Erik Tests a New Microphone
Video Summary
In this video, I’m Erik Darling from Darling Data, and I wanted to share a bit of behind-the-scenes content as I test out my new microphone. The old one met its untimely end after countless hours of discussing databases, but fear not—my audio quality remains top-notch! This video serves multiple purposes: it allows me to ensure the sound is clear across various devices so you can enjoy my content without any hiccups, and it’s a direct way for you to support my endeavors. If you’d like to contribute towards better equipment, consider signing up for a channel membership starting at just $4 a month. Your support not only helps me improve but also gives you access to exclusive perks and opportunities to ask questions during office hours episodes.
Additionally, I’m taking this opportunity to promote some of the services and courses I offer. Whether you’re looking to enhance your SQL Server performance with my consulting services or want to dive into T-SQL training, there are plenty of ways to get involved. The pre-sale price for my 24-hour T-SQL course is currently at $250, but don’t miss out on the limited-time offer! And if you’re attending Pass Data Community Summit in Seattle, you’ll receive free access to this companion content with your admission. Mark your calendars for my upcoming live appearances in New York City and Dallas, as well as Utrecht, where I’ll be sharing more insights and expertise.
Full Transcript
Erik Darling here with Darling Data. And if the first thing you’re noticing and admiring in this video is my new clip on mic, my eyes are up here, buddy, then you are a wise and you are a dedicated follower because I was talking the other day about how my old microphone, I was wearing a big headset at the time, my old microphone snapped in half from listening to me talk about databases. Hopefully you will not. snap in half from listening to me talk about databases. But we can consider the entire point of this video is Erik tests a new microphone. And the reason I’m doing this this way is because it’s very easy for me to upload this to YouTube and then listen to it across a variety of devices so I can ensure that I sound okay on a variety of devices. So let’s, let’s, let’s spiel ourselves here. If you would like me to buy a better microphone, if you have complaints about audio quality, well, you can do something about that. You can sign up for a channel membership and for as few as $4 a month, you can, you can support my endeavors to purchase nice microphones. There’s a, there’s a link down in the video description that allows you to do that. If you don’t care about my microphone, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You can like, you can comment, you could subscribe. You can also ask me questions for free privately that I will answer publicly during my office hours episodes.
Isn’t that nice? Isn’t that nice? These nice things I do for you. If you would really like me to get a new microphone, you can hire me as a consultant. It’s a great way for me to buy new microphones. And I am available to perform all sorts of miracles upon your SQL servers, health checks, performance analysis, hands-on tuning, dealing with performance emergencies and training your developers. So whenceforth you have no more performance emergencies. I do all of these things. And as always, my rates are reasonable. Anyway, uh, if you would like to buy some performance tuning training from me, I’ve got 24 whole entire hours of it. Uh, if you, uh, there’s a link down here that assembles all this stuff for you. But of course, uh, you, you, you can get the everything bundle there, uh, for a hundred, about 150 bucks with a 75% off code. And that will last you for life. No subscription required. Um, if you want to get in on my new T-SQL course. While it is at the pre-sale price of 250 US dollars, uh, you can do that now, uh, videos are dropping and being recorded. I’m going to go do some after I do this. Uh, and, uh, the, the price, once the advanced material is fully published after the summer, will go up to $500.
So please do save yourself 250 bucks unless you’re really itching to donate to the mic fund. Uh, uh, this is all companion content to the pre-cons that Kendra Little and I are teaching at Pass Data Community Summit in Seattle, November 17th to 21st. So if you are attending Pass and hopefully chosen wisely and you’re attending our pre-cons, well, guess what?
Uh, you, you will get free access to that, this companion content with, with your, with your admission there. Uh, if you would like to see me live and in person, Red Gate, Red Gate’s little road show. I’m being taken on tour sort of around the world, limited world tour, I guess.
Uh, some small clubs and venues, uh, New York City, August 18th and 19th, Dallas, September 15th and 16th. That’s the one in Texas and, uh, Utrecht, the one near Amsterdam and the, and the Netherlands. Uh, it’s a Hamlet and it’s beautiful.
Uh, October 1st and 2nd, but let’s, uh, let’s do a, a, a short video here for me to test my microphone with. All right. So, uh, a lot of the times when I’m teaching about dynamic SQL, I like to say things like, if you want to properly parameterize your dynamic SQL, you have to use SP execute SQL and you have to feed it some parameters and you have to feed it some, some values to, to, to substitute those parameters with.
And that, that’s a great way to avoid SQL injection because everyone should be trying to avoid SQL injection. It’s unpleasant, gets, gets you fired. It might get your company to go out of business.
There are all sorts of terrible things that can happen when you are SQL injected. So, uh, I, I do, I do recommend avoiding that. Askew SQL injection at all costs.
But there is kind of one funny circumstance where you can not use SP execute SQL and you can still somewhat parameterize your dynamic SQL. So we, what I’m going to do is, well, what I’ve done already is, uh, this, this only works with linked servers, at least that I’ve ever seen. Um, there might be some really insane work around where it works otherwise, but Hey, what do I know?
Uh, I know T SQL with Eric. It’s apparently what I know, but I’ve already added a loopback linked server to my very own server. Uh, I am, uh, for the, for the most part, SQL Server monogamous.
So, uh, I, I only work with one version in addition of SQL Server at a time though. I guess, I guess, I guess these days I am philandering a bit with SQL Server 2025, but, uh, we don’t, we don’t need to talk about that publicly. We can save myself a little shame and embarrassment here, but this linked server will allow me to do something kind of funny.
This linked server will allow me to, uh, declare some SQL and I’ve, I’ve got, uh, I’ve got my, my string that I want to execute, uh, being set and assigned right here between these two things. And I’ve got this, uh, ID local variable set to eight. Now, uh, in my where clause in my dynamic SQL, I’ve got a question mark, right?
And it’s sort of like that crappy store procedure, SPMS for each DB where the question mark is the database name. And you have to say like use bracket question mark thing to, to get into different databases. It’s kind of like that.
But what I can do is I can use, uh, I can use the, the less safe version of executing dynamic SQL. And I can say execute, uh, at SQL, and I can pass in the ID as a second thing. And that second thing is going to act as a parameter replacement for that question mark.
But I have to use exec at, I don’t know why Zoomit has forsaken me like that, but I have to, I have to execute this at the linked server. And when I do that and, and I, you know, go through great pains to use the right database and everything. But when I, when I run all this, uh, this server talks to itself and it returns the thing that I wanted, which is post type ID eight from the post types table.
So anyway, thank you for joining me for Eric tests, a new microphone. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I hope you learned something.
I hope you like my new microphone because, uh, I don’t know what to get if this, if you don’t like it, perhaps, perhaps you can recommend one to me. Um, it just, it has to plug into one of these things and it has to have a very special connector like this. So if you’ve got recommendations along those lines, um, well, I’m, I’m two ears and one mouth, but that, that, that expression doesn’t really, doesn’t really resonate much.
Does it anyway? Thank you for watching.
Going Further
If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 25% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that, and need to solve database performance problems quickly. You can also get a quick, low cost health check with no phone time required.