06Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey 25 Comments

Say Thank You

Misc, Professional Development
I was approached by a man at SQL Bits who only wanted to thank me for blogging. He said, "I know you probably never hear from anyone, but you should. Thanks for what you do." I'm not mentioning his name because he promised me he'd write an editorial for publication, so I'm going to wait on him to get that done so he gets full credit then, not on my silly blog post. But, the idea stuck with me. I realized, that I don't do it. Oh yeah, I have an "Interesting Reading" set of links that I post to Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Sharing is "thanking" in our modern vernacular, right? No, of course not. It's not the same. I really do appreciate the help that I get on…
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01Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Speaker of the Month: August 2014

Professional Development
Speaker of the Month is now officially one year old. I went back and reread my first post. The goals were for a relentlessly positive experience. Reading back through the twelve posts, I feel like I hit that mark pretty well. Yes, I've always pointed out places where improvements can be made, but I think I've done it in a constructive and positive manner. Plus, I'm picking your session (if you get picked), as the best session that I saw that month, which is pretty darned positive in and of itself. I also promised it would be random and arbitrary. Mission accomplished. I've considered wrapping this up. I did it for a year, just to see what the response would be. I didn't have much more of a goal in…
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21Jul 2014 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Victims of Success

PASS, Professional Development
I took part in the PASS Summit 2014 selection committee this year because I was really curious about seeing how the sausage gets made. I've seen how actual sausage gets made and I still eat sausage.  Despite a few hiccups and communication issues, internal and external, I think the selection process for the Summit went really well this year. But, there was still some controversy. Being a naturally pushy person, I got involved in the controversy, for good or ill, and subsequently have had conversations with many people about the selection process (which, reiterating, I think went extremely well overall). But, the one thing that kept coming up over and over was a simple question: How come I/PersonX didn't get picked? The easy answer is because you/PersonX had a horrible abstract. But you…
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11Jul 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month, July 2014

Professional Development
Another month another bunch of great presentations. I almost don't want to do this any more. It's hard. I sit through a presentation and I think, "Well, here's the winner this month." Then I go to another presentation and I think, "Well, fudge, now one of these people loses." Then I go to a third and I'm simply blown away. And now I have to pick. Well, it's hard. So let me do this, I'm going to declare two winners this month, but only review one of them. Hey, my blog, my rules. First, I want to award speaker of the month for July 2014 to Wayne Sheffield(b|t) and his presentation Table Variables and Temp Tables that I saw at SQL Saturday 294. What's my measure? That I learned stuff…
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08Jul 2014 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Worst Day of a DBAs Life

Professional Development, Redgate Software
Red Gate Software is running a campaign around coping with the worst day of a DBAs life. We've been posting some really fun stories with, I hope, a kernel of useful information inside each. Chances are, if your DBA career has been like mine, your worst days don't involve explosions and car chases. But now they're asking for people to write up stories, what was the worst day in your life as a DBA. I know, I know, first world problems, right? Regardless, I have yet to put a company out of business or kill anyone with any errors I've made, although I've worked at places where either was possible. But the one day that just stands out, well it started about three weeks ahead of the bad day. I…
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03Jul 2014 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Reflections on the 2014 PASS Summit Selection Process

PASS, Professional Development
Oh we are a bunch of high school kids at heart. Maybe high school never ends (and there's a nightmare, god I hated high school). But, there's been drama about the 2014 PASS Summit sessions and the Selection Committee's work. I was on the committee. I worked as a part of the team responsible for rating sessions for the Azure track (said track is gone, more on that later). As self-serving a statement as this is, I think we did a good job. Further, I think the process worked. You can read the official explanation of the process here. Amy did great work and deserves your thanks. All the volunteers who reviewed over 900 submissions from more than 300 people, ON THEIR OWN TIME, FOR FREE, also deserve your thanks. The vitriol directed at…
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30Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

The Curse of Working With A DBA

DevOps, Professional Development
I no more than finished my rant from last week than I started thinking about all the reasons why a healthy chunk of the reasons that developers want to bypass relational database is not the horror of the relational database itself, although, that's there. No, a very large reason why is the DBA. We're on a blog called The Scary DBA. I earned that title, well sometimes. Sometimes I got it and I wasn't sure why. However, it's perfectly in keeping with how many people view their database administrators; grumpy, obstructionist, slow, difficult, control freak, etc.. There are even jokes about it, "What's the DBAs favorite word? No!" And for those answering "It depends" that's two words. I understand why. In large part it's that phone in your pocket (used…
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18Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey 12 Comments

The Curse of Relational Databases

Professional Development
Let's face it, none of Information Technology is easy. Oh yeah, there are those few geniuses that have an absolute grasp over some small aspect of the stack, or those other geniuses that have a very shallow knowledge level, but understand the entire stack. But the stack itself, it's vast, deep, wide, utterly unfathomable. So what do you do? You cheat. You take shortcuts. You ignore things you don't like/understand/appreciate. And then there's all the things you just don't know. Or, you cheat another way, you get experts that have drilled down on a particular technology so that they'll provide you with the knowledge you need. Ah, but then you have to listen to them and what happens when your local genius (deep or wide) doesn't agree with your hired…
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06Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month, June 2014

Professional Development
It's not like I can't find plenty of great presentations here in the US, but, while I was over in Belgium at Techorama I checked out several of the presenters there. They were awesome. This was the first ever Techorama. It's a developer focused event, but there was stuff there for data-centric people too. They had a great international collection of speakers from all over. The venue was a movie theater which was a lot of fun to present in, although may be a little too comfy to watch presentations (I fell asleep in one, I sure hope I didn't snore). It was such a great event that I decided to pick my speaker of the month from there. I saw a bunch of very good presentations (even the one…
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02May 2014 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Speaker of the Month, May 2014

Professional Development
Whoa! Another month gone by already? I guess I better pick a speaker of the month then. I went to several events this month, so selection was difficult, getting to see so many great speakers. But, one stood out in my mind, partly because he's the least experienced speaker I've seen in quite a while. But his inexperience didn't show. Speaker of the Month for May 2014 is Andy Yun (t) and his presentation Every Byte Counts. The session was about using the right data types. You'd think this is self-obvious, but from the way Andy packed the room along with the attention and questions from the attendees, it's clearly a topic that needed attention. I really liked how he did a presentation on the problem space before showing his goals…
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