28Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

SQL Rally: Performance Tuning Abstract

PASS
I get the call, you get the call, everyone gets the call. "Hey, my app/procedure/query/report is running slow." Now what do you do? You go to my full day session at SQL Rally, that's what. Assuming you vote for it. I didn't post the abstract I submitted for the SQL Rally before because I thought that it would be redudant. However, since it's not right off the voting page (unless they updated it since I voted), if you're interested, here's what I thought I would do for a day. If it sounds good to you, please go here and vote for it. One of the most common problems encountered in SQL Server is the slow running query. Once a query is identified as performing poorly, DBAs and developers frequently don’t understand how…
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25Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Who You Learn From

PASS
Less than two weeks to go until the PASS Summit. I'm excited. I've managed to cram a ton of activities into this Summit, more than ever before. But, I'm still going to try to go to a few sessions. The question asked, which sessions are you going to? Who do you want to learn from. Who can you learn from? I've got a pretty simple answer. Everybody. There's not a single person that I work with on my current team that I haven't learned something from. Sure, there are those that teach you tons and tons, for example, we have a fantastic SSIS guy on our team, that has taught me quite a lot, faster than I could have picked it up on my own. So, you're going to the…
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13Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit Birds of a Feather Lunch

PASS
The absolute biggest part of the PASS Summit is the one thing that most people don't take advantage of, networking. And no, I don't mean glad-handing everyone you meet, remembering all their names (although that is a good skill to have) and saying over & over again "Rush Chairman, damn glad to meet you." I mean taking advantage of the fact that you can talk to people that have already solved the problem that you're facing at work, or just might have some insight into that issue, or maybe you can give them insight into a problem they're facing. I'm mean, talking to people. Yeah, I know, we're all geeks, and worse than that, data geeks. That means we like to sit in dark little caves & grumble about our…
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04Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

SQL Saturday in New England

PASS
Adam Machanic (blog|twitter) has put on a SQL Saturday/Data camp event in New England for the last two years. I've helped him both years. It's been very successful. In January we had over 300 attendees, making it one of the larger SQL Saturday events. But, with a single exception (thank you Tim Ford (blog|twitter)), we've only had local speakers. Mind you, we're somewhat lucky with speakers here in New England and have several MVPs and others who are truly excellent when presenting. I'm taking over from Adam to lead the effort for this year, and due to my schedule we're moving the event to the spring sometime. We were thinking about maybe making it the the weekend before SQL Rally. But, I've got a question for all of you who present at SQL Saturday events.…
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30Aug 2010 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Upcoming Presentations: #24HOP & #SQLSAT46

PASS
Blogging has been a bit quiet of late. That's because I've been spending a lot my spare time getting ready for presentations that I have to give. Two of them are in about two weeks. First, and this one is going to be a big deal, is 24 Hours of Pass: Summit Preview. At the PASS Summit this year I have two spotlight sessions, both on tricks and tools for tuning queries, one on using execution plans and the other on using DMVs. Since the 24HOP presentation is supposed to be a lead-in to the PASS presentations, I decided that before you started tuning queries, you need to know which queries to tune. The presentation is titled: Identifying Costly Queries. I understand there are already nearly 2000 people registered. Let's…
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23Aug 2010 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

PASS Elections

PASS
There are a lot of things I'd like to say about the PASS elections. I was on vacation last week when the news about the slate of candidates broke. I've gone through a lot of emotions thinking about this, which is funny, because, really, what does it matter? But, because of the people, and let's face it, PASS is nothing without the people involved, it does matter. But, I've decided to say as little as possible because I'm not convinced I can add constructively to the conversation and that is what is most needed at this time. First, I want to endorse a few candidates. The people I'm going to endorse, I'm endorsing because I know them personally. I've worked with them, I've talked to them, I've read their stuff.…
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11Aug 2010 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

24 Hours of PASS: Summit Preview

PASS, T-SQL
Registration is open for the second 24 Hours of PASS this year. This one is going to be a preview of the Summit itself. So all the sessions are tied, in some manner, to sessions being given at the summit.Here's a link to go and register. I'm very excited to be able to say that I'll be presenting in this 24HOP. One of my presentations at the Summit this year is Identifying and Fixing Performance Problems Using Execution Plans. It covers pretty much what it says, methods for fixing performance problems by exploring the information available within execution plans. But, how do you know you have a performance problem? That's where my preview session comes in. Identifying Costly Queries will show you several ways to gather metrics on your system so that you…
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16Jul 2010 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Steve Jones to Run for PASS Board

PASS
I couldn't hide the lead. Steve Jones (blog|twitter) has announced he's running for the PASS board. I'm excited. I'm almost as excited as if I were going to run. Steve is not simply a major influencer in what we call the SQL Community. He brings two things to the party that I think are going to make him very successful on the board. First, he gets things done. He just does. He's one of those guys that seems to keep it together, just enough, to accomplish stuff. Second, he has real ideas. He's not someone who is simply going to iron out a wrinkle or three at the Summit. He's going to propose stuff that will make a difference. Put those two things together and I think we've got reason to…
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25Jun 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Board Nominations

PASS
If you haven't heard, please allow me to let you in on a little secret. The Professional Association of SQL Server users (PASS) is holding open nominations for the board. If you are interested in running for the board or know someone who should run for the board, get to this location as soon as possible and get their name in. I feel that PASS does a lot for individual database users all over the world. I know people who take the contrary position and say that PASS doesn't do anything for them. If you're of that opinion, that's great. As a matter of fact, if you're of that opinion, I'd suggest you should run for the board. Now is your chance to make a difference. Now is the time…
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09Jun 2010 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

PASS 2010 Submissions

PASS
Since all the cool kids seem to be posting the sessions that they submitted to the PASS Summit, nerd that I am, I'll follow along and do the same. I submitted four sessions, two by invitation for a Spotlight session and two for regular sessions. I tried to branch out a bit from where I've been in the past to see if I can start talking about different topics. With that in mind, the first session was: Spatial Data: The Business Case We've all seen the cool presentations showing all the pizza joints near the conference center or all the bicycle shops on a biking route, but what's the case for spatial data and business? This session sets out to show how spatial data can be of interest to almost…
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