Since I'm starting on the board in January, I've stopped taking part in the bloggers table during keynotes. First time since they had a bloggers. But, I am going to blog through the Women in Technology (WIT) Luncheon because I just love getting to take part in this amazing event. For the luncheon this year, they have changed the format. Instead of a panel, they're just talking to some really interesting people who have been doing amazing stuff supporting growth of women within STEM types of work and education. First up is Kimberly Bryant, the founder of a non-profit organization called Black Girls Code. She started out trying to build a for-profit startup, but when she found that there just weren't that many women in technology. But when her daughter…
I love negative feedback. Well, not really. I love constructive feedback. I love the feedback that gives me things to think about. Am I presenting the right material? Am I presenting it in the right way? Can I improve? But, in order to get constructive feedback, people have to tell you that something you're doing, or not doing, isn't working. That's frequently taken as negative feedback, but it isn't. Let's explore this. If there's a feedback form for a session. It says that 1 is bad, 5 is great and you put a 1, or 2, you didn't like the session. But, if you don't leave a comment, that's just negative feedback. If the comment is something along the lines of "You suck." That again is negative feedback. But, if you say…
Having very recently gone through the nomination process for the PASS Board, I thought I would share a few things about it. Overall, it was a great experience. I feel that I really had to stretch to meet everything required of me. It was quite difficult to put together all the campaign material. Deciding on who to ask to give you recommendations was also very difficult. All, very much, as it should be. We're talking about stepping up to run for the board of, essentially, a multi-million dollar corporation. It should be hard to do that. The interview process with the Nomination Committee was also no picnic. Most of these people had already served on the board, so they knew exactly what you, the nominee, was going to get into,…
I'm learning how to speak German. Interestingly enough, you don't start off reading dissertations. Instead, you begin by learning the names of things, Teller for plate, Buch for book. The fundamentals. I'm a third degree black belt in Ken Ryu Kenpo. But you don't start that, or continue it, by learning complex kata. Instead, you start with how to make a fist, how to hold your hands up in a defensive stance. The fundamentals. I've been doing crossfit and Olympic weightlifting for a couple of years now. I've been working hard on my clean, standing up tall during the lift, getting my elbows around quick. The fundamentals. Situation after situation, skill set after skill set, you have to get the fundamentals right. And, if you don't get the fundamentals right,…
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 Boles 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…
No, this is not about politics. It's about your WHERE clause... and your JOIN criteria... and your HAVING clause. It's about 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,…
Oh we are a bunch of high school kids at heart. Maybe high school never ends (and there's a nightmare, god I hated high school). But, there's been drama about the 2014 PASS Summit sessions and the Selection Committee's work. I was on the committee. I worked as a part of the team responsible for rating sessions for the Azure track (said track is gone, more on that later). As self-serving a statement as this is, I think we did a good job. Further, I think the process worked. You can read the official explanation of the process here. Amy did great work and deserves your thanks. All the volunteers who reviewed over 900 submissions from more than 300 people, ON THEIR OWN TIME, FOR FREE, also deserve your thanks. The vitriol directed at…
Today, April 1st, 2014, marks the release of SQL Server 2014. There are tons and tons of great new methods and functions and processes within the product. We're all going to be learning about them for quite a while to come. One of the most exciting though is one of the changes to the defaults. In the past there's been a lot of debate around how best to configure your databases. What cost threshold should be set for parallelism, the max degree of parallelism, memory settings, auto growth, and all sorts of other settings affect how your databases work. But, Microsoft has finally done something smart. They've bowed to the pressure of hundreds and hundreds of DBAs, Database Developers and Developers around the world. They've finally done the one thing…
The #tribalawards voting is now online. Get over there and get it done. I honestly don't care who you vote for because that is a great list of wonderful people in every single category. But if I were to pick one category, in which I'm nominated, that I'd like to win, it's Person You'd Like to Have a Beer With. So please at least consider making me happy. Then, next time I'm presenting in your area, we could share a frothy beverage and you can claim credit for my win which will result in my being forced to buy a round. See, it absolutely works out in your favor. But seriously, well, as serious as I can be when one of the categories is Best Karaoke, I think the people…
Ever since David Moutray introduced me to the concept of cargo cult programming, it's been running round and round in my head. I'm actually coming to believe that this is a major issue in all walks of life. True or not, we're absolutely seeing it in the data professionals space. Don't believe me? OK. A few questions. Do you work for one of the organizations that absolutely requires NOLOCK on all queries (even INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE)? Why? Because it runs faster? Why don't you just use READ_UNCOMMITTED for your isolation level? What's that? Never heard of isolation levels? I'll bet you also don't know what is meant by "dirty reads" then either. READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT anyone? In short, you're guilty of being in a cargo cult. You've got this form in your head of…