case.  The idea was still met with hostile resistance. Have you faced a situation like this before?  Why wasn't there an trust built because of the first recommendation? Our conversation for today's episode centers around the idea of building trust on the teams you work with.  As most our listeners are in the data platform space, we thought it would be a good idea to reach outside our community to folks we might receive the most pushback from--developers.  We are happy to have Richard Campbell on the show with us today.  Richard is the co-host of the .NET rocks podcast and you might recognize him from one of his many Channel9 videos. We chat with Richard about how we can build trust and some common ways we attempt to show authority can backfire on us and actually cause more problems.  We talk about some of the ways those we trust have gone about earning our trust.  I know you enjoy this episode. The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/09/20/episode-110-how-do-i-build-trust-with-my-team/ and have fun on the SQL trail.

20 Sep 201753min

In episode 64 we interviewed Patrick Thomas, the program manager for the MCP program which includes certifications.  There continues to be quite a bit of discussion around certifications, so it only makes sense that we give our take on the matter.  Both Steve and I are certified, so this may give away some of our thoughts. Certification is a tricky thing.  Much of the value you get out of a certification is dependent on where you on in your career and what your next step is going to be.  This is going to be different for every person, so this decision is one that only you can make.  This can make a decision on which certification to get and even when to get it a challenge. Our conversation really revolves around what a certification will get you and what it won't help you with.  Do you agree with our list?  Let us know!

13 Sep 201730min

After a brief hiatus, we are back on the air to continue the conversation and let me tell you--we have a great conversation lined up for this episode.  The discussion around what will happen to the relational database, and by extension us as administrators continues to get quite a bit of traction.  Even within SQL Server, we are starting to see more features that don't fit the traditional relational mode and a podcast listener inquired about getting our thoughts.  As I thought about a guest for this episode, I didn't want to get someone tied to a product.  They, like me, would be biased and I wanted to get someone a bit removed from the situation. Our guest today is Andrew Snodgrass, the research vice president at Directions and we chat about the future of the relational database and what the future of the data environment we manage might look like.  I hope you will find his insights valuable as an outsider.  While we don't get into the specifics of what databases are mostly like to be around, Andrew does give us administrator some idea's on what technologies we should start exploring. What are your thoughts around the future of the relational database?  Join the conversation and let us know!

6 Sep 201755min

Data analytics is all anyone seems to talk about anymore.  We've even caught the bug at SQL Data Partners and have started working with data platform MVP César Oviedo from Costa Rica.  César has been helping us on some projects and we thought it was time we introduced him to everyone.  On the Spanish front, he has been very busy putting out YouTube videos and publishing content for BI LATAM (Latin America).  We invite him on the show to introduce himself and our conversation turns to the idea of BI for the little guy--smaller organizations that need to take advantage of analytics and how the ecosystem is changing to support them. We are happy to introduce César to you and know you will enjoy hearing from in this episode and future episodes. The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/08/02/bi-for-the-little-guy/ and have fun on the SQL trail.

3 Aug 201732min

User: What was that record before it was updated? Me: I don't know.  Maybe I could restore a backup? User: Really? You have to do all that? It is just one record. Me: (under my breath) Yes, a record YOU updated. If you have ever had a conversation like this you know how difficult it can be to implement auditing of records as they change.  With temporal tables, a new feature, we have the ability to track point in time information about a record without the huge expense of setting up auditing and tracking.  While you won't want to use this on every table, when there are tables with sensitive data you want to audit from time to time, this feature will come in handy.  We are happy to have Randolph back on the program with us to talk about this new feature. The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/25/episode-106-temporal-tables/ and have fun on the SQL trail.

26 Juli 201753min

How can you tell when a change is enough of a change?  How do you know you didn’t make too big of a change?  Steve and I discuss some thoughts around what you might look for when you make certain changes.  Some of the components we cover include Max degree of parallelism, cxpackets, virtual log files, the number of log files for a database, backup retention and memory. The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/18/enough/ and have fun on the SQL trail.

19 Juli 201743min

Do you have any experience with [Insert random technology]?  Your heart starts to race and your palms get a little sweaty.  You don’t want to say no–we’re tech folks–we know stuff, but there are so many new things to learn!  How are you supposed to keep up with it all? In this episode, we chat with Eugene Meidinger about his thoughts on keeping up and his ideas on the most important learning components. The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/07/keeping-up-with-technology/ and we hope to see you on the SQL trail.

13 Juli 201759min

When we write our queries to the database, SQL Server has to go and figure out the best way to go and bring back the data you asked for. A query plan is created to help SQL Server remember how to get the data for this query. It takes time to make these queries, so the database wants to limit the number of times it has to create the plans so it will try to reuse the plan as much as possible. Our topic for today's episode is query plan reuse and the pros and cons with this concept. We will also touch on the concept of parameter sniffing--a technique SQL Server uses to try and figure out the best values to use for the execution plan with the hopes the plan will help the most queries. Special thanks to James Youkhanis for the suggestion. The shownotes for today’s episode is found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2017/07/04/episode-103-plan-reuse/ and have fun on the SQL trail.

5 Juli 201741min