15Sep 2011 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Probe Residual on Hash Match

SQL Server, T-SQL
I have to say, I only recently noticed this on a tool tip: and this in the property sheet: The bad news is, I noticed them while presenting. The worse news is, I said them out loud and then, inevitably, someone in the audience, I forget who it was, might have been Neil Hambly (blog|twitter) said, “What’s that?” Which left me standing there with a slack-jawed expression (one that comes naturally from years & years of practice). I didn’t know. I couldn't remember having seen one before. Here’s a query that you can run in AdventureWorks2008R2 to get a look at this critter: SELECT  soh.PurchaseOrderNumber, soh.AccountNumber, p.Name, sod.OrderQty, sod.LineTotal, cc.CardNumber FROM    Sales.SalesOrderHeader AS soh JOIN Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS sod ON soh.SalesOrderID = sod.SalesOrderID JOIN Production.Product AS p ON sod.ProductID = p.ProductID…
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06Sep 2011 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Meme Monday: Favorite PASS Memory

PASS
Have to complete my assignment from the Rockstar this month since I’ve missed the last several (he gets all weepy, it’s not pretty). The question this time is to describe your favorite PASS moment… Wow! And this is Tom’s idea of an easy assignment. How do you choose? Lots of stuff flashes through my head, a football helmet with antlers & the song Funky Cold Medina, learning Policy Based Management from Buck Woody (blog|twitter) while simultaneously laughing my ass off, a pile of neatly folded clothes in a bush, friends old & new, speaking for the first time and running out of material 15 minutes early, sessions with great information from really smart and helpful people, Dr. Dewitt nuff said, sitting down to breakfast with people that wrote books I’d…
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29Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Professional Development
I’ve finished my 3rd book as part of my year long commitment to read and review professional/personal development books. I read one of my favorite authors this time, Seth Godin and his book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us . I’ve either been very smart or very lucky in my choice of books. I’ve enjoyed all three. But this one was better than the other two. Then again, this is my third Seth Godin book, I think I’m predisposed to enjoying his writing. The core idea behind the book is predicated on two facts. First, humans tend to congregate, we’re social critters. Second, you can take the lead of your tribe. Easy stuff, right? Wrong. It’s complicated and weird and hard. The book doesn’t even remotely suggest otherwise. This…
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22Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Expert? Ha!

SQL Server, T-SQL
How do you define an expert? My personal definition: An expert is the person that is a chapter ahead of you in the book. Why am I talking about this? Just that I’m feeling more stupid than usual lately. In the last two weeks I’ve had people bring up through various discussions, documents, what have you, four different SQL Server trace flags that will affect how SQL Server builds execution plans and I’ve never heard of any of them before. I’ve never, ever, thought of myself as an expert in execution plans, despite having written a book about them. I just thought I had a good grasp on how they worked and I was willing to share. I didn’t know everything and never pretended to, but I thought I knew…
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11Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 7 Comments

Google + Hangouts

Professional Development
I just finished hosting my third hangout on Google Plus. I’ve also attended one hosted by Andy Leonard (blog|twitter) and one hosted by Tom LaRock (blog|twitter). I am blown away by how useful these things are. I’m actually struggling to try to put it into words. This may be something of a ramble. Jorge Segarra (blog|twitter) brought it up during the conversation this morning, you can’t know everything. You can’t. So what do you do when you’re hitting an issue that you can’t solve because you just don’t have the knowledge? Well, you contact someone who does have that knowledge. You work your contacts and your network and track down the information, because someone you know either knows that bit of information or they know someone else who does. That’s…
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10Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Denali & CTP 3

Uncategorized
I have Denali installed on a virtual machine on my laptop and I’m working through evaluating it. Actually, I’m working on writing two books using it as the source for the books. But it’s something of a slog, figuring out what’s new, finding out how the new stuff works, seeing if the old stuff broke. Microsoft just released a new guide for doing Denali evals. It’s worth checking out. It might help you short-circuit that discovery process just a little.
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08Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Droid Apps

Misc
A friend of mine recently got his first smart phone, an Android. My wife has also recently moved into the world of smart phones, again, an Android. I’ve been working with Android for a year now and loving it, and not even remotely non-vocal about it. I even picked up a Droid tablet, an Asus Transformer (which I LOVE). My advice on apps has been solicited a few times. I forwarded the most recent request to G+, Twitter & Facebook. Funny thing is, I’ve installed a ton of apps and then uninstalled most of them. There are only a few that I’ve found really, really useful. Note, this is beyond the basic stuff that comes with the phone, email, web browsing, maps, navigation, calendar, etc. That stuff is wonderful. I’m…
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03Aug 2011 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

All About Execution Plans

PASS
If you’re attending the PASS Summit this October, I’d like to make a suggestion. The Summit itself is only three days long, Wednesday to Friday. But, if you have to travel any distance to get there, you’re going to miss work on Tuesday as well. Why not take a whole week away and spend Monday with Gail Shaw (blog|twitter) and me? The reason I ask is because Gail and I are putting together 7 hours of information all about execution plans. We’re going to be presenting this information on Monday at the Summit as a pre-conference seminar. Yes, you’ll have to pay extra to attend this session. But if you register for the Summit now, there’s still a discount, which you can put towards to the seminar. And, seriously now,…
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26Jul 2011 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Strengths Finder 2.0

Misc
I’ve made the commitment to read and review 12 books over 12 months as a part of continuous personal development. This is my second book. While this is a book review, the first thin you need to know is that the Strengths Finder 2.0 book is actually just a written, in-depth, support document for the test that you take on the StrengthsFinder web site.The core idea to the test and the book is to identify your strengths and work on them instead of spending all kinds of time trying to fix your weaknesses. If you just think about it a little bit, it makes sense that you can spend days and weeks trying to improve in an area where you are not terribly strong while improvement in areas where you…
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05Jul 2011 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

PASS SQL Rally 2011 Evaluations

PASS, SQL Server, T-SQL
  In keeping with the all my other major speaking engagements, I’m posting the results of my pre-con and session evals at the first-ever SQL Rally. I’m posting this really late and I apologize. The good news, I did a fill-in when someone cancelled and I was placed in the Grab Bag category where I had the highest rated session although it was a far cry from the actual highest rated sessions from the whole Rally. There is no bad news. Query Performance Tuning: Start to Finish I was pretty happy with this considering it’s my first, public, all day training class. I’m even happier with the feedback. I received some excellent constructive criticism that I will attempt to take into account when I present in the future (including at…
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