I am running for the PASS Board. You can read more about what I've posted and what others have to say here on this page. Today I want to ask you a question. Should someone on the board be a manger or should they be a community person? Let's avoid the easy answer of both for a moment, not because that's the wrong answer, but because it's the right one. Clearly you need a mix of these skills to be on the board. But, where you fall on my simplistic question could determine the kind of person you want to vote for on the board. Let's discuss it a bit. According to Wikipedia (deal with it), a board of directors is "meant to oversee the activities of a company or organization."…
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…
Red Gate Software is running a campaign around coping with the worst day of a DBAs life. We've been posting some really fun stories with, I hope, a kernel of useful information inside each. Chances are, if your DBA career has been like mine, your worst days don't involve explosions and car chases. But now they're asking for people to write up stories, what was the worst day in your life as a DBA. I know, I know, first world problems, right? Regardless, I have yet to put a company out of business or kill anyone with any errors I've made, although I've worked at places where either was possible. But the one day that just stands out, well it started about three weeks ahead of the bad day. I…
It's not like I can't find plenty of great presentations here in the US, but, while I was over in Belgium at Techorama I checked out several of the presenters there. They were awesome. This was the first ever Techorama. It's a developer focused event, but there was stuff there for data-centric people too. They had a great international collection of speakers from all over. The venue was a movie theater which was a lot of fun to present in, although may be a little too comfy to watch presentations (I fell asleep in one, I sure hope I didn't snore). It was such a great event that I decided to pick my speaker of the month from there. I saw a bunch of very good presentations (even the one…
If you take basic first aid, say a CPR course, you'll learn a handy mnemonic for the primary assessment you have to make, A-B-C. That breaks down as Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Is there an open airway so they can breathe? Are they breathing? Do they have circulation, a pulse, are they alive in short. I recently took a two day course on wilderness first aid (on top of CPR training and first responder training and basic and advanced first aid training and Scout training and Scout first-aid training and I'm sure I'm forgetting some) that added to that, D-E. We now have Disability and Environment. In short, just how responsive is the person or do they have the possibility of spinal issues? What's the environmental situation, lieing on cold ground,…
We are coming into quite a busy time for my speaking schedule. I'm hitting the road. It does one thing for me that I truly love, I get to talk to people. So, if you have questions, want to chat, need to call me a pompous know-it-all to my face, I've got some opportunities for you. Next week, April 13-16, is SQL Intersection. You can register by clicking here. The following week, I've got two events. First, on Friday April 25th, Red Gate Software is hosting a free half day SQL in the City Seminar in the Chicago area. We'll be talking database deployment all day. Go here to register, but don't wait, seats absolutely are limited. And, since this is a Red Gate event, at the end of the…
It really is so much easier to just throw hardware at badly performing databases. Just buy a bigger, faster server with more and faster disks and you can put off doing tuning work for another 6-9 months, easily. But, for most of us, sooner or later, our performance problems get so big or, we just don't have any more money to spend, and we're stuck. We have to tune the queries. And frankly, query tuning is a pain in the nether regions. But, after you've tuned queries 20 or 30 times, you start to recognize the patterns and it gets easier (never easy, just not as hard). But, if you haven't done it 20 or 30 times, what do you do? My suggestion, talk to someone who has done it…
For those who don't know, I work for Red Gate Software. I'm not a developer, but I work directly for the development teams so I spend a lot of time with them. This week I'm over in the UK, where they are headquartered, meeting with the different teams and discussing our products, their future, issues with them, enhancements, and all the rest. Suffice to say, I'm excited by the future. But the really fun bits are when you see behind the scenes stuff. Red Gate is pretty well known for polished, intelligent, elegant UI design (yes, they keep me away from that stuff). Behind those pretty pictures though is code. And our developers are just like your developers, smart, capable, skilled, but still learning. And it's those learning bits that…
A whole new year. Cool. I was at SQL Saturday DC, #233, at the beginning of December. I sat through several really good presentations. I could honestly give the award this month to any of the ones I took notes on, but I have to pick one person (although, not always, my award, my rules). So, speaker of the month for the brand new year is Konstantin Melamud (li|t). Yet another speaker without a blog. Maybe I should enforce my own rules at some at some point. <sigh> Anyway, I enjoyed Konstantin's presentation. Let's talk about it. Performance Tuning - Index Optimization was an excellent presentation. Konstantin came at the topic very carefully. He started off with a knowledge level baseline, right at the start. I thought that was a…
I love that I get to travel around and learn from my #sqlfamily. We're still filling in the majority of the 2014 schedule, but the plans are to go to as many events as Mrs. Scary will let me. I'd like to alert you to a couple coming up in January, and then I should be able to get a fuller schedule for the first quarter posted soon (that way you can complain to me in person about Managed Backups). On Friday, January 10th, I'll be presenting a SQL in the City Seminar on Database Deployment in Cambridge, UK. Presenting in the UK is just fantastic. And this is a live event. And it's at the stately Red Gate Towers. Oh, and this is a free event, but seating is…