So why does this matter to you?  The move itself is unimportant, but it gives me an opportunity to thank my previous hosting provider…Brent Ozar.

Most people don’t know that Brent hosted many blogs, completely free of charge.  It wasn’t something Brent openly advertised, but if someone mentioned they were starting up a blog, he always offered to host it.  Initially my blog was hosted by a friend of mind (and it used Joomla, which I encourage everyone to avoid…just use WordPress) but when I migrated to WordPress I had Brent start hosting my site.

Did I mention that Brent didn’t charge anyone for hosting?  Right.  I should also mention that he often applied new releases for WordPress when they came out, made sure the blogs had the mobile site option, and would send us emails if there was a security update that needed to be applied…he took care of us.  And so for that, as well as for numerous other things that Brent has done for me personally over the past few years, I just want to say thank you.  Thank you, Brent, for that crazy idea called SQLCruise, for hosting your free-cons, for hosting my blog, and for supporting me and so many others in the community.  I will always be grateful for all you have done for me.

And in case you’ve been wondering whether I would continue to keep this blog after joining SQLskills…the answer is definitely yes.  I love this blog, and while I have only posted a few times since the summer, I resolve to do better in the coming months.  Thanks for reading, and for those of you that have a blog, make sure you take backups   I had to say it – it’s something else I learned from Brent!  (Check out VaultPress if you’re using WordPress.)

Many thanks…

The post My Blog Has Moved! (ok, not really) first appeared on Erin Stellato.

• Carlos Bossy (@carlosbossy)
• Neeraj Jandwani (@njandwani)
• Paul Hiles (@PaulGHiles)
• Phil Franz (@phil0103)
• Ryan Adams (@ryanjadams)
• Wil Sisney (@HanSQL)
• Yulia Fuller (@yulia_fuller)

I want extend a special thanks to Carlos, Ryan and Wil who helped host today’s sessions and also kept up a steady stream of chatter on Twitter.  They went above and beyond in numerous ways as we prepared for #SQLPalooza (thank you Wil for the hashtag!).

And a shout out to Paul and Yulia for working diligently on the web site.  Over the next few days they will both get the recordings moved over to the Presentation Archive page, where the sessions can be viewed at any time over the next year.  We are also working to get the slide decks from today’s speakers, and will post those (or links to them) on the archive page.

And let’s not forget the speakers!  The sessions were terrific, and we had no major issues – a definite success.  A huge thank you to those who presented today, and contributed great content to the SQL Community:

• Kalen Delaney (@sqlqueen)
• Argenis Fernandez (@DBArgenis)
• Joe Sack (@josephsack)
• John Sterrett (@johnsterrett)
• Neil Hambly (@Neil_Hambly)
• Randy Knight (@randy_knight)
• Kevin Boles (@TheSQLGuru)
• David Klee (@kleegeek)

Please remind me, the next time I see each of you, to buy you dessert (or in Joe’s case, some nachos).

I also want to thank the sponsor for the Performance Virtual Chapter, Confio.  I mentioned today that Confio has supported this VC since it was revived in mid-2010, which is when I started to help out.  Confio has been there the entire way, and their backing is greatly appreciated.  Not every Virtual Chapter has a sponsor, and we are very fortunate as it allows us to do things like gift card giveaways for our sessions.  It’s not something we take for granted, and to everyone at Confio: Thank you.

And speaking of gift cards, we said we would give one away for each session today, and we will be doing that.  However, we do the drawings after the sessions end (it’s the only way to get a list of attendees) and that list is not always available immediately.  Right now, we’re waiting for the reports to be finished in LiveMeeting, and once they are complete we will draw the winners and contact them via email (so don’t give up hope, you still may win if you attended a session today!).

And finally, thank you to all the members of the SQL Community who attended one or more of today’s sessions.  The goal of the VC is to provide quality content to the community, and at the risk of sounding like a proud mom, we knocked it out of the park for our first event.  I can’t wait to see what Ryan and his team do next year.  Carry on my friends, carry on.

The post Performance Palooza: We Did It first appeared on Erin Stellato.

• Jason Strate
• Jes Borland
• Mike Fal
• Grant Fritchey
• Jerry Brenner
• John Sterrett
• Kevin Cox
• Jeff Renz
• AJ Mendo

Thank you all for making time to present for our VC, and for your contributions to the Community.  We appreciate you!

Our numbers rose steadily over the year, and for the past few sessions we have had over 200 attendees, which is fantastic.  I am so thrilled with our team and the effort that everyone has put forth.  Ryan, Carlos, Wil, Yulia, Paul, Phil and Neeraj, it has been an honor working with all of you.

And if this sounds at all like a farewell type of post, that’s because it is.  I am turning the Performance VC over to the very capable Ryan Adams (@ryanjadams), who did an amazing job with marketing and had the awesome idea for the VC to host a full day of performance-related sessions – which we will be doing on December 6!  Yep, we’re in the process of finalizing the schedule, but on Thursday, December 6th we will have a full day of sessions that are all related to SQL Server performance.  You can read a little more about it here, and make sure to check back later this week to see the full list of speakers.

I’ll leave it to Ryan to blog about his plans for the VC, and as for me, I haven’t figured out what I’ll volunteer for next within PASS, but I’m sure I’ll find something.  I have been a part of the Performance VC team for almost two and a half years; volunteering for the VC was one of the first things I did when I got involved with the Community.  That involvement has led to so much more…so for those of you who want to do more, who want to be more involved: talk to someone who’s involved with PASS.  Maybe it’s your chapter leader, maybe it’s the leader of one of the Virtual Chapters, maybe it’s someone you know through Twitter.  If you want to contribute to PASS and to the Community, there are many ways to do so.  You just need a bit of initiative to go find what’s right for you.

The post PASS Performance Virtual Chapter: The Next Generation first appeared on Erin Stellato.

In no particular order:

Rehearse your presentation, out loud, in front of someone else…or at least in front of the family pet.  This practice has multiple benefits:

• First, you get used to hearing your own voice out loud.
• Second, you get used to talking for an extended period of time.  In real life, how often is it that you talk for 45-75 minutes pretty much uninterrupted?
• Third, you get an idea of the length of your presentation based on your content.

Brent Ozar ( t ) talks about rehearsing in his post, How Rehearse a Presentation.  He has some great insights, but remember that everyone has different methods of preparation.  Find what works for you, and realize that this may take some time to figure out.

Record yourself rehearsing.  This is painful, but has so much value.  If you can record it on video, I highly recommend it.  Everyone has habits, and watching video is the best way to see them.  If you cannot take advantage of video, at least get audio.  Either option will allow you to catch verbal ticks – saying “uh”, “um”, “so”, or “hm” repeatedly – and video affords the chance to catch physical ones such as pacing, standing still, using the same hand gesture, etc.

If you find a verbal tick, practice speaking a five minute section without that repeated phrase.  This was a recommendation that Paul Randal ( t ) gave me the other day.  I had recorded some content and said “um” a lot.  His suggestion was to speak for five minutes without saying “um”, and every time I did, start over.  It’s harder than you think.

Know the first minutes of your presentation cold, to where you can say it without even thinking about it.  Can’t think of a five minute section to practice?  Start with the first five minutes of your presentation.  Paul recommends  practicing the first two minutes, and I think it’s incredibly beneficial.  By the time you get through that first two to five minutes, the nerves will be gone and you’ll find your rhythm.

Remember that the audience is on your side.  People are often terrified to speak because the audience is an unknown.  It’s true, you don’t know what you’re going to get.  But the vast majority of attendees are good people, and won’t go out of their way to harass you.  And if you are concerned about this, have a seasoned speaker in the audience for support.  That person will recognize if someone’s harassing you and step in to help out.  My good friend Christina Leo ( t ) had a rogue attendee at her first presentation, last year at Chicago’s SQLSaturday, and several audience members were seasoned speakers who provided support.  In true Christina fashion she got through it and delivered a great session.

Don’t take it personally if someone isn’t paying attention, or nods off during your sesion.  Last year I gave a presentation at my then-company’s user conference, and part of the session included group activities.  We had attendees get in small groups of four to six people and answer questions and go through scenarios.  One person wasn’t with a group and when I went to him and asked if he was going to join one, he simply said “No.” and went back to his laptop.  I was taken back and stood there, utterly confused for a moment.  I noticed one of my colleagues, a seasoned presenter, looking at me.  He had witnessed the interaction and motioned me over.  I walked over and with wide eyes and asked, “What do I do?”  He said, “You have no idea what’s going on in his life.  I had a person in class once who was despondent and not paying attention.  I found out later he had just received word that a family member was very ill.  That person’s actions may have nothing to do with you and this session.  Let it go.”

It was excellent advice.  Don’t overthink it.  If I see such a person when I’m presenting, I avoid looking at them directly, and instead concentrate on those who are engaged, actively listening, asking questions, and nodding as I speak.

Expect that someone will get up and walk out of your presentation.  I have found that this rarely happens at User Group events and SQLSaturdays, but it will happen at events such as the PASS Summit or other paid conferences.  Don’t let it fluster you.  My friend Allen White ( t )and I talked about this last year.  I believe it’s because some people will not sit in a session that they think isn’t valuable to them if they have paid for the event.  For a free event, people are more tolerant.

Make a connection with your audience.  Don’t feel you have to look every person in the eye, but find those individuals who are engaged and speak to them.  If you try to make eye contact with everyone you might lose your train of thought.  Instead, look at people’s foreheads, right above the bridge of their nose.  When you catch someone who is involved – someone who asks a question or is nodding a lot – then make eye contact every so often.

Make sure your slides are readable.  Kimberly Tripp ( t ) has a great (and funny) post about this, and it includes even more links to other presentation-related posts.

Include your session abstract on one of your first slides to set expectations.  This is something I learned from Buck Woody ( t ) and I love it.  Session titles should be catchy, to first get the attendee’s attention, and hopefully they read the abstract and are interested in your topic.  However, to make sure people are fully aware of what you’re going to cover in your presentation, put your abstract up before you start your session.  Buck even reads the entire abstract out loud.  Sometimes I do that as well and hopefully you’ll never have an attendee write on an evaluation, “This wasn’t the session I was expecting.”

Tell a story.  People love stories.  Not everyone is a good storyteller…become one.  This takes practice, but it will serve you well.  Buck talks about this in his post of 20 Master Plots…a book I need to read.  The best stories are your experiences.  You want to talk about the importance of backups?  Talk about a time where you had them, or didn’t, and what happened.  If you can take technical information and relate it to real-life situations, people will not only remember the content better, but they will remember you.

Have confidence.  From the moment you walk into the room where you will present, stand tall and own the room.  It’s not about arrogance here, but if you step up to the front of the room with any trepidation, attendees will notice and you can lose credibility.  First impressions are huge, and that first impression for any attendee can occur at any time you’re in the room where you’re presenting.  Be ready.  You know the material.  You can handle anything.

Think about what you’re going to do before the presentation starts.  When I first started presenting I would stand at the front of the room or the podium and look busy.  I didn’t interact with attendees, and I barely looked at anyone.  Then I went to one of Brent’s presentations where he had a different PowerPoint going at the beginning, which had trivia questions.  It included SQL Server trivia and some fun facts about Brent.  I loved this idea and shamelessly implemented it myself (and of course told Brent I was going to do this).  However, I put my own twist on it to make it more “me.”  Before my sessions I have a slide deck which includes movie trivia.  If you’re a regular reader you know that I love movies.  The movie trivia breaks the ice and gives the attendees something to do (besides read email and tweet) before I start.  And, I can immediately start interacting with people.  Other presenters talk to attendees or encourage them to come up and ask questions.  Whatever method works for you is great, but whatever you do, be engaged with the audience from the moment you walk into the room.

Remember that becoming a good speaker takes practice.  When I first started presenting I was a graduate student, and I was actually teaching undergraduates.  Not just presenting, but teaching.  I had to make sure they learned something, and then I tested them on what I talked about.  I was terrified.  I am pretty sure I was awful at first (to those students, thank you for your patience) but I got better and more confident with every class.  You have to work at it.

In Summary…

Again, these are just a few of the recommendations that come to mind.  The posts I’ve referenced throughout (and listed again below) are ones I revisit from time to time, as there is always room for improvement.  Some people are natural public speakers, others practice a lot and become very good.  You need to become comfortable being uncomfortable, and you need to be patient.  Don’t give up, have confidence, and above all, have fun.

Links:

Public Speaking: A Primer – Paul Randal

Please don’t create a painful slide deck – Kimberly Tripp

How to Rehearse a Presentation – Brent Ozar

How to Deliver a Killer Technical Presentation – Brent Ozar

How I Prepare For Presentations, And My Speaking Schedule For This Quarter – Buck Woody

Book Review (Book 12) – 20 Master Plots – Buck Woody

SQL Saturday #67: In which I survive my first speaking engagement – Christina Leo

Presentation Tips – Craig Purnell

The post My Favorite Suggestions for New Speakers first appeared on Erin Stellato.

First, I should mention that I am terrible at goodbyes. I completely fall apart, because in that moment of realizing I am saying goodbye, all the wonderful memories flood my brain, and I just think about how much I’m going to miss someone, and how much there is to say, and how I can’t say it all in just a couple minutes.

I expect today will be a roller coaster. As sad as I am about leaving, I am also very excited about my new position at SQLskills; completely opposite emotions. Sometimes it is overwhelming.

I had many thoughts about how to thank everyone.  I have a lot of people to thank, and so much for which to be thankful.  I want my colleagues and friends to know how much they are valued, and the traditional goodbye email didn’t quite seem like enough.  I don’t think I can ever truly put it all into words…

I met with my VP on Wednesday, to catch up and say goodbye. He was the only person that interviewed me all those years ago, after a quick chat with someone from HR.  The company was one fifth the size of what is now.  When I interviewed he asked me where I saw myself in five years.  I answered, “Development.”  He hired me anyway

I have had three managers in those nine years, and I am thankful to each for the unwavering support and the countless opportunities provided.  All three pushed me to get better, backed my every decision, and were right there if I stumbled.  I hope that at some point in every person’s career, they have a management team that empowers them to make decisions, and then stands behind those decisions, no matter what.  I have had that management team, and I am grateful and appreciative for their belief in me.

I have worked with amazing people here; people who inspired me every day and challenged me to become the best that I can.  My colleagues have made me laugh until I cried, and have picked me up when I needed a lift.  Special thanks to those who offered encouragement when I felt lost, and whose belief in me never wavered.  And thank you to those who worked through the toughest customer issues, on little sleep and a lot of stress.  In the end, we sorted it out.

I also want to take a minute to send out a huge thank you to my husband, Nick.  Our “company”, if you will, is the Stellato family.  My family and friends are a great source of inspiration and comfort for me, but Nick is the one who has been there every day; the one who has seen the very best and the very worst.  And he just rolls with it.  Thank you, Nick, for supporting me.  Thank you for saying, when I called to tell you that I won the SQLCruise contest, “Of course you did.”  Thank you for every time you’ve said, “I got it” when I told about my next trip for work, or for a SQLSaturday, or the PASS Summit.  And thank you for being a great dad to our kids.  I love our life.

Finally, this is not goodbye, this is see you later.  I’m not moving, and since I will be working from home, I plan to have lunch out in the “real world” once a week.  Let me know if you want to meet up.  To everyone who’s been a part of the adventure these past nine years, thank you for what you’ve taught me, for your patience, for your humor, for your trust and for your respect.  I wish you all the best on this journey of life.

The post A Fond Farewell first appeared on Erin Stellato.

T-SQL Tuesday

Two weeks ago I put out a call for T-SQL Tuesday posts, and a huge thank you to those who responded!  It was an honor to have so many people participate – especially many new people that I haven’t met yet – and as I expected, I loved hearing about what everyone did.  I also liked how some people included their entire day, some people went into detail about a problem they solved or something they learned, and others just detailed a specific part about their day.  Every post was unique, just as each person’s job is unique.  I’m hoping that I have every post in my list below, but if I missed anyone, please let me know so I can come back and update this post.

Also, in typical T-SQL Tuesday summary format, I’m listing every blogger’s name which has the link to their post.  I’m including a couple sentences about each post, and for the blogger, that sometimes feels like very little after the significant post that’s been written.  I get that, but I want you, beloved reader, to go read each blogger’s post if you haven’t already.  And again, to every blogger who wrote a post, I sincerely thank you for your time and effort.  I know it took time not only to write the post, but to track your day and figure out how to frame it.  I value the individuality shown in each post – they were a lot of fun to read.

Nick Haslam – Nick is either a BI Consultant and Data Warehousing Consultant – it depends on the task at hand – and lives in the UK (I figured this out from a picture where he’s driving on the right side of the car).  Nick got to work on an ETL project and do some performance troubleshooting during his day, and he included a shout out to Adam Machanic’s WhoIsActive script.  Two thousand bonus points to Nick.

Jes Borland – My dear friend Jes is living the dream as a Consultant with Brent Ozar PLF.  I love that she included a picture of her home office in the post (it’s very organized).  Jes did a lot during the day, and the three hour block at the beginning was noteworthy.  That was probably a three hour session where she was engaged the entire time and going 100 miles an hour.  I also liked that Jes had specific breaks to catch up on email and read blogs.

Ted Krueger – Ted is another dear friend, and he’s also consultant.  Ted also doesn’t sleep.  Ted gets a lot done in a day.  He described replication issues, some coding, and dabbled in some ETL.  And wrote blogs.  Ted also pointed out how much he interacted with his family throughout the day; I liked seeing that.  Ted also watches a fair bit of Law and Order, and for what it’s worth, Ted is one of the most humble people I know.

Gil Rowley – Gil is a DBA and when I read his post on Tuesday, I ended it thinking, “Seriously?”  Basically, Gil was done with his “work” for the day at 9:30 AM.  And then I read this post of Gil’s, and I am quite happy to congratulate him on his new job!  I can’t wait to hear about how busy you are   However, Gil loses one million points for having nothing to do, and he has to re-do this post in six months.

Ameena Lalani – Ameena is a DBA and had a busy day with SQL Server upgrades, patches and all sorts of server issues.  Ameena has to communicate with many different teams, and not only keep the Production databases running, but also work with developers and manage their environments.  Ameena gets 3,234 bonus points for attending a webinar on SQL Server 2012 Availability Groups.

Joey D’Antoni – So Joey is another great friend and his title is Principal Architect-SQL Server.  Whenever I hear Architect I think of buildings, so I assume that Joey builds SQL Server environments.  This is kind of true.  He does a lot of other stuff (and sometimes answers my Oracle questions) but often he’s in meetings – as detailed in his post.  Joey gets 1,625 bonus points for biking before work, but loses 902 for the unhealthy lunch he had.  Oh, but then he gets 23,491 more points for riding again at night.

Bob Pusateri – Bob is a DBA in the Chicago area and I have to say that I always enjoy reading his posts.  This was no exception, though I was shocked to see how much of his day was spent traveling to and from work.  Bob was awake at 4:45 AM.  In the morning!  Also, Bob earns 323,423,983 bonus points for biking to work, doing a test restore of backup, watching a webcast, mentioning Plan Explorer, and for including the line, “Put on pants”.  What I really liked about Bob’s post: the opportunities where he got to teach other members of the team.

Jennifer Salvo – Jennifer is Business Intelligence developer at Trek Bicycles (the bike I rode all through college was a Trek!) and her post details the agile development process at Trek Bicycles.  It’s a really interesting read, especially if you’re not familiar with that type of development. For some reason, I like how they refer to a unit of work or development task as a story.  I need to figure out how to work that into conversation…

<I must admit that whenever I read or hear the word scrum, I think of rugby.  Even though I never played rugby.>

Nancy Hidy Wilson – Nancy’s title is SQL Server Service Engineer, and that was a new one for me.  Nancy’s post was great.  It was a walk through of her day but it read like a story as she explained how she tried to solve a problem one way, then another, until she eventually got to a solution (read all the way to the end).  Nancy had a great line: “I’m thinking within a couple of hours I can write a script to save our operational DBAs literally hundreds of man-hours.”  Daunting, but no fear.  And Nancy, I never have a “normal” day either – I completely agree with you about the variety.

Jason Kassay – Jason is a programmer who’s edging toward the DBA/DB developer world.  This came through in his post as he spent some time with code, and some time understanding the schema in a database.  Jason also made time to work on blog posts, which is great to see, and he gets 4387 bonus points for watching Robert Davis‘ webcast on troubleshooting performance issues with the DMVs.

Chris Shaw – Chris is a DBA in Colorado, and that guy leaves his house at 5 AM a couple days a week to go into his office (other days he works from home).  He leaves at 5 AM because he drives two hours.  I’ve seen Chris tweet a few times about driving, I had no idea it was such a commute.  Chris had two stories I related to – one was about how much time he spent trying to tune a stored procedure and the other was when he got involved in a client project, and the client was asking about billing.  One technical issue, one business issue; both reminders to get the whole story.

Rick Krueger – So Rick is a Data Architect and Database Technical Lead.  If I met him at a party and he told me that, I would say, “What does that really mean?” Well, I know now that he writes and tests code, does code reviews, goes to meetings and advises other team members.  I also found out that he’s going to be at SQLSaturday#161 in Iowa City on August 11, and since I’ll be there, I’ll get to meet him!  Also, I really liked Rick’s note about having an environment that mirrors production, and the carpenter’s adage he included.  Never thought of it that, but I’m definitely stealing it.

Rob Farley – The man who hasn’t missed a T-SQL Tuesday post yet, Rob Farley, happens to be another good friend and my non-technical subject pushed him out of his comfort zone.  I think this is good   Rob is the owner of LobsterPot Solutions, so his day included more high level/management tasks, along with a fair share of tasks related to his PASS Board of Directors duties.  One thing that interests me is the multiple locations from which Rob works.  He could be at home, at a cafe, at a client site or at his office.  This is an advantage of being a consultant and/or owning your own company, I realize, but as someone who has always work in an office, it’s a completely different world.

Greg Lucas – Greg is a Development DBA and he gives a great explanation of why that’s the title he uses.  I like it.  Greg also uses London’s catamaran service to get to work.  I envision a huge, beautiful white boat where Greg is served drinks during his commute.  I am sure this not really how he starts his day.  Greg mentions some refactoring he’s doing (and he mentions captures baselines so he can measure his changes, which earned him 64342 bonus points) and the troubleshooting he did for said code.  Greg earned an additional 855,468 points because he planned to attend SQL in the City the next day.

Shyam Viking – Shyam’s title is Database Architect, which he didn’t reveal until the end, but that’s ok because by reading his post, I was able to guess at what he did.  Shyam did a lot of research throughout the day – and included many of the relevant links which is nice for readers.  He also talks about LINQ, data trends for SQL Server and a data model for a Social Media application.  The last topic had my mind racing as I read through his bullet points.  There is so much to learn about database design.

Michael J. Swart – Michael is a Senior Database Developer, and we met last year at the first SQLSaturday in Cleveland (the next SQLSaturday in Cleveland is on August 18th if you’re interested!).  Michael and I had chatted on Twitter and it was great to finally meet in person.  I like his blog, and I love the pictures that he draws (the one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday is clever).  In his post, Michael mentions Tim Hortons (I like Timbits), SQL Server 2012, scrum, views, WhoIsActive, poor performing queries and obfuscating data (Michael, you should talk to Brent Ozar and Merrill Aldrich about this, we had a good conversation a few months back).  Michael gets 562,034 bonus points.

Steve Wales – Steve is a Senior Technical Consultant, and I went back and read his earlier post to see what that really means.  Interestingly, I identified with many things.  Anyway, so Steve’s day started early (funny story) and his day is filled with a myriad of projects.  Of all the posts I’ve read thus far, I have identified the most with Steve’s.  The random interruptions, the time tracking, working with multiple platforms.  I get it.  I just don’t have a 17 year old

Steve Jones – I admit, I don’t know Steve’s title, but I think most people know Steve.  He works for Red Gate, does a ton with SQL Server Central…he’s a pillar in the SQL community.  I am a big fan of Steve    He mentions in his post that he has a standing desk.  I need to ask him about it.  Steve does a lot of reading, writing and processing.  He also spends this day refining demos and presentations.  And ends his day with a run.  He gets 1000+ bonus points.

Mike Fal – Mike is a DBA and spends some of his day doing what I would call “typical” DBA work – verifying jobs have run, checking alerts, fixing issues with TempDB, etc. as well as research.  I consider research to be typical for DBA, and Mike has plenty of that as he’s learning more about CLR.  Mike, let me know how all the CLR stuff goes.  Still haven’t tackled that one yet!

Alan Wood – Alan lives across the pond in Scotland and is a database architect/developer/analyst (per his About page).   I can see this in Alan’s post.  He talks about SSIS, editing a stored procedure, updating data for testing, data modeling, and performance testing.  Alan also mentions SQL Server Central and Red Gate, so he gets 3249 bonus points.  Oh, and Alan mentions cottage pie, and I have no idea what that is but it sounds like something I’d want to eat on a cold and rainy day.

Rich Brown – Continuing with peeps from across the pond, Rich is a Database Administrator in Edinburgh and he caught my attention immediately when he mentioned that he was not a Single Point of Failure in his organization.  I would love to see that as a T-SQL Tuesday topic…are you a Single Point of Failure in your organization?  And if so, what can you do to change that?  But this is about Rich, sorry, and the kicker for me was when he said he spent probably about one day a month for the “traditional” DBA element.  Much of Rich needs/has to do is automated and documented.  I’m impressed.  My next question to Rich, “So tell me everything that you have automated and document.” 

Chris Richards – Chris has his work cut out for him.  He’s the new guy on the team, he’s asking a lot of questions, he’s not getting the answers he likes, so what does he do?  You have to read his post to find out.  I’d love to see Chris’ day in six months – and see how much it’s changed.  Oh, and Chris gets 5,492 bonus points for running Brent Ozar PLF’s blitz script.

Dave Valentine – Dave is a Database Developer, and he starts his day EARLY (7 am).  He does a lot of things I expect a DB developer to do: fix a stored procedure, attend a scrum meeting (third mention of scrum in T-SQL Tuesday posts!), a bit of training, another code fix (SSIS was involved in this one).  Hey, Dave is the Dave that Rick Krueger mentioned in his post…I will get to meet him in Iowa City as well.

Tim Ford – Ok, I messed up, I missed Tim in the original post <hangs head in shame>.  I apologize Tim!  And I only have myself to blame because he mentioned taking pictures to document his day and I should have just checked his feed.  Speaking of the pictures, I loved them.  Although the picture of breakfast made me more hungry.  Tim is DBA and works from home (someone else I can pester for suggestions) and had a typical atypical day.  Tim gets 723,093 bonus points for dealing with corruption and getting in a workout.  He loses 8,854 for mentioning Access.  Oh, and Tim mentions his Coffee Reports – I love this concept and saw him discuss said reports at a previous SQLSaturday.  That’s a great session.

Joshua Fennessy – Apparently I blocked all posts from Michigan, I missed Josh, too, which is killer because I read his post and loved how he tracked a full 24 hours (the only person to do so!).  Josh is a Senior BI Consultant and travel to Boston to meet with a client was part of this typical day.  Josh did some DBA stuff (verify rebuilds finished), some BI stuff (ETL), and a little bit of performance tuning (blasted TempDB).  Josh also earned 39,200 points for his hill workout and for telling his client about SQL Cruise.  My favorite lines from his post?  “Everyone is making jokes about Twitter.  I show them #sqlhelp.  3 of the 4 are now on Twitter.”   Josh is growing the SQL Community one DBA at a time.

Thank you again to all who posted!

p.s. No bloggers actually “won” anything.  I apologize if you were getting your hopes up!  If you are familiar with Who’s Line is it Anyway? you will understand my bonus points.  I also do this with my kids.  They haven’t caught on yet that they never “win” anything.  If you’ve never watched Who’s Line is it Anyway? you simply must.  And only UK version.

The post T-SQL Tuesday #32 Round Up first appeared on Erin Stellato.

T-SQL Tuesday

My idea for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday came from a book I read many years ago, Water Cooler Diaries: Women across America Share Their Day at Work.  I don’t remember how I found the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  As I said in my original post, I like knowing what people do, and this book provided insight into what many women did every day.  Some women also talked about trying to manage a work life balance in their chapter.  I didn’t call out that balance in my post on purpose – I wanted people to focus on their actual job – though I’m curious to see if anyone mentions it.  Below, I actually detailed my entire day, not just my time at work, so skip those parts if you’re not interested

I didn’t find anything new when I chronicled my day.  In fact, it affirmed much of what I already knew: I’m still inefficient at times, and I get interrupted a lot, which disrupts my work flow.  Don’t get me wrong – I love helping people and don’t want to dissuade anyone from asking me questions.  However, our work environment invites conversation, and there is a standing open door policy all the way through the CEO.  Like anything, there are positives (collaboration) and negatives (distraction).

The biggest benefit of tracking my day is that I’m reminded that working from home is going to be a whole new challenge for me.  I expect to have better control over my interruptions – turn off the phone, close Twitter, close email…and no random drive-bys.  But, will the quiet drive me crazy?  I won’t know until I’m in it, and the good news is that I get to start with a clean slate.  I can make a break from old habits and create better ones.  I need to solicit others who work from home to see how they do it.  I realize that everyone has their methods, and I have to figure out what works from me, but I like seeing what everyone else does, then piecing together the parts that work for me.  But enough about the future, here’s what happened last week…

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

5:45 AM I wake up early today to catch up on some emails and regular life stuff.  After a half hour I realize that I should do this more often.  I get a lot done, and it is good time to myself before everyone else is up.  I think better in the morning.  Note to self.

7:00 AM Solitude over, time to start the day and get ready

7:30 AM Begin the task of rousing the kids.  I’m pretty sure this is the hardest part of my day.

8:15 AM Out of the house and off to drop off the kids and then to work.  It’s nice that both kids are in the same place (not the case during the school year, but that changes this fall).

8:45 AM Walking in to work, thinking about my day…three meetings.

9:00 AM First meeting, and it’s with Jim to talk about Customer A, for whom we did a Performance Assessment recently.  Jim is an infrastructure guy who knows a ton about storage, networks, etc.  I love talking to him, there is always something new I can learn.  When he started I knew very little about SANs, and he knew very little about databases.  We have both taught each other so much over the past few years – and I have learned so much more from him about life; he is a great guy.  Anyway, we need to finish up the report to send to the customer, and we always review it together one final time before sending it off.

10:20 AM Review with Jim finished, he shows me this crazy video on YouTube (SFW).  My first thought is, how do you practice?

10:25 AM While we were reviewing the report I realized that there were three recommendations I need to finish up.  Time to knock that out…although I have a meeting at 11, and I’m highly tempted to catch up on some emails.  But, I should focus on getting this finished while it’s fresh in my mind.

10:31 AM Mark stops by to ask me a question about a script I ran for a customer a couple weeks ago.  He needs to do something similar, but had issues getting all the statements to execute at once (customer runs Oracle).  The customer was using a third party utility, not SQLPlus, to execute queries.  I explained how we saved the script out to a file and then called it using: @C:\temp\script.sql.

10:33 AM 25 minutes to finish this report.  Go!

10:44 AM Only one recommendation left.  A quick check on Twitter, looks like people are keeping track of their day – so cool!

10:57 AM So close to finishing the report, but it’s not going to happen by 11 AM.  That’s ok.  Time for a meeting with Loic and Gabe to talk about design for some tables and indexes they use in one of their databases – fun stuff.  Sarah just stopped by because she heard that I’m leaving.  I am surprised, and fully humbled, by how many people have emailed, called or stopped by to talk with me.  So many people have been so supportive.  It is overwhelming and wonderful.

11:54 AM I’m supposed to teach spin class at noon but no one signed up this week.  Bummer.  I could still work out, but I want to get this report and another spec done.  I wait around to see if anyone shows up and get a couple of phone calls done.

12:18 PM Grab some lunch; eat at my desk as usual and catch up on emails.  This is not a good habit.  When I sit at my desk, I end up reading blogs or something.  I’m not working.  It would really be better to eat with people.  I resolve that when I work from home, I will not eat at my desk.  I will sit at the kitchen table and either read there, or chat with my mom (or a friend) on FaceTime.  I’m going to have virtual lunches people, let me know if you want to join me!

12:42 PM I get an update from a colleague, the go-live for a project I’ve been working on has been moved to August, which means I have to transition the project.  Ugh.  I was really hoping to finish this one and not have to hand it off to JR.  JR and I plan to dial in next week to review the scripts and kick them off in a test database again.  <sigh> I hate that I cannot finish everything.

12:58 PM Headphones on, work on finishing that last recommendation for Customer A’s report.

1:27 PM Not really, Mike has a performance question – he’s trying to move 40 million rows from one database to another via a linked server.  It’s been going for 20 minutes and he’s wondering how long it’s going to take.  I tell him to look at the row in sys.partitions for the table and see how quickly the number of rows is increasing.  A quick peek tells us there are only 40,000 rows in the table after 20.  Time to find another option.

JR and I start talking about the user conference the company is having at the end of the month.  We are taking a half day session and expanding it to a full day and have a lot to do, amongst all the regular projects.  We make a plan.  Then I make some notes about my discussion with Loic and Gabe earlier.  I want to ask some SQL peeps their opinion, and need to document the proposed schema before I forget.

Mike comes back and we talk about bcp and bulk import to move the data from one database to another.  I have a set of statements I use that I tell him I will send over.  Hm, they’re not commented.  I take five minutes to put the statements into our standard template and comment them.   Note to self: Do this as you go along!  It saves time in the long run.  I know better.

2:08 PM Report is finished!  I email it to JR to review. He is a stickler for grammar and he has a great eye for detail.  He is busy, and I feel bad asking, but I always appreciate having someone read a report after I’ve been working on it for a long time.  After so many hours, it all starts to blur.  On to Customer B – I need to make changes to their report specification after Monday’s on site visit.

2:16 PM Kevin calls me into his office and asks if I’ve seen a specific document.  I haven’t.  It has database information in it.  Information that’s not correct.  This upsets me.  I tell Kevin I will read through the document and make notes.  When am I going to do that?

2:21 PM I get an email that Kevin is ordering Mitchell’s ice cream.  Hallelujah.  Back to the report spec.

3:52 PM I need a break, I have a meeting at 4.  Report spec is not done, but good progress has been made.  I like writing, but some documents are harder than others.  The specification is hard because I have to verify what was decided against a Word document with my notes in it and some emails, and then I’m also getting names and IDs from the customer database, so I’m jumping between windows.  I do much better when I write long sections at a time.

4:00 PM Last meeting of the day, we are reviewing recommendations for another Performance Assessment customer.

4:30 PM The meeting goes well and finishes early which is perfect as my oldest has a baseball game at  6 PM and I need to get home first, and there’s a Kindergarten meeting for my youngest at 7 PM.  I don’t usually leave this early so it feels very weird to walk out of the building.  I feel like telling people I worked a really long day on Monday so leaving a little early is ok.  I think too much.

4:45 PM Kids picked up, on our way home.

5:00 PM Home.  Thank the neighbor for helping out, and somehow she ends up coming in to the house to chat. Now?  I try to convince the kids to eat.  They’re not interested.  Nick arrives home around 5:30, he takes the oldest off to baseball.  Youngest and I head out around 6:30.

7:00 PM Meeting starts and the gears completely switch to Kindergarten (my baby is starting Kindergarten!).  I am one of the few parents with an older child already in school, so it’s a different perspective.  The discussion reminds me of why I love this school.

8:10 PM The meeting starts to break up but I linger to talk to some other parents.  At 8:25 we finally leave.

8:40 PM Back home, Nick just finished making dinner (thank goodness he likes to cook).  Even though it’s incredibly late, I like that we all sit down and eat together as a family.

9:10 PM Nick cleans up the kitchen, I get the kids bathed, in to bed…it’s way too late for stories.  They’re maybe asleep by 10.

10:00 PM I’m tired.  There are many things I “should” do, but not tonight.  I head to bed.  And I thought summer was supposed to be relaxing

The post T-SQL Tuesday #32: A Day in the Life first appeared on Erin Stellato.

T-SQL Tuesday

When we were kids, sometime during elementary school, adults started asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  The professions initially mentioned varied, but they were often along the lines of teacher, doctor, nurse, fireman, policeman, singer, engineer, etc.  Obviously these are not the only professions in the world.  There are so many different occupations that exist, that whenever I meet someone, I usually ask what they do.  It’s not unusual for someone to list a title I’ve never heard (Improvement Coordinator is one I heard the other day).  But a title doesn’t tell me what that person does.  Even when someone’s a doctor or a teacher, there are so many variations nowadays that I always follow up with, “Well what do you do every day?”  And I ask because I really want to know.  So tell me…

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday post is about you and your job.  Specifically, on Wednesday July 11^th or Thursday July 12^th, track what you do for an entire day and then write about it.  Hopefully one of those days is a “typical” day and not a vacation day (if it is, then just pick another day or do your best), but ideally, everyone writes about what they did on one specific day. 

The scope of this topic is wide open, you don’t have to simply list what you did – feel free to elaborate on what tasks you love or don’t love, your favorite or least favorite part of the day.  Make the post as non-technical or technical as you want (maybe you learned something new that was really cool).  My only request is that you list your official title, as I plan to include them in some way in my summary post.

Rules
•Your post must be published between 00:00 GMT Tuesday July 17th, 2012 and 00:00 GMT Wednesday July 18th, 2012.
•Your post must contain the T-SQL Tuesday logo from above and the image should link back to this blog post.
•Trackbacks should work, but if you do not see one please link to your post in the comments section below so everyone can see what you wrote.

Optional, but definitely encouraged
•Include a reference to T-SQL Tuesday in the title of your post
•Tweet about your post using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay
•Consider hosting T-SQL Tuesday yourself! Adam Machanic keeps the list.

Have fun!  I look forward to hearing about each person’s day

The post Invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #32 – A Day in the Life first appeared on Erin Stellato.

For the past nine years I have worked for an amazing company, and with a remarkable group of people.  My tenure, and my thanks, warrants a separate post, which will come later.  I would recommend my company to anyone – they have supported and encouraged me in all my endeavors, and I have grown more than I originally thought possible.

I have gained a lot of experience in my current position, and while I have seen a lot, I haven’t seen enough.  With SQLskills I will have the opportunity to see diverse systems and I will continue to work with and help clients, which I have always enjoyed.  I will continue to write and present.  And I will work with some of the very best people in the SQL Community.  Learn, solve problems, teach, and write.  Does it get any better?

I will be spending the month of July wrapping up current projects and making it as smooth of a transition as possible.  August 1 will be my first day as a SQLskills employee, and I will be attending IE2 in Seattle the week of August 13^th.  Let me know if I will see you there!

It is time for the next step, and I know that SQLskills is a great fit for me.  I will be forever grateful to my current company and my co-workers for the part they have played in making me who I am today.  I am excited to start my next adventure with SQLskills.  As Calvin said in Watterson’s last post, “Let’s go exploring!”

The post A Day Full of Possibilities first appeared on Erin Stellato.

DBCC Commands: The Quick and the Dangerous

There are many DBCC statements at the disposal of Database Administrators and Developers. Some are used for the greater good; others can wreak havoc in your system. The majority of these commands are informational, but if you’re not careful you can introduce chaos or at worst, lose data you may never find again. In this session we will explore DBCC commands that are useful for the DBA and developer, and cover when to use them and how. Expect demonstrations that provide a practical application of these commands – both documented and not – that database professionals can utilize quickly and easily.

The post Presenting for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter this week first appeared on Erin Stellato.