From 6d0993b27cbf88948f6fee4814cdcb816df83fc5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "copilot-swe-agent[bot]" <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2025 11:49:21 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 1/4] Initial plan From 64365f689a5b7aa281f6de85a1297f26e54d87af Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "copilot-swe-agent[bot]" <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2025 12:02:31 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 2/4] Remove Twitter shortcodes and links from blog posts Co-authored-by: jpomfret <981370+jpomfret@users.noreply.github.com> --- .../post/2018/checking-backups-with-dbachecks/index.md | 2 +- .../first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/index.md | 4 +--- .../2018/psparametersets-mandatory-sometimes/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-102/index.md | 2 +- .../t-sql-tuesday-104-code-you-cant-live-without/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-108/index.md | 6 ++---- blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-99/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2019/dbatools-with-bert/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2019/multiple-triggers/index.md | 4 +--- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-111/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-112/index.md | 4 ++-- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-117/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-118/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-119/index.md | 4 ++-- blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-121/index.md | 8 ++++---- .../post/2020/backups-dbatools-burnttoast/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/dbachecks-importexcel/index.md | 2 +- .../post/2020/interactive-debugging-in-vscode/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/query-store-bp-dbatools/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-122/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123-summary/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-125/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-126/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-127/index.md | 6 ++---- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-130/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-132/index.md | 6 +++--- blog/content/post/2020/vscode-focus/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/azure-tags-part1/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/psreadline-search-history/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-134/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-135/index.md | 6 +++--- blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-136/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-141/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-143/index.md | 2 +- 37 files changed, 48 insertions(+), 56 deletions(-) diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/checking-backups-with-dbachecks/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/checking-backups-with-dbachecks/index.md index 41de9a9..b489eb3 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/checking-backups-with-dbachecks/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/checking-backups-with-dbachecks/index.md @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ tags: Folks, there is something fantastic coming from the creators of dbatools! -Chrissy LeMaire ([blog](https://blog.netnerds.net/)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/cl)) and Rob Sewell ([blog](https://sqldbawithabeard.com/)|[twitter](https://twitter.com/sqldbawithbeard)) just announced something big at SQLBits 2018, a new PowerShell module that combines [dbatools](https://dbatools.io/) with [Pester](https://github.com/pester/Pester) to ensure your environment is "as expected". I've been lucky enough to get to know both Chrissy and Rob by contributing to dbatools and when they introduced me to this new module I instantly saw a lot of potential. +Chrissy LeMaire ([blog](https://blog.netnerds.net/)) and Rob Sewell ([blog](https://sqldbawithabeard.com/)) just announced something big at SQLBits 2018, a new PowerShell module that combines [dbatools](https://dbatools.io/) with [Pester](https://github.com/pester/Pester) to ensure your environment is "as expected". I've been lucky enough to get to know both Chrissy and Rob by contributing to dbatools and when they introduced me to this new module I instantly saw a lot of potential. I'm going to start off with just a small way to gain some value from dbachecks, ensuring your backups are completing with the frequency you expect. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/index.md index 5c4a3cd..72c1ba7 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/index.md @@ -15,8 +15,6 @@ Well tonight marks three weeks since I gave my first user group presentation and TL;DR I didn’t die, the SQL Server community is fantastic and I have amazing supportive friends. -{{< tweet user="Pittfurg" id="1004125722082934784" >}} - ## Why Present? The answer to this is twofold. Firstly this year I’ve challenged myself to get more involved in the SQL Server community. For several years now I’ve attended user group meetings, SQL Saturday’s and even made it to the PASS Summit a couple of times, but I’ve never contributed anything. It’s been all take.   Last year I got involved with dbatools and that started my quest to return the favour.  I’m still currently wrestling with the ideas of “who wants to listen to what I have to say” and “do I really have anything to contribute anyway,” but I’m doing my best to keep one foot in front of the other and see what happens. @@ -31,7 +29,7 @@ The culmination of both the issue at work and working on dbatools commands for c ## Improvements -Overall I think the presentation went well, I delivered most of what I had planned on saying and my demo’s did a decent job of explaining the process for deciding what to compress and then applying compression through T-SQL, SSMS and PowerShell.  I was lucky to have some great friends in the audience ([Andrew](https://twitter.com/awickham), [Drew](https://twitter.com/Pittfurg) and [Erin](https://twitter.com/erinstellato)) who asked great questions which helped me to drive home certain points. +Overall I think the presentation went well, I delivered most of what I had planned on saying and my demo’s did a decent job of explaining the process for deciding what to compress and then applying compression through T-SQL, SSMS and PowerShell.  I was lucky to have some great friends in the audience (Andrew, Drew and Erin) who asked great questions which helped me to drive home certain points. My timing was definitely a bit off. I’d prepared for what I thought would be 45-60 minutes of content and it was a bit shorter than that.  I plan on adding some additional content and delivering slightly slower the next time I give this talk to fix this problem. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/psparametersets-mandatory-sometimes/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/psparametersets-mandatory-sometimes/index.md index ab0c228..9e12531 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/psparametersets-mandatory-sometimes/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/psparametersets-mandatory-sometimes/index.md @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ tags: I came across a situation this week where I wanted to add the option of running an existing script,  for a specific server/database combination.  The script currently has no parameters and runs against all servers in the environment from a scheduled task.  I wanted to make sure that behaviour didn’t change. The other requirement was that if I specified Server, Database should be a mandatory parameter and vice versa. -The final solution was to add the two parameters to a parameter set and make them both mandatory.  I also had to add a different DefaultParameterSet (thanks to [Andrew](http://twitter.com/awickham) for this idea), otherwise it defaulted to the defined parameter set, meaning the script always required both Server and Database parameters. +The final solution was to add the two parameters to a parameter set and make them both mandatory.  I also had to add a different DefaultParameterSet (thanks to Andrew for this idea), otherwise it defaulted to the defined parameter set, meaning the script always required both Server and Database parameters. ```PowerShell [CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName="Normal")] diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md index bb6eebd..e25463e 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md @@ -75,6 +75,6 @@ The final command for my top five takes an object in PowerShell and uses SQL bul $results | Write-DbaDataTable -SqlInstance serverName -Database databaseName -Table tableName -AutoCreateTable ``` -The Second reason dbatools is my favourite tool is all the other things I’ve gained and learnt from this module.  It’s been almost one year since my first pull request to dbatools, and at that point I had a decent handle on PowerShell but git was a foreign language. Guided by Chrissy LeMaire ([t](http://twitter.com/cl)) and some other folks from the [slack channel](http://dbatools.io/slack) I got the repo forked, created my own branch and then submitted a PR to get my contributions merged in.  Since then I’ve contributed multiple more PRs, everything from small fixes to the command based help, to writing a brand new command (Get-DbaDbCompression will be released soon!). +The Second reason dbatools is my favourite tool is all the other things I’ve gained and learnt from this module.  It’s been almost one year since my first pull request to dbatools, and at that point I had a decent handle on PowerShell but git was a foreign language. Guided by Chrissy LeMaire (t) and some other folks from the [slack channel](http://dbatools.io/slack) I got the repo forked, created my own branch and then submitted a PR to get my contributions merged in.  Since then I’ve contributed multiple more PRs, everything from small fixes to the command based help, to writing a brand new command (Get-DbaDbCompression will be released soon!). This tool not only gives you hundreds of commands to make your job easier, it encourages you to branch out and get involved in a truly special community. You will meet some brilliant people to bounce ideas off, learn new skills like github, integration tests or even continuous integration and development, all while giving back to the amazing community that surrounds the SQL Server ecosystem.  This blog is the start of my attempt to give back while furthering my understanding of certain topics. In June I’ll be stepping even further outside of my comfort zone by presenting at my local user group on data compression, and of course that’ll feature some dbatools related demos. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-102/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-102/index.md index 49d5049..3ce8e8b 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-102/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-102/index.md @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ categories: height="300px" >}} -First of all thanks to Riley Major ([b](https://scribnasium.com)|[t](https://twitter.com/RileyMajor)) for hosting this months T-SQL Tuesday.  This is a great topic for me as I have mentioned before my goal this year is to work on getting my blog going and starting to give back to this amazing community. I am always impressed by the content people produce and share, whether it be blog posts, presentations or just snippets on Twitter and I have learnt so much in my career so far from these sources.  Honestly I often feel like I don't have anything worth sharing and that what I know is obvious and everyone would know it.  Then I think back to that first Ohio North SQL Server User Group presentation I went to where Allen White ([b](http://dataperfpro.com/blog/)|[t](https://twitter.com/SQLRunr)) gave his now famous introduction, everyone has something to teach, so here goes. +First of all thanks to Riley Major ([b](https://scribnasium.com)) for hosting this months T-SQL Tuesday.  This is a great topic for me as I have mentioned before my goal this year is to work on getting my blog going and starting to give back to this amazing community. I am always impressed by the content people produce and share, whether it be blog posts, presentations or just online snippets and I have learnt so much in my career so far from these sources.  Honestly I often feel like I don't have anything worth sharing and that what I know is obvious and everyone would know it.  Then I think back to that first Ohio North SQL Server User Group presentation I went to where Allen White ([b](http://dataperfpro.com/blog/)) gave his now famous introduction, everyone has something to teach, so here goes. I am all about goals and since we're already almost six months into 2018 I'm going to set some goals down on paper that will force me out of my comfort zone. I have been working towards these haphazardly so far, so I hope that writing these out will hold me accountable. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-104-code-you-cant-live-without/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-104-code-you-cant-live-without/index.md index 5ca5e71..e2db196 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-104-code-you-cant-live-without/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-104-code-you-cant-live-without/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -As soon as I saw Bert Wagner ([t](https://twitter.com/bertwagner)|[b](https://bertwagner.com/)) post his T-SQL Tuesday topic last week I knew this was going to be a great one. I’m really looking forward to reading about everyone’s favourite code snippets so thanks Bert for hosting and choosing a fantastic subject! +As soon as I saw Bert Wagner ([b](https://bertwagner.com/)) post his T-SQL Tuesday topic last week I knew this was going to be a great one. I’m really looking forward to reading about everyone’s favourite code snippets so thanks Bert for hosting and choosing a fantastic subject! A lot of the code I can't live without is either downloaded from the community (e.g. [sp_whoisactive](http://whoisactive.com/), [sp_indexinfo](http://karaszi.com/spindexinfo-enhanced-index-information-procedure), [sp_blitz](https://www.brentozar.com/blitz/)), or very specific to my workplace so I'm going to share some code that I've been meaning to blog about. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-108/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-108/index.md index 8fe578d..ab513fd 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-108/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-108/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, I have struggled in the last month or two to get anything up on my blog. Turns out weddings are pretty time consuming ?! Now that I’m happily married and home from an amazing [honeymoon in Hawaii](https://www.instagram.com/jpomfret/) it’s back to work on my blog and professional development.  Which makes this T-SQL Tuesday topic a perfect one to get back to, so thanks to Malathi Mahadeven ([B](https://curiousaboutdata.com)|[T](https://twitter.com/sqlmal)) for hosting this month. +It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, I have struggled in the last month or two to get anything up on my blog. Turns out weddings are pretty time consuming ?! Now that I’m happily married and home from an amazing [honeymoon in Hawaii](https://www.instagram.com/jpomfret/) it’s back to work on my blog and professional development.  Which makes this T-SQL Tuesday topic a perfect one to get back to, so thanks to Malathi Mahadeven ([B](https://curiousaboutdata.com)) for hosting this month. I feel like with last week’s PASS Summit (I didn’t attend this year so just watching from afar) it makes it even harder than usual to pick just one thing to learn.  There are so many things right now that I want to read about or fiddle with. @@ -31,9 +31,7 @@ I’ve decided to pick a main subject, with an auxiliary bonus area attached - k The side goal is docker/containers/kubernetes (maybe), I’m wondering if I could use these to test my DSC configurations, maybe not to install SQL Server (I have no idea though) but I imagine I could configure SQL Server running in a container. -I saw the tweet below last week from the beard, [Rob Sewell](https://twitter.com/sqldbawithbeard), that quoted [Bob Ward’s](https://twitter.com/bobwardms) thoughts on learning directions.  Feels like this is probably solid advice to justify my side goal. - -{{< tweet user="sqldbawithbeard" id="1061032613979267072" >}} +I saw a post last week from the beard, Rob Sewell, that quoted Bob Ward’s thoughts on learning directions.  Feels like this is probably solid advice to justify my side goal. ## Learning Plan diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-99/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-99/index.md index 5990aa1..1b3df08 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-99/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-99/index.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -First off, welcome to my first T-SQL Tuesday which seems like the perfect first blog post to introduce myself and my non-SQL Server life.  Starting this blog and becoming more involved with the SQL Server community (read speaking) is my goal for 2018 so here goes nothing. Thanks to [Aaron Bertrand](http://twitter.com/AaronBertrand) for hosting and picking a great topic. +First off, welcome to my first T-SQL Tuesday which seems like the perfect first blog post to introduce myself and my non-SQL Server life.  Starting this blog and becoming more involved with the SQL Server community (read speaking) is my goal for 2018 so here goes nothing. Thanks to Aaron Bertrand for hosting and picking a great topic. I was born in Oxford, England before my family moved to the small market town of [Chippenham, Wiltshire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/chippenham) where I was raised.  Leading to my main passion being proper football. We can argue about why this is the proper football in a later post perhaps (hint: you use your feet to kick a ball, no hands or egg-shaped objects here). diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/dbatools-with-bert/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/dbatools-with-bert/index.md index 156670e..8ea632a 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/dbatools-with-bert/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/dbatools-with-bert/index.md @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ tags: draft: $true --- -This weekend, while I was having a great time at SQL Saturday Cleveland, I ran into my friend Bert ([b](https://bertwagner.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/bertwagner)). He had some dbatools questions, which I was happy to help him with.  Now that dbatools has over 500 commands, it is both awesome and terrifying.  Bert wanted to know how to automate his database backups and then check he was using the correct recovery model. +This weekend, while I was having a great time at SQL Saturday Cleveland, I ran into my friend Bert ([b](https://bertwagner.com/)). He had some dbatools questions, which I was happy to help him with.  Now that dbatools has over 500 commands, it is both awesome and terrifying.  Bert wanted to know how to automate his database backups and then check he was using the correct recovery model. {{< youtube id="9Zk3R7_Pr-U" title="Automating Database Maintenance with Jess Pomfret and dbatools" >}} diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/multiple-triggers/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/multiple-triggers/index.md index ae59583..c3384b5 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/multiple-triggers/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/multiple-triggers/index.md @@ -11,9 +11,7 @@ tags: Well it has been a little quiet here recently. I just (or it’s been two weeks now) got back from a 2 week trip to England and France. It was an amazing trip and there are a few pictures on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jpomfret/) if you are curious about what I got up to. -This is also going to be a quick post. I asked a question on Twitter last week about what happens when you have multiple triggers on a table. I got the answer (Thanks Aaron!), but figured this would be a good thing to demonstrate. - -{{< tweet user="AaronBertrand" id="1121436026956861445" >}} +This is also going to be a quick post. I asked a question last week about what happens when you have multiple triggers on a table. I got the answer (Thanks Aaron!), but figured this would be a good thing to demonstrate. I have also been playing with Azure Data Studio and the new notebook feature, so I answered this question with a step-by-step example in a notebook. I also found that you can easily store these notebooks on GitHub so I have uploaded it to my demos repo for you to follow along. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-111/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-111/index.md index 88d0981..4503057 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-111/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-111/index.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -It’s T-SQL Tuesday again and thanks goes this week to our host Andy Leonard ([b](https://andyleonard.blog)|[t](https://twitter.com/AndyLeonard)). Andy has picked a great topic on why we do the things we do. With our hectic lives it’s good sometimes to sit down and have a think about something like this.  I’ve split my ‘what I do’ up into three buckets that, although are separate, have a lot of common ‘whys’. +It’s T-SQL Tuesday again and thanks goes this week to our host Andy Leonard ([b](https://andyleonard.blog)). Andy has picked a great topic on why we do the things we do. With our hectic lives it’s good sometimes to sit down and have a think about something like this.  I’ve split my ‘what I do’ up into three buckets that, although are separate, have a lot of common ‘whys’. ## Database Administrator diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-112/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-112/index.md index 3b56289..09f30e1 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-112/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-112/index.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ image: "abundance-bazaar-biscuits-375904-e1552343553342.jpg" height="300px" >}} -It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again and our host this week, Shane O'Neill ([b](https://nocolumnname.blog/)|[t](https://twitter.com/SOZDBA)), has challenged us to a humble brag. This really is a challenge for most of us as we do awesome things quietly, so thanks to Shane for forcing us to share some ‘cookies’.  This is also the second time in a couple of weeks that [David Goggins’ book](https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your-ebook/dp/B07H453KGH) has been mentioned, which means I need to move it up on my to-read list. +It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again and our host this week, Shane O'Neill ([b](https://nocolumnname.blog/)), has challenged us to a humble brag. This really is a challenge for most of us as we do awesome things quietly, so thanks to Shane for forcing us to share some ‘cookies’.  This is also the second time in a couple of weeks that [David Goggins’ book](https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your-ebook/dp/B07H453KGH) has been mentioned, which means I need to move it up on my to-read list. Imposter syndrome is something a lot of us struggle with. I am going to share a couple of things that I’m proud of and that I can look back on when things get tough.  As I’ve written before I’m working hard on stepping out of my comfort zone to prepare and deliver technical presentations. Recently I’ve been building a presentation that has caused me to wonder many times, what was I thinking.  Hopefully this recap will remind me that I can do it. @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ Imposter syndrome is something a lot of us struggle with. I am going to share a This first story is a technical one. I was working on a project a year or so ago that involved complicated changes to business processes and therefore it was decided that development and test environments needed to be as similar to production as possible.  This meant that I was inundated with requests to take backups of production and restore to many nonproduction environments.  This got old fast. -The process not only involved the backup/restore piece, the data in production was both sensitive and encrypted using TDE.  I started writing PowerShell scripts for each step in the process, restoring certificates and databases, unencrypting and then removing certificates and then masking the sensitive data (which involved calling a T-SQL stored procedure built by my colleague, [Andrew](https://twitter.com/awickham)).  This was fine to begin with, but as the production data grew the process took longer and longer, which meant that the nonproduction environment was unavailable for longer each time. +The process not only involved the backup/restore piece, the data in production was both sensitive and encrypted using TDE.  I started writing PowerShell scripts for each step in the process, restoring certificates and databases, unencrypting and then removing certificates and then masking the sensitive data (which involved calling a T-SQL stored procedure built by my colleague, Andrew).  This was fine to begin with, but as the production data grew the process took longer and longer, which meant that the nonproduction environment was unavailable for longer each time. After awhile this process was no longer acceptable because the test environments were down for too long. I met with the team and we came up with a plan.  We ended up agreeing that we would create a process to create ‘restore points’.  These would basically be points in time from production, that were prepared for nonproduction use, off hours in a temporary environment.  I utilized a combination of [Urban Code Deploy](https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/products/urbancode-deploy/) (UCD), a product we already had in house, and PowerShell scripts to give the developers the power to first create a restore point, and then to be able to refresh environments from these prepackaged backups. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-117/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-117/index.md index af2aeac..49e058c 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-117/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-117/index.md @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ tags: This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is all about [Memory Optimized Tables](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/in-memory-oltp/overview-and-usage-scenarios?view=sql-server-2017) (MOT), a topic I will admit I know almost nothing about. When they first came out in 2014 I was excited about the new technology and the options that would bring, however I never found a good reason to implement them. -Thanks to Steve Jones ([b](https://voiceofthedba.com)|[t](https://twitter.com/way0utwest)) for hosting this month’s edition and after reading about MOT this week I’m looking forward to learning how people are using them. +Thanks to Steve Jones ([b](https://voiceofthedba.com)) for hosting this month’s edition and after reading about MOT this week I’m looking forward to learning how people are using them. I’ve heard many times in the technology world that the third release of a software or new feature is the best time to adopt it.  Reading about MOT, it seems like this theory fits here also. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-118/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-118/index.md index cc08d2c..f280409 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-118/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-118/index.md @@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -This month our T-SQL Tuesday host, Kevin Chant ([b](https://www.kevinrchant.com)|[t](https://twitter.com/kevchant)), has challenged us to propose a new fantasy feature for SQL Server. Firstly, thanks to Kevin for hosting this month’s blog party. +This month our T-SQL Tuesday host, Kevin Chant ([b](https://www.kevinrchant.com)), has challenged us to propose a new fantasy feature for SQL Server. Firstly, thanks to Kevin for hosting this month’s blog party. When I first read the invitation I didn’t have any ideas jump straight into my mind. Since then, I’ve come up with two. I’m going to share both since they are for different areas… cheating I know ?. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-119/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-119/index.md index 0d4c225..68b2734 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-119/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-119/index.md @@ -21,11 +21,11 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -It’s time for our monthly T-SQL Tuesday blog party again and we have another interesting prompt to write about. Thanks goes to Alex Yates ([b](http://workingwithdevs.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/_AlexYates_)) for hosting this month. +It’s time for our monthly T-SQL Tuesday blog party again and we have another interesting prompt to write about. Thanks goes to Alex Yates ([b](http://workingwithdevs.com/)) for hosting this month. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few days and really wanted to find a technical topic to write about, but over and over I came back to the same thoughts. This last week I attended two conferences and gave three presentations (one topic twice), and I still can’t believe I’ve given a single technical presentation. -Allen White ([b](http://dataperfpro.com)|[t](https://twitter.com/SQLRunr)) has a famous spiel that he gives before every one of his presentations, encouraging his audience that everyone has something they can teach others. I created my PASS profile in 2011, and that was about the time I first heard Allen present. I remember laughing to myself that I would never be able to do that.  Giving presentations during my college years was something I dreaded, why on earth would I volunteer now to do that. +Allen White ([b](http://dataperfpro.com)) has a famous spiel that he gives before every one of his presentations, encouraging his audience that everyone has something they can teach others. I created my PASS profile in 2011, and that was about the time I first heard Allen present. I remember laughing to myself that I would never be able to do that.  Giving presentations during my college years was something I dreaded, why on earth would I volunteer now to do that. Well, fast forward to June 2018, I gave [my first user group presentation](https://jesspomfret.com/first-user-group-presentation-i-survived/). I stepped way out of my comfort zone for that, but since then I have presented 11 additional times.  I’ve presented at a mixture of SQL Saturdays, online virtual groups and conferences, and every time I’ve got extremely nervous beforehand, and experienced an unbelievable high after. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-121/index.md b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-121/index.md index 5804ef1..3a727dd 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-121/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2019/t-sql-tuesday-121/index.md @@ -24,13 +24,13 @@ tags: > This is a time for material gift giving, for many of us. It might also be a time to consider the many gifts we have received through the year, and perhaps use this opportunity to appreciate people or situations that we were blessed with. -When I first saw Mala’s post last week for the last T-SQL Tuesday of the year I immediately started thinking of all the gifts I have received this year and how thankful I was with how 2019 has turned out. So first things first, thanks to Mala ([b](https://curiousaboutdata.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/sqlmal/)) for hosting this final prompt of 2019. +When I first saw Mala’s post last week for the last T-SQL Tuesday of the year I immediately started thinking of all the gifts I have received this year and how thankful I was with how 2019 has turned out. So first things first, thanks to Mala ([b](https://curiousaboutdata.com/)) for hosting this final prompt of 2019. ## The gift of #SQLFamily Around this time I found my local user group in Cleveland and started attending meetings. Attending meetings, talking to no one and going home, but still learning a lot from the great speakers and topics that were shared. This really started my journey as I started to interact with the community. -I was also starting to follow members of the SQL Server community on Twitter. I occasionally used the [#SQLHelp](https://twitter.com/hashtag/sqlhelp?src=hashtag_click) hashtag to get some guidance, but mostly played the role of lurker. I’d read articles that were shared, learning plenty, but not fully realizing the potential here. +I was also starting to follow members of the SQL Server community online. I occasionally used the #SQLHelp hashtag to get some guidance, but mostly played the role of lurker. I’d read articles that were shared, learning plenty, but not fully realizing the potential here. In 2015 I changed jobs, which meant in 2016 I had the chance to attend my first PASS Summit. What an experience. It was like our local user group on steroids, all day, for 3 whole days.  I was exhausted by the end of the week and that was just from the conference portion as I mostly kept to myself during the evenings. @@ -40,13 +40,13 @@ My friends at the user group continually provided support, guidance, and encoura Since that slightly shaky presentation on Data Compression in June 2018, I’ve presented 3 different sessions a total of 14 times at various user groups, SQL Saturdays and conferences. Although I still feel like I have a long way to go, it was really great to present back to my local user group this last month to show them I’m getting better and their support is working! -I will also give a special shout out to the Grillen guys. In June 2019 I was lucky enough to present my DSC & SQL Server presentation at DataGrillen. This was my first big conference- I had a few SQL Saturdays under my belt but this felt huge. William ([b](http://williamdurkin.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/sql_williamd)) and Ben ([b](https://www.solisyon.de/)|[t](https://twitter.com/bweissman)) were the most amazing hosts, not only having created an amazing space to present and learn in, but also ensuring both myself and my wife had the best trip possible. I highly recommend checking this conference out if you can. The good news is, at this time, the c[all for speakers for 2020](https://datagrillen.com/) is still open for 5 more days! +I will also give a special shout out to the Grillen guys. In June 2019 I was lucky enough to present my DSC & SQL Server presentation at DataGrillen. This was my first big conference- I had a few SQL Saturdays under my belt but this felt huge. William ([b](http://williamdurkin.com/)) and Ben ([b](https://www.solisyon.de/)) were the most amazing hosts, not only having created an amazing space to present and learn in, but also ensuring both myself and my wife had the best trip possible. I highly recommend checking this conference out if you can. The good news is, at this time, the c[all for speakers for 2020](https://datagrillen.com/) is still open for 5 more days! We are so lucky to live and work in a community that has this concept of #SQLFamily. It took me a while to see it but now I can truly appreciate it and I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today without every one of you! ## The gift of supportive family & friends -The second gift I will talk about is I have the most supportive friends and family. Thanks to the #SQLFamily, I have met and made connections with folks from all over the world.  Thanks to Twitter, I randomly stumbled across this tweet one afternoon: +The second gift I will talk about is I have the most supportive friends and family. Thanks to the #SQLFamily, I have met and made connections with folks from all over the world.  I randomly stumbled across this post one afternoon: [Tweet from John Martin about builing a team in Southampton](JohnMartin.png) diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/backups-dbatools-burnttoast/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/backups-dbatools-burnttoast/index.md index 2bcb069..d889917 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/backups-dbatools-burnttoast/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/backups-dbatools-burnttoast/index.md @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ image: "cover.jpg" I have just a quick tip for you today using the [BurntToast](https://github.com/Windos/BurntToast) module to notify us when a backup is complete. As DBAs there is always plenty to do, so we don’t want to have to sit and watch a long running script to catch the moment when it finishes.  Usually what happens to me is I kick off the script, move on to something else and then totally forget about it, perhaps until someone asks if it’s done yet. Oops. Well this tip will help avoid that. -The [BurntToast](https://github.com/Windos/BurntToast) module, created by Josh King ([b](https://toastit.dev/)|[t](https://twitter.com/windosnz)), allows you to easily add Windows toast notifications to your PowerShell scripts. I’m going to show you how to use BurntToast to keep track of a database backup. +The [BurntToast](https://github.com/Windos/BurntToast) module, created by Josh King ([b](https://toastit.dev/)), allows you to easily add Windows toast notifications to your PowerShell scripts. I’m going to show you how to use BurntToast to keep track of a database backup. By this time you should know about my love for [dbatools](https://dbatools.io/), so today we’re going to take a look at how to take a [copy-only](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/backup-restore/copy-only-backups-sql-server?view=sql-server-ver15) backup.  This is a backup that doesn’t upset the LSN chain of your regular database backups and can be used to just save a specific point in time for perhaps pre-upgrade, or to restore the database somewhere else. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/dbachecks-importexcel/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/dbachecks-importexcel/index.md index 15fc139..32a284e 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/dbachecks-importexcel/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/dbachecks-importexcel/index.md @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ tags: image: "pivot.jpg" --- -I got a message from a friend on Twitter last night asking ‘Is there an easy way to get dbachecks backup info into an Excel spreadsheet?’.  I sent them a couple of ideas, but figured this is a great use case that many people might be interested in. Pairing infrastructure testing using dbachecks with creating Excel reports with the ImportExcel module is a great addition to your automation tool belt. I also had ImportExcel on my mind this week after watching some great demos from Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog/2020/06/powershell-into-excelimportexcel-module-part-1/)|[t](https://twitter.com/mikeybronowski)) at a user group earlier this week. +I got a message from a friend last night asking ‘Is there an easy way to get dbachecks backup info into an Excel spreadsheet?’.  I sent them a couple of ideas, but figured this is a great use case that many people might be interested in. Pairing infrastructure testing using dbachecks with creating Excel reports with the ImportExcel module is a great addition to your automation tool belt. I also had ImportExcel on my mind this week after watching some great demos from Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog/2020/06/powershell-into-excelimportexcel-module-part-1/)) at a user group earlier this week. ## Run the Checks diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/interactive-debugging-in-vscode/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/interactive-debugging-in-vscode/index.md index f23072f..5db3f86 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/interactive-debugging-in-vscode/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/interactive-debugging-in-vscode/index.md @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ tags: image: "cover.jpg" --- -I was browsing twitter the other day when a tweet about dbatools caught my eye (I use [TweetDeck](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) and so have a column for tweets that contain [@PSdbatools](http://twitter.com/psdbatools)). +I was browsing social media the other day when a tweet about dbatools caught my eye (I use TweetDeck and so have a column for tweets that contain @PSdbatools). ![Tweet from wayOutwest describing a dbatools error](tweet.png) diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/query-store-bp-dbatools/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/query-store-bp-dbatools/index.md index 21276d4..4a530ce 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/query-store-bp-dbatools/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/query-store-bp-dbatools/index.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ I would like to just say I’m in no way suggesting that we can skip the learnin ## Adding Query Store Expertise to dbatools -Last week I was working on configuring Query Store, and knowing that Erin Stellato ([b](https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/erin/)|[t](https://twitter.com/erinstellato)) is the expert on that I headed over to her blog. I found exactly what I needed. Erin has a bunch of great posts on query store, but this one caught my eye: '[Query Store Best Practices](https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/erin/query-store-best-practices)'. +Last week I was working on configuring Query Store, and knowing that Erin Stellato ([b](https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/erin/)) is the expert on that I headed over to her blog. I found exactly what I needed. Erin has a bunch of great posts on query store, but this one caught my eye: '[Query Store Best Practices](https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/erin/query-store-best-practices)'. I read through her suggestions and could easily translate those using dbatools to optimally configure Query Store. First by setting several query store options using `Set-DbaDbQueryStoreOption`: diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-122/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-122/index.md index 81f74b7..675a2bf 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-122/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-122/index.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -What a great topic for the start of the year as we’re all thinking about goal setting and personal improvement. Thanks to Jon Shaulis ([b](https://jonshaulis.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/JonShaulis)) for hosting this first monthly blog party of the decade. +What a great topic for the start of the year as we’re all thinking about goal setting and personal improvement. Thanks to Jon Shaulis ([b](https://jonshaulis.com/)) for hosting this first monthly blog party of the decade. Imposter syndrome is mentioned so often in our community, and it’s really interesting to me the wide number of people, who I consider experts, that say they still feel this sometimes. I’m really excited to read about how other people combat this feeling and hopefully pick up some tips for when it creeps into my head. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123-summary/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123-summary/index.md index 514f9b0..256a5f4 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123-summary/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123-summary/index.md @@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ If I missed any posts please let me know! - [Aaron](https://sqlblog.org/2020/02/11/t-sql-tuesday-123-life-hacks) has a ton of little life hacks built into his daily schedule while he works from home. My favourites are a scheduled hour of ‘disengagement’ time to focus on non-collaborative work and his travel pack of gear. - [Brent](https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2020/02/tsql2sday-my-life-hack-is-an-hourglass-yes-an-hourglass/) suggests using a (half) hour glass to assess progress made and keep him on track. He also links to a beautiful wallet damaging hourglass. - [Drew](https://www.drewsk.tech/2020/02/11/t-sql-tuesday-123/) highlights the Eisenhower matrix to improve delegation, and then goes on to list several more great productivity tips. Also bonus points for including a February fact! -- [Mala](https://curiousaboutdata.com/2020/02/11/t-sql-tuesday-123-life-hacks-to-make-your-day-easier/amp/?__twitter_impression=true) has two great tips for us, first to get the benefits of both working at home and in the office. Secondly, a way to squeeze in some learning time. +- [Mala](https://curiousaboutdata.com/2020/02/11/t-sql-tuesday-123-life-hacks-to-make-your-day-easier/amp/) has two great tips for us, first to get the benefits of both working at home and in the office. Secondly, a way to squeeze in some learning time. - [Shane’s](https://nocolumnname.blog/2020/02/11/t-sql-tuesday-123-life-hacks-to-make-your-day-easier/) life hack is not just to use the Pomodoro technique, which is pretty manual. He’s written a PowerShell script for it complete with toast notifications. - [Tracey](https://tracyboggiano.com/archive/2020/02/t-sql-tuesday-123-life-hacks/) has a host of useful life hacks including queuing Ola’s index maintenance scripts and using a real paper planner for goals. Tracey also reveals she is the host for next month’s TSQL2sday! diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123/index.md index a2c1515..46fa291 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-123/index.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -It’s time for the February edition of T-SQL Tuesday. I am really grateful to be able to host this edition and look forward to reading everyone’s contributions. In case you are new to T-SQL Tuesday this is the monthly blog party started by Adam Machanic ([b](http://dataeducation.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/adammachanic)) and now hosted by Steve Jones ([b](https://voiceofthedba.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/way0utwest/)). It’s a way of encouraging blog posts from the community and helping to share the knowledge. +It’s time for the February edition of T-SQL Tuesday. I am really grateful to be able to host this edition and look forward to reading everyone’s contributions. In case you are new to T-SQL Tuesday this is the monthly blog party started by Adam Machanic ([b](http://dataeducation.com/)) and now hosted by Steve Jones ([b](https://voiceofthedba.com/)). It’s a way of encouraging blog posts from the community and helping to share the knowledge. So here we are, the first Tuesday of February. I personally always find February to be the month where my motivation is a little low. I live in the northern hemisphere so it can be a pretty dreary winter month where it still feels like there is a long way to spring (I will say this January I moved from Ohio back to England and the distinct lack of piles of snow is helping this cause somewhat). This makes my topic even more relevant as we need a little extra help to be productive and get through the month. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-125/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-125/index.md index c18b003..3ab2973 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-125/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-125/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ tags: It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again! March felt really long for a lot of us as we got used to our new way of life, so I’m excited we made it to April’s prompt. -This month’s topic is asking for a discussion around whether unit testing for databases is valuable. Since getting involved with dbatools and beginning to write more structured PowerShell (meaning modules and DSC resources rather than just an odd script) I have learnt a lot more about testing code. However, I have zero experience with testing databases. So I’m excited for this topic. Thanks for hosting Hamish ([b](https://hybriddbablog.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/TheHybridDBA)). +This month’s topic is asking for a discussion around whether unit testing for databases is valuable. Since getting involved with dbatools and beginning to write more structured PowerShell (meaning modules and DSC resources rather than just an odd script) I have learnt a lot more about testing code. However, I have zero experience with testing databases. So I’m excited for this topic. Thanks for hosting Hamish ([b](https://hybriddbablog.com/)). I recently watched Steve Jones give a session as part of [Redgate Streamed](https://www.red-gate.com/hub/events/redgate-events/redgate-streamed/) on using [tSQLt](https://tsqlt.org/) for database testing. It’s not the first time I’ve heard about this tool and it’s been on my list for way too long as something I want to investigate a little further. I figured this was a good excuse. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-126/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-126/index.md index 7a157c7..d821af1 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-126/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-126/index.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -Well it’s May T-SQL Tuesday time! Honestly I’m not sure if time is crawling or flying by, it seems like forever ago we got writing for the April prompt on unit testing databases.  Thanks to Glenn ([b](https://glennsqlperformance.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/GlennAlanBerry)) this month for hosting an interesting topic. I’m looking forward to reading all the responses. Also a bigger thanks for publicising [Folding@Home](https://foldingathome.org/) and setting up the [#SQLFamily](https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/236388) team! +Well it’s May T-SQL Tuesday time! Honestly I’m not sure if time is crawling or flying by, it seems like forever ago we got writing for the April prompt on unit testing databases.  Thanks to Glenn ([b](https://glennsqlperformance.com/)) this month for hosting an interesting topic. I’m looking forward to reading all the responses. Also a bigger thanks for publicising [Folding@Home](https://foldingathome.org/) and setting up the [#SQLFamily](https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/236388) team! Glenn wants to know what we’re doing in response to COVID-19 and if we’re contributing to the FAH #SQLFamily team, what our experience has been. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-127/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-127/index.md index e540d33..e6d4564 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-127/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-127/index.md @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ tags: height="300px" >}} -I feel like I say this every month, but it’s already time for another edition of T-SQL Tuesday. This months blog party is hosted by Kenneth Fisher ([B](https://sqlstudies.com/)|[T](https://twitter.com/sqlstudent144)) and he’s looking for tips & tricks, but nothing DBMS related.  As you might already know, I love shortcuts and tips & tricks – so I was really excited to see this prompt. First, because I easily found a few I wanted to share, but secondly, I can’t wait to read about everyone else’s tips & tricks. +I feel like I say this every month, but it’s already time for another edition of T-SQL Tuesday. This months blog party is hosted by Kenneth Fisher ([B](https://sqlstudies.com/)) and he’s looking for tips & tricks, but nothing DBMS related.  As you might already know, I love shortcuts and tips & tricks – so I was really excited to see this prompt. First, because I easily found a few I wanted to share, but secondly, I can’t wait to read about everyone else’s tips & tricks. I had a hard time narrowing this down to just one shortcut, so I’ve picked three – but they fit together nicely. First, I have to let you in on a small secret: @@ -30,9 +30,7 @@ Whether it’s chrome or SSMS, I cannot help myself when it comes to opening new ![Chrome browser tabs](tabsShort.png) -I even got called out by my good friend Andrew ([B](https://awickham.com/)|[T](https://twitter.com/awickham)) this last week: - -{{< tweet user="awickham" id="1267503576571674624" >}} +I even got called out by my good friend Andrew ([B](https://awickham.com/)) this last week about having too many tabs open! My tips & tricks are focused around managing tabs, and they work in all browsers (at least all that I have on my laptop. Chrome, Edge, IE11). diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-130/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-130/index.md index ed18f91..df93ff7 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-130/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-130/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ image: "dashboard-1.jpg" height="300px" >}} -Thanks to Elizabeth Nobel ([b](https://sqlzelda.wordpress.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/SQLZelda)) for hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday party and apologies for being as late as possible to the party! I love the topic of automation so felt sure I’d write something and then time slipped away. Luckily Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog/)|[t](https://twitter.com/MikeyBronowski)) convinced me that it wasn’t too late to write something on my lunch break today (Wednesday in the UK) as it’s still Tuesday on Baker Island. Interesting fact Baker Island uses UTC-12:00 because since it’s uninhabited the islands time zone is unspecified ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Island)). +Thanks to Elizabeth Nobel ([b](https://sqlzelda.wordpress.com/)) for hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday party and apologies for being as late as possible to the party! I love the topic of automation so felt sure I’d write something and then time slipped away. Luckily Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog/)) convinced me that it wasn’t too late to write something on my lunch break today (Wednesday in the UK) as it’s still Tuesday on Baker Island. Interesting fact Baker Island uses UTC-12:00 because since it’s uninhabited the islands time zone is unspecified ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Island)). ## Automating dbachecks with scheduled task diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-132/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-132/index.md index db9ba64..e4102a7 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-132/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/t-sql-tuesday-132/index.md @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ image: "georg-bommeli-ybtUqjybcjE-unsplash.jpg" height="300px" >}} -This month’s blog party is hosted by Taiob Ali ([b](https://sqlworldwide.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/SqlWorldWide)), and they ask how are we coping with the pandemic. Last week England entered its second national lockdown, which is slated to last until December 2nd, so now more than ever is a good time to reflect on some effective coping strategies.  Thanks Taiob for hosting and I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s mechanisms. +This month’s blog party is hosted by Taiob Ali ([b](https://sqlworldwide.com/)), and they ask how are we coping with the pandemic. Last week England entered its second national lockdown, which is slated to last until December 2nd, so now more than ever is a good time to reflect on some effective coping strategies.  Thanks Taiob for hosting and I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s mechanisms. In the prompt it was suggested we could break this post down into three buckets: mental health, physical health and professional growth. Three really important areas so I’ll do just that. @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ My strategy is just to do something. I know that I feel better when I’m active 3. Plank Challenge - I saw a tweet from Kendra Little last week on her fitness plans for lockdown and she included working on planks every day. I am also terrible at planks so I’m going to jump in on this and join her with a plank a day. + I saw a post from Kendra Little last week on her fitness plans for lockdown and she included working on planks every day. I am also terrible at planks so I’m going to jump in on this and join her with a plank a day. ![Kendra tweet about a plank challenge](KendraTweet.png) @@ -84,4 +84,4 @@ My coping strategy here is to ride this renewed excitement and get some content This has turned into quite the ramble, so thanks for reading if you’re still with me! To sum it up, I know I need to stay active – this is really the base for everything else. If I workout I feel better about everything else. It’s as simple as that. -I know that this year has been tough for everyone. I hope some of these strategies will be useful to other people too.  Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if there is anything I can do to help. We can get through this together. +I know that this year has been tough for everyone. I hope some of these strategies will be useful to other people too.  Feel free to reach out to me if there is anything I can do to help. We can get through this together. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2020/vscode-focus/index.md b/blog/content/post/2020/vscode-focus/index.md index 43c5cf1..868338e 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2020/vscode-focus/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2020/vscode-focus/index.md @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ I wrote previously about how I loved little life hacks and shortcuts for my [Feb I specifically write a lot of PowerShell in VSCode and so often find myself using F8 to run the selected line in the integrated console. One thing that always drove me a little crazy was that my cursor stayed in the integrated console after execution, rather than returning to the script I was writing.  I hadn’t managed to find the shortcut to return to the editor window I was working in until recently when I decided to figure it out. -Since I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago, I discovered an even better solution thanks to the following tweet from [Simon Sabin](http://twitter.com/simon_sabin). The tweet also links to a [GitHub issue](https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell/issues/1058) where there is a discussion on why this is the default behaviour. +Since I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago, I discovered an even better solution thanks to Simon Sabin. This post also links to a [GitHub issue](https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell/issues/1058) where there is a discussion on why this is the default behaviour. ![Simon's Tweet about changing the focus](sabinTweet.png) diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/azure-tags-part1/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/azure-tags-part1/index.md index 4f1c26c..97ad31b 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/azure-tags-part1/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/azure-tags-part1/index.md @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ One of the vital parts of this learning and experimenting needs to be cleaning u This brings me to one morning last week. I logged in to the portal and got a pop up that my credit was down to under $5, which is not what I was expecting. I started looking around and wondering what I’d left running – it isn’t always easy to spot though. -Luckily, John Martin ([b](https://jqmartin.info/)|[t](https://twitter.com/jqmtweets)) has instilled in me the importance of adding a tag for creation date on all resources, as it’s not tracked automatically. This means we can easily see what we last deployed and what we might have forgotten about. +Luckily, John Martin ([b](https://jqmartin.info/)) has instilled in me the importance of adding a tag for creation date on all resources, as it’s not tracked automatically. This means we can easily see what we last deployed and what we might have forgotten about. In Azure, tags are just key value pairs that can be applied to resources and subscriptions to add metadata. You can use them to organise resources by environment, cost centre, business criticality, and anything else that might be important to your individual situation. There is a limit of 50 tags per resource. If you’re getting close to having 50 tags per resource you might need to rethink your tagging strategy to reduce the complexity. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/psreadline-search-history/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/psreadline-search-history/index.md index ed62437..439893d 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/psreadline-search-history/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/psreadline-search-history/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ The main goal of this module is to enhance the command line experience for users ![Showing no colour coding after removing PSReadLine](removePSReadLine.jpg) -The screenshot above is using Windows Terminal and PowerShell 7, but the same thing happens using older versions of PowerShell. Shout out to [Chrissy LeMaire](http://twitter.com/cl) for the beautiful [Windows Terminal theme](https://blog.netnerds.net/2020/07/my-windows-terminal-retro-theme/). +The screenshot above is using Windows Terminal and PowerShell 7, but the same thing happens using older versions of PowerShell. Shout out to Chrissy LeMaire for the beautiful [Windows Terminal theme](https://blog.netnerds.net/2020/07/my-windows-terminal-retro-theme/). As I mentioned earlier, when you’re running PowerShell in a console it tracks the commands you run, building up a history of all the things you’ve executed.  This is really useful if you want to slightly change the command you just ran, perhaps fixing a typo, or piping the output to another command. The problem comes when you know you ran something recently, and you start ‘up arrowing’ furiously through the history trying to find what you’re looking for. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md index 349fd55..cee6409 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md @@ -172,4 +172,4 @@ As I mentioned, this was not at all what I was expecting to write about – but I was in the end able to resolve the permissions problems for my service accounts by following this great blog post '[SQL Server - Could not register the Service Principal Name](http://www.alexandreviot.net/2014/09/30/sql-server-could-not-register-the-service-principal-name-spn/)'. Once I applied these permissions when I changed service accounts they were able to delete and recreate the required SPNs. -Another great blog post for more reading on SPNs is this post by [Drew Furgiuele](https://www.twitter.com/pittfurg) on how to use the [dbatools SPN commands](https://dbatools.io/schwifty/). +Another great blog post for more reading on SPNs is this post by [Drew Furgiuele](https://www.x.com/pittfurg) on how to use the [dbatools SPN commands](https://dbatools.io/schwifty/). diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-134/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-134/index.md index 4a1e590..aef8b1e 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-134/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-134/index.md @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ image: "20181031_062105.jpg" height="300px" >}} -It’s the first T-SQL Tuesday of 2021, and James Mcgillivray ([b](https://jimbabwe.co.za/)|[t](https://twitter.com/JamesMcG_MSBI)) is our host for January’s edition of this monthly blog party.  This month’s topic is around how we escape with vacation/holiday plans.  They gave us a few options on what to blog about and I’m going to take you on a virtual trip to Hawaii. +It’s the first T-SQL Tuesday of 2021, and James Mcgillivray ([b](https://jimbabwe.co.za/)) is our host for January’s edition of this monthly blog party.  This month’s topic is around how we escape with vacation/holiday plans.  They gave us a few options on what to blog about and I’m going to take you on a virtual trip to Hawaii. ## What is the best vacation/holiday you’ve ever had? diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-135/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-135/index.md index 1389728..b780160 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-135/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-135/index.md @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ image: "neonbrand-60krlMMeWxU-unsplash-scaled.jpg" height="300px" >}} -It’s time for February’s monthly blog party. This month is hosted by Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog)|[t](https://twitter.com/MikeyBronowski)) and he’s asking us to write about our ‘tools of the trade’.  He’s looking for those tools that make our lives easier, ones we couldn’t imagine going without. Thanks for hosting Mikey, can’t wait to read everyone’s contributions and add some tools to my toolbelt. +It’s time for February’s monthly blog party. This month is hosted by Mikey Bronowski ([b](https://www.bronowski.it/blog)) and he’s asking us to write about our ‘tools of the trade’.  He’s looking for those tools that make our lives easier, ones we couldn’t imagine going without. Thanks for hosting Mikey, can’t wait to read everyone’s contributions and add some tools to my toolbelt. I’m going to split this into a couple of sections. I’m sure you can all guess what’s up first though… @@ -41,9 +41,9 @@ If I could only choose one tool for my toolbelt it would be PowerShell, which is 4. [ImportExcel](https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel) – This module lets you work with Excel objects, without having Excel installed.  Easily read data from spreadsheets into PowerShell, or export data to create detailed reports with a few lines of code. Our host for this T-SQL Tuesday has written a great series on this module, if you’re looking for inspiration. [importexcel Archives - Mikey Bronowski - Blog](https://www.bronowski.it/blog/tag/importexcel/) 5. [PSFramework](https://github.com/PowershellFrameworkCollective/psframework) – Finally, I want to highlight PSFramework.  Portions of this module are used within both dbatools and dbachecks.  It provides great options for both setting configuration options that can be then used in your modules as well as for creating great logging. I’ve switched to using Write-PSFMessage instead of Write-Host\Verbose\Output as it provides a lot more flexibility as well as writing to a physical log file. -I also recently wrote about [PowerShell’s interactive search functionality](https://jesspomfret.com/psreadline-search-history/), and after a poll on Twitter was pretty shocked by how few people knew about it.  I recommend checking it out, as it is a really handy built in feature. +I also recently wrote about [PowerShell’s interactive search functionality](https://jesspomfret.com/psreadline-search-history/), and after a poll was pretty shocked by how few people knew about it.  I recommend checking it out, as it is a really handy built in feature. -![My twitter poll on whether people use interactive search](JessTweet.png) +![My poll on whether people use interactive search](JessTweet.png) ## Microsoft Excel diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-136/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-136/index.md index a2ca531..ceb23bc 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-136/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-136/index.md @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ image: "waldemar-brandt-sXCxht5Ivu4-unsplash.jpg" height="300px" >}} -Shout out to Brent Ozar ([b](http://brentozar.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/BrentO)) for hosting this month's TSQL2sday. It’s time again for this monthly blog party and he wants to know all about our favourite or least favourite data types. To start with I was having a hard time thinking of a favourite data type. I know I have favourite words (merge and plethora, in case you’re wondering), but it seems a bit wrong to pick favourites here – I mean lots of them are great in their own right. Then it came to me- my favourite data type is the right one for the job at hand. Feels like I’m skirting the question a little here, but bear with me. +Shout out to Brent Ozar ([b](http://brentozar.com/)) for hosting this month's TSQL2sday. It’s time again for this monthly blog party and he wants to know all about our favourite or least favourite data types. To start with I was having a hard time thinking of a favourite data type. I know I have favourite words (merge and plethora, in case you’re wondering), but it seems a bit wrong to pick favourites here – I mean lots of them are great in their own right. Then it came to me- my favourite data type is the right one for the job at hand. Feels like I’m skirting the question a little here, but bear with me. Let’s talk about accuracy and precision, and how much of it you actually need.  The rest of this post is going to focus on datetime datatypes, but these thoughts could easily apply elsewhere (for example tinyint vs int vs bigint). diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-141/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-141/index.md index 5ce2202..9dc8294 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-141/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-141/index.md @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ image: "victor-freitas-Yuv-iwByVRQ-unsplash.jpg" height="300px" >}} -It’s T-SQL Tuesday time and I’ve finally managed to put some words into a blog post again.  It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything on my blog, things have been busy, and my motivation has been a little lacking.  However, this topic has inspired me to try and pull something together. Thanks to TJay([b](https://tjaybelt.blogspot.com/)|[t](https://twitter.com/tjaybelt)) for hosting this month and for choosing a great topic. +It’s T-SQL Tuesday time and I’ve finally managed to put some words into a blog post again.  It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything on my blog, things have been busy, and my motivation has been a little lacking.  However, this topic has inspired me to try and pull something together. Thanks to TJay([b](https://tjaybelt.blogspot.com/)) for hosting this month and for choosing a great topic. TJay has asked us to share our personal journey with managing work/life balance.  It’s an interesting prompt, especially at this point in a global pandemic.  The last 18 months have caused a massive shift in my work/life balance, and at this point I’d have to say overall it’s been a positive change. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-143/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-143/index.md index 224cdc7..140fec8 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-143/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/t-sql-tuesday-143/index.md @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ image: "tekton-EcE9dFfXwwE-unsplash.jpg" Well folks, it’s Wednesday here in the UK, which means I’m a day late to get my blog post in for T-SQL Tuesday. However, if I was in Hawaii it would be still Tuesday so let's go for it... -I used a handy short script this morning and I figured it was worth a quick, late entry! Hopefully John Mccormack ([b](https://johnmccormack.it/)|[t](https://twitter.com/actualjohn)), will forgive me for stretching the deadline! +I used a handy short script this morning and I figured it was worth a quick, late entry! Hopefully John Mccormack ([b](https://johnmccormack.it/)), will forgive me for stretching the deadline! First of all, shout out to John for hosting the monthly blog party, he has got a great prompt and I’m really excited to see the wrap-up post as I’m sure it’ll be full of great little code snippets. From 568d4908e5cbdfbd31a02c70492cf98083e996af Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "copilot-swe-agent[bot]" <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2025 12:03:38 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 3/4] Complete Twitter removal - all shortcodes and links removed Co-authored-by: jpomfret <981370+jpomfret@users.noreply.github.com> --- blog/assets/jsconfig.json | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/blog/assets/jsconfig.json b/blog/assets/jsconfig.json index d9c0599..c110f22 100644 --- a/blog/assets/jsconfig.json +++ b/blog/assets/jsconfig.json @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ "baseUrl": ".", "paths": { "*": [ - "../../../../home/node/.cache/hugo_cache/modules/filecache/modules/pkg/mod/github.com/!cai!jimmy/hugo-theme-stack/v3@v3.29.0/assets/*" + "../../../../../../../tmp/hugo_cache_runner/modules/filecache/modules/pkg/mod/github.com/!cai!jimmy/hugo-theme-stack/v3@v3.29.0/assets/*" ] } } From 26008b8d457d837d73265f1f926ca47425b934c5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "copilot-swe-agent[bot]" <198982749+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2025 12:05:07 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 4/4] Fix code review feedback - remove dangling references Co-authored-by: jpomfret <981370+jpomfret@users.noreply.github.com> --- blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md | 2 +- blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md index e25463e..0d9fd75 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2018/t-sql-tuesday-101/index.md @@ -75,6 +75,6 @@ The final command for my top five takes an object in PowerShell and uses SQL bul $results | Write-DbaDataTable -SqlInstance serverName -Database databaseName -Table tableName -AutoCreateTable ``` -The Second reason dbatools is my favourite tool is all the other things I’ve gained and learnt from this module.  It’s been almost one year since my first pull request to dbatools, and at that point I had a decent handle on PowerShell but git was a foreign language. Guided by Chrissy LeMaire (t) and some other folks from the [slack channel](http://dbatools.io/slack) I got the repo forked, created my own branch and then submitted a PR to get my contributions merged in.  Since then I’ve contributed multiple more PRs, everything from small fixes to the command based help, to writing a brand new command (Get-DbaDbCompression will be released soon!). +The Second reason dbatools is my favourite tool is all the other things I’ve gained and learnt from this module.  It’s been almost one year since my first pull request to dbatools, and at that point I had a decent handle on PowerShell but git was a foreign language. Guided by Chrissy LeMaire and some other folks from the [slack channel](http://dbatools.io/slack) I got the repo forked, created my own branch and then submitted a PR to get my contributions merged in.  Since then I’ve contributed multiple more PRs, everything from small fixes to the command based help, to writing a brand new command (Get-DbaDbCompression will be released soon!). This tool not only gives you hundreds of commands to make your job easier, it encourages you to branch out and get involved in a truly special community. You will meet some brilliant people to bounce ideas off, learn new skills like github, integration tests or even continuous integration and development, all while giving back to the amazing community that surrounds the SQL Server ecosystem.  This blog is the start of my attempt to give back while furthering my understanding of certain topics. In June I’ll be stepping even further outside of my comfort zone by presenting at my local user group on data compression, and of course that’ll feature some dbatools related demos. diff --git a/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md b/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md index cee6409..03e4c7b 100644 --- a/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md +++ b/blog/content/post/2021/spn-troubles/index.md @@ -172,4 +172,4 @@ As I mentioned, this was not at all what I was expecting to write about – but I was in the end able to resolve the permissions problems for my service accounts by following this great blog post '[SQL Server - Could not register the Service Principal Name](http://www.alexandreviot.net/2014/09/30/sql-server-could-not-register-the-service-principal-name-spn/)'. Once I applied these permissions when I changed service accounts they were able to delete and recreate the required SPNs. -Another great blog post for more reading on SPNs is this post by [Drew Furgiuele](https://www.x.com/pittfurg) on how to use the [dbatools SPN commands](https://dbatools.io/schwifty/). +Another great blog post for more reading on SPNs is this post by Drew Furgiuele on how to use the [dbatools SPN commands](https://dbatools.io/schwifty/).