Category: Uncategorized

I recently was privileged to speak at SQLDay in Wroclaw Poland... man, I love visiting Poland... Anyway... Great event. Worth your time to attend, and if you're a speaker, oh, you don't want to miss this one. The data community there is just amazing. I always walk through the vendor floor to see what's what. I get recommended to look at the SQL Server monitoring tool from Woodler. I do. WOW! Look, I sell a monitoring tool (please, go here, look at Redgate Monitor), which means, technically, we're competitors. However, fact is, we're doing things they're never going to do, and, hoo boy, they're doing some stuff that we're never going to do. Plus, competition is a good thing. Now, they're primarily a consulting organization, but they use the tool…

The question came up that someone wanted to monitor the queries impacting tempdb using Extended Events. Initially, I was pretty sure that there was no real way to do this. The standard query events like rpc_completed includes spill information, if any occurred, but that's it. There are also no actions that you can add to an event that would capture tempdb behaviors. So, I want to my senior DBA, YaDuBiGle. I found this ancient (2009) article on SQLTips, that surprised me with a pretty slick solution using, are you ready, waits. Clever. How well does it work? Let's try it out. Testing Capturing Queries Impacting TempDB I'm not stealing their code, so you can follow the link to see the setup. I'm much more interested in the results. How well…

Just a quick post to let you know that there's a great sale right now at Springer on my brand new, completely rewritten, query performance tuning book. Get your copy. $6 for electronic, $10 for paper. No idea how long this sale will last, so I'd jump if I were you.

And no, the answer is not because you want to be a Microsoft MVP. Multiple surveys have been published over the decades that list "fear of public speaking" as one of people's top fears. Some are even more afraid of this than death. Yet, public speaking is a skill we all need. Allow me to take a moment to explain why. You Are On Stage All The Time You may not think so, but you are tasked with a lot of public speaking as part of your job if you're in IT. Seriously. You constantly do it. Don't believe me? Allow me to ask a few questions. Have you in the last couple of months tried to convince the boss to implement a process change or adopt a new technology?…

I remember going into Andy Leonard's session at PASS Summit in Denver. I'm not going to lie, it was kind of sparsely attended, so I got to sit up front and ask questions. Andy answered 'em like the pro that he is and then we got to talking afterwards. I'm honored to say we became friends. Thank you Andy! Andy is one of those people who is quick to try stuff out and then share it with others. He introduced me to Google Hangouts and both of us experimented with them quite a lot, sometimes being the only person in each other's Hangout. Which means we got to talk quite a bit. Thanks Andy. Go read Andy's blog sometime. Yeah, you're going to learn some technical content. However, you're also…

Ah, Tim Ford. I remember the time we were sitting at Ruth Kriss Steakhouse trying to figure out which of the two of us was the dumbest person in the room. Just so we're clear, it was me. Anyway, we've been friends for a long time. Thanks Tim! Thanks for being insane enough to think that teaching tech on a cruise was a good idea. Then, being so utterly 'round the bend that you actually did it. Multiple times. Successfully. And I got to take part in it. Thank you Tim! Like with Wendy, there are no words to express how I feel about our time on the PASS board. Thank you. We've spent so much time together, honestly, it's hard to pick out all the ways you've been kind…

I honestly don't know when or how I met Wendy Pastrick, but I'm so happy I did. Wendy and I have been friends for a very long time. Thank you Wendy! I think the biggest thing I can say about Wendy is that she builds communities. I suspect no one knows just how much she has done, behind the scenes at her local events in Chicago, at the national and international level, all to get people together to share & learn from one another. Wendy has been one of the guiding lights and foundational persons, and I know, not enough people are aware. For almost literally toiling in darkness, thank you Wendy. Wendy and I have not shared a technical track the way I have with others. Her specialties &…

I know I can say that I'm a friend of Allen White without getting into trouble. Allen and I have a shared a lot of things over the years and I'm inordinately pleased that I know the man. Thanks Allen. Allen was the very first person, ever, to say to me "Say, aren't you Grant Fritchey? You wrote that book on Execution Plans." To say I was blown away that anyone, anywhere, would recognize me, well, there's simply no way to understate this. Thank you, Allen, for the recognition. Allen has always been one of the clever ones. He was up and using Powershell almost before it was released, or so it seemed. When I was just barely starting to figure out the kind of automation I live by now,…