Featured Content on JumptartTV

My video on Adding and Removing Events in SQL Server Profiler is the featured video on JumstartTV today. This is one of several videos on JumpstartTV that take you through how to use Profiler.

Profiler is a great tool for troubleshooting SQL Server and every SQL Server professional should have a basic understanding of how to use it.

JumpstartTV is a site dedicated to provide short, task-specific videos currently focusing on Microsoft SQL Server.

RedGate SQLPrompt Laughers

I was writing some SQL today, big surprise, and I noticed this snippet in RedGate SQLCompare, "yell". So I hit the tab key to insert the snippet and here is what I got:

/*

 AAAA   AAAA   AAAA   AAAA  RRRRR   GGGG  HH  HH  ######
AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG  GG HH  HH  ######
AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG     HH  HH   ####
AAAAAA AAAAAA AAAAAA AAAAAA RRRRR  GG GGG HHHHHH    ##
AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG  GG HH  HH
AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR  GGG G HH  HH    ##

*/

So I decided to see if there were any other funny ones. I only find one more, neo, which puts this in:

-- I know Kung-Fu.

If this was, "I know aikido", then there are few SQL Guru's it would apply to. Gail Shaw, Grant Fritchey, and Steve Jones.

I love when I find little things like this. They make life interesting.

Forum Etiquette Rant

I was going to post about some tools that I use for various tasks, but I was perturbed by a post on this SSC thread. The poster basically said,

"I found this as I worked on a problem and reading it is a waste of my time, you guys don't know what you are talking about"

Now maybe I shouldn't be irritated by this, but, as a frequent contributor, it bothers me when someone doesn't offer anything constructive to the thread and basically calls me an idiot at the same time.

Hey, I realize I don't know it all, and when someone posts a better solution than I did I think it's great and I use it myself.

If you find yourself on a forum and don't find it helpful, don't criticize without posting a better solution. Remember most of the contributors are doing it because they want to help, not because they are getting paid.

Remember what your mother said,

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"

How's your commentary?

Steve Jones had a good editorial on SQLServerCentral, A Dearth of Comments, this past Monday. One way I measure a good editorial is the discussion it generates and this one generated an interesting one.

There are generally 2 camps for commenting code:

1. My code is self-documenting.
   

People in this camp usually have more verbose method, property, and variable names.

2. I want the next person to know what I was doing and why. Oh, and I want to be able to remember when I go back in 6 months.
   

People in this camp sometimes over comment. This folks will take a Insert Into table Select From tableB and put this comment at the top "this inserts a row into tableA from tableB".

I have to admit that in practice I am more in the first camp, although I'd like to move toward, but not all the way into the second camp. When I was learning to program, my boss\mentor was and, to the best of my knowledge, is firmly entrenched in the first camp. The fact that I have had to spend some time debugging and upgrading his code certainly is playing a part in my desire to do more commenting. Here are a couple of things I picked up from the SSC discussion that I am going to try to implement as I move forward:

1. Comment why I am doing what I am doing and why I am doing it this particular way. Any good developer should be able to figure out what the code does, but not necessarily the why. Thanks Roger Plowman and those who seconded his comment.
2. Comment so a novice, either in programming or business knowledge, can understand what the code does and why. Several people mentioned it in the thread.
3. Create the why and how comments BEFORE beginning. Really this is putting together a plan, and will probably be the hardest one for me as I like to "dive" right in. Thanks Jay Holovacs and others who mentioned this.
4. Push for and get an intranet Wiki or Knowledge Base. My first job had one and it was great. Where I'm at now does not, which means the developer who wrote it, supports it. Not that I don't want to support my code, but I don't need to be the only one who can do it. Thanks again to Roger Plowman and others.

I've always done a good job with a header on stored procedures and triggers (see this post), but not within the code or in my VB or C# code.

So now you know that my "commentary" is mediocre at best, but how's yours?

Goals for 2009

I've read several posts recently about how people did on meeting their goals for 2008, so I thought I'd post my goals for 2009.

1. Learn SQL Server 2008, particularly policy-based management, resource governor, and service broker.
2. Write 1 article per quarter for SQLServerCentral.
3. Record and submit 1 video per quarter for JumpstartTV.
4. One blog post per week.
5. Become more involved in leadership in my local user group (OPASS).
   
6. Speak at 2 community events (user groups, SQLSaturdays, etc...).
7. Attend the PASS Summit.

Certainly all of these are attainable, but each one stretches me professionally. It has only been over about the last year that I have attempted to "broaden my horizons" through writing and speaking on technical subjects. The best part is that I have discovered that I enjoy doing it and that it has really helped me become a better SQL Server professional.