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When Are Your Breaks?

As I work through 2024, I found myself doing a little more vacation planning this year than in previous ones. In 2022 I traveled quite a bit, but my wife went with me often. We went to Europe 5 times that year and added quite a few vacation days around my work trips. My wife thought that was a great year.

Last year, 2023, was different. I traveled more (36 trips), with most of them being short. When I traveled that much, I wanted to end trips quickly and get back home. I learned that was too many, and also too disruptive for life. I got behind on things I needed to do at home, my wife went with me less because many trips were all work, and I lacked energy from the pace of moving all over the world.

As a result, my boss and I are more closely watching my travel schedule, and I'm consciously working to ensure I take some breaks between trips. Part of that is doing some planning. So far this has me reducing the number of trips (10 in H1), but also including 3 good-sized vacations away from work during that time.

Note: don't feel too sorry for my travel load. I'll get a holiday each in the US, Europe, and Australia.

I know a lot of people like to schedule their vacations at similar times each year. The end-of-year holidays are often a time when many people travel, but I know some people who take time every June, others every August, often corresponding with school breaks for children, family reunions, or some other event.

When do you like to take your vacation? Are you a many-long-weekends-through-the-year person? Do you go on one long trip a year? Love holidays to get away or stay home and work because work is quiet?

I don't know if it matters, but I'm always interested in what others do and why. I prefer more, shorter vacations, but convince me why your long trip is better. Tell me the amazing things/places you've done/seen. Maybe I'll get some ideas for a future trip.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Learn how it works and how to use the DENSE_RANK() function in your code.
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Department of Redundancy Department

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Ever wonder all the reasons that we use databases instead of file systems? While we don’t think of it too much anymore, the first reason that databases came into existence was to remove redundancies.
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From the SQL Server Central Blogs - The London Redgate Summit Comes on Apr 17

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I’m heading to the UK in a few weeks for the London Redgate Summit. This starts a wild period of travel for me, but I’m excited. This is the...
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From the SQL Server Central Blogs - What is data classification, and why is it important?

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The benefits of data classification and the features of a tool like Microsoft Purview, a unified data governance service. Data classification organizes data into categories based on its type,...
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Practical Database Auditing for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL: Troubleshooting, Regulatory Compliance, and Governance

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Know how to track changes and key events in your SQL Server databases in support of application troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, and governance. This book shows how to use key features in SQL Server ,such as SQL Server Audit and Extended Events, to track schema changes, permission changes, and changes to your data. You’ll even learn how to track queries run against specific tables in a database. ss

 

  Question of the Day

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

Default Objects in Clones
On SQL Server 2022, I do this: 
USE model GO CREATE TABLE dbo.DBALog (logdate DATETIME2(3), logmsg VARCHAR(2000)) GO
I then create a new database: 
CREATE DATABASE INVENTORY GO
I install a new database application in here with multiple tables, views, etc. I do not run any queries. I then decide to run this code: 
DBCC CLONEDATABASE(INVENTORY, Inventory_clone); GO
What happens?

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)

Tempdb Pages

If I create an object in tempdb, what is the minimum number of pages used?

Answer: 9 pages

Explanation: There is a minimum of 9 pages. One IAM page and an extent (8 pages). Ref: tempdb - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/tempdb-database?view=sql-server-ver16

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

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