This month Deepthi Goguri invites us (the community) to write about two topics: our favourite new feature of SQL Server 2022 and your new years resolutions. You can find her blog here, her LinkedIn profile here and she’s also on Twitter here.
Favourite new SQL Server 2022 feature
Most of my work is in data warehousing and as a lot of this is (slowly) moving to Azure, our main obstacle is getting all the data from an on-premises server to the cloud. One smart(er) way of doing that is using Change Data Capture, a very nice technique that keeps track of all the changes. So when you’re ready to refresh your data warehouse, just read the CDC tables and you’re done. You can get very pedantic and raise all kinds of issues, but on a high level, this is the technique.
Now, with SQL Server 2022 there’s Synapse Link. This feature let’s you create a connection between your SQL Server 2022 on-premises server and Azure Synapse. If there’s a change in your data (monitored by the Synapse Link), it will almost immediately be read by Synapse and propagated to your cloud data store (data lake, SQL database etc). In a small testing environment it works all nice and easy but I am really curious as to what it will bring for seriously large datasets. Some of our customers have billions of rows in multiple tables, that will have some effect to the initial start of the process and maybe the link itself.
New years resolution
I’m not really the type to have a new years resolution. Improvement comes when it does. One of my major changes that started last year is the use of a parking page. This may sound a bit weird but allow me to explain.
We’re all in this hybrid era where questions, urgent messages and new tasks pop up on Teams, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Outlook and whatever other tool you might use. And, if you’re like me, you’ll try and remember it all, categorise it in your head and prioritise it. Let’s just say I’ve found out that it doesn’t work for me and that my head was mostly buzzing with all kinds of things needed to be done.
In comes the parking page. When I see a message coming in (I’m more and more using the pop-up blockers and killing notifications just to make sure I’m looking at messages when it suits me, not the other way round), I’ll look at it and assess it. If it’s not something that needs an answer right now, it’ll go on the parking page. By writing it down, my mind can let it go; it’s been written down for later review and that’s good. So instead of having all the things bouncing around in my head making me think I need to work for 28 hours in the day, I’ve got a short list of things to take care of later. And it is usually a short list, but because it keeps bouncing around in my head it grows to abnormal proportions.
Let’s make one thing very clear. This process works for me. It doesn’t mean it works for you or should work for you. I am sharing this for the one or two people who might benefit from this. If you’ve found another method that works for you, excellent! Now, share it with us through a blog, video, talk or whatever you feel comfortable with.
Now, mental health is a growing topic in our community and is a very diverse topic. Please don’t be afraid to reach out to people if you need advice. Talk to your employer to see what they have for you if you need help. Their response will say a lot about how they think of the people working in their company.
More and more conferences are scheduling sessions on mental health. Try and attend some of these sessions if you can.
Thank you so much for reading!
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