Red Gate visited three cities this year with our SQL in the City event; Pasadena, Atlanta and Charlotte. I just wanted to give you a quick assessment of how the events went from my point of view. Overall, each and every one of these events was awesome. I can safely say that because each and every one of these events provided something special, the opportunity to network with our peers and with the developers and project managers at Red Gate (who are also our peers, but not usually available to us). I both took part in the networking and stood back and watched it happen. I love seeing a bunch of data pro's sitting (or standing) in a circle exchanging war stories, ideas, questions, thoughts or suggestions. It means you…
This year I was invited to attend the Women In Technology luncheon as a blogger. So I'll be live-blogging it through it in the same way as I did the keynote. The WIT lunches are a fascinating, and let's face it, unique PASS-style event, that have been taking place for years at the PASS Summit. It's about growth and empowerment for women within technology. But, it's not some crazy man-bashing event. It's just another, special, way to network (that thing that PASS does so well). Panelists are Cindy Gross, Gail Shaw, Kevin Kline, Rob Farley and Erin Stellato. Mickey Steuwe is acting as moderator. The theme is Beyond Stereotypes: Equality, Gender Neutrality, and Valuing Diversity is the theme. The first question: "Do you have to make an effort to fit…
I read this fascinating blog post called "Don't Be a Gatekeeper" by Julie Zhuo. Please read that first. It really resonated for me in a lot of ways. Everything she said is 100% applicable to our jobs as data professionals. Work to make things more robust. Create processes and structures and an environment where you don't have to be the hero all day every day. Yes, absolutely. But... ah, there's this nagging little voice at the back of my head. Let's ignore it for a moment. Are you a gatekeeper for your developers? Why? Get out of their way. Listen to what Ms. Zhuo has to say. Your development team doesn't need you squatting on their servers preventing them from moving as fast as they can. In fact, they need…
[caption id="attachment_2548" align="alignleft" width="300"] That was hard work[/caption] You may or may not have noticed, but every single week day for the month of September, I've put up a blog post. Some were short little blurbs linking to some other person's blog or an article that I decided to comment on. Some were the normal, longer, type of posts that I put up, explaining some bit of technical behavior that has interested me or that I've had questions about. This is the last week day of the month and I'm excited to be able to go back to blogging 1-2 times a week again. There was no small amount of stress ensuring that I had posts scheduled out for each day, coming up with ideas, getting them written up. Whew!…
I've already made my own intentions clear. I'm casting one of my votes for Allen Kinsel. But, I get three votes. Some of you may be asking yourselves, why didn't recommend two other candidates? Honesty time. First, no one else asked me to. I'm actually glad of this. If I received requests for help from more than three of the candidates, I would be very hard pressed to choose. Yes, I ultimately have to, but I don't have to publicly reject anyone. At this point, it looks like I'm ready to vote for every other candidate. That's a good thing from my standpoint, maybe not so much from theirs. However, if anyone wanted a little help, they should have asked. That's a good policy with life in general. Second, I…
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…
Women, for the entire male half of the population, I apologize. Those who know me well recognize, pretty easily, that I am hardly "politically correct." My mode of address can be blunt and even rude. But... I think it's also recognized that I'm very even-handed with my blunt statements. Female or male, if you have in some way crossed me, I'm generally pretty clear about letting you know. So while I absolutely have prejudices (and I won't get into what I think mine are), they are not around Male/Female abilities. Yes, there are differences between the sexes coming from a million+ years of biology and Darwinism, but by & large, especially when talking about cognitive abilities, we're evenly matched. In the computing world, I'm an "old guy." With three or…
I recently posted some comments about some guidance offered by Microsoft when talking about the CXPACKET wait type. Nothing I said was wrong, no. But, evidently there are a few whip smart and agile people who work for Microsoft. Specifically, Rick Byham, who works for the team tasked with taking care of the SQL Server Books Online. Why am I calling Mr. Byham smart and agile. Evidently he saw the blog post and has completely updated the description for CXPACKET at MSDN: Occurs with parallel query plans when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. If waiting is excessive and cannot be reduced by tuning the query (such as adding indexes), consider adjusting the cost threshold for parallelism or lowering the degree of parallelism. WHOOP! That's awesome work. Thanks Mr. Byham. Of…
If you missed the 24 Hours of PASS Summit 2013 Preview, you missed some excellent sessions. I watched a few, but not all. But now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can go back and catch the ones I missed. You can too. I'd like to call out my session, Be a Successful DBA in the World of Cloud and On-Premises Data. I know that my fellow DBAs and database developers are largely dismissive of Azure. I get it. But I really think you're missing out on this. It's another excellent tool in your toolbox that you need to start taking advantage of. Little things like getting a quick and easy installation of SQL Server 2014 or Windows Server 2012 R2 up and running. Helpful things like the…
I'm trying out a new blog post series, mostly for myself as an exercise. I'm going to pick one speaker each month that I've seen present recently and tell you what I thought of them. Now, don't panic. If you stunk up the place, I won't abuse you... by name. Kidding. This is going to be endlessly positive and supportive. I'll try to find places where you can go to see these speakers in the future, if I can (Lanyrd.com people). If not, maybe they'll notice this post and tell us themselves. For those interested in getting picked, don't bother me. This is arbitrary & random. However, be sure that you have a blog (or equivalent) that I can direct people to or I'll skip over you. If you don't…