17Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Great Idea: Tribal SQL

Misc
Writing books, even just a chapter, is not easy. Yet, people are desperate to do it for some reason. But, it's actually hard to break into writing (not that hard, I did it after all). So, when you get the chance to work on a book, if you're crazy enough to think you want to, jump on the opportunity. My good friend, and co-author of SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 2, Jenn McCown (b|t) had an idea. Instead of gathering up a bunch of the usual suspects, what if you gave people who have never published anything a shot at writing a chapter. Yeah, insane, right? But then again, every author you know, at one point, wasn't published. Someone gave them a chance. Jenn is just that kind of…
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27Jun 2012 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

The New Phone Book Is Here!

PASS
I can't help it. I get really terribly excited when I publish a book. Maybe it should be old hat. Maybe I should be jaded. But I'm just a 12 year old (it's been argued 10) in reality so I get really, really jumping up & down excited when I get that wad of paper and my name is on the cover. It just doesn't seem to get old. What am I talking about? Oh, sorry. Let me explain. After about nine months of work, my new, revised edition, of the Query Performance Tuning book is available. I want to publicly, and loudly, thank Joe Sack(blog|twitter) for the incredible job he did as tech editor. His hard work, and ruthless criticism, made this book what it is. Despite the scar…
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14Jan 2011 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Failed Blog Posts

Misc
Over the last week I've started and trashed two blog posts. Let me tell you, that's painful. You get some great idea and then it all goes south. For example, I was going to explain the difference between a table/heap scan and a clustered index scan. The problem was, I ran into gaps in my knowledge, some outright errors in my beliefs on how data was stored, and really faulty conclusions drawn from those facts and a less than thorough set of tests. I'm not even going to tell you what went wrong with the other notion. Luckily, all this was behind the scenes so I didn't post my ignorance for all to see.  Since I'm not offering you a chance to point & laugh (in this instance), you might…
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11Jan 2011 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

TSQL Tuesday: Resolutions

Misc
Sounds like a good action adventure movie. The theme this month on TSQL Tuesday, thanks to our host, Jen McCown (blog|twitter) of SQLawesomesauce, is Resolutions. In particular, Techie Resolutions. I have to do this because Jen just received her MVP award, in case you’ve been under a rock since last week. I’m not a resolutions kind of guy. I tend to make plans. The plans might start on January 1st, or they might start as soon as they lawyers are done making up the contract. I’m not hung up on schedules except as they relate to due dates. For example, when submissions are due for the PASS Summit or something along those lines, then I’m date driven. In other words, I don’t sit down New Year’s Day or New Year’s…
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08Dec 2010 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

So you want to write a book

Misc
I had posted a while back on the process of book writing. It was an attempt to educate while scaring you half to death. Writing a book is extremely hard work, especially when you try to do it while holding down a full-time job and maintaining something resembling a life. Enough scare tactics though. My Apress editor, Jonathan Gennick, great guy, wrote a detailed overview of how to put together your book proposal. The overview is targeted at Apress, but that’s largely a question of formatting. The gist of the article, and the wisdom and excellent information within it, are going to be applicable to any & all publishers. Some of the stuff that really jumped out at me: You’re writing the proposal not only to sell the book idea,…
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24Nov 2010 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

FreeCon

Misc
I got my FreeCon. What's more, I did it in public and didn't get in trouble. FreeCon is the brain child of Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). Basically Brent gathered together a few bloggers & writers from the SQL Server community, some extremely well known, like Tom LaRock (blog|twitter), some in the middle, like me, and others that are clearly up & coming like David Stein (blog|twitter).  He jammed us all in a room and made us talk to one another. OK, that's a lie. He invited us out to this lovely little poetry space in Seattle the day before the PASS Summit was due to start, where we imbibed good food & coffee and had the opportunity to share a lot of great information with each other. The basic concept was…
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28Oct 2010 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Writing Opportunities

Uncategorized
Are you looking for opportunities to show off your elite writing skills and consumate SQL Server knowledge? Want a chance to build up the resume a bit? Are you like me and you have a hard time thinking of ideas to write about? I've got a solution for you. There's a new forum over on SQL Server Central that is all about requests for articles. It's mostly small stuff, easy one-page articles, a bit more than a blog post but a bit less than a full blown multi-page drill down. Also, if you have ideas for articles that you'd like to see someone write up, you can post them there. You should read the rules about the forum, which aren't complicated, and then dive in.
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19Feb 2010 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

So You Want to Write a Book?

Misc
What the heck is wrong with you? Still interested? Fine. I'll tell you my take on this whole business. I'm only an expert on this if you take the adage that the expert is the guy that's a page head of you in reading a book. To date I have published two full books and three chapters in a third. I can easily think of enough people who all have more experience than that with book writing that I'd have to take off both shoes to count them all. Is anyone still reading? Cool. So you have the desire to write a book? Let me pop your first bubble. You will make very little money. This bears repeating. You will make very little money. If you were to figure out your hourly…
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04Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Standard Article Abstracts

Misc
I'd really like to publish your article in SQL Server Standard. All I need from you is an abstract, a description of what the article will be. I've posted this before, but I've never provided examples. So, to get people started, here are a few examples of articles that have been accepted and will be published (shortly I hope). Here's a great example from Andy Leonard. It includes a great amount of detail, more than I need to make my decision, but with this much detail, the decision is much easier because I know exactly what this article is likely to look like:    I'm interested in writing an article on SSIS for SQL Server Standard. I'd like to cover ways packages can exchange information at run-time. There are a couple…
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02Dec 2009 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Standard Update

Misc
Andy Warren in the latest PASS Connector has posted an update on where we're at with the SQL Server Standard. I'm so happy that Andy has been keeping this out in front of people. It provides some impetus to get the work done. Except for the authors thanks (and they're receiving $500, so they should say thank you), there's very little feedback on the Standard to show whether or not people are interested, if the goals and ideas are worthy... In other words, you guys need to let us know what you think about the thing. Two more articles are in the hopper to be published. Another has gone into copy edit. We're technical editing two others. That's five more, so you guys can expect to see another ten weeks…
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