KILT DAY! Today we have to eat our vegetables and then get lots and lots of sweet desert. Or. Today we hear about PASS Finances as a part of the official annual meeting and then we get to hear Dr. David Dewitt speak (completely and utterly getting our nerd on and squeeing like teenage girls at a Bieber concert). I will be live-blogging this event, so watch this space. 8:20: Douglas McDowell kicks off the key note today. Â the vast majority of the money that runs PASS comes from the Summit. That's right, by attending the Summit you're also supporting the organization. The Business Analytics Conference, which kicked off this year also provides quite a bit more money to the organization. 8:25: PASS has changed its budgeting process. At this…
I am liveblogging the keynote from the bloggers table at the PASS Summit again this year. Just keep scrolling. Watching the introduction video as people trickle in. All the other bloggers are setting up. I get in early. I didn't rearrange the seats this year. I see others doing it now. 8:11: Watching the videos of all the attendees registering and meeting people at the start of the event and last night's welcome reception is awesome and fun. 8:21: The lights go down and the videos of what everyone is looking forward to at the Summit. In keeping with our location, right next to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, we've got a bit of a race theme going on. We're seeing current PASS President, Bill Graziano having a dream about…
This is my second post in what I hope will be an ongoing series. You can see the rules for this, such as they are, and the last winner here. I didn't travel this past month, so I'm pulling my speaker of the month from a session that was recorded at 24 Hours Of PASS. I love the topic of database design. I love the topic performance tuning. So, my speaker of the month is Audrey Hammonds (b|t) and her session Design Matters! The Performance Impact of Database Design. I've known Audrey for a few years now, but I'd never sat through one of her sessions. What's wrong with me? I don't know, but I finally did and I'm really happy that I took care of it. I loved how…
No, this isn't some complaint about PASS or the Summit. This is an announcement that not only will I be speaking at the PASS Summit, but I'm speaking about Azure... a lot. First up, I'm going to be doing an all-day pre-conference seminar specifically aimed at getting you into Azure. No, I don't want you to drop your on-premise databases and infrastructure. Are you nuts? No, wait, you think I am. OK, fair point. But what I actually want you to realize is that some pieces of your work are better done in the cloud. There are all kinds of terribly fun and cool things you can get done there, as an addition to your existing infrastructure. There are way, way too many things that are better done locally to ever think you'd move…
The greatest part of my job is that I get to travel all over the world to present different technical sessions. But, it's not the presentations that make it cool. It's the fact that I get to meet people. I get a chance to hang out with my #sqlfamily. I get a chance to make new friendships. Those contacts are amazing. I love the opportunity to sit down and talk to people about what they're doing with technology, the challenges they face, what's common with my own experience, what's different. From all that, I get a chance to grow and learn. Sometimes I even get the chance to help people. I'm going to be all over the place between now and June. I'd love to get the opportunity to talk…
I earned my nickname. I'm proud of it. I am the Scary DBA. I don't really like to advertise my other nickname, Rant (get it, Grant shortened to another word). I earned that one too. I'm not proud of it at all. I got that one because I sometimes don't listen as much as I should and, because I tend to be more than a little passionate about my job and my databases, I would go off on a rant. And yeah, I stood in the way of some development processes and approaches that I shouldn't have. Instead of facilitating the development team and trying to understand their problems and issues, I just said "No." Usually at length. I just finished reading this post from Martin Fowler, whose work I've  enjoyed,…
Two quick points, I'm putting this blog together using the Surface.. ooh... and this isn't a keynote, but a spotlight session at the Summit. Still, I thought I would live blog my thoughts because I've done it for every time Dr. Dewitt has spoken at the Summit. Right off, he has a slide with a little brain character representing himself. But, we're talking PolyBase, and futures. This is basically a way to combine hadoop unstructured nosql data with structured storage within SQL Server. Mostly this is within the new Parallel Datawarehouse. But it's coming to all of SQL Server, so we need to learn this. The information ties directly back to what was presented at yesterday's keynote. HDFS is the file system. On top of that a framework for executing…
Welcome to Day 2 of the PASS Summit! It's been a very exciting event so far. Today I'm presenting two sessions, one on tuning queries by fixing bad parameter sniffing and one on reading execution plans. Please stop by, or watch the one on execution plans on TV as PASS is livestreaming events all day long on SQL TV (which is what I used to call Profiler). The intro video, which can be good or goofy was really good this year. They had people from all over the world talking in their native language, making the point that the PASS organization is a global community. It really is. Doug McDowell is giving us the finance and governance information for the PASS organization. I find this boring and vital at the…
We're off and running here at the PASS Summit. New this year is live streaming all day. Bill Graziano is introducing the Summit. More importantly, he's introducing PASS. Further, he's introducing speakers to everyone. He doesn't mean just speakers at the summit, but anyone who has spoken at a SQL Saturday or a user group, and it was a scary large group of people. PASS has created a new web site to make it easier to find local Chapters. Track one down. On the one hand, it's weird that we're sitting at the PASS Summit and introducing the PASS organization, but I think they're right to do it. It's a great organization and I'm always surprised at how many people don't know about it. Bill's big announcement is the all…
If you missed all the great speakers on the five city tour of SQL in the City, don't despair. Many of the same people will be back at SQL in the City in Seattle. It's scheduled on Monday before the PASS Summit proper starts, so if you're looking to get your learn on early and you can't sign up for a pre-con, this is a great, free, opportunity to pick up some additional instruction. Check out the list of speakers. It's going to be an event worth attending. I've seen the early drafts of the feedback forms from the prior five events. People really seem to enjoy this slightly different approach. In short, Red Gate puts on a heck of a show. During the five city tour, I was able…