System views, twitter, and tshirts

First, a bit of TSQL.  I made a video yesterday but I'm too impatient for the video to be published, so here's the quick read: There are a few system views and sps I use on a daily basis. For starters, I easily forget the names of my SPs very often, so I have a simple way to  look them up:

SELECT [name] FROM sys.objects WHERE [name] LIKE '%get%' AND [type] = 'p'   — Use 'u' for user table

Similarly, I often remember that I wrote a piece of code (or used a particular call, or what have you), but can't remember in what procedure.

SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id) FROM sys.sql_modules WHERE [definition] LIKE '%@WhereIsMyDog%'

Though if I'm going to be completely truthful with you, I'm having to train myself off of using the soon-to-be-outmoded syscomments view.  I also like to get the full text of a stored procedure without digging though object explorer:

sp_helptext SPName

I have sp_helptext programmed in as the shortcut CTRL-F1 in SSMS, on ever box that I own.  And finally, you can use sp_depends (programmed as CTRL-3 on my box) to see the dependencies for an object. For example, this will display what tables and SPs the stored procedure "Get_All" references:

sp_depends Get_All

Twitter

It just occurred to me that we don't mention it much in our blogs, but there's a lively bunch of SQL folk in Twitter.  Oh sure, there are news and science feeds and celebrities, but you can just consider the SQL folks the "in crowd" 🙂  We post blogs, events, questions, answers, jokes, links, and whatever else comes to mind.  If you're new to Twitter and have no idea what it's about, no big deal. Sign up, check out the FAQ, go find and follow us (@MidnightDBA), and see where it goes from there.  A bunch of the SQL Server MVPs are on, and you can search for them by name or handle, or just wait for them to come up in someone else's tweets.

-Jen McCown, http://www.MidnightDBA.com

YES WE CAN!!!

I just won SQLServerPedia's Dream Trip contest.  I'm SO JAZZED.

Briefly: This was a Quest-sponsored contest to drum up participation in SQLServerPedia, a wiki-style SQL knowledge site populated by user-written articles.  It worked…I'd guestimate they had nearly 200 additional blog entries through 16 new syndications, and 15 new articles.  Not to mention all the great buzz through Twitter and the blogs themselves.  Good times.

So I get to go to PASS for free, and I get a netbook with WiFi to blog about the experience for SQL Server Pedia.  I was really gearing myself up NOT to win…hey, a 1 in 3 chance means you're 66% likely to lose.

I have never worked so hard on anything, ever.  Not to bang on about it too much, but the first two weeks never saw me in bed before 1am, and that's with a 6am wake up call.  I really, really wanted this.

Thanks SO much to Quest for sponsoring, and to SQL Server Pedia for putting this on.  The editors I worked with were the bomb, and I think we can all agree that Brent Ozar deserves a medal for all the time he put in on it.  By the way, Brent…wouldn't "check your junk" be a great greeting? Let's make it the official "hi" for PASS….

A very BIG thank you to my tweeps…many of us were competitors, but it was an awful lot of fun going through this with you guys.  Everybody go out and follow these people and their respective blogs, they are the shizzle:

 

-Jen McCown, http://www.MidnightDBA.com

MidnightDBA News – Podcasts, new DBAs@, and Snacks

MidnightDBA is in iTunes!!  We're getting all the videos published in batches. So far we have something like a couple dozen videos out there, and we'll catch up in very short order.

I also just published a three-part DBAs @ Midnight video from this week: Working From Home (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  ALERT!!!! We had a lot of fun making this video but we covered some topics we're passionate about, so in a couple patches the language gets a little rough.  There's a normal amount of cursing but I do manage to slip up and drop an F-bomb once.  So if you're offended easily then perhaps you should skip this one.  I try not to do that, but sometimes it happens.  Anyway, this one is a great time where we talk about the use of DBs in various customer service companies and how nobody uses them to their fullest.  As well we also talk about office dress codes, hot chicks, and other stuff.  Our daughter makes an appearance as well.  So yeah, big fun. 

Here are a few short-term projects we'll have ready for you:

  • We're going to start offering short snippets of DBAs @ Midnight videos as Midnight Snacks.  Think of this as teasers, or highlights…it'll be both.
  • We haven't forgotten that we talked our Tshirts up a couple of weeks back.  We're on it!
  • I'm going to get a section together for Sean's (and eventually, my) webcast and lecture materials.  You know, so you can come and download notes, leave feedback, that sort of thing.
  • In a few weeks we'll have alerts for new videos!  You'll be able to manage your subscription based on what topics you're interested in.  Rockin…

 

-Jen McCown, http://www.MidnightDBA.com