Author Archives: SQLGator
Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
“Life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone.” ~ Neale Walsh
For years people told me to get outside of my comfort zone, to which I replied no thanks. Besides, I like it in here, they all know my name. For years I did not venture outside of the zone. At the same time I was bored and found little excitement in life. That all changed in 1998 when I was 27. I had no intentions of traveling outside of the United States for fear of the unknown. I rarely did new things because the change may be uncomfortable.
The company I was working for at the time sent me to Italy for a month to finish off and deliver our software and ensure that it was implemented properly for our client when it went into production. I was skeptical and scared to leave the country but thought at least they have a vested interest in my safety and ensuring that I return home. I had a prime opportunity to explore Italy being there for a month and I rarely ventured out more than a couple of blocks from my hotel. Looking back, I wasted an opportunity of a lifetime staying in my comfort zone.
A year later I was a consultant traveling around North America. Having realized the opportunity that I missed in Italy, I ventured out a little more but not nearly as much as I should have. Two golden opportunities to see the world down the drain. Over the last couple of years, I have stepped further outside the zone to begin networking and meeting new people as well as traveling. In that time frame, my life has been more fulfilled, so much so that I look for new opportunities to step out of the circle. Don’t get me wrong, I am not all the way there yet. I still have to coax myself away from my iPad and force myself to talk to people and step away from the introversion. But I can see with each step brings new opportunities and new adventures and my life has been forever changed. Enjoy!
T-19 Days Until the PASS Summit, Are You Prepared?
With the DATEDIFF script returning 19 today, I thought I would share a thought that I had this morning on the way into the office while thinking about the PASS Summit 2012. My wife is constantly asking me about what clothes I am taking, what jacket, and other minute details. I usually try to leave decisions like these until a day or two before a trip, but she makes a really good point.
With flying from Tampa to Seattle, I am going from one corner of the country to the exact opposite corner. My usual shorts and short-sleeved shirt will not cut it at this conference. However, I will be bringing my swim trunks as the Sheraton has an indoor pool, so why not get some laps in? I also needed to find my jacket and make sure it fits still and of course dust it off. Yes, I live in Florida and I only have two jackets, one is more professional and one is for the outdoors. The jacket is still comfortable, wow I think it has been a year or two at least since I have had to wear it. Since the Sheraton is across the street, I also wonder if I could get away with shorts to some of the sessions? Should I take an umbrella? I might need some advice here.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
Nifty Code to Update Collation
Today, we interrupt our countdown series in progress to bring you some actual T-SQL coding. I had to bring out this snippet and dust it off for my purposes, to change some column-level collation in a database. To give you some background, we have a vendor product that requires case-insensitive collation at the server and table level, but case-sensitive on the column level. Yes, I know that is not best practices and seems like a weird design choice but I have to support it as the DBA.
Normally this would require a script from the vendor because it is their code, but the product allows you to create some custom tables (they default to the table level collation) in the database and those are our responsibility. So why would you need to change it you say? The developers were trying to write some reports against these tables and as you would expect they received an error (Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 4 Cannot resolve the collation conflict between “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS” and “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS” in the equal to operation.) It would take forever to go table by table and column by column to change the collation, hence the need for the script!
DISCLAIMER: I have had this little snippet for a while and I do not know who wrote it originally, probably found on MSDN. I also know that it is not the most updated way of doing this (you should use the sys schema) but it works and sometimes that is easier than rewriting the code.
The first thing you should do is right-click on your query window in SSMS and set your results to text so that the script outputs you a new script that you will run in another query window. Keep in mind with some of your tables you might have to drop and recreate the indexes in order to alter the collation. Always take a backup before changing something like this and know what you are doing and changing before executing any script.
SELECT ‘ALTER TABLE ‘ + syso.name + ‘ ALTER COLUMN [‘ + sysc.name + ‘]’,
syst.name + ‘ (‘ ,
sysc.length ,
‘) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS’ ,
CASE sysc.ISNULLABLE
WHEN ‘1’ THEN ‘NULL’
ELSE ‘NOT NULL’
END + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + ‘GO’
FROM sysobjects syso ,
syscolumns sysc ,
systypes syst
WHERE syso.id = sysc.id
AND syst.xtype = sysc.xtype
AND sysc.collation = ‘SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS’
AND syso.type = ‘U’
AND syst.name != ‘text’
AND syso.name NOT IN ( ‘SYSDIAGRAMS’ )
Enjoy and I hope this helps you!
T-21 Days Until the Summit Conference, Three Weeks Baby
With the DATEDIFF script returning 21 today, the reality is starting to set in that three weeks from today at this time I will be in the air on my way to the super bowl of technology events: the PASS Summit 2012.
With so many activities planned it looks like I will have Sunday and Friday night to myself, at least as of today. I do want to get back to the space needle and I also want to Ride the Ducks. My dance card is filling up fast, but one thing is for sure this will be the trip of a lifetime, at least until next year.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
T-22 Days Until the Summit Conference, No Sleep for the Weary
With the DATEDIFF script returning 22 today, I thought I would share a thought that I had today while thinking about the PASS Summit 2012. I might get an average of three hours sleep a night, and I am stoked! Obviously, I usually get about eight hours a night and I function pretty well within that framework. But you only get this opportunity once a year and I plan on making the most of the opportunities.
With evening activities and many after hours activities filling up and my goal of experiencing everything I can at my first Summit, I may have to sleep the next week. The interesting part is the wide variety of activities being provided by sponsors as well as PASS itself. My SQL cup will runneth over that week, come and join me.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
T-23 Days Until the Summit SQLHugs
With the DATEDIFF script returning 23 today, I thought I would share a thought that I had this morning on the way to work while thinking about the PASS Summit 2012. In the immortal words of Longfellow Deeds “handshakes are for strangers, pal. We hug around here, buddy.” This is the #SQLFamily, so are SQLHugs appropriate? I am a hugger, not to everyone, only friends. The SQL community is a world of friends available online anytime, so with that being said I think SQLHugs are appropriate. What do you think? Let me know ahead of time or you just might get a big SQLGator hug when I see you at the Summit.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
T-24 Days Until The Summit
With the DATEDIFF script returning 24 today, I thought it would be great day to review my travel plans.
- Hotel booked, staying at the Sheraton, which is right across the street from the conference.
- My flights are booked through Delta departing Sunday and coming back home Saturday. I keep checking my seat assignments in hope that I have an empty chair next to me for comfort. It probably will not happen, but one can dream.
- I will probably take a shuttle from the airport even though the light rail sounds interesting, I understand it is a considerable walking distance and I really do not want to do that at this point with a laptop bag and big suitcase.
- My wife purchased some new luggage for another upcoming trip and I will be purchasing a new laptop bag for this trip.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
T-25 Days Until My Summit Experience Begins
With the DATEDIFF script returning 25 today, I thought it would be great day to point out some of the links provided by SQL Pass to enhance your Summit experience.
- A list of After Hours events, it’s not all-encompassing, but it is a good start.
- A list of Evening events (not to be confused with the After Hours events).
- A list of First Timers events.
- A list of Attendees for networking purposes.
Haven’t registered yet? Why not? Come on you know you want to! See you there! Enjoy!
T-26 Days Until My Summit Excursion Occurs
With the DATEDIFF script returning 26 today, I thought it would be great to include some pictures from my last and only trip to Seattle in 1987. As a stud defensive lineman (maybe just in my own mind), I was not too cool to be a mathlete and flex my national Mu Alpha Theta competition smile. I am geek and always have been so it would not be surprising that I was the captain of the Algebra II team that won the state competition. This was a blast for the four of us on the Algebra II team, my friend David Jones competing in the individual Trigonometry and Pedro Nunez in Geometry, I believe.
This is my friend Chuck Zanti and I sitting where Ken Griffey, Jr. and Alex Rodriquez sat inside the King Dome during our tour of the stadium. We wanted to see a game, but the Mariners were out-of-town the whole week. Sadly I will not be able to return here since it no longer exists.
This is inside the Boeing Museum of Flight, which was another highlight of our trip in addition to the flying fish at Pike Place Market. I do not think I will have time to visit Boeing this time, but the market is definitely on the agenda.
I am not sure that I remember what this place was called, I just know that we took a long ferry ride to the island and then we saw a Native Americans performance along with some excellent salmon. Of course, we had to get a picture in front of the totem pole.
And finally, this was the view from our dorm room at the U Dub (University of Washington) where the math competition was held. It was a beautiful campus and we greatly enjoyed our stay in Seattle. Enjoy!
T-27 Days Until My Summit Adventure Begins
The DATEDIFF script tells me it is now 27 days until I leave for the SQL PASS Summit 2012. Today I have built my tentative schedule (as shown below) and this was probably the most difficult task I will ever have to do this year. Trying to balance the sessions I need that will aid my current position in addition to what I would like to know and let’s not forget the people with whom I want to see speak. Thankfully, I purchased the DVDs to cover all of those lost sessions.
I will go over the schedule again in a few weeks as I understand it is evolving. However, I am curious, with shifting time slots if my calendar will adjust to the session or simply make me believe that I am attending a session that is no longer in that time slot. Another thing I would like to point out is that I loaded all of these sessions into my outlook calendar and then I realized ‘hey that calendar is on eastern standard time!’ So I edited these sessions in my phone to reflect a pacific time zone so that hopefully when I arrive in Seattle everything will be correct. I am making a mental note to review my schedule on Sunday when I arrive.
Stay tuned for this excellent adventure!
SQL Swampland 