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Learning to Grind

When I was younger, I had a variety of jobs, but in most of the positions I had to work hard for stretches. Really hard, as in more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. Often as I was starting a new position, it took some time for me to develop some understanding, some skill, and some muscle memory. In some jobs, especially in restaurants, I also had to build the physical skills to be on my feet for many hours.

In technology, I've often found myself unsure of how to approach a new position, aware I had knowledge gaps about how things worked, and often, I was naïve or ignorant of some piece of technology my employer used. Even at jobs where I started as a developer or DBA on a known platform (ASP or SQL Server), I sometimes encountered some aspects of the technology that I hadn't used in the past (like clustering).

In those situations, something I learned from my parents and a few youth coaches came to mind. I needed to bust my butt to be successful. The lessons I learned weren't expressed so politely, but they boiled down to putting in extra time and focus, and continuing on that path until I was competent in the eyes of someone else, usually my boss.

I've encountered many people in the last decade that have much to learn. I've met far too many that didn't understand their environments as well as I'd expect them to as a manager. I have encountered far too many people who wish they could be more skilled in some way, but they haven't made a commitment do the work to further that wish. I've met far too few people who are working to improve themselves on a regular basis.

How do we teach people to grind away at something to improve themselves?

I don't know. I've tried to motivate people, I try to give them examples, I've tried to provide suggestions. It seems that many people have lost the drive to invest in themselves to prepare for the future. Too many want their boss to train them and then re-train them when they don't use a skill and forget it. Or they want their time in a position to count as experience. Or they want their boss to give them time out of their 40 hours, without having to make their own investment of time at night or on weekends.

Skill and experience don't magically appear. They take work. They take grinding away, making mistakes, achieving small successes, taking a step backward, then driving forward in new ways. It's effort, and it's time. Read any story about a person who's achieved success and you'll find tales of study, work, practice on their own time.

If you want something different in your career, or in life, you have to work at that thing. Make a plan, but then work at it. Give up some leisure time. Not all, but some. Give up something fun to achieve something else later. Learn to sharpen your saw, polish your craft, grow your marketability, whatever you want to call it.

Just start doing it.

If you want to read a few examples, I have a short series of posts on grinding away at life.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 
  Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Feed SQL Server logs into SIEM

Pablo Echeverria from SQLServerCentral

Keeping track of all the security related logs can be hard. Using your security team to shoulder some of the load can help. Learn how in this article.

External Article

Build a Streaming Data Architecture with Apache Kafka and Zookeeper

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article, we look at how to use Apache Kafka and Zookeeper to process and load streaming data.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How to Build Data Management for Unstructured Data

Joyful Craftsmen from Joyful Craftsmen Blog

The post How to Build Data Management for Unstructured Data appeared first on Joyful Craftsmen.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Monday Monitor Tips: Am I Patched?

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

One of the things that I think is neat is that Redgate Monitor helps you track patching on your systems. This is something that has been challenging in every...

Pro SQL Server 2022 Wait Statistics: A Practical Guide to Analyzing Performance in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Use this practical guide to analyze and troubleshoot SQL Server performance using wait statistics. You'll learn to identify precisely why your queries are running slowly. And you'll know how to measure the amount of time consumed by each bottleneck so you can focus attention on making the largest improvements first. This edition is updated to cover analysis of wait statistics current with SQL Server 2022. Whether you are new to wait statistics, or already familiar with them, this book provides a deeper understanding on how wait statistics are generated and what they mean for your SQL Server instance’s performance. 

 

  Question of the Day

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

 

The Random Rows

If I run this code in SQL Server 2019 on Adventureworks, how many random values are returned?
SELECT TOP (10) be.BusinessEntityID , RAND (BusinessEntityID) FROM Person.BusinessEntity AS be;

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)

The New Log File

I have a detached database from SQL Server 2019, called TDE_Primer. This database had a 100MB data file and a 73MB log file. The log file was lost, so I need to run this code:

USE [master] GO CREATE DATABASE [TDE_Primer] ON ( FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\TDE_Primer.mdf' ) FOR ATTACH_REBUILD_LOG GO 

How big is the new log file?

Answer: 1MB

Explanation: A new log file will be created and it will be 1MB in size. Ref: CREATE DATABASE arguments - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-database-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16&tabs=sqlpool#arguments

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 2016 - Administration
NC index creation duration question - Hey All, My setup is as follows: Table with Clustered Index on ID col. Size 13 GB.  200+ fields, many LOB cols. Single non-clustered index with key CaseNumber and 2 include columns. Size 200 MB. Server performance was good, normal, i.e. hardware doesn't explain the issue. Scenario: I attempted to add a new Non-clustered index […]
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Trigger After Update to Update the Updated Table - Okay I can easily see how to update a table field after an Insert but do I use the system Inserted when creating a trigger to update a field in the table that was just updated and do I use AFTER UPDATE or FOR UPDATE CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[TG_ResolvedDate_I] ON [dbo].[Issues] AFTER UPDATE AS BEGIN SET […]
Group Delete - I have 2 tables which I need to cleanup old costkeys, based upon a driver table. The driver table is [CostKeyDeletes] and used as input to the cstdetails for cleanup. The costkeys very in record counts so I need a batchsize limit. I would like see logging of the process showing which CostKey it working […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Group records during capture - I have a table which is being written to by another application. A few things of note I can't alter schema, or unable to upgrade the sql version at this time. I need some help in a couple of areas. The first is to grab the last 15 minutes of information from this table. The […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on AlwaysON Availability Group - I’ve been tasked with securing SQL Server data and log files (MDF and LDF) using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) across all SQL Servers in our environment, which consists of over 85 instances. This is a significant undertaking, and I’m concerned about the potential impact of deploying TDE universally across such a large number of servers, […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
funny character shows in one hdg name in ssis flat file connector - hi, i spent some time today in an existing pkg replumbing 5 flat file connectors to new tsv files.   eventually that will be automated. 2 of my connectors show the bizarre character shown below prior to my first hdg name.  on one i'm not sure what i did but i chose the file in the […]
Reporting Services
Migrating from SSRS 2008 (SP Integrated) to 2022 (Native) - Has anyone done a migration from sharepoint integrated ssrs to native? I'm not finding any specific documentation for this use case. We were able to get the reports migrated via the RS utility and ssrs_migration script provided by microsoft but the subscriptions and report history didnt come across. From the microsoft documentation it seems we're […]
change server connection - I have a one database and one table in that database. This is on 100 servers. Same db and table name 1.Can I build a report which will change server connection based on the server selected in a drop down list of 100 servers. Can the  select data from multiple servers based on a check […]
Strategies and Ideas
Automating DAX Studio... - Still trying to figure out options for automating the export the result of a PowerQuery to SQL Server. Turns out that if I have DAX Studio installed, I can do this: Open my PBIX file that contains the PowerQuery I want to export the results from. Open DAX Studio from inside PowerBI. Go to the […]
Suggestions
Peer review SQL Central articles - Hi, I would like to contribute to SQLServerCentral in peer reviews. As there are many articles that need to be reviewed on a daily basis, i assume this site needs some reviewers. May i know the process to become reviewer and start contributing.?
Working with Oracle
CPU Performance Advice in SQL Server 2005 - I am having problems with CPU performance on SQL Server 2005. CPU spikes frequently to 90-100% for no apparent reason. I have checked the running jobs and queries but found nothing unusual. The server has about 30 concurrent connections and the database is about 5GB. - Check long queries and optimize them. - Use SQL […]
CPU Performance Advice in SQL Server 2005 - I am having problems with CPU performance on SQL Server 2005. CPU spikes frequently to 90-100% for no apparent reason. I have checked the running jobs and queries but found nothing unusual. The server has about 30 concurrent connections and the database is about 5GB. - Check long queries and optimize them. - Use SQL […]
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
Duplicate Documents - Hi Experts, I am trying to find duplicate documents stored in our Filestream database. I have come across multiple documents with same size, created timestamp within minutes\secconds difference, same filename. Is there a better way to identify the duplicate files?   Regards
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Which selection criteria is more efficient. - Is it more efficient to search on an int than a nullable DateTime? I have a table where I can choose to search on an int field in the where clause or a nullable datetime field looking for nulls in the where clause. Both methods return the same resultset. While I am most likely nitpicking, […]
Cannot install development version. - A while into install I get a Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server. The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. It is looking for msoledbsql.msi. I have one locally but than I get a message: The file 'D:\msoledbsql.msi' is not a valid installation package for the […]
 

 

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