18Oct 2016 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

SQL Cruise as a Speaker and Sponsor

Professional Development
SQL Cruise offers a number of unique opportunities for everyone involved, including speakers and sponsors. I've written before, several times, about the benefits of SQL Cruise. As an attendee of the cruise, you will get to sit in classes by amazing people (and me) talking about all aspects of the Data Platform. Further, you get the opportunity to sit down, for long hours, with these people and get, for want of a better description, free consulting time. What about as a speaker and a sponsor though, do we get benefits? As A Speaker Tim Ford is quite a bright fellow. He has tweaked and tuned SQL Cruise. I have been on SQL Cruise a number of times over the last five years, and it has changed radically since my first cruise…
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05Jul 2016 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Carpenters vs. DBAs

Professional Development
Let's get the caveat out of the way up front, I work for a tool vendor. If you look around at the tools landscape for the Microsoft Data Platform, it's really interesting. There are a few tools vendors, primarily clustered around monitoring tools, and then there are a bunch of point tools for helping with various aspects of operations against the Data Platform (mostly SQL Server). Some of these are free tools. Some are pay only. Some are a mix. There are variables in the quality of these tools, and I'm sure not going to comment on that. Instead, I find one thing really interesting. Let's step back a bit. My neighbors have both worked as carpenters (well, one carpenter, and one general contractor who also does carpentry). They both…
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02May 2016 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

How to Convince the Boss to Send You to PASS Summit

PASS, Professional Development
August two years ago I originally posted, Make the PASS Summit Work for Your Employer. After conversations at several SQL Saturdays over the last couple of months, I decided to refresh and update that original content and post it again. I keep hearing how the job market has changed. That companies just don't want to pay for training any more. However, I don't recall any of my employers in the past ever actively wanting, desiring, begging me, please, oh, please, can't you go out to a little training? In fact, for the most part, I pretty much always had to beg the boss to send me out to training. I had to sell it. I don't think that's a new development. Let's review the selling points to help you convince the boss.…
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01Apr 2016 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: April 2016

Professional Development
THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL POST! Seriously. My Speaker of the Month for April 2016 is Keith Tate (b|t) and his session at SQL Saturday Chicago called Profiler is Dead, Long Live Extended Events. I actually suspected very strongly from the start of the session that it was going to be good. The reason for this, Keith was having issues with his machine, but he started the session anyway. It was an excellent beginning. Then, he started to talk about Extended Events and use his slide deck to emphasize the points he was making, and it was wonderful. For example, as he talked about the way the number of events has grown in each version of SQL Server since 2008, he used larger and larger fonts with the bigger…
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29Mar 2016 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Do You Teach Azure Data Platform?

Azure, Professional Development
I offer instruction on the Azure Data Platform, and have for about six years, since shortly after it came out. I started using Azure SQL Database (although it had a different name then) Day 1. I know a few other people who don't work for Microsoft, but have been actively pursuing Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure VMs, and pretty much all the Microsoft Data Platform. I'm not counting the BI people who have dived into PowerBI and related tech. The BI people, who are generally pretty smart, jumped on Azure with both feet. I'm talking about the data platform aspect of Azure. The people that I know who regularly teach classes are (in no particular order, sheesh, you people): Karen Lopez(b|t) Denny Cherry(b|t) Jes Borland (b|t) Thomas LaRock (b|t) Joe D'Antoni…
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14Mar 2016 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Leadership Lessons

Professional Development
Not for you, for me. I'm sure you've heard the statement: Praise in public. Criticize in private. I agree with this approach. However, I find it extremely difficult to do. It's one of the fundamental proofs that all leadership, all life for that matter, is about constant practice and discipline. It's not enough to know something. It's not enough to practice something occasionally. To get good at this stuff, you need to practice a lot. Let me tell you about a recent failure on my part. My 17 year old daughter had friends for a sleepover (yeah, they still do that). She makes her own breakfast and starts eating. I remind her to ask her friends what they want. She does so in this really irritated manner. Of course, the…
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04Mar 2016 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Speaker of the Month: March 2016

Professional Development
I'm finally getting back out to community events so I should be able to avoid giving this gigantic honor to professional speakers for a month or two. My Speaker of the Month for February 2016 is Ron Dameron (b|t) I saw Ron’s presentation Monitoring & Alerting for Azure SQL Database at SQL Saturday Tampa. It was a good presentation (or it wouldn’t be here would it). I especially like the topic. As more people move on to the Azure platform, this is the sort of information they’ll need. Ron spent a lot of time setting up slides to avoid overusing bullets. Nicely done. His delivery was clear and solid. He used Zoomit quickly and smoothly, it looked like it was just part of the presentation. His demos worked (unlike a couple…
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12Feb 2016 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: February 2016

Professional Development
I've been a little remiss on this. I just haven't been getting out to see people speak for a while (no travel is nice). However, I'm back in the airplane seats again, so these blog posts are off and running again. Speaker of the Month for February 2016 is Jason Hall (b|t) for his talks on SQL Cruise. Jason covered two topics, TempDB and SQL Sentry Plan Explorer. I missed the talk on TempDB, but I heard it was great. I was there for his presentation on Plan Explorer. Excellent stuff. I had never seen Jason present before. In fact, I didn't know he did presentations. He does. He spoke really well to the crowd. He knew the material down (not surprising since he's been responsible for developing the tool)…
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04Feb 2016 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Positivity

Professional Development
I'm sitting in the classroom of SQL Cruise listening to Tim Ford (b|t) explain mechanisms for monitoring indexes. It's a great class. Earlier in the week I got to hear Jes Borland (b|t) talk about extended events and do a session on wait statistics. I was also lucky enough to listen to David Klee (b|t) talking about systems monitoring, especially around VMs. Argenis Fernandez (b|t) and Jason Hall (b|t) are coming up today. In short, I've received some excellent learning while on a boat in the Caribbean. Now, one could argue (and you'd be right) that I'm thinking about positivity because of the nature of the position in which I find myself. Hang on though, I have some additional points. One of the biggest strengths of the SQL Cruise is the intimacy of the…
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27Jan 2016 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

The Importance of a Full Backup in SQL Server

Database Lifecycle Management, DevOps, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQL Server 2016
This is the first of 12 posts this year in support of Tim Ford's #iwanttohelp initiative. These will be completely 100 level, introductory blog posts meant to help people that are just getting started as data professionals. I'll try to cover several different topics over the year, but felt I should start with what I think is the most important, backups. It is impossible to overstate the importance of getting a good backup of your SQL Server databases. A backup is the most fundamental of protections for the information on which your business is dependent. Since SQL Server is a service, it manages it's own files. Because of this, you can't just copy the *.mdb file where your data is stored. Instead, you must run a process, usually through the…
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