Rob Farley

@simongerman600 About 30 years ago I was living in Melbourne. Seven of us went on a road trip to Sydney for a few days. The only person whose middle name was not “John” was Debbie.

What is the middlest name of them all? Ann! No other name is as disproportionally used as a middle name compared to as a first name. Great data work! Source: erdavis.com/2025/12/31/wha…

@nonstoptom No Adelaide Fringe for you this year?

@rob_farley You’ve seen right through me.

I’d like to apologise to everyone for completely wrecking another episode of Hard Quiz.

I often use GROUP BY to create aggregated tables and then join them, mimicking a true Entity-Relationship (ER) model. It cuts query load by reading fewer rows and skips repetitive calculations... brilliant! 😂 Your technical take is fascinating. It’s a completely different angle from mine, yet as Deaf individuals working with databases, our approaches somehow align. Your perspective clicks perfectly... it’s just a different lens. For me, though, I lean on designing a relational database to keep data safe. I translate business rules into constraints, ensuring only clean, transformed data gets inserted. That way, I can pull from messy datasets or legacy sources... like mainframes or old systems with terrible databases... clean it up upfront, and then denormalise. Less scripting means I can focus on tight data transformation, using GROUP BY and similar ops for denormalisation. That’s my way... my Deaf way, too. 🤘😀 Your approach, though, feels all about denormalisation from the start. You’re hammering indexes for performance and I/O efficiency, minimising joins, precomputing data, optimising parallel execution, leveraging memory-optimised tables, tuning buffer pools, refining row versioning and lock escalation... and then digging deep into engine-level analysis. Respect! 🫡 Reading your technical posts hit me like a crash onto a wooden floor... the light bulb in my head just flicked on! Damn… it dawned on me that you, me, and maybe other Deaf folks who’ve wrestled with databases for years, we visualise structures hard. We don’t lean on spoken language or even English context as much. No shade to hearing folks I’ve worked with, but I sometimes get frustrated when they act like they’ve got it all figured out... copy-pasting tasks, skimming books, leaning too hard on English without real hands-on grind. It’s shortcut references that end up needing more manual data integrity checks, even if they get the same result. That bloats costs, tanks productivity, and turns into a honey pot... spawning extra roles (which management loves to justify their big salaries). Worst case, it even cracks the door open for fraud and corruption. I’m thinking of making videos of me and my database work, of course with an interpreter for voice. In fact, one of my network connections, @rob_farley , has been pushing me to do this for a long time. It’s not the work I’m struggling with... it’s the shield over my head. To be honest, I’m in the early stages of breaking that shield... hiding my real work or showcasing it publicly has been tough due to past traumatic workplace experiences that built a wall around me for years. That’s why I don’t post my programming or database design work on this platform or my website, or even release the real web-based applications I’ve built yet... I’m still wrestling with my mental health. But my mind’s getting clearer since I was forced to retire in 2023 to protect myself, and I’m hoping that clarity helps me break through. I think @DataRepublican , a Deaf database professional, is my true inspiration... this helps me big time 😢. Sorry for writing such a long post!

@way0utwest Published the round-up: lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2025/01/1…

A great invitation this month, giving you two ways to write about integrity for #tsql2sday

@SQLGene I’ll count it if you want. Go to my blog and leave a comment saying you published a little early… :)

@rob_farley Shoot I wrote this too soon, lol sqlgene.com/2025/01/01/the…

This month's T-SQL Tuesday #tsql2sday sees me hosting, not just writing. Got thoughts about integrity? Could be in the data world, the professional world, or whatever world you want to write about. If so, this invite is for you! lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2025/01/0…

@way0utwest Thanks for the RT, Steve. My post is up, over at lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2025/01/1… #tsql2sday

Spotify: Here’s some music you like, based on what been listening to this year. Duolingo: Bonjour! Dzień dobry! You’ll be able to understand this, based on how many foreign words you’ve learned this year. LinkedIn: I’ve got this…

@DMaslyuk @the_d_mp @cbryden @DataZoePowerBI It’s not like I had to think. I just wrote the truth

@rob_farley @the_d_mp @cbryden @DataZoePowerBI Quickest meaningful reply ever?!

Yesterday at Difinity in Sydney I got to shake hands with @the_d_mp, @rob_farley, @cbryden, and most charming @DataZoePowerBI for the first time! I also saw many others whom I'd met before and hadn't seen in a long time, because the last time I went to a conference was before COVID happened! Thanks to @Rad_Reza for organizing Difinity!

@hellosqlkitty @tsql2sday My response is at lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2024/11/1… #tsql2sday

I’m enjoying the second season of The Diplomat a lot. But through both seasons, with Rory Kinnear as the UK PM, I keep wondering if anyone is going to mention the pig incident…

@way0utwest lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2024/10/0… for mine. #tsql2sday

The Oct #tsql2sday invite is up: timmitchell.net/post/2024/10/0… Write your posts for next week. If you don't have a blog, start as a #SQLNewBlogger

@tarynpivots Totally. :(

@JamesMcG_MSBI I dropped Gordon, and nearly brought Gvardiol too, which would’ve surely prevented their goal.

@rob_farley Same. We can all band together to stop Haaland

I feel like I’ve done my bit for the fortunes of Arsenal, by using my wildcard to bring Haaland into my FPL team.

@dbanuggets Here’s mine. Thanks D lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2024/09/1…

Happy to host this month T-SQL Tuesday #tsql2sday #sqlfamily dbanuggets.com/2024/09/03/t-s…

Terrific post by @kellybroekstra about building star schemas, at lobsterpot.com.au/blog/2024/09/0…

@SQLFlipFlopsDBA That happens. I think it’ll make you a better presenter (if that’s possible). Crowd work is a whole nother thing, because you’re not scripted. Hopefully you haven’t had hecklers yet.

@rob_farley I felt it a bit at first last evening. Still working on my transitions from one story/joke to another. Stumbled a bit a few times with that and got in my head but it got better.

So, tonight is the second time I’m taking a stage at an event and performing some standup comedy. I did this once last month and was asked to come back immediately for this months event. Hoping I get some videos this time.