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The Voice of the DBA
 

Daily Coping Tip

Respond positively to everyone you interact with

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.

More Time to Certify

With all of the shutdowns and quarantines with the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft has extended their deadline to finish the MCSA, MCSD, and MCSE certfifications. Previously old certification exams were due to expire on June 30, 2020. You had until then to complete your work. Now the timeline has been extended to January 31, 2021. This gives you more time to earn the cert you started.
 
I haven't held an active certification for years. I found them useful for studying and focusing my learning early in my career, but less so now. Working towards a test is also a time sink for me, when I often don't quite have as much time as I'd like to get other things done. Life is busy, and I haven't been as focused in a single area in a long time.
 
However, I do think that certifications can be helpful in a few ways to many people, in addition to focusing your learning. Scheduling an exam puts pressure on you and will drive you to learn more. The semi-vague requirements will force you to learn more things than you might otherwise work on, which broadens your knowledge. I've found that to be particularly helpful in my career, when I have a wide variety of skills in different areas.
 
Maybe the one area that you can use to further your career and open doors is to point to the certification not as a measure of knowledge and skill, but of desire. It takes active effort to learn and pass a certification exam, and employers need people that are hungry to learn and grow, and most importantly, willing to do this on their own time. It's a good point to make if you talk about your work in an interview or write something on your blog.
 
In addition to extending the deadline, Microsoft has changed the fees for rescheduling and cancellation, which is good. They're also working for more remote proctoring of exams, which will allow more people to take these tests from work or home instead of having to drive to a facility. They are also extending out voucher and discount dates.
 
If you're interested in pursuing something, let us know today. I'm considering some of the Azure role based certifications, mostly because they may focus my learning. Now I just need to find time and make the decision to actually move in that direction.
 
 
 
 

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums
 
  Featured Contents
Stairway to U-SQL

Stairway to U-SQL Level 16: The Azure Data Lake Catalog

Mike McQuillan from SQLServerCentral.com

Delve behind the scenes and learn about the catalog used to manage Azure Data Lakes.

Working with SQL Cursors

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

In SQL cursors serve as a pointer that enables application programming language to deal with query results one row at a time. This article quickly explores the concept behind and show how to declare cursors, open, retrieve data from them, and then close them

Free eBook: Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for the Accidental DBA

Press Release from Redgate

Three SQL Server MVPs (Jonathan Kehayias, Ted Krueger and Gail Shaw) provide fascinating insight into the most common SQL Server problems, why they occur, and how they can be diagnosed using tools such as Performance Monitor, Dynamic Management Views and server-side tracing. The focus is on practical solutions for removing root causes of these problems, rather than "papering over the cracks".

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - The Power of Git–Getting Code

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I find git to be incredibly useful, and this is a quick example of one of the ways that this matters to me. This post is also available in...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Administration Basics: Point in time recovery

epivaral from SQL Guatemala

Nowadays, data is a precious asset for companies today. If you are a database administrator (by decision or by mistake) or simply you are the "IT guy," you have...

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by BTylerWhite):
 

Difference Between Lists
I have the following two lists in Python: 
registered_ids = [1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 20, 21, 22] recent_login_ids = [3, 5, 9, 21]
Comparing these two lists, how can I return a list of registered_ids not present in our list of recent_login_ids?

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 ordering of the data

I have this code:

DECLARE @Test TABLE (testString VARCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS); INSERT INTO @Test (testString) VALUES ('a') , ('b') , ('c') , ('A') , ('B') , ('C');

Then I run this in the same batch.

SELECT testString FROM @Test WHERE testString LIKE '[a-B]';

What is returned (each letter in the answer would be on a separate row)?

Answer: a, B

Explanation: This is an interesting collation issue. The ordering of the entire set, given the collation, is:

A a B b C c

In this case, the return is a, B.  

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
SSIS Deployment Issue - Hello: Problem:  Cannot deploy SSIS packages to AZURE VM/SQL Server Instance (or execute them via SSDT/VS) from a local laptop using a SQL Login. FYI:  Project Deployment Model is used. Background:  We moved our development SQL Server instance to an AZURE VM, and would like to avoid giving every developer RDP permissions access to the server. […]
query optimization -    
SQL Server 2017 - Development
count by week by start/end date - I'm trying to show a count by week but I am unsure of how to find dates between years? How do I show the Year, Week, and count for the example below? This ID_NUM should show 1 for every week for the entire year. I've shown what I've tried so far below. Thanks.   I'd […]
update by quantity - I'm writing an update statement that uses a quantity column to determine how many rows get updated.  I can accomplish this using RBAR, but performance is unusable and I can't figure out how to do this as a set operation. I have a sales table that contains a row for each individual item.  In the […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
Convert SQL HA (2 node) to Standalone - Hi, We have some of the SQL Server AlwaysOn environment (NonPROD) where we do not require alwayson any longer. Instead a standalone system will be sufficient. Without provisioning a new environment (standalone), how we can use the existing HA to a standalone and remove one of the other nodes? Does Microsoft has any clearly defined […]
Shrinking _log file for live database - I have a live database in SQL2016 (in Production, in use) that I need to shrink its l_log file which has grown to over 250GB. Can I use this type of command block safely?: ALTER DATABASE ExampleDB SET RECOVERY SIMPLE DBCC SHRINKFILE('ExampleDB_log', 0, TRUNCATEONLY) ALTER DATABASE ExampleDB SET RECOVERY FULL
Logical file name mismatch - Hi All I've picked up that the logical name for my transaction log is different between sys.database_files and sys.master_files. I know how to fix this up. My question is, how did it get that way? How can I recreate this issue? SQL Server 2016     Thanks    
SSRS report font settings - Dear team, Hope all are safe and doing well, We have a Windows Server 2016 STD server with SSRS installed. Question is where can I download Arial Narrow & Myriad Pro To use in SSRS reports? Is this available on Windows server 2016? User is having some issues with fonts while exporting reports to PDF on our […]
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Stored Proc slow after switching to Replication? - Hi First, let me apologize in advance for my ignorance on this... We are in the process of switching our reporting DB from backup and restore to transactional replication. I am testing stored procedures and noticing some SP's run much slower in transactional replication. I've done some googling and have tried the three below, but […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
Trouble with Finding Dependencies between Tables using Keys - In the past I could rely on the View Dependencies feature in SQL Server Mgt Studio to show me all objects that an Object depends on or that the object is dependent on. I don't know when this changed but it no longer works reliably.  The View Dependencies works for some parent/Child tables but not […]
How to find Last Record with multiple results - In Access, there is a LAST function, which simply allows you to do a group by, then select last, and you get the last record for each of your results.  This does not exist in SQL. I have a query I am running that will show me a full list of all Part ID's in […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Finding a range of date within a range of date - I have a project that requires to display a list of patients within a specific period of dates but having problems building my statement the following is the sample data set. CaseNo     DateAdmitted   DateDischarge 1                 12/01/2019        12/02/2019 2                12/01/2019         12/03/2019 3                12/02/2019        NULL                   - not yet discharge Scenario 1:  getting patients from 12/02/2019 to 12/03/2019 […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Unexcpted erorrs restoring large tables - Hi Please excuse me if this is a basic question, I have been given a .sql file which has a script to create and insert data into a table. The script around 100,000 records in it. Most of the content is in the form 'Insert into table ....' 'insert into table ...' GO Insert into […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Arithmetic overflow error converting expression to data type nvarchar. - Is there a way to find the field this error is being generated by? I am trying to bring data from an AS400 to SQL.  I am attempting to convert 3 fields to date formats. I have a staging table that converts them to nvarchar(10) then when inserting into the final table I do IDATE(field) […]
SQL Server Newbies
Force job to fail based on condition of IF - I am using SQL Server 2005 and I need to force a job to fail based on a condition of an IF statement. This is an overview what my code is doing: IF (SELECT '1') = 1 BEGIN PRINT 'Yes' END ELSE BEGIN PRINT 'No' END The above isn't my exact code but this gives […]
 

 

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