06Jul 2015 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

But I Don’t Have a Test Server…

Database Lifecycle Management, DevOps, SQL Server, T-SQL
I frequently see statements on forums along the lines of "I don't have a test server, so I'm going to do something I've never done before directly on my production servers..." This is usually followed by questions along the lines of: But that's OK and I won't get fired, right? So how do I know if it worked? Is that dangerous? The replies are: No. You should be fired You won't By All the Gods! Yes! It's stupidly, insanely, I don't really like my production server, my data, my boss, or my job, dangerous. Yes. I understand. You're working for a not-for-profit, so you can't afford tons of new servers. You're looking at a 50tb production server of which, you can't make a copy. Your bosses just don't want to spend the…
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03Jul 2015 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: June 2015

Professional Development
With my travel schedule, I don't always get out to events where I can see a community speaker. Sometimes, I just see pros. That's the case this month. Instead of skipping the month entirely, which feels wrong, I've decided to do a special award. Speaker of the Month for June 2015 are all the speakers (except me) on SQL Cruise Mediterranean 2015. I've said it before and I don't mind repeating myself, SQL Cruise changes people's careers. There are a lot of reasons for this. The number one reason is all the work that Tim & Amy Ford do to put together the cruise, create the itinerary, ensure plenty of structured and unstructured time on the boat to ensure intense interaction, and all the rest of the stuff that they…
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30Jun 2015 by Grant Fritchey 41 Comments

Leadership Training Possibility

Professional Development
I know a few people in the SQL Server community who have been involved in Scouting. A couple of them have taken or helped lead Scoutings leadership training program known as Wood Badge. It's an amazing program. I won't even attempt to tell you what Wood Badge has done for me and what it does for Scouting. Suffice to say, Wood Badge helped to make me a better person and in return, I helped make Scouting better. What's this have to do with SQL Server? Not much really. But, what does it have to do with you and your career? Tons. It was pointed out to me that there's an Oracle users group that actually runs a leadership program. You can read about it here. It strikes me that, maybe this…
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09Jun 2015 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Speaker of the Month: May 2015

Misc
When I attend sessions at events, I try to mix it up. I'll go to a session that, really, I probably will never use the information, just to expand my knowledge level a little. I also go to sessions by the masters so that I can try to expand my skill set. I go to sessions on topics that I feel like I know well just to reinforce my own learning and understanding. That's where I got the Speaker of the Month for May 2015, Denis McDowell (t). I went to his session titled DevOps for the DBA at SQL Saturday #380 in New York City. I present pretty regularly on this topic and I've helped build multi-day training courses on it. Seriously, I feel like I probably know it.…
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01Jun 2015 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Parallelism and Columnstore Indexes

T-SQL
Columnstore indexes are fascinating and really cool. Unfortunately, they're adding an interesting new wrinkle to an old problem. What's the Cost Threshold for Parallelism set to on your server? If you just said "The whatsis of whositz?" then the value is 5. The cost threshold is the point at which the estimated cost of an execution plan goes from definitely serial to possibly parallel. This default was set for SQL Server 2000 and hasn't been changed since. I've long argued, loudly, that it's too low. I've suggested changing it to a much higher value. My advice has gone from 35 to 50 and several places in between. You could just look at the median or the mode of costs on your system and use the higher of those values as…
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27May 2015 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

PASS Board Update: May 2015

PASS
I've had a busy month on the Board. You may have seen some tweets going by about our compliance with international laws regarding SPAM. This has been something of an education, so anything I say wrong below, it's because I'm wrong, but not malevolent (at least in regards to this topic), so please be kind. It appears that the mechanisms we had on our emails for showing where the email came from and how to unsubscribe from it, weren't completely in compliance... IF... we were sending emails that involved advertising. By we, I mean Chapters, not HQ. Now, that IF, could mean that we could skip out of meeting this requirement when our emails didn't involve advertisements, but then it'd have to be in compliance when it did and we'd…
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26May 2015 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Azure, SQL Server, T-SQL
I would love to see the Database Engine Tuning Advisor (DTA) pulled from the product. Completely. Heck, I feel bad that I included a chapter on it in my query tuning book (all updated for SQL Server 2014 by the way). Let me tell you why we need to pull this tool. First, I understand its purpose. It's supposed to be a fast and easy way to get some performance tuning done for people who just don't have the time or knowledge to go through the full process of gathering metrics, evaluating poor performers, understanding root causes and applying indexes to fix those causes. I also readily acknowledge that it actually is an amazing piece of software. If you don't agree with that, go read this white paper. With those acknowledgements…
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19May 2015 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Book Review: Connected

Professional Development
I heard about Connected from a show on NPR (Yes, I listen to NPR, why do people keep saying that?). It was right after another segment talking about how positivity affects your mood and your ability to think and act in a clear fashion. I've long been a believer in the ability of your network to impact you, but I really didn't think about it beyond that. Hearing about the book Connected changed my thinking, so I ran out (meaning, connected to Amazon) and got a copy. The premise of the book is pretty simple. You have close friends and acquaintances. Your close friends and acquaintances also have friends and acquaintances, that may or may not over lap with yours. Those people also have another set of friends and acquaintances.…
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18May 2015 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Come to Us or We’ll Come to You

Database Lifecycle Management, DevOps
No, that's not a threat. It's an offer to help out. Redgate Software is very serious about the efforts we're putting into creating the tools needed to support your Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) processes. DLM is a vital part of supporting both Agile development methods and moving towards an automated DevOps style of systems management that tightly integrates your software development and deployments with your database development and deployments. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can get really good at performing manual tasks, or you can get really good at automation. You want to get good at automation and we're here to help. Getting a smooth process from source control, continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment can be a lot of work, but work with huge…
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15May 2015 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

I Am Grateful For…

Misc
I'm almost done reading the book Connected (will be by the time this is published). It's fascinating although, at least so far, little in the way of suggestions for how to take advantage of this information. That however doesn't change my plans around working on positive thoughts and emotions as a way to hack your own mind and increase productivity. I'm also trying to figure out how to reinforce my network. In short, these are completely self-serving posts. I am grateful for Thomas LaRock (b|t). Tom is hard to miss. If you look at the floor all the time, the green shoes might be a giveaway. If you look up a lot, keep looking up because he's quite tall. Oh yeah, and he's the President of PASS (for a couple of…
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