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Learning from Exercise

Editor: This editorial was originally published on Nov 12, 2019. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation.

A long time ago I decided to run every day. I did for a bit, in fact, I had a neat milestone along the way and continued on for 1564 days. That was quite a memorable period in my life, and one that I look back upon fondly. I've aged a bit, and while I could do it again, I also have decided there are other things that matter more to me, so I have moved on in life.  I learned a lot from that time, lessons about myself and life that continue to help me today. Some of them even apply to work and my career, little nuggets of wisdom that help me find ways to find success in my life.

Apart from some better fitness, one of the main benefits for me was the sense of accomplishment. I had no bad days where I would think I wished I had run. None. That seems obvious, but it also provided me some comfort that I had moved things forward in my life. I took that lesson back to work, where I sometimes have bad days. I have days where nothing goes right, or I have people that take over my day and schedule.

I know there are also a number of things that I need to do at work, which aren't that important, or even aren't that critical, but they provide a measure of satisfaction that I've moved things forward. These days that is often getting things scheduled for the newsletter. In the past it might be doing a little space extrapolation (though I'd just look at this in SQL Monitor today). Low value items, but I get some accomplishment in the midst of otherwise stressful times when I get something small done that is on my list.

The other thing that came from the running streak was the feeling of getting away from other parts of my life. Whether with family or work, I might be overwhelmed or stressed or otherwise out of sorts in my day. Taking 20-30 minutes for myself was a way of resetting my day, and it was a welcome break. While exercise is my thing, and even today it's a priority around work, I've had other crutches that help me cope. I love to read, so taking 5 minutes to escape in a book every day is something that feels similar to exercise.

I know other friends that might play a short game, play with a pet. Having some other consistent, distracting activity is a good release when things are tough. No matter how busy we are, or what's broken, taking 5, 10, 15 minutes away can help refresh you and get you ready to go back into the trenches and deal with others.

I'm sure jobs exist that can't spare the time, but I've never had one. I haven't always realized it until later, but I wish someone had told me to take 10 minutes away in a crisis to reset myself and then come back. I know I'll remember that the next time I end up being stressed during an IT problem at work.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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  Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Combining Silver Tables into a Model – Data Engineering with Fabric

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This next article in the series creates objects at the gold layer for consumption by combining tables from the silver layer of the lake house.

External Article

Building a Culture of Data: The Technical Aspects

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

In the first part of this two-part series, I covered the mostly non-technical aspects of building a data culture. While the lion’s share of the work will be getting people to work together and embrace ever deeper use of data, as a reader of Simple-Talk, a lot of this transition will be technical.

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I talked about Microsoft Fabric shortcuts in my blog post Microsoft Fabric – the great unifier (where I have updated the picture with the newest supported sources) and wanted...

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Deciphering Data Architectures

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Data fabric, data lakehouse, and data mesh have recently appeared as viable alternatives to the modern data warehouse. These new architectures have solid benefits, but they're also surrounded by a lot of hyperbole and confusion. This practical book provides a guided tour of these architectures to help data professionals understand the pros and cons of each.

 

  Question of the Day

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

 

Full Text Editions

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

The Query Traceflag

Answer:

Explanation:

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

Featured Script

Truncate tables where Referential Integrity exists

Perry Whittle from SQLServerCentral

This script can be useful in test and dev environments to quickly clear tables via the truncate command where referential integrity exists.

--=====================================================================================--
--=== Author: Perry D J Whittle ===--
--=== Date: 13/07/2023 ===--
--=== Synopsis This script will generate drop and create statements for all FK ===--
--=== constraints in the selected database. This will provide the ability ===--
--=== to truncate any tables rather than run delete statements which will ===--
--=== take some time on large tables. ===--
--=== ===--
--=== Changelog: ===--
--=== PDJW V1.0 09/03/2023 Initial script creation ===--
--=== PDJW V1.5 17/07/2023 Script did not cater for composite FKs so added ===--
--=== PDJW V1.7 25/07/2023 Tidy up the composite key script detail ===--
--=== PDJW V1.8 22/03/2024 Further tidy up the composite key detail ===--
--=====================================================================================--

--============================================================--
--=== Execute under the context of the db you're working on ===--
--============================================================--
--USE [somedb]
--GO

--==========================--
--=== Suppress rowcounts ===--
--==========================--
SET NOCOUNT ON

--==========================================--
--=== Gen the drop constraint statements ===--
--==========================================--
PRINT '--!!! The following statements run first to remove the referential integrity !!!--'
SELECT 'ALTER TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id)) + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(parent_object_id)) + ' DROP CONSTRAINT ' + QUOTENAME(name) + ';' + CHAR(13)
FROM sys.foreign_keys
ORDER BY QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(parent_object_id))

--================================--
--=== Now truncate your tables ===--
--================================--
PRINT CHAR(10) + '--!!! Now truncate your tables before continuing !!!--' + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13)

--============================================--
--=== Gen the create constraint statements ===--
--============================================--
PRINT '--!!! The following statements run last to restore the referential integrity !!!--'
SELECT
'ALTER TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(fk_tab.schema_id)) + '.' + QUOTENAME(fk_tab.name) + ' WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT ' + QUOTENAME(fk.name) +
' FOREIGN KEY(' +
STUFF((SELECT ', ' + QUOTENAME(c2.name)
FROM sys.foreign_key_columns fkc2
INNER JOIN sys.columns c2 ON fkc2.parent_object_id=c2.object_id
AND fkc2.parent_column_id=c2.column_id
WHERE fkc2.parent_object_id = fk_tab.object_id
GROUP BY c2.name
FOR XML PATH(N''), TYPE).value(N'.[1]', N'NVARCHAR(MAX)'), 1, 2, N'')
+ ')
REFERENCES ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(pk_tab.schema_id)) + '.' + QUOTENAME(pk_tab.name) +
' (' +
STUFF((SELECT ', ' + QUOTENAME(c3.name)
FROM sys.foreign_key_columns fkc3
INNER JOIN sys.columns c3 ON fkc3.referenced_object_id=c3.object_id
AND fkc3.referenced_column_id=c3.column_id
WHERE fkc3.referenced_object_id = pk_tab.object_id
GROUP BY c3.name
FOR XML PATH(N''), TYPE).value(N'.[1]', N'NVARCHAR(MAX)'), 1, 2, N'')
+ ')
GO
ALTER TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(fk.schema_id)) + '.' + QUOTENAME(fk_tab.name) + ' CHECK CONSTRAINT ' + QUOTENAME(fk.name) + '
GO' + CHAR(13)
FROM sys.foreign_keys fk
INNER JOIN sys.tables fk_tab on fk.parent_object_id=fk_tab.object_id
INNER JOIN sys.tables pk_tab on fk.referenced_object_id=pk_tab.object_id
ORDER BY fk_tab.name

More »

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

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


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