Grant Fritchey

05Sep 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: September 2014

This month I'm very grateful because I was given the opportunity to present at DevLink in Chattanooga. I got to meet a lot of new people and see presentations by people that just don't hang around SQL Server specific events. It was great. I'm going to apply next year (depending on scheduling of course) and I'm applying for a lot more development conferences. I still get to see friends present, Louis Davidson, Kevin BolesÂ and Kevin Kline were all there. But I get to see new people. Speaking of which, speaker of the month for September 2014 is Josh Lane (b|t) and his presentation AWS vs. Azure, Which One Is Right for You. The thing that I found the most amazing about this presentation was how even-handed it was. Josh Lane…

03Sep 2014 by Grant Fritchey 12 Comments

Left or Right?

SQL Server, T-SQL

No, this is not about politics. It's about your WHERE clause... and your JOIN criteria... and your HAVING clause.Â It's aboutÂ a canard that still makes the rounds occasionally. Please, help me put this statement to sleep for once and all: A function on the left side of the equals sign can lead to performance problems Well, you know, it's sort of true. But then, a function on the right side of the equals sign can also lead to performance problems. In short, it's not the placement of the function that causes issues, it's the function that causes issues. Let's take a look at a really simple example: SELECT a.AddressID, a.AddressLine1, AddressLine2 FROM Person.Address AS a WHERE a.AddressLine1 = 'Downshire Way'; This simple query results in an equally simple execution plan: Now,…

21Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Silliness for an Important Cause

Professional Development

I don't mind saying that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, scares me. A degenerative disease that takes away the minds ability to control the body, leaving the mind intact... words fail me. Add to that the fact that there is no known cure, and that there are at least 30,000 people suffering from this, just in the US, something has to be done. You can give money over at the ALS Association. Please do. Oh, and Aaron Bertrand of SQL Sentry asked me to come over to his house to take part in the ice bucket challenge. Here are the results. Please donate for this important cause. If you see Kevin Kline, Steve Jones or Thomas LaRock, help them mix their ice bucket.

20Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

The Red Gate Way…

DevOps, PASS, Professional Development, Redgate Software, SQL Server, T-SQL

As companies go, Red Gate is a little different. That is readily apparent in our tools and the philosophy behind them, ingeniously simple. But, we do a lot of other things too. There's the Simple-Talk web site where we publish serious articles on all aspects of development and database administration across platforms and programming languages. There's SQL Server Central, the single largest SQL Server community on the planet. There's Ask SQL Server where you can get direct answers to your direct questions about SQL Server. If all that's not enough, there are all the books, which we give away for free, on, again, all aspects of programming and database administration. But, we like to do more, so we also bring you training, the Red Gate way, at the SQL in…

19Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Getting the Word Out

Professional Development

A discussion that I've frequently had with organizers of SQL Saturday events, our own people here at Red Gate, authors, MVPs, pretty much anyone interested enough to listen for a few minutes, is summed up by "How do we get the word out about the opportunities that the SQL Server community offers?" The question always comes down to, how do we reach people? We tweet. There's a Facebook page. Discussions are hosted on LinkedIn. Emails are sent out to various distribution lists. Advertising is done on SQL Server Central (with over one million registrants, what else do you have to do?). And yet, at events, I'll ask, who has heard of PASS and will only get a 50% positive response. Heck, I'll never forget that at the Charlotte SQL in…

14Aug 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

A Full Day of Query Tuning

SQL Server, T-SQL

I'm excited to able to say that I've been given the opportunity to put on a full day workshop at SQL Connections on Friday, September 19th, 2014. The title is "Query Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2014", but I assure you we're going to cover things that are applicable if you're still working on SQL Server 2005. We'll start the day covering the different mechanisms you have to capture query metrics. We'll go over dynamic management objects and extended events that are incredibly important to you in understanding which queries you need to tune. We'll get an introduction into how the optimizer works and the importance that statistics, indexes and constraints play in helping the optimizer make the choices it makes. I promise, execution plans will be covered throughout the…

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…

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…

23Jul 2014 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Challenge Accepted

PASS

There seemed to be some question whether my comfort level with my own masculinity would prevent me from wearing these: Oh please! Couldn't we be a little more challenging? Anyway, here's the deal, you donate to a good cause, Doctors Without Borders. We hit 10K and I'll sport those lovely rainbow whatever-they-are at the PASSÂ Summit 2014. Sound good? I'll go one better. You double the goal, make it hit 20K, and I'll present my session while wearing the rainbow whosimawatchits. BOOM!

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.Â 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 stillÂ some controversy. Being a naturally pushyÂ person, I got involved in the controversy, for good or ill, and subsequently have had conversations withÂ 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…