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Daily Coping Tip

Show your gratitude to people who are helping to make things better.

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours

Taking Quarantine Holiday

On one hand I'm tired of writing about the challenges of working under this pandemic. On the other, it's not going away quickly, and I know there are many people struggling much more than I am. I don't in any way want to minimize the hardships that some of you are going through. I know there are many more important things than this topic for you.

That being said, I wonder what some of you are doing about holidays and vacation this year. For many of us, any plans we might have had for a flight, a cruise, even a drive, might be derailed by closures and limitations. My wife would like to take a horse and go ride at a park, but many are closed. Other plans I had are completely up in the air for now, with no real idea of what to do instead.

My employer has asked all employees to take 60% of their vacation allowance by the end of September. It's a decision made for two reasons. One is that people need to avoid burnout and they need to get away from work, even if they can't go anywhere. They need to find some way to recharge.

The second reason is that assuming the world were to open back up this summer or fall, we might have a large number of people wanting to take a few weeks off during the fourth quarter. Most businesses do expect more vacation during holidays, we they can't function well if too many people are gone at the same time. We have very liberal and generous policies at Redgate, but I'm not sure we want most of the company trying to take the entire month of December off.

I know I need to get a break, and I'm looking at starting to take some long weekends most weeks across the summer. If I can make plans with my wife, I might try to get a week or two off in a row and go somewhere, anywhere. We have a camper we can use, so if there's a place to park, we're thinking of just packing up and disappearing for a bit.

Let us know what you think about vacation during this pandemic. How will you handle it? Or can you just bank holiday time until next year? Maybe nothing changes for you if your normal holiday plans are still possible.

Whatever you do, be careful of burnout when your home and work lives are this intertwined. It can creep up on you if you are not careful.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

 
  Featured Contents

Bones of SQL - Practical Calendar Queries

The Dixie Flatline from SQLServerCentral.com

After the first article created a Calendar table, learn how to use this in a practical sense with some common queries.

Why Ordering Isn’t Guaranteed Without an ORDER BY

Additional Articles from Brent Ozar Unlimited Blog

If your query doesn’t have an ORDER BY clause, you can’t reliably predict the order of your results over time. Sure, it’s going to look predictable at first, but down the road, as things change – the indexes, the table, the server’s configuration, the size of your data – you can end up with some ugly surprises.

How SQL Clone and SQL Change Automation enable seamless Database Branch Switching

Additional Articles from Redgate

Learn how to use SQL Clone together with Git hooks and SQL Change Automation to branch your database in Git as quickly and simply as your code.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Clumio’s Rapid Recovery is amazing for SQL Server

kleegeek from Technobabble by Klee from @kleegeek

Clumio’s Rapid Recovery is amazing, and you should know more about it. You might not have heard of Clumio before. Clumio is an upstart SaaS-based backup solution for both...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Azure DevOps Agent Job Names

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I’ve been working with some complex builds lately, multi-stage ones, and I’ve been annoyed by the Azure DevOps agent. If you’re like me, you might see this in Agent...

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

COUNTROWS()

I am exploring the use of the COUNTROWS() function in DAX. Which of these is true about the function?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

XEvent Targets

What is a target in Extended Events (XEvents)?

Answer: A consumer of data

Explanation: From BOL: "Targets are event consumers. Targets process events, either synchronously on the thread that fires the event or asynchronously on a system provided thread." Ref: SQL Server Extended Events Packages - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/extended-events/sql-server-extended-events-packages?view=sql-server-ver15

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


SQL Server 2017 - Administration
Very odd behavior with parameter sniffing, overall poor performance post CU19 - Hey all, Seeing something very strange. Overall performance on a SQL 2017 instance has dramatically worsen since CU19 was installed. Have historical records on nightly processing that shows that post CU19, report execution times went through the roof. One in specific, used to run consecutively in 1 minute. After CU19, it jumped up to 10 […]
Replication - I am thinking to configure Always on or replication from two databases to 1 single database for reporting and consolidating the dbs . Current prod is on sql 2016 and planning to configure the reporting server with SQL 2017 and configure Always on between SQL 2016 primary and SQL 2017 secondary. My understanding is lower […]
SQL Server 2017 - Development
OLE Automation - downloading API response file and insert into a table - Hi there, I'm not sure if this is possible and can't seem to find a clear answer. I have a table that contains some light HTML, and by light, I mean 1 or 2 pages of simply formatted text and a logo. I have a stored procedure that creates the HTML. What I'd like to […]
SQL Server. JSON. From Json to table - Hi! I've got a table where the content of a JSON-file is put into a column. I want to "unpack" that JSON into a structured table. I've never worked with JSON before. Below I 've posted an example of how the data in the "Json-column" looks like. (There are more lines, but I deleted them […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
Foreign Key -- How to verify - I have created a foreign key and the table properties list the column as an FK. My question is, if I do a SELECT statement on the table, shouldn't it reveal the data from the other table (where the primary key is)? To me, it means the FK is not linked properly, as the table […]
Keep track of who accessed\modified the database except application user\login - Hi, SQL version: sqlserver2016 standard . I am looking to keep track of the details for audit purpose who  access to database, from which machine , and data modifications. event_time Client Machine Name\IP UserName\Loginname server_instance_name database_name schema_name object_name SQL statement Any help here ? Thanks.    
AD group access - persists after removed? - I have a strange problem regarding an Active Directory group that has access to a database. We have a AD group called APP_OP that was created a long time ago to give users access to specific databases used by an in-house application.  So basically we created the group as a login on the server and […]
What Are Your Thoughts on Sections 302, 401, and 409 regarding Data Integrity - DELETED.
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
SSIS and temp tables - hi folks i have a stored procedure that i want to run within an SSIS data flow package (sql 2016, vs community 2019) the ole db source is the sp, and the sp creates 3 temp tables as well as lot of other standard sql lookups so i am getting what seems to be the […]
Administration - SQL Server 2014
SQL transaction backup failed for a sec - Hello, just trying to figure out something, nothing critical but just curious... we changed a password to a domain admin account, and nothing related to SQL server (domain admin account wasn't running any sql service account), and for some reason, the transaction log failed, I couldn't get the error message since its been a few […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
sp_addextendedproperty for transaction log file - hi there all, I am "playing around" with extended properties. I realized you can add them e. g. for the database files, using the logical file name, like this: execute sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = 'myOwnInformation' , @value = 'that works' , @level0type = 'FILEGROUP' , @level0name = 'PRIMARY' , @level1type = 'LOGICAL FILE NAME' , @level1name […]
SQL Azure - Development
Clustered Index In Azur - Hi Experts :- We are currently working on sql server 2012 and planning to migrate to Azure. I have few queries regarding azure sql. • In SQL Azure, all tables should have a clustered index.  Is this limitation removed in current version of Azure sql. What are different version available in Azure SQl.(Like for sql […]
Reporting Services
Performance Dashboard and Server Dashboard - Hello All,   I am wondering if anyone has been able to successfully recreate or find the RDL file for the Server Dashboard? I have been able to publish the Performance Reports Dashboard but upper management wants to only see what the server dashboard has to offer. This is a add-on that Microsoft allows you […]
SQLServerCentral.com Website Issues
User Forum is Terrible - Today is not the first time I've had problems with the SQL Server Central forums since they were changed (not sure how long its been).   The new/current view is like a dumbed down view of a more complex user forum. There also is no FAQ or HOW-TO for the forum at least not that i […]
COVID-19 Pandemic
Daily Coping 6 May 2020 - Today’s tip is take a step towards one of your life goals, however small. My thoughts: http://voiceofthedba.com/2020/05/06/daily-coping-6-may-2020/
 

 

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