Yeah, I'm a couple of days late. Tough. My blog. My rules. Speaking of rules. Speaker of the Month is chosen by me based on my whims, interests and the direction of the wind on every other Tuesday at 3PM. No whining. I saw a ton of excellent sessions during the month of October. I was at SQL in the City, SQL Saturday Charleston, and the PASS Summit, so I had an embarrassment of riches to choose from. One session stood out. It's on a topic that, frankly, I find incredibly dull. But not this presentation. Without further ado, for November I'm picking Chris Bell (b|t) and his presentation, Indexing Encrypted Data (oh stop yawning, this is good). Chris went to town on the slides. He's clearly very carefully built…
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…
KILT DAY! Today we have to eat our vegetables and then get lots and lots of sweet desert. Or. Today we hear about PASS Finances as a part of the official annual meeting and then we get to hear Dr. David Dewitt speak (completely and utterly getting our nerd on and squeeing like teenage girls at a Bieber concert). I will be live-blogging this event, so watch this space. 8:20: Douglas McDowell kicks off the key note today. Â the vast majority of the money that runs PASS comes from the Summit. That's right, by attending the Summit you're also supporting the organization. The Business Analytics Conference, which kicked off this year also provides quite a bit more money to the organization. 8:25: PASS has changed its budgeting process. At this…
I am liveblogging the keynote from the bloggers table at the PASS Summit again this year. Just keep scrolling. Watching the introduction video as people trickle in. All the other bloggers are setting up. I get in early. I didn't rearrange the seats this year. I see others doing it now. 8:11: Watching the videos of all the attendees registering and meeting people at the start of the event and last night's welcome reception is awesome and fun. 8:21: The lights go down and the videos of what everyone is looking forward to at the Summit. In keeping with our location, right next to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, we've got a bit of a race theme going on. We're seeing current PASS President, Bill Graziano having a dream about…
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…
No, this isn't some complaint about PASS or the Summit. This is an announcement that not only will I be speaking at the PASS Summit, but I'm speaking about Azure... a lot. First up, I'm going to be doing an all-day pre-conference seminar specifically aimed at getting you into Azure. No, I don't want you to drop your on-premise databases and infrastructure. Are you nuts? No, wait, you think I am. OK, fair point. But what I actually want you to realize is that some pieces of your work are better done in the cloud. There are all kinds of terribly fun and cool things you can get done there, as an addition to your existing infrastructure. There are way, way too many things that are better done locally to ever think you'd move…
The greatest part of my job is that I get to travel all over the world to present different technical sessions. But, it's not the presentations that make it cool. It's the fact that I get to meet people. I get a chance to hang out with my #sqlfamily. I get a chance to make new friendships. Those contacts are amazing. I love the opportunity to sit down and talk to people about what they're doing with technology, the challenges they face, what's common with my own experience, what's different. From all that, I get a chance to grow and learn. Sometimes I even get the chance to help people. I'm going to be all over the place between now and June. I'd love to get the opportunity to talk…
I earned my nickname. I'm proud of it. I am the Scary DBA. I don't really like to advertise my other nickname, Rant (get it, Grant shortened to another word). I earned that one too. I'm not proud of it at all. I got that one because I sometimes don't listen as much as I should and, because I tend to be more than a little passionate about my job and my databases, I would go off on a rant. And yeah, I stood in the way of some development processes and approaches that I shouldn't have. Instead of facilitating the development team and trying to understand their problems and issues, I just said "No." Usually at length. I just finished reading this post from Martin Fowler, whose work I've  enjoyed,…
Two quick points, I'm putting this blog together using the Surface.. ooh... and this isn't a keynote, but a spotlight session at the Summit. Still, I thought I would live blog my thoughts because I've done it for every time Dr. Dewitt has spoken at the Summit. Right off, he has a slide with a little brain character representing himself. But, we're talking PolyBase, and futures. This is basically a way to combine hadoop unstructured nosql data with structured storage within SQL Server. Mostly this is within the new Parallel Datawarehouse. But it's coming to all of SQL Server, so we need to learn this. The information ties directly back to what was presented at yesterday's keynote. HDFS is the file system. On top of that a framework for executing…