2017 - Page 7 of 8 - Grant Fritchey

29Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Random Blogging Challenge Results

The winner is: Everyone. Hey, the challenge was random. I didn't promise a prize or a winner. Instead, I suggested everyone blog based on an image of the great Tom Baker: In no particular order we have: Persist and Aggregate Index Stats Across Server Restarts by Eric Cobb Nice use of the image, incorporating it into an interesting technical post on how to persist your index usage stats. Useful information since this DMV is reset when you restart the server (or fail it over or...). Good technical blog on a useful topic, data about your system. Working with SQLSaturday SpeedPass by Wayne Sheffield +10,000 points for both using the image well and for the PowerShell. -10,000 points for making me comment on a post about PASS (I'm the EVP of…

28Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Sharing With You In All Fifty States

Misc

I made a mistake the other day. For some reason I got it into my head that I was flying to Albuquerque when I was actually flying to Phoenix. I've no idea how or why that occurred, but I sent a tweet out on how excited I was to finally be visiting and presenting in New Mexico for the first time. Yeah, oops. But here's the deal. It got me thinking. I've been presenting professionally for quite a while. I've visited a lot of places around the world because of this. I want to visit a lot more. I've decidedÂ to workÂ closer to home as well as elsewhere. I Want to Speak in All Fifty States I've presented live sessions to user group meetings, SQLSaturdays, Code Camps, and large events all…

13Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Why You Should Change the Cost Threshold for Parallelism

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016

I've written several times about the Cost Threshold for Parallelism and it's relationship to your execution plans, how to determine your execution plan cost, and even how to decide what value to set your Cost Threshold to. What I haven't explicitly addressed in extremely clear terms is why you should adjust your Cost Threshold for Parallelism. There are two reasons to modify this value. Cost Threshold for Parallelism Default Value The primary reason to change the Cost Threshold for Parallelism is because the default value is not a good choice for the vast majority of systems. The default value is 5. This means that when a query has an estimated cost greater than 5, it may get a parallel execution plan. Microsoft set the default value for the Cost Threshold…

07Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Help Me, Help You, Deliver DevOps

DevOps

I believe in DevOps. Actually, that's a pretty horrible way to put it. It's not about belief, like keeping Tinkerbell alive. I have successfully worked within an environment that implemented a DevOps approach to development, deployment and maintenance. I also provide classes and consulting on how to approach DevOps from the Ops perspective as well as writing books on the topic. Because I've seen the DevOps approach work, and work well, despite the fact that my principal job description is in the Ops side of DevOps, I am a very strong and passionate advocate for DevOps. But! DevOps Despite the fact that I absolutely support the concepts of DevOps, moving development & deployment into the production space, and moving operations into better support of the development space, I frequently find…

06Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 41 Comments

SQL Clone and a Little Competition

Database Lifecycle Management, DevOps, Redgate Software

Redgate has released a new product, SQL Clone. I've already talked about how excited I am about it. Now, it's your turn to get excited. Our developers evidently had too much time on their hands after building SQL Clone. They created a skill in Alexa that lets you clone a database using voice commands. In fact, I was recently visiting Redgate HQ and was able to try it out and you can watch here. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zI2Oj9EZM8&feature=youtu.be[/embed] Now, in celebration of the launch of SQL Clone, we want to enable you to do some voice commands of your own. We're giving away five Amazon Echo DotsÂ and one copy of SQL Clone to anÂ overall winner. To enter, go into the comments and let us know what skill you would like toÂ build for Alexa…

02Mar 2017 by Grant Fritchey 14 Comments

Random Blog Post Challenge

Misc

OK, for no particular reason at all or maybe because I had too much food at lunch or just because Jason Hall gave me the idea, here's a blog post challenge for anyone who wants to take it up. Write a technical blog post that incorporates this image: Link back to here and I'll put together an aggregation and assessment of all the posts. Why this image? It's Tom Baker as Dr. Who. That's reason enough. This is just having a little fun. No ulterior motives, requirements, etc. Let's play!

28Feb 2017 by Grant Fritchey 19 Comments

Determining the Cost Threshold for Parallelism

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016

In the previous post, I showed how you can get full listings of your execution plan costs. Knowing what the values you're dealing with for the estimated costs on your execution plans can help you determine what the Cost Threshold on your system should be. However, we don't want to just take the average and use that. You need to understand the data you're looking at. Let's explore this just a little using R. Mean, Median, Range and Standard Deviation I've used the queries in the previous blog post to generate a full listing of costs for my plans. With that, I can start to query the information. Here's how I could use R to begin to explore the data: library("RODBC", lib.loc="~/R/win-library/3.2") query <- "SELECT * FROM dbo.QueryCost;" dbhandle <-…

27Feb 2017 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

SQL Clone

Tools

Today is the launch of SQL Clone, a great new tool that helps you quickly and easily provision SQL Server databases for development and testing. Oh god, that sounds like marketing speak. To heck with that. Let me tell you why I'm so excited about SQL Clone and why I think you're going to be excited too. Once Upon a Time... Almost two years ago one of the developers here at Redgate called me over. He wanted to show off this neat trick he'd figured out. What I saw was a good-sized database, about 200gb, created on his local instance of SQL Server in about 10 seconds. Now, that's fast. Further, he showed me the files and disk space on his machine, and it was only taking up a few…

24Feb 2017 by Grant Fritchey 12 Comments

I Don’t Understand

Professional Development

I suspect this may make a few people angry, but I felt the need to share. I was recently asked to go through my contacts and put together calls with some technologists for a series of discussions. OK. I thought about what we'd need, compared it to a mental list of people and what I know about their work in my head and started sending emails. I got in touch with people. Everyone was interested in helping out. It was a win. Later... Well, I talked yesterday about reading that blog post by Susan J. Fowler and the confusion it caused. I just don't understand it. Further, I don't understand it on two levels. Level 1 Acknowledging that I'm the most evil, privileged individual on the planet, cis-gendered white male,…

23Feb 2017 by Grant Fritchey 17 Comments

Confusion of An Old Technologist

Professional Development

As someone who still actively pursues a career in technology, I'm a little on the older side. I got started in tech when a lot of the people I know were still in elementary school. So please understand that when I write the rest of this little... rant. I read the blog post by Susan J. Fowler the day it was posted. I'm not sure where I found it. It's been running around and around in my head ever since, so I'm finally going to write a couple of posts on this. Let's Start With Age There's at least an implication that with age comes wisdom. Well, I'm living proof that's total BS. However, I will agree that with age comes perspective. The modern age has its problems. I've had…

Year: 2017