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Most of my blog is filled with posts related to PASS in some way. Events, various volunteering opportunities, keynote blogging, this or that…With the demise of the organization, I wanted to write one final post but wondered what it could be..I could write about what I think caused it go down, but that horse has been flogged to death and continues to be. I could write about my opinion on how the last stages were handled, but that again is similar. I finally decided I would write about the lessons I’ve learned in my 22 year association with them. This is necessary for me to move on and may be worth reading for those who think similar.There is the common line that PASS is not the #sqlfamily, and that line is currently true. But back in those days, it was. Atleast it was our introduction to the community commonly known as #sqlfamily. So many lessons here are in fact lessons in dealing with and living with community issues. Lesson #1: Networking is important. Seems odd and obvious to say it..but needs to be said. When I was new to PASS I stuck to tech sessions and heading right back to my room when I was done. I was, and I am, every bit the introverted geek who liked her company better than anyone else’s, and kept to it. That didn’t get me very far. I used to frequent the Barnes and Noble behind the Washington convention center in the evenings, to get the ‘people buzz’ out of me – it was here that I met Andy Warren, one of my earliest mentors in the community. Andy explained to me the gains of networking and also introduced a new term ‘functional extrovert’ to me. That is, grow an aspect of my personality that may not be natural but is needed for functional reasons. I worked harder on networking after that, learned to introduce myself to new people and hang out at as many parties and gatherings as I could. It paid off a lot more than tech learning did. Lesson #2: Stay out of crowds and people you don’t belong with. This comes closely on the lines of #1 and may even be a bit of a paradox. But this is true, especially for minorities and sensitive people. There are people we belong with and people we don’t. Networking and attempting to be an extrovert does not mean you sell your self respect and try to fit in everywhere. If people pointedly exclude you in conversations, are disrespectful or stand offish – you don’t belong there. Generally immigrants have to try harder than others to explain themselves and fit in – so this is something that needs to be said for us. Give it a shot and if your gut tells you you don’t belong, leave. Lesson #3: You will be judged and labelled, no matter what. I was one of those people who wanted to stay out of any kind of labelling – just be thought of as a good person who was fair and helpful. But it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Over time factions and groups started to develop in the community. Part of it was fed by politics created by decisions PASS made – quite a lot of it was personal rivalry and jealousy between highly successful people. I formed some opinions based on the information I had (which I would learn later was incomplete and inaccurate), but my opinions cost me some relationships and gave me some labelling. Although this happened about a decade ago, the labels and sourness in some of those relationships persist. Minorities get judged a labelled a lot quicker than others in general, and I was no exception to that.Looking back- I realize that it is not possible to be a friend to everyone, no matter how hard we try. Whatever has happened has happened, we have to learn to move on. Lesson #4: Few people have the full story – so try to hold opinions when there is a controversy. There are backdoor conversations everywhere – but this community has a very high volume of that going on. Very few people have the complete story in face of a controversy. But we are all human, when everyone is sharing opinions we feel pushed to share ours too. A lot of times these can be costly in terms of relationships.I have been shocked, many times, on how poor informed I was when I formed my opinion and later learned the truth of the whole story. I think some of this was fuelled by the highly NDA ridden PASS culture, but I don’t think PASS going away is going to change it. Cliques and back door conversations are going to continue to exist. It is best for us to avoid sharing any opinions unless we are completely sure we know the entire story behind anything. Lesson #5: Volunteering comes with power struggles. I was among the naive who always thought of every fellow volunteer as just a volunteer. It is not that simple. There are hierarchies and people wanting to control each other everywhere. There are many people willing to do the grunt work and expect nothing more, but many others who want to constantly be right, push others around and have it their way. Recognizing such people exist and if possible, staying out of their way is a good idea. Some people also function better if given high level roles than grunt work – so recognizing a person’s skills while assigning volunteer tasks is also a good idea. Lesson #6: Pay attention to burnouts. There is a line of thought that volunteers have no right to expect anything , including thank you or gratitude. As someone who did this a long time and burned out seriously, I disagree. I am not advocating selfishness or manipulative ways of volunteering , but it is important to pay attention to what we are getting out of what we are doing. Feeling thankless and going on for a long time with empty, meaningless feeling in our hearts – can add up to health issues, physical and mental. I believe PASS did not do enough to thank volunteers and I have spoken up many times in this regard. I personally am not a victim of that, especially after the PASSion award. But I have felt that way before it, and I know a lot of people felt that way too. Avoid getting too deep into a potential burnout, it is hard to get out of . And express gratitude and thanks wherever and whenever possible to fellow volunteers. They deserve it and need it. Lesson #6: There is more to it than speaking and organizing events. These are the two most known avenues for volunteering, but there are many more. Blogging on other people’s events, doing podcasts, promoting diversity, contributing to open source efforts like DataSaturdays.com – all of these are volunteering efforts. Make a list and contribute wherever and whenever possible. PASS gave people like me who are not big name speakers many of those opportunites..with it gone it may be harder, but we have to work at it. Lesson #7: Give it time..I think some of the misunderstandings and controversies around PASS come from younger people who didn’t get the gains out of it that folks like me who are older did. Part of it has to do with how dysfunctional and political the organization as well as the community got over time – but some of it has to do with the fact that building a network and a respectable name really takes time. It takes time for people to get to know you as a person of integrity and good values, and as someone worth depending on. Give it time, don’t push the river. Last, but not the least – be a person of integrity. Be someone people can depend on when they need you. Even if we are labelled or end up having wrong opinions in a controversy , our integrity can go a long way in saving our skin. Mine certainly did. Be a person of integrity, and help people. It is , quite literally all there is. Thank you for reading and Happy Holidays. The post End of an Era – SQL PASS and Lessons learned appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. I started to dig into JSON queries recently, and as I continued to experiment with JSON, this struck me as strange. Why is there a NULL in the result? The path looks right. This appears to be somewhere I ought to get a result back. As I looked up the JSON_QUERY documentation, and it says I get an object or array back. I’d somewhat expect that position, while containing a single value, could be seen as an object of {“setter”} The fact that I need to know I have a single value here seems like poor design. If the document changes, perhaps someone might enter this: DECLARE @json NVARCHAR(1000)     = N'  {  "player": {              "name" : "Sarah",              "position" : "setter, DS"             },    "team":"varsity"   } '; In this case, a JSON_VALUE would fail, while a JSON_QUERY wouldn’t work in the first example above. This means that I need to modify my code based on documents. I don’t like this, but I need to know this, so if you work with JSON, make sure you know how the functions work. SQLNewBlogger While writing the previous post, I changed one of the function calls and got the NULL. I had to fix things for the other post, but I kept the query and then spent about 10 minutes writing this one to show a little thought into the language. You can easily take something you are confused about, made a mistake doing, or wonder about and write your own post. The post No Scalars with JSON_QUERY–#SQLNewBlogger appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

I’m excited to announce that something new is coming to the Power BI community in 2021: Workout Wednesday! Workout Wednesday started in the Tableau community and is expanding to Power BI in the coming year. Workout Wednesdays present challenges to recreate a data-driven visualization as closely as possible. They are designed to help you improve your skills in Power BI and Tableau. How You Can Participate Watch for the Power BI challenge to be published on Wednesdays in 2021. The challenge will contain requirements and a dataset. Use the dataset to create the desired end result. Then share your workout! You can post your workout to the Data Stories Gallery or your blog, or just share a public link. If you aren’t able to share a public link – perhaps because that option is disabled in your Power BI tenant or you don’t have a Power BI tenant– a gif, a video, or even some screenshots are just fine. To formally participate: Post to Twitter using both the #WOW2021 and #PowerBI hashtags along with a link/image/video of your workout. Include a link to the challenge on the Workout Wednesday site. And please note the week number in your description, if possible. Community Growth I’m looking forward Workout Wednesdays for a couple of reasons. First, I think Power BI needs more love in the data visualization department. We need to be talking about effective visualization techniques and mature past ugly pie charts and tacky backgrounds. And I think Workout Wednesdays will help us individually grow those skills, but it will also foster more communication and sharing of ideas around data visualization in Power BI. That in turn will lead to more product enhancement ideas and conversations with the Power BI team, resulting in a better product and a stronger community. Second, I’m also excited to see the crosspollination and cross-platform learning we will achieve by coming together as a data visualization community that isn’t focused on one single tool. There is a lot Tableau practitioners and Power BI practitioners can learn from each other. Join Me In January Keep an eye out on Twitter and the Workout Wednesday website for the first challenge coming January 6. While it would be great if you did the workout for every single week, don’t be concerned if you can’t participate every week. A solution will be posted about a week later, but nothing says you can’t go back and do workouts from previous weeks as your schedule allows. I look forward to seeing all of your lovely Workout Wednesday solutions next year! The post Workout Wednesdays for Power BI in 2021 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

A quick exploration of Query Store, the most anticipated feature of SQL 2016. The post Introduction to SQL Server Query Store appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

At the end of 2019, Mala (b|t) invited us to write about the gifts we’ve gotten during the year.  I’ve decided to try to make this yearly habit.  This year with COVID I know it’s hard to be as thankful with lockdowns and not being able to see love ones and holidays not being the same but I think we all still have something we can be thankful and see as a gift.  I’ve been gifted with things this year personally and professionally.  So to honor the 12 days of Christmas here are 12 gifts I have received. Here is the post from 2019. My physical health, with COVID going around everywhere that is very important, although my doctor suspects I had in February before it was known thing to get tested for.  Other than that two weeks I have been perfectly healthy. My mental health has taken some bumpy roads this year as I don’t like being cut off from people, but I have a therapist and some amazing #SQLFamily that have helped during and after our Happy Hour and well anytime.  I’m well medicated and adjusted now and with the therapy I’ve gotten over the last year, the holidays aren’t bothering me and tanking me into depression. I’ve advocated for five different children this year, still advocating for two of them through the North Carolina Guardian ad Litem program, putting me up to I 54 kids in 17 years. Read more about that here.  This is absolutely my favorite job, the DBA job just pays me money so I can volunteer for things like this.  Who can have enough volunteer jobs, not me.  I’m up to three outside the SQL Community.  See my newest on at #12. I had the pleasure of speaking at PASS Summit for the fourth year in a row and on Mental Health this time.  I got greater reviews which you can read here and my highest score ever.  I spoke at several user groups and about 13 SQLSaturdays again.  Something I never take for granted.  When I first started talking on Mental Health I meet some resistance and even got a really nasty evaluation from an attendee but now I get user group leaders asking to give the presentation because COVID has made the times more stressful for people.  If anybody would like for me to present this to your group or conference just ping, email and Twitter at the bottom of the page. I’ve mentored a couple people along the way career wise and to be speakers, that seems like a gift for them but really is a gift for me as I like giving more than receiving. After Rob Sewell helped me learn how to write checks for dbachecks, I set the world on fire writing dbachecks for CIS compliance and may have added a couple of more based on requests. I’ve embraced my colorful hair self having orange hair, then red/blue hair, now yellow/purple and about to be red/green for Christmas. #SQLFamily has been a tremendous rock in life of people that I can count.  I had a situation in May where I was able to reach out to members and they were able to keep me sane. My job, I’ve been financially secure despite the dramatic shift in economy in the US. I was awarded the PASS PASSion Award at Summit this year for my efforts in the SQL Community. I was awarded the MVP Data Platform Award in August. I am starting to volunteer with NAMI in my county in NC.  To help give more talks about personal experience with mental illness, education, and maybe with their website. Along the way I’ve acquired many more people as part of my #sqlfamily, personal family, and to my core value of making a difference.  I hope every had a blessed Christmas and has as many gifts for the year to be thankful for as I do. Despite the difficult year I would like to encourage everyone to look for the gifts they have in life no matter how small they are.  Bring on 2021 and vaccines and let’s see what gifts we find next year. The post T-SQL Tuesday #121: Gifts received for this year Redux 2020 first appeared on Tracy Boggiano's SQL Server Blog. The post T-SQL Tuesday #121: Gifts received for this year Redux 2020 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

In my last post in the ETL Antipatterns series, I wrote about the common antipattern of ingesting or loading more data than necessary. This brief post covers one specific case of loading more data than necessary by performing a full data load rather than using a smaller incremental load. ETL Antipattern: performing full loads instead of incremental loads Earlier this... The post ETL Antipattern: Performing Full Loads Instead of Incremental Loads appeared first on Tim Mitchell. The post ETL Antipattern: Performing Full Loads Instead of Incremental Loads appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

The PASS organization (and likely SQL Saturday) are shutting down their sites on 15 Jan,  2021. This means that potentially lots of links and data will disappear. There are people in the community saving some of the data, and images. I’m hoping to put some of those in an archive that will live on and remain accessible, but for speakers, the links to events are part of our living CV. It may be important for you to capture some of this. I’ve got a few things for you to do, especially those of you that are Microsoft (or other) MVPs, or nominated. I have thoughts here on image schedules and your living CV. Note that you might not care about this, or you might not be sure. However, once the data is gone, it’s gone, so you might want to get it now and decide on its value later. Sections here: Image Schedules A Speaking CV Preserving SQL Sat Data Image Schedules I should have done this years ago, as some events (like DevConnections), get rid of their site for particular events and only show the schedule for the next one. As a matter of fact, they’re done. For SQL Saturdays, you can get the schedule for an event on their page. For example, I spoke at SQL Sat 997 – Salt Lake City. I can get the schedule from an image capture: Or at the bottom, there is an export to PDF. I recommend you save these, then upload the image/pdf to someplace you can link to from your CV. Going forward, I’d continue to do this, and even take pictures on a marquee when we get back to live events. Speaking CV I track lots of activity for my Microsoft MVP award, but I also keep a Speaking CV I can point to from my resume. For me, this is a static page on my WordPress blog that I update, but I separate things by year and include the events and links. Typically I link to a schedule page for an event, but these will all be broken, or some of them. One of my tasks this winter will be to go capture some of the visual evidence of these, if I can. That way I can preserve things. One other note is that the first day back to work after I speak, I usually update this and ensure it’s current. Preserving SQL Sat Data For posterity, or maybe just for me, I was curious what activity I’d had. If I log into the PASS site, I can go to My SQL Saturday, and see the events where I submitted things. If you’re curious, go here, and then you know where to go save an image. The footer gets in the way, but you can copy/paste and resort this all if you need to. The post Speaker Guidance: Save Your Data appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

Reading execution plans in SQL Server is just hard. There’s a lot to learn and understand. I previously outlined the basics I use to get started when I’m looking at an execution plan for the first time. However, just those pointers are not enough. I want to explain a little further why and how those […] The post Getting Started Reading Execution Plans: Highest Cost Operator appeared first on Grant Fritchey. The post Getting Started Reading Execution Plans: Highest Cost Operator appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

This is a guest post by another friend of Dallas DBAs – Brendan Mason (L|T) Upgrading and migrating databases can be a daunting exercise if it’s not something you practice regularly. As a result, upgrades routinely get dismissed as “not necessary right now” or otherwise put off until there is not really another option. Maybe… The post Top 3 Upgrade & Migration Mistakes appeared first on DallasDBAs.com. The post Top 3 Upgrade & Migration Mistakes appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.  Today’s tip is to do something helpful for a friend or family member. This one is for my wife, her employee, my daughter, and for me. I installed an electric winch last winter to raise and lower the arena door. We use this almost daily to move hay in and out. Someone ran it too far and bent the drum axle. As a result, the winch didn’t work and I had to go out late one night, and hook up the manual winch again. A pain for me one night, but an ongoing pain for everyone. It’s been broken for a week, and it’s been cold, so I haven’t worked on it. However, I ordered a new winch a few days back and when it arrived, I took a few hours to remount it and hook it up so that everyone can enjoy the convenience of electricity rather than the 70 turns the crank takes to open the door. The post Daily Coping 14 Dec 2020 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

In 2018 I started a new user group called the Calgary Data User Group, and hosted one session called “The Ethics of Machine Learning.” It was well-attended and its format of a discussion group (as opposed to a regular slide show with demos) was well-received. At the end of 2019, the founder of the Calgary-> Continue reading Announcing the Calgary Data User Group The post Announcing the Calgary Data User Group appeared first on Born SQL. The post Announcing the Calgary Data User Group appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

I’m making my bid. I don’t know this brand needs to continue, or that it will, but I’d like to hold this for posterity, at least in an interim basis. Feel free to submit your own bid. I am hoping PASS is willing to return this brand to the founders. The post Placing my Bid for SQLSaturday.com appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

Recently I wrote about ignoring comments in SQL Compare. That seems like something I want to do in all my projects, so I went looking for how to set this as a default. It wasn’t obvious to me, but since I can ping the Redgate Software developers and support staff, I found an answer for this post. If I start SQL Compare by clicking a project, it opens and my settings are there. When I start SQL Compare, it brings up the New Project dialog, shown here: However, if I don’t want a new project, and close that, I have a basic interface. Going through the menus, I don’t see any way to set global options. There are Application Options, but these aren’t anything to do with projects. However, I realized that I missed something a support person pointed out to me. On the options tab for any project is a button that says “Save as my defaults”. I can set things from any project, or I can click the “My Projects” button in the toolbar, which gives me a list of projects (I don’t save many). At the bottom of this is an “edit” button, which opens the familiar project dialog. I can click Options from there and see options. When I do that, I can now set the items that I care about. The Ignore Comments is one, but there a few others I think cause issues. I do want to ignore encryption objects. I shouldn’t have the same ones  in dev as prod, so I’ll check that. Others: Use database compat level (likely better than server version these days) Online = ON Ignore identity seed and increment (this could get changed) Ignore WITH ENCRYPTION I can then click the “Save as my defaults”. This will ensure new projects have these options. If I have old projects I want to update, I can always click the “My defaults” in the project to load what I’ve saved. This animation shows how the button works. Now I can easily ensure that projects work as expected on my machine. Unfortunately, these defaults are stored in the registry, so this is a client by client basis, but you can ensure all your projects are set up the same by default. SQL Compare is a fantastic product to make it easy to see what has changed in a database. If you’ve never used it, give it a try today. The post Setting Defaults for New SQL Compare Projects appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.  Today’s tip is to stop for a minute today and smile while you remember a happy moment in 2020. I’ve had more than my share this year, but my happy moment from 2020 that comes to mind is from February. The only airplane trip of the year for me, to celebrate a birthday. Merry Christmas. The post Daily Coping 25 Dec 2020 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.  Today’s tip is to listen wholeheartedly to others without judging them. I was talking with a friend recently and they were struggling with their workload. They complained about the amount of work, and the dates things were due, while also noting they were struggling to focus and get things done. In the past, I’d have suggested something, or maybe questioned how they were planning on doing the work. I might even try to get them to see where they weren’t taking advantage of the time they did have and resources available. In other words, I would have been my typical Type-A, let me solve your problems person. Instead, I did none of that. I sympathized, empathized, and wished them luck, while asking if I could help. Sometimes I think venting and talking aloud helps someone sort through their thoughts, and my wife has helped me to learn how to be a sounding board without offering my own input. The post Daily Coping 16 Dec 2020 appeared first on SQLServerCentral.