30Sep 2024 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

The Only Valid Test of a Backup is a Restore

Professional Development
Please, let me reiterate: The only valid test of a backup is a restore. THE ONLY VALID TEST OF A BACKUP IS A RESTORE. I'm happy that you have backups. That's great. Can you restore them? Let's tell a story. I Play With Radios "WE KNOW! SHUT UP ABOUT IT! Damn radio people. Worse than crossfitters." Cool, cool! I won't get into the radio stuff.... too much. Just a quick setup. Please bear with me. There's an organization in the US, American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Founded back in the dawn of time, more or less the first radio club. Now, the ARRL does a lot of stuff for radio users in the US, but also everywhere, but there's controversy (when isn't there). One thing they did was build this…
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13Aug 2024 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

State of the Database Landscape Survey 2024

Professional Development
Hello all! This post is nothing but a simple request. Please, if you have a few spare minutes, meander on over to this link and fill out the State of the Database Landscape Survey for 2024. Yeah, it's for Redgate Software, my employer. But, really, it's for everyone. Why is it for everyone? Because, every time we do one of these surveys, we don't sit on the data, we share it. Here are the results from the 2023 survey, published earlier this year. Yeah, but, I hear you opining, what does this really do for me? Well, let's talk about it. Consuming Survey Results On the one hand, who cares. Gotta get to work. Reading about what other people are doing has no bearing on me. True. To a degree.…
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08Jul 2024 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Use Your Voice

Professional Development
If you want more of a career and less of a job, one thing you will have to do is learn to use your voice. I mean this on multiple levels, so let's talk about it. Volume, Tone & All That Stuff When I say "learn to use your voice," one of the things I mean is that you will need to spend some time learning how to literally, physically, speak. It takes some practice to understand how to increase your volume so people can hear it you without actually shouting. If you have to speak for an hour or more, controlling tone and volume does take time to learn. I know people who can't talk long without hurting their vocal cords. If you're one of those people, track down…
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18Jun 2024 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

The Community is YOU, Not Any Organization

Professional Development
As I type this, we're leaving behind spring, and all the amazing events that take place then, and entering the quiet time of summer. After that, we'll go into the fall and hundreds of community events (feels like hundreds) will kick off again. Before all that, I wanted to share what I think is an important message: The community is you. Let's talk about it. What Really Defines Community First up, community is not an organization. Sure, organizations can and do support and define communities, but they themselves are not the community. The community is, at the core, down to the people that make it up. The social norms we build around our communication with one another, interests, methods, values, these are what define a community. And yes, a good…
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17Jun 2024 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Six Months!

Professional Development
Oh good gosh. Six months without a single blog post. Most important information: I'm not dead. Apologies. The issue is pretty simple. I'm getting old. Ha! Seriously though, I am suffering a bit from a lack of energy to do ALL the things and still maintain this blog. However, to hell with that. Time for a refresh. Watch this space. I'm going to be cleaning it up. Changing a few things. Also, getting back to posting. I don't think as many of the posts will be technical though. I'm going to start posting some leadership ideas and suggestions. I've been involved in community for a long time, and I want to see it keep going. I have received so much from the communities I'm involved with, I want to give…
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23Aug 2023 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

State of the Database Landscape Survey 2023

Professional Development
As data professionals, of any stripe, we should, as much as we can, where we can, base our decisions on data. After all, in theory anyway, we're the experts at making that possible for others. We should lead the way on it. However, how do you know how others are implementing, oh, I don't know, cloud migrations, or multi-platform database management? What kind of success are they having? Where are they facing challenges? Well, one mechanism for answering these questions this is to simply ask. State of the Database Landscape Survey 2023 Yep. That's exactly what we're doing. We're asking you, and your peers, how you're doing. More, we're asking you how you're doing it. Please, help us out. Follow this link and fill out your information. Whether you're literally…
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20Mar 2023 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

20 Minute Sessions: A Couple of Thoughts

Professional Development
At the most recent SQL Bits, I gave two 20 minute sessions. I also gave one last year. There is a little bit of controversy around these (nothing real, come on), and I'd like to take a moment to record a few thoughts. Let me say this up front, and then we'll go from there:I'm not a fan. 20 Minute Sessions Can Be Challenging Most conferences have a 60 minute session as the default. Quite a few have 75 minutes too. The standard session at Bits is the 50 minute session (which, can be mildly uncomfortable when you're used to 60, but is honestly no big deal). So what are the 20 minute sessions for? You'll also see a lot of shorter sessions, usually 5-10 minutes, sometimes called lightning talks.…
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30Jan 2023 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Presenting On Basics Is Difficult

Professional Development
Over the last year, at work and after work, I've been teaching myself a lot of brand new technologies. As such, I'm reliant on others to have put together coherent, approachable, documentation, classes and videos. Let me tell you up front, that is not always the case. There are a lot of videos out there, that have the information you need, but it's presented so poorly that it's almost incomprehensible. Let's talk about it. Mea Culpa Please let me start with the full knowledge that I've frequently failed in this myself while presenting. I'm not talking to you now from the top of the mountain. I'm absolutely talking to you as a peer who is suffering along side you. I've spent my entire tech career teaching others (more than 30…
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24Oct 2022 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Getting Help Online

Professional Development
I spend a lot of time in the forums on various web sites, trying to assist people with getting help online. It's shocking how hard they make it. Let's talk about it, just a little. Tell Me the Real Problem One thing you see a lot is that people, for whatever reason, will absolutely not simply state what the actual problem is. You'll get stuff like "What SQL Server internal behavior prevents dynamically naming local variables?" And you're left scratching your head, why on earth would someone want to dynamically name local variables? Only to find out, after lots of comment & discussion, they thought that you needed to rename variables when changing values. When you get stuck, take a moment to describe the problem, but aim for the root…
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12Sep 2022 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Look Into Chocolatey

Professional Development
Just a suggestion, but I'd say you should look into Chocolatey. Let me explain why. Sabbatical For those who don't know I was recently on a six-week sabbatical from work (thank you Redgate) and I tacked a week of vacation to that. While I did clean out email during that time (can you imagine coming back to seven weeks worth... <shudder>), I didn't do software updates of any kind. In the meantime, Docker was updated. VSCode, SSMS, a whole slew of others. Not to mention, the busy little beavers at Redgate released umpty-million updates. My machine needed love, so I typed the following: choco upgrade all -y Then I went to get some coffee. Why? Because all that software that was out of date, it was getting updated, automatically by…
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