28Aug 2012 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

These People Are Exceptional

Professional Development
I should know. I was one of the judges of this year's Exceptional DBA of the Year award. I had to read through tons and tons of submissions and help to arrive at a final list of people who truly personify the concept of both the DBA and the exceptional person. They are all worthy of your votes, but you can only pick one. Today is the final day to make your voice heard and get your influence in. Please, let us know who you think the Exceptional DBA of the Year is by clicking on the link, now, and voting.
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28Aug 2012 by Grant Fritchey 34 Comments

Please, Call Me Richard

Professional Development, T-SQL
I presented a session at the SQL Saturday event in Oklahoma City last weekend. The event itself was pretty good. The organizers put everything together pretty well and the venue was quite nice. Plus, since I grew up in Oklahoma (Tulsa), it was a chance to go home. The event was good, but my presentation went a little downhill. The name of the session is "Top Tips for Better Stored Procedure Performance." I should rename it to just say "T-SQL Query Performance" because it's not focused on stored procedures, but on queries. The presentation is 1/3 talking about how you write your queries, naming syntax, formatting, etc. The second 2/3 is all about common mistakes made in writing T-SQL such as using NO_LOCK everywhere, nesting views, joining and nesting multi-statement…
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