Rob Farley

LobsterPot Solutions owner & principal consultant, helping orgs do better with their data. Also does stand-up.

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@DeafProgrammer No, this is about the Arsenal. :)

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

Finally

[Rob Farley @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.

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@nonstoptom No Adelaide Fringe for you this year?

[DeafProgrammer @DeafProgrammer]

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!

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@way0utwest Published the round-up: https://t.co/AauHDH8m1I

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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! https://t.co/W1cfnPqpku

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@way0utwest Thanks for the RT, Steve. My post is up, over at https://t.co/kOph4TIydE #tsql2sday

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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…

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@hellosqlkitty @tsql2sday My response is at https://t.co/sLsqWjmSTL #tsql2sday

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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…

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@way0utwest https://t.co/MW4OTaaxbn for mine. #tsql2sday

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@tarynpivots Totally. :(

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

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

[Rob Farley @rob_farley]

@dbanuggets Here’s mine. Thanks D https://t.co/Ny2hlDkURm