Invitation and follow-up from Todd Kleinhans.
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is about what do YOU use databases for in your personal life that you are willing to share?
We work with data all day and sometimes all night long. When we turn off work, some of us continue to use data and databases to enhance our professional growth and learning. I know on some days the last thing I want to look at after work is- another screen full of data. Kinda of like how some auto mechanics have poorly running cars. How can that be? Because they work on cars all day long and they are tired of working on cars- including their own.
But I’m curious- outside of work and learning, what do you personally use databases for? Tracking books you have, recipes, collections, etc? While it can be said using databases for personal use could be either overkill or a hammer in search of nails on the other hand, it is exactly what they are for- storing data.
Years ago I challenged my daughter- I would give her $100 to go through a book about databases, sit her in front of SQL Server Developer Edition, and we would build a database to track our VHS collection. (VHS, heh, yes I’m old. Now get off my lawn).
We used a book called The Manga Guide to Databases.
It was great except they used the non-ANSI syntax for joins…
We whiteboarded and created a simple database.
The experiment was a ton of typing. And linking to the movies in Wikipedia. And then capturing some information about personal family events based on date. BTW, she is now a film student in college.
More than twenty years ago I was into FileMaker Pro working for a defense contractor. We needed a way to store many pictures about launch site equipment. It was my first time trying to figure out: a) how to store pictures in a database b) how to store metadata about the pictures and c) how to search and retrieve the pictures. There was no auto-tagging, object recognition or any sophisticated technology to help me out. So I used what tools I knew about. The project was a success but took way more time than I would have liked.
I am into pictures and have been looking at ways to store and retrieve them for quite some time. Some things work and some things don’t work so well. On 06Apr19, I will be presenting in Colorado Springs, Colorado for SQL Saturday on Storing Images in a Database – Tips and Techniques.
As I learn more about Python I’ll be able to do more sophisticated things. Like the kind of things I couldn’t do twenty years ago. One of them I want to tackle is how to extract text out of images. Ever see people taking pictures during a presentation with their smartphones? Or see code in a YouTube video? How do you get the text of the code out? Most people I think would say they just re-type it. But what if you could use software to do that for you? So I’m fiddling with Python-tesseract.
So what do you use databases for in your personal life that you are willing to share? Blog about it. I’m curious to see the range of uses and even if you don’t use databases for personal stuff, what do you see as the future of organizing personal data?