14 Habits of Great SQL Developers
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Ike Ellis gave a presentation on the 14 habits of great SQL developers. Some of the key habits discussed included having strong testing practices like using mocking frameworks and testing that code runs correctly; always automating processes and never directly changing objects in production; questioning assumptions and re-evaluating decisions; understanding the true goal is to deliver value rather than just writing code; treating software development as a team sport through practices like code reviews and knowledge sharing; and constantly improving code quality by refactoring and fixing issues. The presentation emphasized habits like these can help developers increase their value.
14 Habits of Great SQL Developers
- 1. Ike Ellis, MVP, Crafting Bytes 14 Habits of Great SQL Developers Things you can do to increase your value to everyone
- 2. Please silence cell phones Please silence cell phones 2
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- 5. Ike Ellis Partner, Crafting Bytes Microsoft MVP Since 2011 Frequent PASS Summit Speaker And speak often at SQL Saturdays + maker of youtube videos ā Ikeās tips! Author of Developing Azure Solutions Now in 2nd Edition /ikeellis @ike_ellis ellisike
- 6. ā¢ Things great SQL developers have in common ā¢ Great for all developers, not just SQL developers ā¢ In order to benefit you, not benefit me. ā¢ #1, #2, #3 are by far the most important ā¢ This isnāt a performance lesson ā¢ This isnāt a SQL internals lesson ā¢ This isnāt a SQL language best practices lesson ā¢ This is a discussion on the personal habits and characteristics and thought patterns of great SQL developers.
- 7. Habit #2: Testing Best Practices ā¢ Use mocking frameworks, begin tran, action, rollback tran, mock data ā¢ Never use production data ā¢ Love all testing frameworks ā¢ tSQLt ā¢ Visual Studio ā¢ NUnit ā¢ SpecFlow ā BDD testing ā¢ Cucumber/Gerkin ā¢ ApprovalTests ā¢ At minimum, test that the sprocs, views, and functions actually run with the right arguments
- 8. Habit #3:
- 9. Habit #3: Always Be Shipping ā¢ Automate, automate, automate ā¢ Fold tests into deployment process ā¢ Learn a scripting language ā¢ PowerShell ā¢ Azure CLI ā¢ Grant Fritchey says! ā¢ Never change an object in production directly ā¢ Always go through the deployment pipeline
- 10. Habit #4: Question, Re-Evaluate, Act ā¢ Question your own preconceived notions ā¢ Question your own biases ā¢ Question the purpose of new technology ā¢ Question your own derived answers ā¢ Evaluate effect on previous decisions ā¢ Change your mind and behavior
- 11. Habit #5:
- 12. Habit #5: ā¢ Understand The Real Job ā¢ Not to write code, but deliver value ā¢ Can it all be done in Excel? InfoPath? Power Apps? ā¢ Itās more fun to delete code. ā¢ Deliver as fast as you can.
- 13. Habit #6: Software development, at its most fun, is a team sport ā¢ Code reviews ā¢ Share all information ā¢ Teach technology ā¢ Teach habits and practices ā¢ Teach domain knowledge ā¢ Teach code frameworks and architecture ā¢ Disseminate information at every available opportunity ā¢ Mob Programming
- 14. Habit #6: Software development, at its most fun, is a team sport
- 15. Habit #6: Software development, at its most fun, is a team sport
- 16. Habit #6: Software development, at its most fun, is a team sport ā¢ Focus on a single task ā¢ Complete it ā¢ Test it ā¢ Verify functionality and impact on other systems ā¢ Check in ā¢ Deploy if possible ā¢ Work on next item ā¢ Avoid silos
- 17. Habit #7: Fight dependencies
- 18. Habit #7: Fight dependencies ā¢ Normalizing and denormalizing and changing the data model is essential to a good application ā¢ Necessary for performance ā¢ Necessary to represent changes in the business ā¢ Necessary to remove dead features ā¢ Necessary to make data exploration and analysis much easier ā¢ Necessary to speed application development ā¢ T-SQL code is the ultimate dependency ā¢ Should be isolated so schema can change ā¢ Schema can stay vibrant and relevant
- 19. Habit #7: Fight dependencies ā¢ Avoid change lock ā¢ Happens because of dependencies ā¢ Lack of testing ā¢ Complicated code ā¢ Loss of intent
- 20. Habit #7: Fight dependencies ā¢ Views ā¢ Stored Procedures ā¢ Functions ā¢ ORMs ā¢ Web APIs ~ REST, SOAP, etc ā¢ Come through the front door. Give them an API ā¢ Can cause the use of triggers. ā¢ EDA ā ODS, DW, DM ā¢ Never allow direct access to your tables for anything ā¢ Adds initial time to development, but keeps the application changeable and flexible
- 21. Habit #7: Fight dependencies ā¢ One application ~ one database ā¢ Or at least one software development team, one database ā¢ Fight three part names ā¢ Database.dbo.tablename ā¢ Or even worse, four part names ā¢ Servername.database.dbo.tablename ā¢ But if youāre going to use four part names ā¢ Use DNS Alias (CNAME) ā¢ Use Views/Stored Procedures ā¢ Keep the coding contract firm and clear ā¢ Preferable to use Web API/C#/JS
- 22. Habit #8: Code for resiliency/code for cloud ā¢ Error handling ā¢ Flag ā¢ Fix ā¢ Fail ā¢ Connection retry ā¢ Short transactions ā¢ Deliberate rollback tran ā¢ Table update order document
- 23. Habit #9: Love your tools ā¢ Know every option ā¢ Know keystrokes and shortcuts ā¢ Know code navigation ā¢ Know these tools: ā¢ SQL Prompt ā¢ Visual Studio ā¢ SSMS ā¢ Profiler ā¢ Extended Events ā¢ MS Excel
- 24. Habit #10: Love your language ā¢ SQL is a command language ā¢ Think like the optimizer ā¢ Learn new features: ā¢ CONCAT ā¢ TRY_CAST ā¢ Window Functions ā¢ Memory Optimized Tables and Procedures ā¢ Columnstore ā¢ DROP IF EXISTS ā¢ R ā¢ Python ā¢ JSON
- 25. Habit #11: High-performance is not created by accident ā¢ But it can be created at the last responsible moment ā¢ Key to performance is to watch dependencies ā¢ Think always about concurrency ā¢ Small things are changeable and scalable ā¢ Think cloud-scale+
- 26. Habit #12:
- 27. Habit #12: Leave it better than you found it ā¢ Long stored procedures are the bane of the great developer ā¢ Not testable ā¢ Hard to change ā¢ Bad for performance ā¢ Prone to bugs ā¢ Prone to have developers avoid understanding it ā¢ Hard to navigate ā¢ Motorcycle vs Semi-truck
- 28. Habit #12: Leave it better than you found it ā¢ Update and repair ~ weed the garden ā constantly ā¢ Bad developers work to get the item off their plate so they can do something else ā¢ Great developers work so that the item is more enjoyable to work on when theyāre asked again
- 29. Habit #13:
- 30. Habit #13: Respond with a sense of urgency ā¢ Treat it as their most valuable commodity ā¢ Things that erode user trust: ā¢ Repeated mistakes ā¢ Half-done code ā¢ Bugs surfacing at run-time ā¢ Missed deadlines ā¢ Bad listening skills ā¢ Not reading the entire email ā¢ Things that gain user trust ā¢ Doing what you said you do when you said youād do it ā¢ Digging deeper to understand and empathize ā¢ Doing their work with them, not for them
- 31. Habit #14: Time as the most valuable commodity ā¢ Record victories in excel, google doc, or better yet: Toggl ā¢ Think about time doing plumbing and maintenance ā¢ Merging, branching ā¢ In meetings ā¢ Moving code to production ā¢ Maintenance tasks ā¢ Repeated tasks ā¢ Take ownership of their habits and their time ā¢ Make things happen, not happen to them
- 32. PRIZES TO GIVE AWAY! ā¢ Next week Iāll ship 10 posters to winners ā¢ Just give me your business card and pick which poster you want. Iāll send it to you.
- 33. Thank You Learn more from Ike Ellis [email protected]@ike_ellis
- 34. ALL DONE! Ike Ellis @ike_ellis Crafting Bytes Weāre hiring a Data Experts! Microsoft MVP Chairperson of the San Diego TIG Book co-author ā Developing Azure Solutions Upcoming course on Azure Data Lake www.craftingbytes.com www.ikeellis.com