SQL for Everybody

I read a terribly excited blog this morning by a guy who had just discovered Alt-F1 in SSMS. (If you don’t know, it runs sp_help on the highlighted object.)  My very, very first instinct – I’m ashamed to say – was to think “Who doesn’t know about that?”

That’s not right. In fact, that goes against everything I believe in about technology, blogging, and Getting Excited About Things and Doing Stuff in general. This includes, but isn’t limited to, the following ideas:

  1. Somebody, somewhere, hasn’t yet heard of That Cool Thing…whatever That Cool Thing may be*.
  2. Folks should spread the word about That Cool Thing when they feel moved to do so, to support idea #1.
  3. Folks who have already heard of That Cool Thing should support idea #2.

I will say, in my defense, that I immediately changed courses mentally: my second reaction was “Awww, he just found the sp_help shortcut. Good for him!”  sp_help really is a cool little function, and works for “any object, in sysobjects or any user-defined data type in the systypes table”. Versatile!

Let’s get Zen about technology: notice what’s around you, in the moment. Then go blog about it, or tweet about it, or tell your cubemate, or whatever. Somebody hasn’t yet heard about it, and Things and Doing Stuff are exciting**.

Happy days,
Jen McCown
www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen

*Among other Cool Things: the greatness of Powershell, XCKD, New Skin Liquid Bandages, standing desks, using underscores with LIKE in T-SQLthe Pandemic board game, Adam Savage’s Tested.com podcast, and using RegEx in SSMS.

**This blog was partially inspired by John Scalzi’s “Who Gets to be a Geek? Anyone who wants to be” blog, which includes this very resonant passage:

When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”