I read an excellent article by Camille Fournier about the importance of recognizing that being right is not the only factor that needs to be taken into consideration when making a decision. You could even change it from "being" right to "doing" right. Although, I mean it in a technical sense, not a moral one. If you haven't read it already, go ahead, I'll wait... I agree with her. I've been that guy... more than once.... okay, okay, a bunch of times. You know that guy. The one who just couldn't see past the point that we were doing something wrong, something stupid, something that would bite us in the butt for the next three or four years. Oh yeah, that guy. The popular one (not at all). The one…
Microsoft is supporting an effort by PragmaticWorks targeted at supporting technical training for returning veterans. I can’t think of a single better cause to throw some support behind. Not one. They’re going to donate money based on posts about #sqlfamily. Well done to Brian Knight (blog|twitter) and all the team at PragmaticWorks. I knew you were great people, I just didn’t know how great. Thanks to Microsoft and the SQL Server Team for their support of Brian. Oh, and for all the work you guys do with SQL Server. I may bitch about you guys more than you’d like, but it’s only because I live inside your software, constantly. I wouldn’t be there all the time if you didn’t do great work. Keep it up. We can talk about this…
Bill Graziano has come out on stage, looking marvelous, in a traditional kilt and stockings. Thanks Bill. For those who don’t know, Day 2 at the Summit every year is Kilt Day. [8:19]Outstanding volunteers being recognized are Tim Radney and Jack Corbett. These are some outstanding people who work their bottoms off for the PASS Community. If you meet them, thank them. The 2011 PASSion Award goes to Lori Edwards. She’s simply amazing. Congratulations Lori and thank you for all the work you’ve done! [8:23]Time to eat our vegetables. We’re looking at the financials. It’s a slightly painful process, but important to understand where the money goes since this is a non-profit organization managed by volunteers. You should understand where the money comes from and where it goes. [8:25]Quentin Clark…
This is Day 2 of the Summit proper. But for me, this is the fifth day of the Summit and my sixth in Seattle. Sunday was the opening of registration and it was like a high school reunion with people that you really love. Registration itself only takes about three minutes, but I was there for almost two hours talking to people, friends from previous PASS Summits, SQL Saturday’s, SQL Cruise, and SQL In The City. Monday I put on a pre-conference seminar with Gail Shaw. We had 120 attendees. Despite our worries and multiple contingency plans, we had more than enough material for the time (you try coordinating 7 hours of material with someone from South Africa who has less band width than my phone). It went off wonderfully.…
Hello again. The PASS Organization has once more allowed me to sit at the bloggers table for the key note. I’ll be posting updates as the information unfolds. [8:06] The crowd is filling in. this looks like one of the biggest crowds I’ve ever seen at the summit. The organizers have done a great job so far. Thanks for all the hard work guys. [8:10] SQUEEEEE! I just met Dr. David Dewitt and got a picture with him. I’ll post it after I get home and find the cable. [8:22] Watching the videos of different people on the big screen talking about what they like about the PASS Summit is really cool. [8:26] Rushahb Mehta is introducing the board and the Partners of the PASS board. We now have a…
Tom LaRock has a new meme for Meme Monday. It’s all about the problems caused in your system other than disks. Thankfully, despite the title, I don’t have to list 99 separate things, only 9, but you know what, 99 is possible. I’m going to present the problems. You find the solutions on your own today. Let’s go. Recompiles I’ve seen queries so big that they take more than three minutes to compile. That’s the edge case, but as an edge case it is educational. The most important thing to remember about recompiles is that they are driven by data changes. Once a threshold is reached on any given set of statistics, all queries referencing that set of statistics gets marked for recompile. The key words and tricky phrase here…
It sure seems like there’s a lot of miscommunication between developers and database specialists. In fact, the communication can become so poor that outright hostility between the groups is common. At the end of the day we are all working towards a common goal, to add value to whatever organization we are working for. It's a shame that we all lose sight of this commonality and create such a false dichotomy between the groups. I think there are some ways that we, as database specialists, can use to attempt to cross that gap. Prior to being suborned to the dark side, I was a developer. I had a little over 10 years experience working in VB, Java & C#. I remember, distinctly, cursing our database team for being so problematic…
I got my FreeCon. What's more, I did it in public and didn't get in trouble. FreeCon is the brain child of Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). Basically Brent gathered together a few bloggers & writers from the SQL Server community, some extremely well known, like Tom LaRock (blog|twitter), some in the middle, like me, and others that are clearly up & coming like David Stein (blog|twitter). He jammed us all in a room and made us talk to one another. OK, that's a lie. He invited us out to this lovely little poetry space in Seattle the day before the PASS Summit was due to start, where we imbibed good food & coffee and had the opportunity to share a lot of great information with each other. The basic concept was…
Today is Dr. Dewitt. The ballroom, where the keynotes are held, is filled with extra chairs. The Summit organizers expect extra attendance today, and well they should. Dr. Dewitt was amazing last year. I suspect this year will be more of the same. Rick Heiges is introducing the day (waiting for Dr. Dewitt). Lynda Rab is leaving the board. Sad. I started volunteering for the PASS organization working for Lynda. She's great. The new board members are Douglas McDowell, Andy Warren and Allen Kinsel. The spring SQL Rally event was announced. I'll be presenting a full day session on query performance, Query Performance Tuning, Start to Finish. Look for (a lot) more blog posts on this. The Summit next year has been moved to mid-October. WHOOP! This is great because…
Ted Kummert is still talking. For the cloud, of course, they're talking about SQL Azure. Microsoft really is throwing themselves into the cloud, completely. The emphasis is that they offer both a cloud and an on-premises solution. I don't mind saying, I'm still trying to get the full business proposition for an old school, fat, business like the one I work for. What should we be doing with the cloud. I just haven't seen the magic. I see where smaller businesses, or start-ups, or temporary surge capacity for businesses that may have that type of thing can use the cloud, but... traditional work, it just doesn't seem to jive yet. We're going to see some made-up scenarios for how Azure can manage Contoso Bikes. He shows how the report can…