Coffee with Pros ft. Monica Rathbun

Thank you

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well well well good morning good afternoon good evening everyone for you joining us today

we are joining this Sunday morning from East Coast hi how are you Mahesh how are you doing

this Sunday morning good Simon good morning good morning looks like we have a good topic today in

the coffee with pros and today we are going to talk about data and databases and hopefully

learn something about community. How are you doing there? How's things? How's weather

How's everything there in Delhi? Well I'll tell you it's almost like 47 and 48 degree Celsius

here in the capital and you wouldn't believe it in past 10 days we have had around like 10 to 12

earthquakes so you don't want to be so you i mean there's a lockdown you cannot go out but again

there's an earthquake so you have to go outside so we are in delima now either to stay inside or

to stay outside so things are very challenging here but all in all this live shows that we have

been doing from past couple of months have been really amazing especially past two or three days

were really exciting for the C-Shap Corner community as we had an amazing Women in Tech

conference. Also, we launched the beta version of live shows that we have. And one of the guests

today was one of the speakers in the conference. That's great. So, okay, so let's talk about today's

show. Well, hopefully things get better there in India and here in Philadelphia. We also have same

situation you know summer is here pandemic is still going on cases are still rising so hopefully

things get better in the meantime we we shall continue these you know anything we can do to

keep people busy folks busy and learning yeah and today we're going to talk about data so if you look

at the history of data you know since this web um web world has started today we produce and consume

the most data ever, ever in a day. Like right now we're talking, we are producing data. People who

are watching, they are consuming data. This data is somewhere, somehow, in some ways being stored

on databases, right. There are about four billion people in the world. They consume data every day

and they produce data every day. So think of the amount of data we are consuming and producing

every day not only just as a human we produce data but even our cars our cell phones our any

devices you call them iot internet of things or internet of everything's every those thing is

producing data and it's somewhere somehow going from that device to somewhere on the internet

And if you look at the numbers today, every day, every day, we produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data

It's just a lot of data. We can't even imagine how big this data is

So one of the things we want to bring this to, you know, to this show is that, you know, talk to somebody who works with data all the time

who manages people work with data and how they do things in the background and maybe ask some

questions. You know, you, our users and viewers have any questions related to data

Yeah, but I think we have been using data a lot, especially when it comes to machine learning and

AI, the importance of data has grown a lot these days. I mean, the data that was just kept, now

people have started processing it and now they're getting insights from that data. So quite an

interesting topic to talk about so shall we invite the guest of the today in this show now

yes definitely yeah all right there you go welcome everybody you caught me mid-dream with my

c-sharp corner mug love it looks nice looks great thanks for having me today yeah definitely it's

great um so well welcome to the show this um i'm sure um everybody's excited everybody who's

watching the show they're excited to have you here and then I would say you want to just go

start with your introduction a little bit talk about yourself what you do and you know we want

to learn more about as a DBA what do you do every day like when you are you know going to work or

working from home you wake up and then what you really do every day as a DBA and managing people

and you know anything else we don know about and how do you manage your day and you know get the things going on for everybody Well given your intro it sounds like I going to

be employed forever because data is everywhere, right? And I chose the right field because

we're going to have to exist as long as data exists. So it's pretty cool. I love what I do

I've been in the industry for about 20 some odd years. I'm not going to tell you how many

But straight out of college, I started with data and I got my first job with zero database experience

It was awesome. I actually got my first career based on networking, which, you know, I'm hoping we'll talk about how networking is so important

But I got a call from a sorority sister. I was in a sorority in college and she let me know that a job was opening at the port and that they needed somebody

And so I was able to get an interview and get started and off and running

I was inside the database world and I've been there ever since. Absolutely love it. It's like in my bones

Everything about data fascinates me. It's one of those things that I'm really happy that I got a career that I'm passionate about

Right. I don't dread my job. I'm absolutely passionate about. But being a DBA is hard. It's a lot of work. It's 24 seven

As you guys know, we don't get vacations, you know, unless you're on a team vacation

What's that? We always have our laptops with us. There's always some production issue that has to be taken care of

You know, it's something that becomes your baby, right? Something that these servers become become a part of you and you want to make sure they're up and running

So I've been doing data for a really long time. I spent if you watch the Women in Tech Conference earlier, what, yesterday or day before

I was a lone DBA for 16 years. I did it all myself with no help and no education in how to do SQL Server specifically

So I had to learn and grow as everything came my way for 16 years

And you were saying what life is like as a DBA, especially by yourself. You get up five o'clock in the morning, you grab your phone, you look through for any alerts or anything that broke while you're asleep because you got to get it fixed before everybody else gets in the office

Right. So you grab the phone, you grab the laptop, you're brushing your teeth

while you're running jobs and you're getting things going and then you're getting your kids

ready and breakfast while you're still working on jobs. And then you get to work and everybody's

happy because things are up and running before they had to get their morning reports, right

So then you go through your day waiting for one thing or another to fall through the cracks or

whatever project you're working on and you're juggling, trying to keep everybody else in the

company who become your customers, right? Happy and make sure they have all the data that they need

while you're trying to make sure things are working. So that's quite a job, huh

But I can imagine, right? I've been in IT industry for almost 23 years

And that's how we are, right? Data is very important. So you said you started this working with data with no experience

What are the challenges? Like, obviously, you know, we have in computer science, we have degree, right

We can go to programming degree. I did master's computer applications. That's where we learned, okay, what is compiler? What is meaning of, you know, data by storing in variables and, you know, basics, basically very, you know, little tiny things. But you, I mean, looks like you just jumped in right in there. What were the challenges when you just, you know, you were in the networking in the beginning, and then now you are now just start working with data. And I know it's been in 20 years, but it's still the same challenges

What were those challenges and how did you overcome those? Like did you get help and would you like to share something with our viewers

I have a degree in information technology. So when I said I had no experience, I had a lot of book experience, right

And you took some classes. I learned C-sharp. I learned COBOL and I learned some other programming languages and different facets of IT

So I had some IT background. And while in college, I had four years of experience working in IT, but it was just minimal, right

Administration kind of thing. So I didn't go into data until after

Challenges is you don't know anything. You don't know what you don't know. So luckily for me, I got into community

There's a community out there of SQL Server people all out there on Twitter and social media and stuff

And luckily, I landed in the right group. They started showing me where all of the free training was and all of the available tools out there for me to learn SQL Server

And I just had to be a self-starter, right? Because the challenge is you don't know what you don't know when it comes to data

And how do you find out what you don't know? Right? So it was a lot of stumbling and stuff like that

But going online and learning where everything was and learning where all the experts are, like on C Sharp

And then there's a group called PASS, Professional Association for SQL Server

And the SQL family, we call it, is out on Twitter. And they helped me get through those challenges of learning because you don't know what error means what or what the data is supposed to look like, what the best practices for the servers are supposed to be, or how to fix whatever thing that just crashed that you've never touched before, right

So luckily, out on Twitter, there's this thing called a SQL help hashtag

And we have experts in the field, like the people who wrote SQL Server watching this hashtag all the time

And they're able to answer questions. I've actually solved production issues where I didn't know anything

Right. The challenge is I didn't know anything about it online with people from Twitter who saved my butt two o'clock in the morning trying to get things up and running

Right. Because we're all working 24 seven. We're worldwide. and so some of the challenges were you know trying to fix something that you never touched before but

you only have a small amount of time to do that and with no experience or knowing what it is or

what to do and you're just you or you know whether with the team we all got to figure this stuff out

um it was tough it was tough so oh that's great so these SQL help I guess you that was that was

direct from Microsoft SQL Server team? So SQL help is actually the whole SQL Server community

that's online on Twitter. There's some people from the Microsoft teams that are watching that

There are some people like myself who is now a consultant or people who have written the books

about specific topics and experts in whatever they are. Watching that help hashtag and you can

pose your questions and they help you answer them, get answers, you know, provide this, what is this

next step and they'll tell you what to do and and what is this error and what does this mean and

and i've done this and that am i doing something wrong can you help me and that's how i survived

when i was growing up in sql server so so on c sharp corner and all our show there's a lot of

i would say majority of them are developers i would say 80 and 15 are data or database guys

If you have to give an advice to a developer, what do you think they should do besides coding from the data perspective

Anything you deal with even developers in your day-to-day job. Get rid of your bad coding habits Some people have a list of standards that they put in their code and then they put that everywhere And sometimes those standards

need to change over time. We no longer drop temp tables at the beginning of your store procedures

or at the end of store procedures. SQL Server handles that better for you. There's no reason to do that

Well, you'll find it in everybody's blocks of code because it's something they're used to doing

Taking the time to look at your variable definitions. your data types, things like that. Many times people may be using Varchar Max or Varchar 500

because they don't know what data they're going to be importing at some point in time. Well

over time, as you develop, you know what that data is. Make a change. If it is a state code and it's

a two digit state code, make it two characters, right? Don't leave it Varchar Max. All of those

things and decisions that they do, you need to be looking at that and evaluating what you're doing

from a performance perspective. I'm a more performance guru. All of those things

looking at developers code all of the time. And it's those things that I try to catch

and look at. But it's really looking at what your standards are

What you put into everything is still relevant. Once you write everything

and you start to see what your data is that's coming in, maybe you need to reevaluate

and make those changes before you go live. make be uh be cognizant of what the data is that's coming in not just making something work

yeah make something work is so important for developers right you got to get from each stage

it's so important right yeah so we are all really all the time goal is just to make it work you know

you know first thing because there's somebody asking is it done is it done right most of the

software developers and me being a programming background there's you know manager call it

manager, college lead, whatever, when you start programming and you don't have experience

you're like, okay, can you get this done in like two days? Yeah. Is it done? Is it done? So our goal

is just whatever we copy, go to Google, find code, copy, paste, put some stamp, whatever table

you know, if we need, sometimes don't write a store prox. If nobody tells us, just write in line SQL query and make it work. Yes. That's great advice. So talking about

performance right so we always see that you know when guys are you know rushing things down rushing

to pushing this code to the you know make it work and then here comes the time when you go live and

people you know users customers start using it and that's when the things happen that's when

things start failing there's like crash going on even on c sharp corner website sometimes we launch

this new control which is loading data so and things start failing because there's thousands

people now using it so is there when you look at this process of building these high performance

scalable websites or applications do you have some kind of standard or some kind of tools

to test that or is just some expert has to go look at that what are the things you do

in their day-to-day work? So, you know, when you guys are working through your platforms, right

you go from your development to your QA to your testing, and then you go to prod

A lot of people miss the QA or the user testing, and then they just jump to prod

So when you're developing, you're used to working with a small subset of data

and you may not have covered all of the examples that could be coming through. So I think it's important to have code reviewers, first of all

Right. You don't automatically put your code in because you need that second set of eyes. I know it works, but somebody else needs to look at it for performance

That's where as a consultant I come in. That's my favorite thing to do. Let me look at your stuff and performance unit and tell you, you know, different things to watch for in your next set of code that comes through

I love that. It's so much fun. But I think testing, testing, testing, testing, testing is important

And then going back through after something goes live, regression testing. Look and see if something regresses over time

Don't just push it out and say it worked. Look at it over a trend and see as the data amounts build, is there something we need to do

Is there an index that needs to be changed? Is maybe a function not working right as a function and it needs to come back as inline code

There's things that need to always be evolving. It's not a write it, push it out and don't touch it again, which happens a lot

But you can always get people. There's a lot of performance companies out there that can look and performance test your code for you

There's consultants like myself that come in and do code reviews and things like that for performance, especially on the SQL Server side

Right. When you're writing procs and things like that. There's great tools. If you're using SQL Server, there's a thing called Query Store

that goes and watches your queries and you can do, it gathers a bunch of data in the background

and it'll show you regressions of a stored proc over time. And you can figure out

and it shows you the execution plan, how to tune it and make it better. So it's knowing what tools are out there

I'm not huge on the developer side. I can't tell you, you know, the whole life cycle of your, the development tools

that are out there for you to test. But I think it's just important that it's not a write it

turn it over and don't reevaluate. which which happens a lot even if that requires you a team or one person of a code review that

that watches for that so this query store is that a third party or is it part of sql server it's

part of sql server it's built in um from 2016 a sql server 2016 and above yeah um it's there

and it's fantastic i use it all the time when i'm tuning myself i'll show the before i touched it

and after i tune it the after and i can show you this big you know it gives you a little bubble

circle and then you get the smaller bubble circle you know and you can actually show wow that's a

big difference it gives a visual people are very visual so yeah i don't think yeah i don't think

a lot of developers know are there any other tools available in latest version of sql server

say 2019 those are you know they're new and you know developers are or dbs are not used to knowing

them and they're still doing, you know, things the way they used to do always

So not necessarily tools. When it comes to things like Query Store, they're constantly building and making things better

There's X events where they're constantly building things and making things better

They're doing things more inside the engine now to automatically tune for you, to give

you more information to make things faster. If you're on 2019, there's a lot of performance things that have happened that people may not

to be aware of that could be already making your stuff faster without you knowing it

So without getting into, you know, real technical things of, you know, I could give you a two

hour session just on performance tuning inside SQL Server. But if you're able to go up to 2016, going and having the ability to have query store

world of difference, world of difference for you to be able to yze your code as a developer

Yeah. So when I was, you know, I was in college, I read this thing that data is information

how you convert from data and it becomes information. But today world data is not information Data is intelligence And as Simon said earlier data is everything now you don use applications to find out what people are using you use data to do all that right so what in the

world of intelligence you see you're doing or you see it's coming in our viewers who are watching

this, what is your advice to them when it comes to using databases or data in terms of intelligence

or AI or machine learning or BI? What do you see like where it's going to go and is there future

and should they be learning that? Oh, there's no question they should be learning that, right

Everyone wants to take advantage of the data out there and how it can get them one step ahead

Companies are looking at machine learning like crazy, things like graph databases

huge, right? Things like learning Python so you can navigate for machine learning

to be able to make forecasts and decisions on how many employees they need, how many people

do they expect for reservations for their hotel. You know, all of this stuff helps companies project

what to expect, which in turn saves them money, right? So definitely, definitely, if you are

getting into the data realm. Look at the machine learning and look at business intelligence

power BI, knowing how to show what the data is telling you in a way that your executives

and C-level can understand, right? Everybody wants pictures. Everybody wants to see what

those numbers actually mean. Take the time. It's worth learning. Our jobs are not going away and

it's just going to grow and grow and grow and grow. It's definitely worth investing your time

And regardless of what facet of data you get into, it's market gold, right

Yeah. All right. So I think you both guys really talked about that all professional stuff on how you started

your journey with. I mean, Mahesh would go and tell that he had 23 years of experience in that

Maybe something that is my age maybe around. So surely something. I am not the exact part of the show

But we have a couple of questions coming from the comments, Monica. maybe you would like to answer that

There's one from Srikan that he says, let me bring it in the light

that what's the best in performance-wise between sub-query versus joins? So you guys are going to stump me

What did we say about technical questions on a Sunday morning where I've only had one cup of coffee people

There's a bunch of questions coming now. So the answer is it depends

It really depends what it is. your joins. Joins to me are better than doing a subquery, but it depends on what you're doing

your data is, what your data is doing. Without looking at code, I cannot give you a decisive

answer because sometimes subqueries are important. Sometimes the joins are important. But the key is, is making sure you're joining on the right columns. Make sure you have enough

columns in those joins to bring your data down to the smallest facet as possible

Make sure you're not using functions within your joins that create scans that make you read every single row when you're only looking for a subset

Right. Making sure things are indexed properly. All of that makes a huge difference on performance, whether it is sub queries or joins

So that's as far as I'm going to go into for that, because I'm not looking at the code and I'm going to say it depends, which is our normal answer

All right. So, Monica, you write a lot of content on C Sharp Corner

and you have been a featured columnist, I was just going through a C Sharp Connect profile

and just look at some of the top articles that you have

And one of the very interesting articles that got my attention is

SQL Server Updates Trigged Me for Years, right? That is an article that is pretty interesting

So would you like to go ahead and talk about it? I can maybe just share my screen and then you can..

Oh my gosh, we're going into technical again. What did we say, Simon? That was a trick to get in here

So when you apply and upgrade a SQL server, you add patches and stuff

There's a safeguard, and I don't remember what version. I wrote that article quite a long time ago

And I believe that was talking about you have to kind of tell it you want to apply that update

or it really doesn't apply the update for you. you think it did because you've done the whole install

but there's a safeguard and there is an actual flag that you have to change

And I can't think of it right off the top of my head that tells it, yes, go ahead and accept those changes and pull it forward for you

So you can provide the link if you want in the chat. I can't recall, you know, exactly what it is right off hand, you know

I mean, you wrote this article a couple of years back, and this is exactly what you have written article

I've shared in the comments too. Taking you away from the technical questions

Monica, right? I'm not going to push you anything like the good comments test

There are a couple of questions here. Let's talk about the community part, right

You have said in the past that you've started this community work and speaking just like

only from past five years, right? But now you are a C-Sharp Kunder MVP

You said you have traveled to India, Thailand, across the globe. You are also a Microsoft MVP

So how did you actually start your journey into this whole community part

somebody made me. I hope it's not nice. So as far as writing and speaking, I was at my local user

group meeting for SQL Server and the person running it at the time asked me to speak. And I

said, I didn't have a topic. I have no idea. Nobody wants to hear me speak. Everybody knows everything

already. Somebody's already written about it, talked about it. What do I have to offer? And he

said, you're speaking in August. And I said, okay, it was June. So I had to come up with something

And I gave my free first presentation. And then somebody asked me, hey, maybe you should blog

about a problem you had, right, or something. So they said, you should really do this. And they

kind of pushed me in. And I wrote my first blog. And then I was hooked. I absolutely loved it. Now

I like to really put short blogs out there that are direct to the point. This is what I wish I

knew when I was looking for something, you know, growing up as that lone DBA, right? I wish somebody

had something out there. So I pretty much write a lot of my blogs and content for me so I can

remember what it was. So I started with that and then just kept building and building. And I try

to put out a blog a week. I try. With COVID, it's really gone down a lot because I'm so busy. But

I just started building with that. And then I spoke for the first time at a conference and I

got that speaker high. You get so excited when you see somebody in the audience that gets it

You're like, yes. And then I just wanted to do more and more. And now I do probably

12 to 18 events a year, normally on site when we can. And I've been able to build from that

And it's those contributions that have gotten me the C Sharp MVP and the Microsoft MVP

and what I do now is try to contribute as much as I can to help those who knew nothing or didn't

know what they didn't know and try to put some of that knowledge out there for everybody else

So you just mentioned Microsoft MVP, right? And I'm assuming obviously you are MVP in data

Yes. If somebody wants to become a Microsoft MVP, what do they have to do

Is there any criteria for that? How does that work? So there's no set list of checkoff items that you have to do

It's all about reach and some technical knowledge and your impact. And it's contributing to everybody else around you

So Microsoft has this fantastic program where we're able to work with engineers behind the scenes

We're able to contribute to the community. They help amplify us. But there's no set

It's not that you have to write 100 blogs or you have to speak 10 times. You have to write a book

It's none of that. There's just what you contribute. They look at what you've contributed over time and somebody has to nominate you

and then you get evaluated and maybe you get shot down and you don't

but you keep moving forward. Becoming an MVP is not a requirement

It's not a goal. It's a, hey, awesome, I'm really glad I have this

and I'm able to give back to the community amplified, right? What are the benefits for becoming an MVP

How did you get benefit? Is it like a bunch of money comes in a truck your way or what is this

Oh, my God, I wish there was money involved. There is not money involved. So it's more of a recognition for what you give back

It allows us to really give input to the engineers that are writing the code

And to me, that's important. You know, being able to build and help frame the next part of SQL servers and working with the engineers on that

We're given a lot of insight inside of what Microsoft is doing and the direction that they want to do and stuff like that

I think that's the most valuable thing. And we're working with a set of MVPs where we can kick, we have distribution lists and stuff

We can kick ideas and problems to each other on a higher level and kind of get information from each other

I think that's the biggest benefit. Yeah, we get a nice little plaque and trophy, which is kind of awesome

And we get some things for the recognition. But I really think the biggest thing is being able to work with Microsoft themselves and help with the path

right so now let's move a little bit switch to the jobs right a lot of guys here they probably

are interested in you know jobs when you see this uh if somebody wants to get into databases

or sql server or they're already in there uh what do you see the future of job market

and does the mvp program help you also get a better job i would think so and i want to you

see what you think on that. So I can tell you I work for a consulting group and there's six of us

and out of six of us, five of us are Microsoft MVPs. It's pretty impressive to be able to say

that we are in Microsoft MVPs. I think it gives a little credence to our knowledge base

which I think helps. I think the future in data is definitely going in the direction of the cloud

I think everybody needs to take the time and learn the cloud. It's no longer a fad. It's not going

away. Future of data is if you're not going into that direction and understanding it, you're going

to fall behind. There will always be on-premises type scenarios where people need to work on

hardware itself and stuff. But if you want to move forward, it's definitely going cloud-based

You need to be focusing on that technology. So you're saying Azure SQL is probably being

more used now or in demand from job side? Absolutely. Especially with COVID, right

Everybody is having to go virtual. They're having to scale up for things. They are having to not go

into the office, they are taking the time to get to the cloud now. And you need to be running to

the cloud as quickly as you can from a professional side. Yeah, it makes sense, right? If you look at

what we need, like even software developers or companies who are building new software or

product or innovating in different ways or even apps, looks like every software these days needs

some kind of automation they need some kind of a business intelligence they need some kind of even

machine learning right and to me if you are already using as your sql or you know any database in the

cloud i guess those tools and technologies are already there available there so they probably

you know work easy there and even look at microsoft has now teams microsoft now has office

365 and all the suites they all kind of work together in the cloud right um so that's good

i mean um simon it's up just to you now go ahead you go ahead with your questions all right so we

have one i won't ask technical questions but there's one question related to the one discussion

we're having uh that is with uh he says i'm a beginner c-sharp programmer i need a book please

tell me or share a good resource i'm not definitely with that email id but of course we can discuss in

this show. I mean, he's a beginner C-Shot programmer. So what should be his first step

to move into this database and all that? Oh, databases. If you're into books, I know

Kaylin Delaney has a really good book. I'm not much of a grab a book and read kind of person

I want to necessarily, I want to read the blog series. I want to, you know, watch the stuff

I tend to turn over to Pluralsight. There's a Pluralsight thing that has a combination of all kinds of training materials out there specific

I would definitely be looking at that. I would be definitely looking at any free training, virtual classes that you can do out there

I know there's virtual chapters with Inside Pass for new database administrators, things like that

start looking out there for what you can get. I can't give you a book recommendation because

I'm not the one that's going to sit there and stare and highlight at a book all the time. So I guess the learning path is learn online. There's so many resources out there available

online, right? You can just search anywhere. Plural site is definitely being one of them

I'm sure Microsoft SQL Server page have a lot of information there as well

Correct. Absolutely. And I believe on C Sharp Corner, we have a learn series as well, Simon

Okay. So the goal is really, I don't think reading book is a good idea these days. I think it's more

about going online and learning there. Everybody has a different learning style. So whatever works

for you, it's not exactly what works for me. So yeah. I was just looking at those 10, 15 machine

learning books that I have. It's over there. So I do read books. I mean, books are good

to put in a showcase, right? Oh my goodness. I watching all these TV shows these days So many people are online from home and everybody has a bookcase behind there Yep It right behind me

It's called obsolete or expired because this data and information and technology is changing so fast

If you have a book that's two years old, it's probably obsolete. Yes, that's correct

It changes so fast. so um so that was for beginners right so if i'm a you know dba i've been in you know doing this for

10 years uh managing databases and doing servers and back end and all that and i see this some dba

they work in these corporate environments they don't really upgrade themselves to cloud because

either their company is not migrating there or they are just working on a project client project

where it's probably an old Oracle database and or it could be one of I've been seeing some machine

you know mainframe databases there still so what is your advice to those senior database or guys or

DBAs who wants to upgrade themselves how they can get into and get motivated to get into these

you know self-learning self-motivating modes you have to so I've seen so many people that say I only

know SQL Server 2012 because we haven't been able to upgrade or we're on 2008 R2 and we can't

upgrade. So that's all I know. I'm not going to learn the other stuff because we're never going

to go there. Or I'm not going to learn the cloud because we're never going to go there. And they kind of get stuck in their current environment, current job. In order for you to move on in life

move on in your job and stay passionate about what you do, you have to take on that self-learning

You have no choice but to go and you can register for Azure free credits, right

Azure gives you, I think it's $200 that you can register for an account and get out there and start playing with it

Get out there and maybe go sign up for one of the Azure certification exams

So you push yourself into learning that new stuff. Nobody's going to spoon feed you the information

No one's going to hold your hand and say, come with me. I need you to learn all of this because you're still in a corporate environment where they're going to stay in the older versions and not move forward

In order for you to stay happy in your job and feel fulfilled and continue to grow, you have to take on that self that self learning, self motivation to learn more because nobody's going to do it for you

And Mahesh, I see that all the time. People tend to stay with what they know and what they have to work on

and they're not constantly looking for that next level. Even when you're a senior and you have mastered everything in your environment

you still have to keep going because like we're in COVID now

I see a lot of people getting laid off and then they look at their skillset now

and they're like, oh my God, I don't qualify for any of these jobs because I stayed in 2008 R2 for the last 15 years

10 years, whatever it is, right? Whatever number it is. So you've got to prepare yourself for situations

like the unknown, what we're doing now. yeah and same thing um you know i tell any anybody who's writing code right they i meet these

developers they're senior software engineers and some are architects and but they're still doing

things old ways right there's they have you know traditional applications running and they're not

learning and soon if they don't upgrade themselves they'll be out of job yeah because that's the

reality everything is moving to the cloud all the you know it's you don't just build one application

these days the application you build is even the data it has to work with others as well right

uh it has to work it has to transfer data from here and there and cloud is the best way to do

that absolutely all right t simon to you all right so i i mean that those are a couple of like

technical questions right i'll take a pretty simple one i'm not going to take from the comments because the guys are just asking about the shape of the data and all that i'm not gonna push that

to you but but here's my question to both to mahesh and monica is like uh you have been into

this community for a really really long time right so uh sometimes uh when you work full-time

as a senior you have a lot of stuff too but how do you actually keep yourself motivated i mean if

we'll talk about mahesh he has been doing this from almost like 20 years right that's a really

long time. I really not know how that matters. If I would go and talk about C Sharp Corner to anyone

people would say that why the C Sharp Corner has even been running, right? I mean, you don't

that's an entire source of knowledge, but how can you run it for 20 years? So my same question is

for you, Monica, how do you keep yourself motivated when you work as a full-time as a DPA

And what keeps you motivated? I just love what I do, right? I've turned it into my hobby

and I'm passionate about it. I don't look at it as a job

When you start looking at something as a job and just a paycheck

it becomes overwhelming and daunting and you end up hating it. So I absolutely found a niche that I love

which is performance tuning. I get excited about it. I absolutely love what I do

I write about it. I talk about it. And and I don't I don't think of the bad stuff that goes along with it

The the constant on call, the no vacations because you have your laptop with you, the the constant pressure that can come with this

I don't I'm an optimist, right? I'm a I'm a positive person

Anyways, I just had to change my mindset in the beginning. You know, you really have to start looking at it as more than just a job

It's a career. And when it's a career, you want to be the best at what you can do and you want to make it to the next level

And it's all about mindset that that's how I can do it for so long and how I can still absolutely love it

And light up when I talk about a query going from 10 seconds to three milliseconds

You know, it's fun. I love it. yeah so i agree with monica just said definitely 100 percent uh one thing i have learned over the

years is that even though you are very passionate about something you love it there'll be time where

you don't just want to do it there'll be time where like you know what that's it i can't do

today it happens all the time right because you're doing for so long things get boring

so how do you sustain this process of being contributing to the community for so long

first thing is in the beginning as monica said you have to find something you're passionate about

it can't be just it can't be forced onto you you cannot just do this as you work like

oh i want to write code and share and talk in the community but if you don't like it it's not

gonna be long run right so you have to make sure you like it now once you like it then

though it should not be a burden to you should be fun right so what I usually do and I used to write

a lot on c-sharp corner you know I was running my company I was also working full-time as a

consultant I was writing books and I was also writing on the c-sharp corner side by side

so as Monica mentioned earlier the way my writing style was if I solving I stuck in a problem problem And I solve that problem all I did is just write about it how I did it because I sure somebody else is searching for the same problem so that the easiest way

you can write number two I write is something about when I'm learning

something new yes because let's say these days you know I'm learning

quantum computing I just don't have a lot of time but that's my interest I want learn that so when you learn and write about it while you're doing it you just end up you know

learning more and trying to solve some the problems you stuck yourself right so anything you want to

learn something you start writing about it and when you write about it then you figured out oh

shoot i was wrong then when you post it on the on the website or a blog or wherever then people

ask you more questions they're like oh really let me figure this out so that then it becomes fun

because first of the thing, you're like, you're working with it. You're trying to solve a problem

And now people are engaged, giving you feedback. So that whole process becomes fun

And it's like, it's then it's not a burden anymore. And then beside that, then over the time, after doing all this

you'll also have to find a kind of, and it's very important to find a people or a group of people

or a community that motivates you from time to time when you're down because there'll be time

when you're just gonna be like not feeling good so there has to be somebody where you can reach

out to you like and then get motivated again one of the big big thing from you know i'd be i was

microsoft mvp for 14-15 years and personally it wasn't really much value to me the only value i

got from that was because i wasn't really interacting with the team of developers because

I'm doing I'm just didn't have enough time uh my value I learned from that was I meet these people

awesome people yes and I'm not even I it wasn't even learning coding I you know it was more about

learning from them how do they think so motivation and how they're like it's like it becomes that

becomes your motivation right that's where you get your energy back so everybody has different

way to do things we all have to find where do we get that energy from for example if you love pets

maybe you go and you know feed pets that's or help you know dogs and shelters and all that may give

you energy back right same thing with the when we go to these conferences when we speak at the events

they all give energy back even though they take a lot but when you come back you just get so

motivated and we go to this microsoft mvp summit we used to go you know i used to go every year

when you come back you're just like all motivated you're boosted up for one whole year

so if we don't have those events in life things will get really bad and like boring and stale

so we have to keep doing all those things and once in a while you just take breaks just shut

it off that's very important right um you just don't have to if you sometimes you don't feel

like don't do it it has to be when you feel like when you can do it and after that the last thing

is when you keep doing so long it becomes your habit so right now my habit is if I don't write

anything in a you know few days I feel like I've done nothing I could be doing a lot of projects I

could be helping clients I could be getting paid all that stuff but if I don't write or I don't do

anything community. I feel like this week was pretty bad. So once it becomes habit, then it's

fun. I totally agree with what you said, Mahesh. I have a group of, so I went to a past summit back

in 2011 and I met a group of people. We were all, you know, pretty mid-level of our careers

but I met a group of people sitting in beanbag chairs at the community zone and we just started

talking. We ended up exchanging information and now I talk to them every day. We have a Google

Hangouts. And now there's some of the biggest names inside the SQL server community right now

And we all grew up to this together. But we are, we call ourselves our SQL tribe, right

We are the same people that give each other energy. We're the ones that we can gripe to. We're the

ones we can turn to. We're the ones that can help us with other problems. We drag each other with

each other to the next step in our careers. But you're right. They are my energy. And there's no

way I could have had my career without it. Networking and doing stuff at these events

like you said, going to MVP Summit, getting that energy back from all the other people who are

like-minded with you, huge motivation. That is an excellent, excellent point. Yeah. And Simon, to add to that, even in C-Sharp Corner, we do a bunch of events at schools and

villages and helping kids and people who don't have anything. It all fuels back to you. Like

look how fortunate I am and look at these guys so I think I need to do go back and do more

uh either if we forget that route like okay and don't look at the people then you just forget and

you live in your own world that's when you kind of get you know lose focus but it's important to

go back and see okay look at this guy this their stage and look at me I think I need to do more

and that kind of keeps you you have to find a fuel right it's like we are like machines

you know i compare people as machines right any car for example you're driving a car you're going

to drive to like a long journey you have to fuel in between you have to make sure car is clean you

have to upgrade you have to get new tires otherwise what happens car is not it's gonna

you know be rusty and you know you're not flat tires and all that wow i mean yeah i want to hear

more i mean i want you both to keep there is a there is a one episode just on that just on that

like what what human can learn from machines especially computers that's amazing i think here in india i mean for one behalf of c-shef one of we have been doing a

lot of community events we go to country sites and we talk to school kids they're underprivileged

and what about the covid19 light up conference we are having i mean it's all for the same it's

for the fundraisers. I think Monica really doesn't know about this Light Up Conference, right

So there's a Light Up Conference coming on the 14th of July. It's a 24-hour conference

with over 200 speakers running in more than 10 different time zones

across the globe in English, Spanish, Hindi, and a couple of languages we are doing

And all this for free of cost, just to raise funds for those who have been affected by COVID-19

As you said, people have been laid off or because of this pandemic so if any way we could help them or

maybe help the people who have lost their jobs here in in india things are a little bad things are

uh not not as good but people may not have those skilled jobs so that is something our next key

focus is right the mahesar the 14th of july yeah so manpreet it was actually manpreet's idea manpreet

is one of our MVP, C Sharp Corner MVP's in Philadelphia. He runs Philadelphia chapter

He also Microsoft MVP for several years He runs his own user groups as well focused around Microsoft Teams and Power Platform So we were you know we were both talking and like yeah C Sharp Corner needs to do something about pandemic

He's like, we definitely need to do that. So we kind of combined with several other communities, local user groups, combined this event called Light Up event

and idea was really to make a big event 24 hours non-stop you know from you know every country

um and uh have some you know bunch of speakers have some sponsors people can also donate using

it's free event but people can donate uh and there's option their donate option and all the

We have partnered with a couple of non-profit charities. I think, which one is that we partner with, Simon

UNICEF. UNICEF is one, and we were talking to a couple of more

So the funds will go direct to UNICEF. And really, idea is, you know, we want to make it big

We want to make it everywhere and kind of, you know, help and light up some people's lives who need help

especially children. And it's on 14th, 15th July. You want to share a screen, Simon

Yeah, I'll do that. Let me just pull up the conference website

So, which again means, Monica, as you said, behind the scenes, 14th and 15th July, I'm

not sleeping. Yeah, Simon's been working. That's why we need young guys, because he has so much energy

He's like 24 hours he's working, but looks like he works 48 hours in a day

You both might have worked a lot more harder than me in this age

All right, so we have this. There you go. I mean, when you were at my age

All right. So this is the conference, Light of Virtual Conference. We started 14th of July, 9 a.m. EST

It's supported by UNICEF and all the funds could go directly to the UNICEF

We still have the speakers registration open, so you can click on this and go to session eyes

and submit your, and here's the speakers list. Guys coming from across the globe, we have

this is more of like a Microsoft stack. It may be AI, DevOps, the storage

So most of it, content is based on Microsoft technologies. And the website still needs to be updated

because there are a lot more speakers coming in. Right now, I think we have around 100 speakers on the website

We'll add a couple of more. And for now, we have one, two, three, four tracks with Spanish track two

There's Hindi and more languages coming. So it's going to be really, really interesting

And let's see how this goes. That's fantastic. I already recognize some of those names

I'll reach out to some of my friends that are speakers as well, and we'll see if we can get you a few more sessions

Yeah, it's all Microsoft focus. So that's a good thing is, you know, it's everything from coding to data to AI machine learning teams, SharePoint, pretty much everything. We just want to give everybody platform to talk. And, you know, it's a, it's for a cause. So any, you know, it's more is less

so that's another topic i have one topic just titled more is less

i have so many things coming up in this and i will be busy then

you can write a title like a book has more the title for the live shows

more is less very interesting it will say how and then one is less is more right

there's other way around right if you yeah so we will this is good

so i'm very excited about all these shows we are coming up in uh very interesting

all right i think uh we are almost like with time now with 56 minutes for the live show it

was scheduled 45 minutes anything i would really like to thank monica for coming on this sunday

morning any last but you both like to have and i'll just wrap it up um i did i wanted to address

somebody put a question about no lock in the comments. I urge all your developers to take no lock out of your standards

Please don't use no lock. It introduces dirty data into your process

If you're going to use no lock, please do all the research you can before you start putting it into your code

There's a lot of misinformation out there that people think no lock needs to be

on every line of their code, which is the first thing I take out when I look at somebody's code

So please, if you're going to use NOLOC, research, research, research, and understand exactly what it

is. Otherwise, rip it out. Do not put it in as a standard. I talked about that earlier about some

standards that have been long term used. So that's definitely one to rip out of your standard base

But that's what I wanted to address real quick. But it's been awesome to be with you guys. I think

these are really great things to have on a Sunday morning. Thank you so much for having me

If you guys have any follow-up questions, you guys know how to reach me on C Sharp Corner

All of these technical questions that you ask, feel free to always reach out to me. And Simon and Mahesh, if we ever want to do this again, just let me know. I think you guys are

doing great stuff with C Sharp Corner. I rave about C Sharp Corner all the time. The other

communities that we do that I'm in, you guys do things a little different, which I think is

fantastic. The platform that you give to all of us to speak out on is a worldwide network that we

wouldn't be able to reach if it wasn't for people like in platforms like C Sharp Corner. So thanks

so much for having me both of you. And I continue to look forward to what else I can do with C Sharp

Corner as the time goes on. Well, thank you so much, Monica. It was great. And again, our goal

is simply we want to humanize the technical people. Okay. Because when I see sometimes technical

people are so not human sometimes they live in their own world and our focus has been always in

people who are involved with the communities like come on make it fun let's be like a human people

you can be nice you don't i understand that you're expert i understand you are pro i understand you

know better coding than other guys doesn't mean you cannot be nice person right so that's our

theme is that okay we want people make sure how you can be a nice techie guy and that's uh with

that simon it's all you all right i think that's a wrap we had an amazing 60 minutes and uh this

sunday looks very interesting you guys gonna start your sunday and and hit my face it ends

so uh thank you everyone who has joined us today it was an amazing session from you monica

i stephen simon on behalf of entire c-sharp corner community and its millions of users would like to

thank you for your valuable time and your contributions to the community

We would love to have you back once again, uh, till then stay safe. Uh

have a happy Sunday and bye. Bye everyone. Okay. Uh, I need to have this too, right? Oh, my, my, my, my name, mine is spill proof

All right, guys. Thank you