I read a lot of self-help and improvement information. I'm always trying to hack my brain or my attitude to arrive at a better, more productive, more useful individual. I suck at it. Positive If you read a lot of these books and articles about how to go about getting better, positivity is one of the most important aspects. That's not to say you should be a Pollyanna. In fact, it's extremely important to be honest with yourself and others. It's more about how you're critical or how you deliver bad news, not whether or not you should deliver bad news. Quick story that happened to me recently. My family and I went to Fort Sumter during our vacation (that's "on holiday" for my friends across the pond). Follow the…
I want to take a moment to thank a few people for being amazing. First up, Thomas LaRock is wrapping up his tenure on the PASS Board this year. He has one more in-person meeting at Summit 2017 and then he's basically done. I followed Tom to karaoke during my 2nd PASS Summit and have been following him around ever since. I'm honored to count him as a friend. Tom, you set an impossibly high bar. Thank you for everything you've done for me and for this community. Second, Denise McInerney is also completing her time on the PASS Board this year. Denise has been a fixture in the leadership of PASS ever since I first volunteered. I had no idea just how much guidance and advice and flat out…
Thank you to everyone who participated in T-SQL Tuesday #091 which was on databases and DevOps. As I anticipated, this brought out quite a bit of variety on the posts. This is because DevOps is still... not quite cooked...(?) in many peoples minds. I think with the range of posts we saw here, it'll be a lot more clear to those who are just getting an introduction to it. Here are the posts (in no particular order) and a few comments on each: Databases and DevOps: Rob Farley - I like Rob's approach to this intro to DevOps. He's a consultant. It'd sure be nice if you had the protections that DevOps offers in front of your systems before he starts recommending changes. What Playing at Minecraft has Taught Me…
This is my first ever guest blog post. Take it away Hazel Garcia. Though the gender gap narrows by the year, there remains a noticeable lack of balance in the professional workplace. This gap reflects in everything from gender-based pay scale discrepancies to the ratio of women to men in the workforce. Interestingly, the gap varies by region, though it significantly impacts the professional gender balance all fifty states. The gender gap displays quite prominently in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, despite a growing number of young female graduates who carry all of the qualifications that their male counterparts possess. Still, highly qualified female candidates in STEM fields frequently find themselves passed over in favor of similarly, or even less qualified male candidates. Despite overwhelming evidence showing the harm…
A couple of weeks ago we had a small contest here to pick a skill for Alexa. The entries were all wonderful, but I could only pick five as winners with one of them being the top winner. Thanks everyone for playing. In no particular order, here are the four runner's up, followed by the final winner along with my comments. Adrian Porter:Â Alexa, let's get real here! Please protect me from my stupid self. Take whatever measures needed. And for the final time, I don't want to play chess, let's play Global Thermonuclear War! [major points for an excellent nerd reference and one of my favorite movies] Zingiber: Alexa, drive me to work [You have to love the short simple set of instructions here, plus, extra time to read…
The winner is: Everyone. Hey, the challenge was random. I didn't promise a prize or a winner. Instead, I suggested everyone blog based on an image of the great Tom Baker: In no particular order we have: Persist and Aggregate Index Stats Across Server Restarts by Eric Cobb Nice use of the image, incorporating it into an interesting technical post on how to persist your index usage stats. Useful information since this DMV is reset when you restart the server (or fail it over or...). Good technical blog on a useful topic, data about your system. Working with SQLSaturday SpeedPass by Wayne Sheffield +10,000 points for both using the image well and for the PowerShell. -10,000 points for making me comment on a post about PASS (I'm the EVP of…
So, my blog got hacked. They edited the page where I thanked Rodney for all that he did. I had to remove that post as a part of the cleanup (still ongoing). However, I couldn't let that stand. I've used caching on the internet to track down the original post because that must live on. Here you go Rodney. Thanks again. I recently was honored to take part in the SQL Sons of Beaches Tour. It was a whirlwind of five user groups across the entire state of Florida in five days. I was joined on the tour by Denny Cherry. He and I did most of the presentations (except Tampa where we also had Buck Woody). We were driven from place to place by Karla & Rodney Landrum. I…
The power and capabilities of Azure SQL Data Warehouse are pretty amazing. However, it's still basically SQL Server under the covers. SQL Server still needs maintenance and one type of maintenance is keeping statistics up to date. Statistics maintenance is doubly important within Azure SQL Data Warehouse because statistics are not created automatically, nor are they maintained automatically. It's up to you to ensure your statistics are up to date. Statistics in Azure SQL Data Warehouse It's worth re-emphasizing the point that there is no automatic creation of statistics in Azure SQL Data Warehouse. This means you need to plan to add statistics to your tables. Microsoft recommends an easy method is to add them to every column. While that does make things easy, it's not like statistics are free. If you…
This month concludes my second full year on the PASS Board of Directors and my first full year on the Executive Committee. This year has been exciting, challenging, educational, and, I truly believe, useful to the organization. We've accomplished a lot. We will do more. Year In Review I have two primary responsibilities as the Executive Vice President – Finance and Governance. Firstly, I am responsible for PASS’ budget.  Secondly, I am responsible to oversee the governance of PASS. Here's how the year went on these two topics. Finance At the beginning of the year, our primary focus is to ensure that the various directors in charge of different portfolios are getting ready for the annual budget. Our fiscal year runs from July to June. A significant amount of work is spent…
Monday I got in on Sunday and chose to have a small dinner with a couple of friends, quiet, preparing. Monday was a less hectic day than the others . The Board had the morning off, although Redgate had me go and give a session at an event. Monday afternoon was one of our three in-person board meetings. The minutes will be published soon. I was responsible for running the meeting. I also presented two topics, first, and most importantly, our current financial status. Then I presented the initial set of thoughts towards some SMART goals for Global Growth, which I will share once they are further developed . Monday evening I had two events I had to attend. First, as part of the Executive Committee, I attended the kick off dinner…