As most of the technology world knows, today is 3.14.2012. Or, as most of us would see it, Pi. This morning it so happens, I ran across some nasty hard-coded values in some code. This made me think….hmmm…I bet you could use MONTH() and DAY() in your code and it would be horrid but completely valid today! Then, like me, today the sifting of where those hard-coded values are would begin.
This is an archive of the posts published to LessThanDot from 2008 to 2018, over a decade of useful content. While we're no longer adding new content, we still receive a lot of visitors and wanted to make sure the content didn't disappear forever.
This month my good friend and newly crowned Microsoft Certified MASTER BLASTER, Argenis Fernandez (T | B) is hosting the T-SQL Tuesday. Argenis as selected a pretty cool topic this month. Specializing and how you feel about it as well as if you do or are the “jack of all trades”. Below is the segment that asks the specific question that Argenis wants us to talk about this month.
[]1 It’s T-SQL Tuesday time! The 28th installment is being hosted by Argenis Fernandez (blog | twitter), and his chosen topic is “Jack of All Trades, Master of None?”. He asks us, “Are you specialized? On something? Or anything at all? Has that been a good or a bad thing? Why? Are you the SQL guy at work? Or the one who does everything? Do you code? And configure wireless routers at work also?
Prior to being a full-fledged DBA, I was a SQL Developer for a Warehouse Management System called HighJump. HighJump is a very fast paced system with system owners who partner very closely with IT. This also means, that I was working closely with people who were very sensitive any system issues and wanted answers fast. I was just making the move from SQL Developer to DBA when I first learned of Idera’s Diagnostic Manager.
After a great many years (3 to be exact) I’m moving on from my current position into new exciting challenges. I have learned a lot in working in a big environment like this and swimming in the deep waters of SQL Server, but a huge thanks goes to my great colleagues and manager were able to keep up with my ramblings and (sometimes intolerable) drive for innovation and restraining me from torturing developers who have not yet learned the way of SQL Server.
Last week Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending the Chicago SQL Server User Group’s monthly meeting and presenting “Filegroups: Putting the Pieces Together”. Other than my usual brush with death as I attempted to navigate to the underground parking garage, the travel down and back was smooth. It was great to see the usual #chisql gang, and meet a few new people. The presentation was fantastic! The crowd was really lively, both asking and answering questions.
Forgotten art of using what you know One thing that can be very hard to learn early in your career is the art of ignoring the latest and greatest methods to get a task done in a short amount of time. Now, before I continue, we as technology professionals always need to embrace changes in computing. In no way should this article portray a meaning that your skills should become stagnant and ambition and motive not be used to learn new ways of performing tasks.
The first four letters in database administrator spell data so for some reason people see you as somebody who can do magic with all kinds of data. One of the requests I got was to start from an export of course data and to group the courses and merge the dates in a single column. I had to start with an Excel document and the result had to be in CSV format.
Do you have a group of developers who as soon as their application has any issues they call you because it must be the database server? Do you have managers who really want to know if all the jobs are running successfully? Yeah, me too. That’s one of the really cool things with Diagnostic Manager. You can setup security for Active Directory Groups, Active Directory Logins and SQL Logins for read only access in the Console.
From time to time on still has to use the built in Print abilities of winforms. But you should be using microsoft reporting a lot more. And one of the things you micht want to do is to print something in lanscape mode. So you do this. vbnet Dim _printDocument = New Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument Dim _printPreviewDialog = New PrintPreviewDialog _printPreviewDialog.Document = _printDocument _printDocument.PrinterSettings.DefaultPageSettings.Landscape = True _printPreviewDialog.ShowDialog(Me) But alas that doesn’t actually turn the page.