The blog of Andy M. Mallon
Notes from the work, the community, and everything in between.
In my last few posts, I’ve walked down memory lane, and talked about a ton of great successes I’ve had in my five years as blogger & speaker. It’s been fun to reminisce about how far I’ve come and brag about some success. Today’s post has a bit of a different …
Continue readingIn Year Three, I had a pretty big year. I kind of felt like I had peaked. I had received the Community Influencer of the Year Award and Microsoft MVP Award. Where do you go from there? Mostly, I just wanted to keep up what I was doing, and keep sharing what I …
Continue readingIn Year Three, my goal was to keep focused on what I learned in the FreeCon the year before, and keep moving forward with speaking and blogging. I was putting a bit more effort into my speaking (and thus easing off on the blogging some).
Continue readingIn Year 1, I only wrote 6 blog posts. In Year 2, I decided to take things seriously, and kicked things into high gear. During this 12-month period, I wrote 36 blog posts--my best 12-months as far as pace & productivity in these five years.
Continue readingI've lost my blog stats for that first year, so I can't say exactly how many visitors I had. I can say that the number of views was so low that it didn't matter. If I were going to offer a generous estimate, I would guess I got whopping 100 page views in year …
Continue readingOn May 16, 2014, I bought a domain on a whim. I'd been sitting in the NOCC at my employer, helping with maintenance. I was waiting on another team to perform their task, and champing at the bit. Over the next week, I set up a Blogger website, tied my domain to …
Continue readingLast night while having dinner with my husband, I had a thought and messaged Chrissy LeMaire (blog|twitter) on the SQL Server Community Slack. Thoughts on an LGBTQ channel here? I doubt it would be very active... But I'd love to have a spot for the data …
Continue readingIf a server falls in a data center and no users are around to notice, does it count as downtime? There's a lot of discussion about preventing downtime. As a DBA and IT professional, it's my sworn duty to prevent downtime. I usually describe my job as DBA …
Continue readingStarting with SQL Server 2017 CU6 and SQL Server 2016 SP2-CU3, you can now configure your distribution database as part of an Availability Group (AG). I found one spot where a minor change made a few of my scripts blow up.
Continue readingYesterday, I talked about batching deletes, and the day before I talked about how much I like to delete data, and why it's necessary to do it, despite being a data pack rat. Today, let's look at just one scenario, and how I like to handle it. In my experience, …
Continue readingYesterday, I wrote about the importance of planning your data purges. Today, let's look at the simplest requirement for purging data: Keep data for X days after it's created.
Continue readingDBAs & Data professionals tend to be digital packrats. My personal Google Drive is filled with random files that I refused to part with--even though it's of questionable value. I lament that I do not have a copy of every paper I typed in high school or …
Continue readingI’m a college drop-out. When I was trying to figure out my life, a friend (my brother’s ex) referred me to a software company where she was working–I got the job because I was (a) breathing, (b) eager to do the job, and (c) cheap. The application we built and …
Continue readingBloggers spend a lot of time writing about our successes, but we're human and we make mistakes, too. This post is a chance to share one of my memorable failures.
Continue readingI was recently fussing with a CSV file that had an inconsistent number of columns. UGH. There was a bunch of historical data that had 4 columns, and then more recent data had a new attribute added with 5 columns. I spent a few minutes cursing whoever was …
Continue readingAbout two years ago, I moved my home office down into the basement at our house. Earlier this year, I started a new job at SentryOne, and work from home full time. This means I spend more (awake) time in my office than any other room in the house. I thought …
Continue readingIt’s been almost two weeks since the LGBTQ Meetup that I organized at PASS Summit, and I wanted to offer a bit of follow-up and commentary on the event. Why did I wait two weeks before writing this follow-up? Well, tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, so I …
Continue readingBack in January, Malathi Mahadevan asked me if I would participate in a book she was working on. The book, "Data Professionals At Work", is part of Apress Media's "...At Work" series, an anthology of interviews with Microsoft-focused data professionals
Continue readingIn 2016, I organized an (unofficial) PASS Summit LGBT Meetup. It was a bit of a last-minute party, and more than once I found myself saying, “Worst case scenario, I’ll end up having a chill cocktail party with some friends.” Turns out, I under estimated …
Continue readingOn my flight home from a conference in Europe, I found myself watching a documentary on Fred Rogers. This prompted me to reflect on some of the extra special people in my life that have helped me get where I am.
Continue readingOn October 2, 2018 at 11PM EDT, I’ll be joined by John Q. Martin (blog|twitter) for a webinar on Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. To sign up, register here. You can access the recording of the session here. Follow-up Q & A from the live session can be …
Continue readingOn August 28, 2018 at 2PM EDT, I’ll be joining Melissa Connors (blog|twitter), Kevin Kline (blog|twitter), and Rob Sewell (blog|twitter) for a webinar on advanced SQL Server features. The webinar centers around a real-life case study of technology SentryOne …
Continue readingI was recently doing a training session when a developer commented that it was OK to run an expensive query twice because on the second execution, SQL Server would use the "results cache" and be "practically free". It's not the first time I've heard someone …
Continue readingI'm headed to SQLSaturdays in Louisville and Columbus for my first community events as Product Manager at SentryOne. While I'm there, I'm interested in talking with SentryOne users.
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