One of David Platt’s prayers and hopes in discussing these things was an urgency in spreading the Gospel. An urgency in proclaiming God’s truth. Well during the talk on hell, he preached on truths I’ve known; on truths I’ve believed and hold fast to about hell. In fact I would say that the knowledge of and belief in the doctrine of hell is one of the things that has prompted me to share my faith. But – last night I felt convicted about my post yesterday, I felt convicted about how I approach hell. I fully believe in a literal hell for a literal eternity, but I don’t think I’ve given it the proper weight. My convictions are that, even in yesterday’s post – I focused a lot on the Good News but I don’t really talk about what makes that news so good.

Platt said, and I agree, that we must declare this doctrine of hell continually, unapologetically , compassionately, and with urgency. 

It Really Is Bad News

Right now I literally have tears welling up in my eyes as I type this. As I contemplate the truth of what hell is and apply that with the realization that so many are heading there. So many I love, so many I am friends with, so many I care about and so many I’ve never met. It hurts. You see we’ve put hell aside. In so many surveys people overwhelmingly believe there is a heaven, they overwhelmingly believe they are heading there and they overwhelmingly believe there is no hell. That’s wrong. It’s not Biblical.

Christ talked about Hell in verse after verse. The Bible at length describes the horrors of Hell. David Platt pulled some lessons and truths out (you can see the study guide here for all verses and the full text):

Fire and Pain - “So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace” – Matthew 13:49-50

Conscious Torment - Read Luke 16:22-28 – About the rich man in hades – just pleading for relief, begging that someone would go and tell his brothers that hell is real.

Darkness 

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth

Continual Rebellion - Russel Moore describes this well -

The sinner in hell does not become morally neutral upon his sentence to hell. We must not imagine the damned sinner displaying gospel repentance and longing for the presence of Christ. The damned indeed are longing for an escape from punishment, but they are not ‘new creations’. They do not, in hell, love the Lord their God with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Instead, they are now handed over to the full display of their natures apart from grace, natures that are satanic (John 8:44). Thus, the condemnation continues forever and ever and ever, with no end in view either for the sin or the punishment thereof.

Hell is a Place of Complete Separation - From God. From the One our hearts were made to long after. Fromthe very One we were made to fellowship with.

Hell is Eternal - Forever…  During the event David used a good phrase to describe this – you are never any closer to the end of this suffering than you are to the start. Even after a million ages of this torment – you are still no closer to the end. There is no end. That seems harsh but you see our sin is sin against an infinite and eternal God. A pure and righteous God.

We Send Ourselves There

CS Lewis says this one best:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
– The Great Divorce

I often hear the questions like “what about those who are innocent?” Or “I’m not that bad?” But as I talked about in the Good Friday post – we are. Just one moment of sin condemns us. Just one white lie. Just one moment of selfishness. We all deserve hell. The real wonder of God isn’t why He would send good men to hell (for there are no good men!!) but why He would pardon broken, sinful creatures like us. Why He chose to allow His son to enter into history and pay a price that we couldn’t bear – all the while being spit on by the very people He was dying for.. That’s the question I can’t get. Because it is quite clear that I deserve hell. I’ve offended – and constantly offend – a righteous, holy, perfect, infinite and eternal God. Every day. I deserve hell. So do you.

Justice

Justice.  You cry out for it. I cry out for it. This world cries out for justice. I heard it loud and clear after the Sandy Hook massacre, you see it after heinous crimes. People call out for it for corporate greed. Hell will execute God’s justice. When time as we know it is fulfilled and Christ comes back – as a Judge this time, not as a baby  - justice will be complete. Every sin will be taken into account. For the Christian we will hear FORGIVEN. FORGIVEN. IT’S ALL FORGIVEN - Every single one of our sins will be forgiven – not because of any worth in us – but because of Christ’s completed work. For those who are outside of Christ – those sins will be taken into account. Every sin will be charged, hell will be the place where the just sentence for sin is carried out.

D.A. Carson says it like this:

Do you really want nothing but totally effective, instantaneous justice? Then go to hell.

That’s It

The Bible leaves no room for question on this one. Jesus leaves no room for debate. Hell is a horrible place. God doesn’t want you to go there – but if you choose to go there by choosing to trust in self or choosing to put off a decision on trusting Christ – then He will allow you to go there. His righteous wrath will be poured out on you there. Not because He was offended that you don’t believe in Him, you won’t be there as an innocent person condemned by some jealous and capricious God. You will be there because you have a sin nature, because you are not innocent, or good. In the light of a Perfect and Holy God – you fall short. I fall short. Well short:

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Romans 3:9-18

Let that verse sink in. I’m going to Heaven – but I don’t deserve that. I deserve hell. I deserve eternal suffering. If God sent me there, He’d be well within His right as the Sovereign King of this world. In earthly measurements, I’m a saint compared to Hitler. But God? God sees the heart. If God were to come down right now and open your heart fully and completely and play it out on a stadium jumbotron – would you be okay with everyone in your life being there? Every sin, every impure thought, every fall to temptation.. I wouldn’t. God sees the heart. Not only does He know what is on it but He knows what our deepest motives are. He sees our smallest sins. And when we compare ourselves to our Creator we see that we aren’t any better than anyone. There is one area where the entire human race has full equality. There is no difference in social status, there is no 99% and 1% – we are all equally unfit and unworthy of standing on our own before a Holy, Perfect and Righteous God. Each of us deserves hell equally.

That’s Why The Good News is So Good.

I won’t share it again here, you can go read it on yesterday’s post. You can go to this site I link to below to read more about it. But I urge you. I exhort you to consider this Truth. I don’t share this because I want to win friends and influence people. I don’t share this because I get some points if you believe in some pool at church. I share this because I believe hell exists. Because I love you. Because I don’t want you to suffer without contemplating the weight of what rightfully awaits us apart from Christ.

This is a “today” question. Today is the day of salvation. We don’t know when we move from here to eternity, no one wakes up thinking this is the day I die.

My contact info is on this blog. I’ll even take your phone call if you have sincere questions here and you want to hear more. I’ll trade e-mails with you if the motive is to seek more understanding or get more verses to study. But my prayer – my sincere prayer is that you don’t go down the broad path that leads to hell.

Yesterday’s post about the Good News.

A site with more info on how to become a Christian.

Let this be your first Easter celebrating grace and forgiveness that comes from Faith in Christ.

The post Bad news . . . appeared first on Straight Path Solutions, a SQL Server Consultancy.

This year, I want to talk about the Gospel of Christ. The Good News that Christ offers the world.

The Gospel Isn’t

To get some examples of what the Gospel isn’t, I can look to what I thought it was before I was a Christian. I can look to what often hear people ask or say about Christianity. It isn’t:

• A set of rules designed to rob you joy – In fact it isn’t even a set of rules.
• Something that requires math or science skills to decipher – It isn’t a secret formula that only some can know and others can figure out. It isn’t something you have to go through an intermediary to understand.
• Scales that balance your good and your bad and having your good just tip over the bad
• Giving the right amount of money to some church
• Having someone tell you you are mostly good and well intentioned so everything is fine
• Going to the right church

The Gospel Is

The Gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ – the Righteous Son of God  died to satisfy the punishment of our sins, rose again on the third day triumphant over death and sin. Through that death, salvation is offered to anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus and His works on the cross proved through his resurrection. There is no condemnation for those who believe – the wrath of God that we all deserve is put off through Christ’s actions.

That’s it.  

You see. The Bible declares that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23)  - and you don’t have to look too hard to see that that is true. God’s law is clear and precise. Ever tell a lie? Ever look with lust? Ever get so angry that you’ve hated? Have you ever not loved God with all your heart and loved your neighbor as yourself? Then you are like me – a sinner.

The Bible then says that there is a punishment for that sin – death (Romans 6:23 Isaiah 59:2) – eternal separation from Christ. You see God is righteous and we can’t enter His presence in our unrighteous state. In fact – He hates our sin. Our sin compared to His Righteousness fully condemns us and leaves us all in deserve of Hell. There is no other place for us. We deserve the punishment that God has in store for sinners.

That’s what makes the gospel so good..  We have no ability to earn our salvation. We have no hope on our own. We can’t even want to have a relationship with God on our own without His grace leading us there. But God made the move. He sent Christ to take on our sins – receive the punishment for them (and that punishment wasn’t just the horrible physical torture – He was cursed on that cross (Galatians 3:13) He bore the full weight of our sins. The pure and spotless Lamb of Christ became a curse on behalf of a bunch of sinners (myself included) who didn’t deserve or want the gift He was offering.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible explains this:

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

-  Romans 5:6-8

 The Most Important Question You’ll Ever Answer

(Or.. What will you do with the Gospel Message?)

Who is Jesus Christ to you? This isn’t an optional question. The Bible tells us that everyone will answer this question. Ignoring the question in this life is still answer.  If you choose indecision here, you’ve made your choice. Either He is the Righteous Son of God who took on your sins, who clothed you in His Righteousness and is your Savior – your Lord – or He isn’t.

That’s uncomfortable. It’s offensive to many. But it’s God’s truth. And the answer to this question isn’t just a matter of where you spend eternity – though that does ride on the answer. The answer is about your life here, also. Either you’ll live your life seeking to please God, knowing that you are not forsaken, having the hope and assurance that is offered through the acts we celebrate on Easter weekend – or you won’t.

The Gospel Message Is Still Relevant To Christians

I see a lot of Christians putting the thought in people’s heads that this walk in faith is about rules and key performance indicators. If you can answer the “Who is Christ to you?” question as your savior – then you need to step back and really get lost on the Gospel more. I can say this because I know I need to.

You see, central to this Gospel message is the fact that we cannot earn this salvation. We do not deserve it. It wouldn’t be “good news” if it was just one more way. It’s good news because a way was opened up to something that we couldn’t attain on our own.

It’s beyond that. In fact – we deserve Hell. We deserve suffering. We deserve any curse ever called out in the bible. We deserve the curse that God placed on His Son on that cross. Yes Jesus came in love, yes Jesus went to that cross in love and obedience – but that wasn’t love being poured out on Christ on that cross. That was the wrath we deserve.

Too many Christians (myself included) live “God and I” lives. We gloat about holiness, we brag about rules we follow, we seem to fall into the trap of believing that we are somehow adding something to our salvation, our assurance or our growth as Christians. And that throws people off. That makes people believe that there is some secret formula and handshake or rulebook. Nothing could be further from the truth. We didn’t add a single thing to our salvation – we didn’t even want our salvation without God’s grace leading us there. So why then, do we think we can add anything on to it after the fact? Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked, the Bible tells us so. We aren’t saved because there is some redeeming trait in us that God just couldn’t live without having in Heaven. We aren’t saved because God knew that we would eventually somehow fully follow the law (which none of us can do! Go read Romans 6 a few times). Our churches are and will remain full of sinners. Even the most God honoring church is full of sinners – sinners saved by grace. We need to remember that. I need to remember that.

This Easter

If you are a Christian, reflect on your salvation. Reflect on who you are in the light of a Holy God. Reflect on God’s love, yes, but reflect on just what it means to have his wrath poured out on Christ. What it means that your sins were imputed onto Christ on that cross. Reflect that the most important question you can answer is who Christ is to you. That means so much. Christ is everything to you, he is everything to me. But in this easy life we have in the Western world we can forget what that means. We have security, we are eating, we have fun, we have friends, we have relatively good lives – most of us. When we have so much we can sometimes forget about what this means. What we have been given is so precious that it can never be taken away. We didn’t earn it, we couldn’t, and we can’t lose it. If you are Christ’s and He is yours – it doesn’t matter how bad your day or your life gets.

If you aren’t a Christian. Please look up some of the verses I mentioned, watch the video below. Ask yourself what you thought the Gospel message was. So many don’t hear the real Gospel. They don’t get presented the real gospel. They either get presented some set of rules or some watered down mush – but not the simple message that Christ died for the ungodly, He was resurrected and He has the power to cleanse you from your sins and remove all condemnation from you. 

This video explains the Gospel.

This site explains salvation. It is my sincere prayer that you trust Christ and that you can enjoy resurrection Sunday like you never have before.

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A Short Disclaimer…

I’m not the father of this SQL Community – and sometimes I’m a divisive old Uncle spouting off on “the way things used to be” or “how the darn kids and entitled brats are ruining this country!” at Thanksgiving dinner. So I’m not here to be a lecturer or a “do as I say” admonisher… But sometimes I think we all – myself included – can lose site of the goal of the sharing at times.. This came to mind for a few reasons and none of the reasons are spectacularly negative either. Just an observation that gave me pause for introspection.

• I’m part of various communities, in some of these communities I’m there as a welcome guest of the organizer. Some of these things are special invites that somehow I received, even though there are so many other deserving folks out there. Every so often lately I’ve heard more whining from some of the other invited guests who are also there by the graces of the organizers. They complain about silly things and can get lost in odd arguments and long winded e-mail threads repeating what others say just rephrased. Mind you this isn’t everyone, just a vocal minority. It’s a little frustrating, it’s like we’ve lost the ability to think rationally and consider that there are people on the other end of our electronic rants.
• It’s my MVP award anniversary next week, so that as me thinking about giving back and it also has me frantically trying to put in a couple nominations for people who contribute a lot that I should have done long ago. I don’t know if it weighs more coming in from an MVP but I want to get those in before next Monday just in case.
• I’ve been watching a post on Tom LaRock‘s blog and just checked back on a couple comments and they made me smile and inspired this post.

You see? Tom wrote the post for the person out there thinking of doing this or struggling to do it.. That person came to the post, ignored all the garbage in the comments, read the article, was helped along, and is left in a better spot. In fact this person was helped so much they felt it important to say, “thanks”.  Someone was helped – you can delete 80% of the comments and still say mission accomplished.

Now I know Tom. I know the others who were commenting – I know they all do this to help. But when I see threads like that or I see some of the whining in various settings, it makes me wonder - what the heck?!

I don’t really have a point here other than these few thoughts I’ll end with in bullets. But first an Admission -

I love being an MVP. I’m happy that I was awarded, and I hope I get awarded again next week. The powers that be at Microsoft have already decided this weeks ago they just don’t share that until the official date, so I’m not trying to sway anything. In one sense I hope I do get it, I LOVE the interaction with the product team, I love the great dealings I have with MVPs. I enjoy the access. I won’t lie, some part of me likes putting that logo on my slide decks and my laptop. At the same time, I kind of hope I don’t get it. There are so many deserving people out there – many are more deserving than I am. Many pour their lives into giving back to the SQL community – and for the most part none of them do it to become an MVP. They do it because they want to help. I don’t want to turn into someone who feels he’s entitled to a status or award, I don’t want to turn into someone who can fall under lower standards because it is just a “renewal” – I don’t want to turn into someone who gives back to just keep a status. I want to keep the same passion I had when I was first nominated and awarded. I want to be helpful and useful.

The final thoughts:

• Think before you speak.. Don’t let yourself get worked up if someone disagrees with you. Apply a test – is the disagreement worth losing a friendship over or causing an uproar over? If it is well then have that discussion..
• Don’t be mad if someone was helped by someone else. That’s jealousy. We don’t need anymore of it.
• You can disagree and correct in public – but you better do it carefully. When you do it in public and in the written word it can be often misunderstood. Sometimes you weren’t misunderstood, you just wanted to be a jerk. Don’t do it.
• People see through Passive Aggressive – remember that.
• Don’t do this unless your goal is to be helpful. If you are speaking, blogging, etc to get an MVP status, then you are doing it wrong and it will come out in interactions. If you are passionate about the community and sharing and helping others – then be useful and do it. If you aren’t well then don’t.
• You really do gather more bees with honey.. I can tell you that I am a cranky and bad person at heart – I’m selfish. There are days where I just am having a bad day and want to shred someone else down. I don’t know where that comes from and I don’t like it. But when I ignore that and build someone else up, and encourage someone else, you know what happens? I end up having a better day and I see the community around me increase.
• Can’t we all just get along? We all are in it together.

I’ve said this in a few posts and I believe it – All boats rise or sink together in the harbor. I love this SQL Server community. I feel it is the way it is because the early pioneers in it were sharing people who think of others first. They were people who loved to share just to share. Let’s keep that spirit alive.  

Thanks for the post Tom – thanks for helping someone out – that’s why we’re here.

And while I have your attention, I just recently discovered a new blogger. He’s a friend of Bradley Ball (who has an amazing blog himself). His name is Lonny. He is on twitter and his blog is just starting but looks incredibly promising, I think. Check it out and let’s encourage new faces to step forward in this community. Let’s be open and cooperative. Remember when we used to trip over ourselves welcoming new bloggers? I liked that.

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Evolution of Memory & Storage Prices

Not your SQL Server memory shopping list, I hope!

I’m still sort of young at 34. In High School, I was in the class of ’97. In 1997, memory prices were somewhere around $3 per MB.. Capacities were lower  and prices were higher. To get a machine with 4GB of RAM back then (Forget the machine price, that would have been a big setback by itself) you would have probably spent somewhere around $12,000. A “decent” consumer harddrive back then would have cost you somewhere around $100/GB or $400 for a slllloowww spinny, rusty-metal 4GB Hard Drive..

Today?  That same hard drive spend could probably get you two decent SATA 6 SSDs at about 256GB each and you can throw them in a mirror to present one fault tolerant drive. Over at Crucial that same memory budget could get you somewhere around 1TB of RAM – though you’d probably be better off just buying a new server, putting 96GB of RAM in it, decent processor(s) and maybe put some SSD drives in it – for about the same price.

I’m not going to play the comparison game here with different years – go look at the links I shared above. Look at the charts. Memory and Hard Drive space are less expensive.. But.. They aren’t just less expensive. The performance changes at an exponential rate. Just 13 years ago 15k drives were new and fast.  Today just one lonely SSD can blow away a handful of drives from 2000 or even 2010 in most tests.

This Isn’t News

I know.. I know.. You probably think I can file this in the “obviously!” category like my post on how SQL Server join syntax has changed… I cannot tell you how often I still bump into servers that have a lot of data on them, with pitiful amounts of memory on them (and by pitiful I mean 2013 pitiful – 8GB, 4GB, etc.) and they are suffering some performance issues because of this. The point is – it isn’t obvious. Not to the folks making decisions.

You see, though, when I went off into consulting, I sort of thought that I’d get beyond those sort of discussions. Surely out in the flashy world of big challenges and serious performance tuning gigs this wouldn’t ever rear its head, would it? Well.. It does.

Aren’t you yelling at your clients right now? No.. I’ve had this conversation with some of my clients and they’ve moved ahead in their thinking on hardware, they realize that they are pricing the heavy hitting, pretty nice complete systems (HBAs/NICs/sometimes OS, sometimes not) in the $15k range instead of the $30-45k range that higher end servers were priced at even 6 years ago. They realize that giving their servers the memory and disk performance they need is easier than it ever has been.

I’m talking to the folks who haven’t hired me.. The folks who have great staff asking for memory and disk and better IO performance.   To the managers who hear these requests but then start getting scared because they fear killing the budget with memory and drives – or even new servers with better CPUs.

You don’t need to be afraid! Go to HP’s site. Go to Dell’s site – whoever you use. Spec out a “dream server” and load it up with RAM, load it up with internal SSDs and thumb your nose at the SAN team and say “we’ll manage just fine with our umpteen and a half IOPs, thanks..” What’s the price? Not as bad as you thought, right?

SQL Server and Your Users Changed Too

We keep more data than ever before. We have more customers than ever before. People are using smart phones that have more processing power than computers did when I was in High School (and that wasn’t that long ago as we’ve already established). People are on social media. People are impatient. Latency is measured in ms not seconds. We have fast internet connections everywhere.. My phone’s data connection puts the modem I used to connect to BBSs as a nerdy geeky teenager to shame. Your customers are impatient and we should be giving our database servers the resources they deserve. The manufacturers of DBMSs are changing also. They are realizing the lay of the land and have been making their products ready to live in a world where great memory is cheaper than amazing help. New offerings like SQL Server’s Hekaton are built around this concept, too. Do yourself a favor and take a look at your hardware. How old is it? Planning on upgrading soon anyway? Why not pull out the stops and spend an extra couple thousand dollars or so and look at the memory and drives you are throwing in your next server..

You Still Need SQL Server Consultants

Now.. This isn’t my way of saying I’m becoming a RAM reseller or anything. I had this discussion with a friend of mine and also a SQL consultant (who, like me is an MVP but unlike me is a MCM – great guy!), Brent Ozar (that’s the cool thing in this space, btw.. you can link to the “competition” it’s okay because we’re all in it together.) We were talking about this in the context of a mutual client and some recommendations there. Brent said he pretty much just tells folks to go for a 128GB server and allocate 64GB to SQL (Max SQL Standard edition can hold) nowadays. My first gut check was, “really?” but when you look at the pricing, it isn’t actually that bad of a move. If not 128GB, it is at least time to get out of the mindset of scraping by with your memory calculator measuring in 4GB increments.

This doesn’t mean folks like us don’t want clients. It doesn’t mean that your developers should have hardware thrown at their problems or that you don’t need that wellness check. It just means that in 2013, hardware shouldn’t really be as much of a concern. It also may mean – and this may come out wrong – that throwing hardware at a problem as one, initial, phase of an attack may not be that bad of an idea (ducking.. it’s okay I wanted to throw something at me right there too). I am not an advocate of it, and it will eventually not work so you should address those kinks. What I am saying, though, is if you are running a DB that needs some performance tuning and development help and you are running on a server built like it was still 2005 - you might consider looking around at the hardware available nowadays, while reaching out for that helping hand on the performance tuning side.  2005 me would have laughed at 2013 me if I reported back on the 1TB to 2TB of memory I just helped a client upgrade their SQL Server to. That was “expensive” but by memory standards in 2005? Not really.

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We All Knew SQL Server Joins Were Changing…

I know… I’m not really telling a lot of folks anything new here, am I? Most of us have been writing INNER JOIN and LEFT OUTER JOIN for a long while now. Not everyone got the memo though and a quick little funny story that I experienced with a client of mine is a good reminder of that But first..

Review on SQL Join Syntax Evolution

It used to be that you would just list your tables in the from clause separated by a comma and join the tables via the where clause:

SELECT A.Column1, B.Column1

FROM TableName1 AS A, TableName2 AS B

WHERE A.IDColumn = B.IDColumn

That joins TableName1 and TableName2 on any rows that have a match in the ID column. If we remember back to our SQL Server join 101 – that means that we are doing an inner join. The rows that satisfy the condition are returned – they have to be in each table. To get all the rows from one table regardless of whether they have a match and then return the info from other tables if they have a match, we do an outer join.. A left outer join gives us the rows in the left hand table whether there is a match or not with the rows in the right hand table. If there is a match, get get that second tables requested rows as well. If not, we get a NULL. The “old” way of doing this:

SELECT A.Column1, B.Column1

FROM TableName1 AS A, TableName2 AS B

WHERE A.IDColumn *= B.IDColumn

When the ANSI-92 standard came out, the “JOIN” word was added to the lexicon and it eventually started circulating through the database products out there. Instead of a *= or += in a WHERE clause, you use the right word and just tell your DBMS what you are joining on via the ON clause.. The two examples above respectively become:

SELECT A.Column1, B.Column1

FROM TableName1 AS A

INNER JOIN TableName2 AS B

ON A.IDColumn *= B.IDColumn

AND

SELECT A.Column1, B.Column1

FROM TableName1 AS A

LEFT OUTER JOIN TableName2 AS B

ON A.IDColumn *= B.IDColumn

Alright… So I probably just bored 95% of you reading this because you either already knew about this change or never even knew about the “old way” of doing joins. You can still do your inner joins this way (I don’t recommend it for the reasons below) but you cannot do your outer joins this way in SQL Server 2012.

A Story About Joins…

I don’t share this to poke fun at anyone. It is a real story that happened to a real client of mine and a real DBA at a real client of theirs. No names or industries will be shared here. It is humorous, and it may be one of the funniest exchanges I’ve been a part of this year on the job. (It was only funny because it was very quickly rectified and no reports were harmed in the process)..

So.. I had a client I’ve helped a couple times with some consulting work. Great customer. Great product and service. They host for the vast majority of their clients and offer their product as a service. A couple customers, though, self host. I was engaged by them to help with some SQL tuning and a sanity check to help their product perform the best it could. During the process of that check, I noticed they occasionally used some of the older style outer joins that were deprecated and soon wouldn’t be supported. I included that on a list of some things to work through. It wasn’t the most critical, but I told them it affected readability of their code and the support of that syntax was waning. They agreed to fix that stuff and did end up fixing almost all instances of it, but they hadn’t done a thorough test on 2012 yet so they had a couple here or there they left hanging around..

Fast forward to this week..  They called up asking for some assistance and it was a client affecting issue so I told them I’d see what I could do. Turns out one of their self-hosted clients upgraded to SQL Server 2012. They were advised to thoroughly test and ensure all looked good because they hadn’t yet tested the app on SQL Server 2012. Well somehow the client ended up doing the upgrade and a couple reports started failing after they were live with success for a couple days on SQL Server 2012. They asked me to look and I quickly looked at the report definitions and found “WHERE column *= column” and said AHA! This JOIN syntax won’t work! And told them. They agreed and started working on changing those couple reports that were still using the old syntax.

I “Fixed” The Typos!

But… At the same time as I was finding the issue, they received an e-mail from their client’s DBA/Developer indicating they found and fixed the issue. The client DBAs assessment of the situation was There was a typo in your code… I found some cases where an “=” sign was turned into a “*=”. I fixed the typo and turned those back into “=” signs and all works!

Now. Because I knew we had the real solution and it would all be better soon, I felt that a quick bout of laughter in my office would be okay when I read that note. So I did. I mean.. It’s funny. If it happened to me and I was the DBA, I’d look back and think it’s funny, too. I mean.. Come on.. It’s funny. Those typo fixes were the same thing as rewriting “LEFT OUTER JOIN” as “INNER JOIN” – total behavior change and different results can definitely happen.

SQL Server Joins – Lessons From This…

Again – we rectified the situation, everyone is happy and everything is good with that situation. I was hit with a few lessons after that situation though. I think they are important (and I also think they help to excuse the DBA who honestly thought there was a typo):

1. There is a new generation out there - Not everyone started with these database systems when everyone did their joins in the WHERE clause. In fact there is a generation at work right now in our offices that have never seen one of these types of joins. Not in college, not in the field, not in a book.
2. Someone else maintains your code - Listen.. Your code isn’t self documenting. Comments aren’t useless. If you build something, build it so those coming after you can pick it up and work with it. Don’t be that developer. It may even be you that has to pick up your code later. Make it easier on the next person…
3. Pay attention to the deprecated lists - Microsoft maintains a list of these. Go through it, see what you are doing that isn’t in the long term game plan and adapt… They don’t just yank something out, they tend to give you 3 versions advanced notice! If you were planning on maintaining your code into the future, you shouldn’t be doing things that Microsoft gave you warning about removing. Now this client of mine didn’t know that and they were working to adjust but are you? 
4. Shotgun troubleshooting is tricky - Now I don’t fault this DBA too badly here. It would look like a typo to me if it highlighted in red squiggly lines and SSMS said “invalid syntax” and the query right above it had an “=” sign and it worked. But… I’m a big fan of accurate and informed troubleshooting when your data is on the line. I blog a lot about troubleshooting and this post talks about some steps. One of them is to research the solution and understand it.
5. The older left outer joins really don’t work anymore - That’s a good reminder.. Those *= joins don’t work in 2012. Whether you are in 2008 compatibility mode or not. Prepare for that if you haven’t already..
6. <shameless self promotion> If you are a vendor – have your “stuff” reviewed - One of the things we do well at Linchpin People is help application vendors make the most of their product. We can make sure you are doing the best you can be and we’ll help find these potential issues before your clients call us and we help them with them. An independent set of eyes on your performance, maintenance recommendations and code can help me not write blog posts like this and instead write posts like this. </shameless self promotion>

So that’s it. SQL Server Join Syntax has changed, it was just awhile ago and it isn’t until now (SQL Server 2012) that the old style outer joins are no longer SQL Server Joins…

The post SQL Server Join Syntax: It’s Changed! appeared first on Straight Path Solutions, a SQL Server Consultancy.

• Perspective – I took a little trip to the little hill I grew up on last year. Only I thought it was a big hill. 14 years ago, I didn’t know what SQL Server was, now I get to teach people about how to use SQL Server better. Perspective is a neat thing.
• Relationships – I’m in a lot of different ones. I’m thankful for each of them. I’ve had some amazing mentors and coaches along the way. They’ve inspired me to share what I learn, as I learn it, with others. I have an amazing wife, wonderful children and great relatives.
• Self-Employment – Last year was my first year at it. I’m still thankful for the ups and the downs and the lessons along the way.
• The SQLFamily – I’m blessed to have been born in the country I was born in – I didn’t choose that.I also sort of fell into SQL Server and I’ve been blessed by that. The support Microsoft gives, the givers in the community, etc. It’s great to work with this technology.
• Grace – God’s Grace – I’m a sinner. I deserve eternal punishment but I get eternal satisfaction in the presence of the very One who created this earth. Grace is great.

What to add?

I’m stil just as awestruck by last years today as I was this week last year. Maybe nothing. I’m so thankful for an amazing family that loves me and I love. I’m still thankful for success so far as a consultant and for all of the things above. I’m thankful that I have a great group of teens in the youth group my wife and I head. I’m stil proud of and thankful for the country I live in. The only thing I wanted to add after some of my political involvement and some of the bitterness of the election cycle from both sides is..

I Didn’t Build This

And I’m thankful for it. During the election President Obama gave a speech. “My side” took that speech and ran rampant with it. I don’t think he was saying what rabid talking heads thought he was saying though. I think he just said that success doesn’t just happen in a vacuum without help. He’s right. I don’t think that means that we need an overarching central government or “extra” help – but I’m thankful that I live in a nation where I had an equal opportunity to rise beyond the means I grew up in and the circumstances of my life to be where I am. I’m no millionaire, and I don’t believe I will be – it just isn’t a goal of mine… But I’m comfortable. I’ve built a skillset, I’ve built a house for my family, I put wood in the wood stove and I live a comfortable life. I’ve built one business and am a business partner in another one that is in the building stages now – Linchpin People…

I didn’t get here on my own. Not entirely, anyway. I’ve had a support system of a patient wife while I hopped jobs and gained skills. I’ve had in-laws help with child care and encourage my wife and I. They love us so much and we’re blessed by their presence in our lives. I’ve had some amazing mentors. I have some insanely smart and talented business partners in Brian and Andy. I live in a nation with an infrastructure that allowed me to grow in technology. I live in a nation that had a structure that allowed me to hold my nose and jump in the pool (the link there is one of the blog posts I’m most “proud of”, by the way).

I may not have voted for President Obama, but I think I know what he meant and I’m thankful for that. I live in a nation where I had this opportunity. I wasn’t guaranteed success – I had to pull up my own boot straps, but my chances of success were made easier by all those around me. I’m thankful for that. So thankful.

Have a blessed thanksgiving – and thanks for reading this post. I appreciate all of the people who actually seem to enjoy reading my writing. I think you are odd for it, but I’m thankful for it.

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A New Hashtag

So I hate it when we come up with ideas that everyone likes and then life moves and the idea fizzles. I think it was at a SQL Saturday in Atlanta with a bunch of folks that I heard it first seriously discussed. I’ve heard it discussed at PASS events before and I’ve seen people bring their daughters or sons to SQL events before. So this isn’t a new idea. But I think the way that a swarm of people jumped on this idea of “take your kid day” tells me – it’s a good idea.. Or just a really popular bad idea. But either way we should give it a shot. So I thought we’ll just use #passKIT (Kids in technology) for now.. Change it if you like.. I’m just writing a post to get folks talking about it. This is just a quick “hey.. let’s talk about this as a larger group” post. So… Let’s talk about this..  We can do it here in the comments.. We can do it on a bunch of blogs.. On twitter.. Maybe SQLPASS will setup a DL.. But let’s poke holes in this idea and see if it can happen.

So a bunch of people started discussing this and are discussing this right now. I think it was Tom LaRock (Twitter/Blog) who first seized on my tweet with the “let’s do this for all kids!” spirit. If I added the others now, I’d spend all my time finding twitter handles and I’d still miss a bunch. Go look in twitter for around the time this post went live and you’ll see them. Maybe some of them will comment here also..

The Concept (loosely)

There isn’t any concept yet. It’s an idea that is developing. But basically - encourage our daughters.. encourage our sons… Let them see the other side of what we do all day (not just the phone call that interrupts the game, the other end of the laptop that comes out during family time to fix that issue at work) Let them see some of the fun..  Let them see the value of paying attention to their education. Show them that data can be fun. Let them watch mommy or daddy give a session in one of the normal sessions or tracks. We’d be planting seeds basically… None of us want to force our kids into our field, but we want our sons and daughters to have the opportunity to go this way if they choose. We want them to have the ability to take steps to do what they want to do and be what they want to be when they’re adults. This is one way to encourage them and show them what a path looks like.

What it isn’t or shouldn’t be -

It shouldn’t be a surprise attack at just any SQL Saturday anytime. It shouldn’t be a rules free babysitting club for young kids. It shouldn’t be a time to dumb down regular session content or have “regular” sessions interrupted by kids laughing, talking, crying and playing DS games. It shouldn’t even be a regular occurrence – if it should be one at all..

Some Ideas

Just some of the ideas that were floating around on twitter and in my head as we started talking about this spit out here.. We’ll see if this goes anywhere before developing any of these.. And if this is an absolutely horrible idea then it shall die the death a really horrible idea deserves

• Some sessions/panels for the kids – Again this depends on the age of the kids. But sort of like a career day at school. Let the kids ask questions. Let some adults talk a bit about the decisions that they’ve made along the way. Talk about some of the education that was important to get to where they are today.
• Some Fun Sessions For kids – I don’t know what this looks like. One idea I had was – send a survey to parents and a survey to kids ahead of the event. Try and encourage as many responses as you can.. Then during the session talk about the survey and go through the data.. Create a simple database for the data, load it, create some reports, create some data visualizations and bring the data to life with a tool like Power View.. Make the survey fun and funny and have fun with the results. Maybe we can see the difference from the adult and kid perspective of different questions… Maybe a session where someone can talk about the technology behind the scenes of things the different age groups can identify with.
• Hands On - Not sure what, but some hands on technology for the kids.. Some Kinect data visualizations, some labs for older kids. Maybe play with some data that is from different verticals for the older teens/pre-teens. See the data and data tools behind cancer research, behind sports coaching, behind logistics, behind TV networks, in finance, etc.

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This year the Birds of a Feather lunch will be the Friday of Summit during the regular lunch in the regular lunch room. 60-80 tables will be set aside and there will be signage and directions inside the lunch room. All you have to do is pick one of the table topics below.

A special thanks goes out to the folks at PASS HQ (LANA! KATHY! and everyone really!) who do a lot of the hard work and the reminding of these things. They juggle a heck of a lot behind the scenes. Also to Andrew Karcher – you see, I’m going to miss my first SQL PASS Summit in about 4? 5? years so I won’t be there to the help on setup and to walk around and make sure no fights break out between the DBA and Dev tables. Andrew is stepping up to the plate and doing that this year. Thanks!!!!

A Little History First…

So 2009 was the year the Summit did the first Birds of a Feather lunch. The idea is simple (and I still don’t know who came up with the idea of trying this at the PASS Summit! I just know Blythe from PASSHQ at the time needed volunteers to help organize this concept and I said “sounds simple enough.”) – instead of folks going through the lunch buffet by themselves, and finding a table with the most open seats and eating by themselves, we figured we’d provide a way to get folks sitting together, if they wanted to.  So the premise here is we would create a bunch of table topics, provide a list of those table topics to people ahead of the lunch and they could sit with others interested in the same topic. The first three years, we’ve asked table hosts to come up with specific table topic titles and people would sit down at a topic title that interested them.

What Worked In The Past

Most of the tables had people sitting at them and I’ve always walked around and listened in at each table – great conversations ensued at most and some friendships even were formed because of these. I’d call that a success. There were some hitches though:

• Topic Titles Were Long – I encouraged the hosts to come up with creative table titles in previous years. That was a lot of fun and many came up with witty titles. BUT – We had query issues on the list.. Our users (the attendees finding a table) now had to do a scan through 50+ long titles to quickly decide where to sit. This wasn’t efficient, and a lot of people just went for the first one they found or a table not part of the BoF lunch.
• People Didn’t Find Info Ahead of Time – Further complicating our problem above, most people didn’t find the info about the topics ahead of time, so they were left to look at a few signs and try and make that decision. A little overwhelming, perhaps.
• Flyers – The last couple years we printed (wasted) a lot of pages of table topics. First half of the sheet was the topics, second half was a “map” and we got a bunch of PASS HQ volunteers and we attacked folks heading into lunch with a sheet. Most quickly looked away like we were telling them about a PASS credit card offer.

What It Looks Like This Year

Some parts still remain the same. Like the roles and responsibilities:

PASS provides the icebreaking - a technical affinity  to coalesce around. A lunch room. Some food.

Your Table Hosts Talk with Ful Mouths – MVPs, MCMs, Microsoft Employees and starting this year, Summit speakers have hosted various tables. They’ll help encourage conversations around the topic area and help foster networking.

You eat and meet folks. Sometimes you get questions answered – The whole reason we do the BoF tables is for attendees. Attendees pick a table based on a topic area they are interested in, grab a seat there and join the conversation. Great way for you to learn more about a topic, meet others who are interested, meet some new friends and maybe get a question answered from the host or other attendees.

What’s different this year? The Topics.

Instead of inundating you with a totally different topic title per table. We are going to try going with pretty broad table topics this year and see how it works out. We still great table hosts interested in a whole range of aspects of these topics but now you can just pick that general topic and sit at any of the tables with a sign on it for that topic. A lot of the table hosts will be blogging and tweeting about their hosting and we’ll get a list of the hosts out once we are agreed on the finality of it later today.

The Topics 

The bolded words below are the topic titles. These are what the signs will be on the tables. The non-exhaustive list of sub topics are the kind of conversations you can expect to have at a table in that topic area. Any questions? Leave a comment and I’ll answer.

• The Cloud - Azure, working with data in the cloud, syncing between cloud and on premise, etc.
• Big Data – Hadoop integration with Microsoft, working with Big Data, analytics on Big Data, etc.
• Data Warehousing & Reporting -  SSAS, Analytics, Data Mining, Dimensional Data Modeling techniques, Considerations and best practices with data collection, warehousing and dissemination with tools like PowerPivot/Power View, SharePoint, etc.
• SSIS and Data Integration - SSIS, EIM, DQS, MDS & other TLAs
• Performance - Database and system performance baselining, optimization techniques and tricks, getting the most out of your instances, understanding hardware, etc
• Database and Data Development - Data modeling, SQL Server Development best practices, T-SQL enhancements in SQL 2012, Source Control for databases, etc.
• DBA – Database Administration Best practices, Virtualization, Consolidation, HA/DR, Backup & Recovery, Troubleshooting, Upgrading and Migrating
• #SQLFamily - Meet current and past BoD members at PASS,  talk about PASSWIT,  some Professional Development thoughts, learn about SQL Saturdays and User Groups, Get excited about volunteering, learn about #SQLHelp on twitter and all of the great resources out there available for free within the #SQLFamily

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I think we suffer from that as DBAs. Sometimes we are the problem, even when we aren’t. Why? Because we don’t chat, we don’t

Part of the solution is expressing ourselves appropriately and effectively. Let’s chit chat about that here. I’ll start off by saying I am not the one stop answer shop here and I would love to see your thoughts on how we get this wrong in the comments. Please – discuss. I’ll get the conversation going.

Improper Communication Leads To

We can choose to just talk to the other DBAs and our management and whine about the lack of understanding we see. We can vent to friends at User Group meetings or the SQL PASS Summit. That won’t solve anything. Improper communication has led to a lot of bad in the world. At NASA and some of it’s contractors you could say it was at least part of what led to the Challenger and Columbia tragedies – avoidable tragedies based on info teams had before either. We could blame a fair number of our armed conflicts on this as well as some of the tragic way certain conflicts were handled when politicians stuck in Washington failed to effectively communicate with the military tacticians in the field. It has been the cause of several avoidable aviation disasters – So much so that a simple – but effective – training process, Crew Resource Management, was created in the aviation industry..  And in our workplaces – it leads to downtime, increased IT expenditures, project delays, and tension. I’ve witnessed the effects of this failure with my clients repeatedly… One example -

Just recently I was at a shop that told me their disk layout was rated for high performance and would scale fine so we wouldn’t really need to test it like I wanted. I asked them how they knew this. Their response was basically, “Oh.. We told the off-site SAN team that this was to be high performance and we cared most about performance for the logs and the tempdb LUNs.” Sounded good but I asked if we could have a call with the SAN team to get a few things answered from them about how their particular SAN was laid out. We had that call to ask about SAN cache, RAID types, LUN layout, etc. During the call I asked how the LUNs for this particular cluster were setup… The answer back was, “Oh.. they are all slices off of different 5 disk RAID 5 groups” I asked what else was on them and they said not much yet but they were the last RAID groups available and would get the most allocations since the SAN was full until/unless more trays were purchased. I also said, “now the team here said they told you that the LUNs were all performance sensitive and that the TempDB and Log file LUNs needed to be high performance, those are also on  slices of 4+1 RAID 5 raid groups?”  The answer back was, “Yeah… That’s how we do all drives unless the team specifically asks for a specific RAID type or different setup… Everyone says their stuff is ‘High Performance’ but if all they tell us is the size, they get a slice off of a RAID 5 for the space they need.” I thanked them for their time and then had a conversation about communication with the SAN team with the local DBA team….

If we use this as our example and add in a little basics from crew resource management we can come up with at least a few simple rules -

Effective Communication…

1. Doesn’t leave room for assumption – The DBA team assumed High Performance meant dedicated RAID 10 in this case.. It didn’t mean anything, actually. Airliners have literally crashed because the crew each assumed the other was watching fuel or that fuel was fine..
2. Is Precise – “High Performance” is a bad request… It will almost always mean something different to the asker and to the asked… Spell out what you need. When you are complaining to a developer instead of saying (pardon me..), “your code sucks, I won’t implement this” – try and precisely tell them what’s wrong and how they can improve it.. They’ll learn something and you’ll have an ally in development as a result.
3. Seeks clarification – “High Performance” may be a bad request. But to see that and then just deliver the standard is intellectually dishonest and, well, lazy. If someone asks for something and there is room for assumption – clarify it. I talk about this in my “If you see something, say something” post.
4. Is Free of Attitude – I know… Developers are supposed to hate DBAs and DBAs are supposed to be grumpy to developers.. It ought not be that way, though. Listen, understand where the other person is coming from and help them out.
5. Is Concise – Yeah…… I’m up to 1,000 words already. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and I’m still working on it. It helps though. If your request is lost in a novel you won’t see a response. Especially in this age. Be concise, Mike…
6. Seeks Confirmation – In crew resource management there are a few steps to communication.. The process is something to the effect of 1.) Get their attention, 2.) State your concern/intention 3.) Explain the problem/reason from your view, 4.) Propose a solution or approach and 5.) Seek agreement/confirmation…  Close the deal! “Hey SAN Team – these drives are housing our critical app that will have a lot of transactions and runs our entire operation.. Performance is going to be visible and important here, I think we should go dedicated RAID 10 with 6 disks for TempDB and a dedicated mirror for logs because this is what we’re expecting for load. Do you have the spindles for that and does this approach make sense to you?” This is clear, concise and gives them an opportunity to counter, seek clarification, disagree or agree. If they agree and don’t deliver you now have something to fall back on and you figured out about the issues up front instead of the week of go live deployment.

Speaking of being concise, I’ll stop here. What are your tips and tricks to avoid “What we got here… Is a failure to communicate?” syndrome? How do you get along with your SAN team? What irks you about the way your DBAs talk to you? What could politicians learn from us? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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When “Well Meaning” Isn’t Enough

I was looking at the news today and a picture caught my eye… It was of an “art tragedy”… The image is below.. There was a fresco in a church of Jesus, it has been damaged over time by water and was in need of restoration. Pretty common story in old churches and museums across the world, right? Well what happened here is a great reminder for all of us – sometimes you need outside help… Sometimes “well meaning” isn’t enough…  You see.. A woman who attends the church didn’t like seeing this image of Christ damaged. I don’t blame her, we both love the same Jesus, and I see the value in works of art done in earlier generations and times. I love history. Well this woman could stand it no more, so she decided to take it upon herself to touch up the photo. Sadly, her results – while better than I could do – are.. well… pretty horrible. A goal in art restoration is to do as little “new” as possible and to bring things back to the state they were in.. In this case… Well if there wasn’t a before picture, you wouldn’t know what she was trying to do..

Pretend this is your data...

There are lessons for us in technology here… Being Well meaning isn’t always enough.. Sometimes you need to get trained, get help and get connected…

Get Training!

Managers – how up to speed is your team? Have they been supporting SQL Server 2000 their whole career? Do they even know the new features that came out in SQL Server 2008 let alone SQL Server 2012? Are your developers performing amazing feats of mental gymnastics because they aren’t harnessing the blessings of T-SQL improvements in SQL Server 2005, 2008 and 2012 and they still write T-SQL like it’s 2001? I think you’d be surprised… Are your DBAs afraid of virtualization still when there is no really great reason to be? Whether you go with individual mentoring for your team from a consultant (full disclosure – I am a consultant) or some great immersion training – like what SQL Skills offers, or Kalen Delaney offers through her SQL Server Internals courses. Or classes like my colleagues at Linchpin People offer or some of the great virtual and in person training that my friend Brent Ozar and his great team offer (most for free, btw!)

Get your team some training and they won’t turn your masterpiece (The Data) into something worthy of a comic strip. Like my friend Karen Lopez says – LOVE YOUR DATA... Get them that training or mentoring.

Get Help!

Sometimes an outside opinion and set of eyes is what you need. Maybe you have an amazing staff and they’ve been suggesting that you implement x, y and z but it hasn’t happened. Maybe they don’t know what to suggest because they haven’t been exposed to a lot of different environments. This is where consultants can help. I don’t mean to imply that you need a consulting firm with 45 multiplying bodies taking over your operations… I’ve worked at companies that have gone that way and all I ended up seeing was more expensive and mass produced images that come out the same more often than not.. I mean consider an outside set of eyes to look things over. Perform a health check/assessment/sanity check or whatever they call it. It doesn’t have to be me or my colleagues. That SQL Skills company I mentioned? Great folks! Brent Ozar and his team? I love working with them. Karen Lopez and her company, InfoAdvisors? How can you not trust the woman whose motto is to love your data? There are countless great firms out there to work with and there seems to be enough work to keep us all busy without needing to horde our client base. Sometimes it is worth spending a little money up front to make sure you are equipped for what the future will bring. That painting was probably pretty obvious to anyone who walked into the room as that well meaning woman was “fixing” it… But maybe to her – lost in the “operational details” of doing the actual repainting didn’t take the time to see what she had gotten herself into. She didn’t realize she was stuck until she was REALLY STUCK… They may be able to save that painting now – but it is going to cost a lot more to fix.. It is going to take a lot longer and it is possible that they are going to have to replace it with a photo of the original…. Your environment is the same way… Switch to proactive mode. Look for problems before the occur and you’ll spend some money on training and outside help – but I guarantee you that you’ll spend less than calling for that help after your precious artwork has been turned into a monkey…

Get Connected!

In cities and towns all across America – there are meetings going on from SQL Server User groups… On twitter you can ask a help and add the #sqlhelp hash tag and get a worldwide audience of SQL Server experts (and no matter when you answer you’ll almost always get SQL Server MCM Robert Davis answering you it seems) actually answering you. Visit Stack Overflow… Ever hear of PASS? The Professioanal Association of SQL Server Users? They do all sorts of online and in person training – including the worlds largest gathering of SQL Server geeks for a week long conference jam packed with networking, learning and Q&A with the experts and the makers of SQL Server… There is no reason for you or anyone on your team to be a lonely art restorer trying to solve the problem at hand late at night by yourself… These people are here to help and offer advice. You can chat about your plans and most of them are bold and friendly enough to laugh and say – you’re making a monkey! But they’ll suggest alternatives and contacts.. Check out SQL Server central! They have some amazing “Stairways” which are soup to nuts lessons on a topic. They start on the ground floor and build up to 500 level content. There is an entire community of people out there ready to help you and your team!

In closing – I’m not poking fun of this story. I feel for this woman who meant well. I’ve been in her shoes before as a full timer early in my career. I’ve helped a lot of folks out who have monumental tangles caused by well meaning folks who weren’t connected, weren’t trained and weren’t allowed to get help. I think this is a good story to learn from.

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It’s been a.little.while since my last blog post! I’ve been busy this summer! My wife and I bought a 2 room schoolhouse built in 1904 and have been up there during most of our free time renovating it so we can open it up as a resource for all of the homeschooling families in the area (Union Schoolhouse if you want to see more). I’ve been busy with client projects and meetings and busy moving forward with growth and projects at Linchpin People. So the blog… Well it’s been a bit neglected (though it’s brought me a few jobs this summer so I guess we can blame the blog on keeping me busy ) But I saw this month’s #meme15 topic and it looked like a good one. Especially since I never finished my series that were trying to convince you, dear reader, to join the ranks of independent consulting – that series started with my “I’m Cheating!” post…  I’ve also just had a great long conversation over dinner with a friend from the SQL Server world at the end of a client meeting the other day. This topic came up so the ideas are fresh in my mind.

Onto the #Meme15 Post…

First some background – Jason Strate organizes this and has a few rules. You can read all about it on his site. The topic this month is simple… List 5 reasons you love your job. So I’m writing this both as an independent consultant working for myself and as one of the business partners in a SQL Server consultancy at Linchpin People. The answers work well for each.

… In no particular order:

1 The Change of Scenery

When I’ve had a full time job, I’ve been working at a company with a predefined culture and set of problems and typically in one industry. There were a lot of things that would never change with any one company. That can be a great thing sometimes but it can also be a horrible thing. Especially to someone who likes to see things planned right, done well the first time and with the future in mind. As a full time employee those traits sometimes can be big burdens. Early in my career this really caused problems for me. It wouldn’t take long before the wind of idealism was beat out from behind my sails and I’d turn into a sarcastic, frustrated employee. I ended up coming into a company, making a lot of improvements in performance, reliability etc. then get stuck in firefighting mode or get frustrated and leave… Maybe that’s too much to admit in a blog post that clients and potential clients will see – but it’s the truth.

As a consultant I find that I’m often going into an environment that has been in “let’s just worry about today” mode and been bitten by doing that – they want help getting out of that mentality. I get to have clients in different sectors – A couple longer term clients of mine are fun – A big enterprise Credit Union in Seattle – the 4th largest in the country, a large city in MA, a couple smaller mom and pop shops that just need to know their DBs are behaving and a huge data warehouse at an online travel industry site playing with SQL and Hadoop. Plus short term planning and strategy clients in all different sectors and sizes. I get to touch a lot of industries and work with a lot of different kinds of teams, structures and people. That’s great.

This also has meant I can really take lessons from one client and apply them to all others. I means I can hear someone say “we’re thinking of doing x” and I can say “PERISH THE THOUGHT!!! Client z just tried x and they’re still clawing their way out of it.. I really recommend you look at y instead…” I get exposed to things I already have “expertise” in and I get exposed to things I only know academically (I let the client know that, by the way) and get to learn and cut my teeth as I go. I’ve probably grown more in this past year of independent consulting than I did in any one year as a full timer.

2 I Can Make A Difference

This isn’t to say that “working for the man” Mike couldn’t. I like to think I did for the various employers I had. I hope I did anyway! But it’s different. My rates aren’t really low and when a company is in a relationship with me – they are looking to get their money’s worth from our relationship. Something about an initial engagement, references or our initial conversation convinced them that I was the right person for some of the professional services dollars in their IT budget. That means that I’ve felt as though the advice I’ve given as “Consultant Mike” has a much higher success ratio (in terms of being followed to actually see the changes) than it did as “Employee Mike” – now the advice hasn’t changed (well sure sometimes it does as I learn more and experience more.. If I were a politician you could call me a flip flopper then) but the “weight” of the advice has gone up. I don’t like that, and I’ve worked with some GREAT full time DBAs, Developers and Architects who had given great advice but it wasn’t until I said, “Amen!” that the company saw it as great advice. But I seem to have more freedom and power to make a difference. I can be a bit more blunt now and say “You know.. you really shouldn’t have just turned on replication without understanding it first. These decisions take a lot of time to plan properly and there are a lot of variables.. That is why your main system was heavily blocked all day yesterday.. I suggest we spend some time to understand just what it is you need from a reporting perspective and then work towards that.. In the meantime here is a workaround.” And instead of getting mad? They listen, follow the advice and they all live happily ever-after (or something like that).

3 Mentoring

I LOVE teaching. I’ve been working with a lot of clients lately in a mentoring relationship. Sometimes in person, sometimes via webex. Basically I spend time in couple or few hour chunks showing them all of my secrets. I check the health of their servers with them. I analyze performance with them. I explain my thought process and give them the “if you ask 10 of us about this one you’d get 6 different answers” caveats where appropriate and I get to watch them grow. I can see the changes in the questions they ask and can watch their skill level rise. That is awesome. Sure I may end up with less hours overall with them, but that is fine – there are a lot of potential clients out there. Besides that, they know that I share knowledge instead of horde knowledge, fix their easy issue and then walk away. So they still call me when they are ready for the next level.

4 The Camaraderie

Maybe it is just the SQL Server consulting world, maybe it isn’t. But for the most part competition isn’t competition. The majority of the great (I’m not counting Straight Path there yet – I hope we are building Linchpin People to be there) consultancies and consultants out there help each other out. They refer around to each other when too busy. They give advice. They say nice things about each other to clients behind their backs. I never chose SQL Server DBA/Performance/Architecture as a career path 12 years ago. It chose me as I’ve blogged about before. I’m blessed that this is the path I went down, though. The people in it are amazing and we just get along and help each other out.

5 The Flexibility

I’ve been busy. When people ask me about marketing my answer has always been and today remains “I’ve been too busy to try and look for clients” that isn’t bragging – it’s just a realization that I’m in a skill set that still seems to have need. Clients have been finding me and I’m filling future months up. So life has been busier in some ways (there is all the non billable time I wasn’t considering when becoming a consultant at first ) but it’s been more flexible. I’ve been able to have days where I can say “let’s go to the beach” or “let’s go work all day at the schoolhouse” now when I say that sometimes some project work will have to be done later at night or double the next day or I may have to schedule a break from the fun to join a call, etc. but I’ve had more schedule flexibility than I ever had. I feel more free as an FTE in a few ways and this is definitely one of them.

It won’t be so long this time…

I need to get some posts going. Maybe I’ll start with the ones I promised at the end of the I’m cheating post back in May:

So the rest of this week the posts will look like (I can’t believe I said rest of this WEEK… That was back in May… that’s one of the downfalls of being busy on my own and with the schoolhouse.. Blogging has taken a new priority level)

• Things I’ve learned (and wish I knew) – Sick days are different, taxes are a bit different, etc.
• Relationships – We all knew they mattered, but they make a world of difference in business
• Slingshots, Parachutes and Partners – a few ways to go it alone without being so alone
• Benefits and Drawbacks (for me, for clients, for you)

The post 5 Reasons I Love My Job (#meme15) appeared first on Straight Path Solutions, a SQL Server Consultancy.

This week I’m going to share a few observations from the “almost one year” point of my life as an independent SQL Server Consultant. I figured I should come clean in this first post this week and tell you all that I’m cheating but I figured I’d let you copy off of my paper while I’m at it.

Unemployment Is High – But Not In All Fields

The first cheat? For good resources with skills (heck, even for me) – there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of database related jobs. Even the ones that aren’t so glorious, that don’t pay so well and have long drives and other annoyances associated. I can’t speak for where you are but I bet you’ll find a similar situation in your job market – It seems hard to find good people. I’ve helped clients interview and phone screen through a LOT of folks to find quality people (even ignoring most of my “6 reasons I won’t hire you” it is tough to find lately). Jumping off of a perfectly good cruise ship to build a boat of your own sounds risky, but not that bad when you are moored 125 yards from a boat factory.

What is “Permanent” ???

Not only am I a cheat – I’m a liar…  I just said going off on your own means jumping off of a perfectly good cruise ship. Well that cruise ship is only as good as long as it stays good. What I mean is your full time job is only full time as long as it makes sense for your employer to spend their budget on salary and benefits for you. They may be the nicest employer in the world but if it doesn’t make business sense, you are being kicked off of the cruise ship –  no matter where it is. Sure you’ll hopefully get a life raft (severance pay) of some size, but you are still at risk of getting kicked off. To steal a line from the Princess Bride – “Job Security” you keep using that word but I don’t think it means what you think it means…

I Know I Can’t

With a self defeating attitude, who needs enemies? It is tough being independent. I’ll talk about that later this week. There are things you have to take care of that are different. There are non-billable tasks. There are taxes to pay. There are contracts to sign. It isn’t really that scary though. Let me put it this way – it isn’t as scary as you’ve convinced yourself it is. Like I said in that pool fear analogy post linked above – don’t be paralyzed by “I think I can’t” – that’s one prediction that always comes true, because it is self defeating. If I can? You can. I KNOW you can.

Have a Plan

If that cruise ship was in the middle of the pacific – and you still jumped – I’d call you a complete moron (in love, of course…) Just because you can and you have a lifeline (the ability to get even a 3-6 month contract position with long hours, a long drive in an industry you don’t like – but pays fine), it would be really irresponsible to leave without a plan. Later this week I’ll share some ideas about how you can slingshot, parachute or partner your way into independent consulting. I chose the parachute approach with a little slingshot added. It worked. There are other options, I’m sure, but the point is – work out a plan, create some savings and test out your relationships to see if work can find you first. I can’t think of a bolded sentence to end this paragraph with, just make a plan!

What’s the worst that can happen?

I’m a man of faith – this paragraph is about that – quick warning… I’m a Christian. I believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God. I believe that God is a loving (among other attributes perfectly balanced) God. I believe I am Heaven bound when my time in this messed up body is done (I’ve blogged about this a lot already. The really long version of my testimony is here if you care to read.. In short – A loser w/o a high school diploma, living for himself avoiding God and “His followers” at all costs met the real Jesus and my life hasn’t looked the same since, in spite of my attitude at the time). That gave me a peace about this decision and was probably my biggest cheat of them all. What’s the worst that can happen to me? Even if I somehow managed to really screw this up and could never get a job doing anything ever again, my pitiful savings dried up and my church and family abandoned me and no safety net existed whatsoever – the worst that would happen probably involves death. Maybe even a slow or painful one. So? My God has a plan for eternity, I’m included in it and my eternity (I’ve seen some horribly slow queries in my life, but none were that long) is secure. I’m going to live forever in the presence of God. The one who fashioned this world, the one who created me, the one who holds the keys of life and death – my friend, my father. How risky is it to go off on your “own” when you’ve got an adoptive father who runs the show and already promised an ending that never really ends and is filled with goodness?

The Point

Coming Soon!

So the rest of this week the posts will look like

• Things I’ve learned (and wish I knew) – Sick days are different, taxes are a bit different, etc.
• Relationships – We all knew they mattered, but they make a world of difference in business
• Slingshots, Parachutes and Partners – a few ways to go it alone without being so alone
• Benefits and Drawbacks (for me, for clients, for you)

The post I’m Cheating! appeared first on Straight Path Solutions, a SQL Server Consultancy.

When this post goes live it will be Easter Sunday – resurrection sunday. The day that Christians throughout the world celebrate the literal and actual resurrection of Christ Jesus. As I’ve done for the past 3 Easters (doesn’t seem like I’ve been blogging for 4 years) I wanted to share a post on some aspect of Easter. First I posted about the meaning of the word “Tetelestai” that Christ shouted from the cross. Then I posted about what was good about Good Friday. Last year I posted about living in the shadow of an empty tomb.

This year, I want to visit Good Friday again and talk about the torn veil in the temple. You see, like with most things in the life, death and resurrection of Christ there is specific Old Testament explanations that go beyond just reading the words in the New Testament here. In the past I have talked of the proofs and historical evidences in favor of the resurrection of Christ as being great reasons to believe Christianity. The harmony of the Bible is another reason. There is no doubt from a scholarly perspective (from believing non-believing/even hostile scholars alike) that the various books of the Bible were written at different times by different authors in different professions (tax collectors, fishermen, Kings, prophets, farmers, shepherds, a doctor, a pharisee who persecuted the Christians originally). Yet… This collection of 66 separate books written over a stretch of 1500 years – is in harmony.  Let’s talk about example – the significance behind the tearing of the temple veil in light of Christ’s mission and purpose of his life, death and resurrection.

What was significant about this temple veil?

The veil of the temple was no ordinary curtain. It separated the “Holy Place” from the “Most Holy Place”. You see in the temple and the tabernacle that came before it, the Priests would receive various offerings described in the Old Testament. The Holy Place was where most of this work was done. It was where most of the offerings were taken. It was a holy place and there were examples in the Old Testament of people not approaching it with the appropriate honor and spirit of Worship and their end was death. The Holy Place was still a set apart place, but the Most Holy place (the Holy of Holies as it is also referred to)??? That was set apart further. There was a large 60′ high veil separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was inside this Most Holy Place that only the High Priest could enter, and then only but once a year for the national day of atonement (Yom Kippur) to make a sacrifice for the sins of the nation. The High Priest himself had to make a sacrifice for himself and prepare himself before he went in there.. For in the Holy of Holies the physical presence of God dwelled. We are sinful, we are not able to enter the presence of God on our own. This veil represented that – on one side was God, on the other side was us in our sins, unable to directly approach a perfect and Holy God on our own. The veil was significant because it was a great sign of the relationship between us and God in Old Testament times… There were believers in those times, many people looked forward to the redeeming work of Christ and trusted that God would do what He said and put their faith in that work, many examples throughout the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit did fill people and work in people He chose to work in but it was not a permanent dwelling.

The Significance of the Tearing

Christ came to earth as a love offering of God. Jesus Christ was God wrapped in human flesh coming to pay the full satisfaction of our sin debt. Every wrong we’ve committed. Every small or large sin separates us from God and we are behind that veil of sin. On Good Friday some 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ – the judge of the world – stepped down from His heavenly bench, took off His heavenly judge’s robe and allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross to pay the price of our sins. When He did this He gave us a new way of access to God, if we accept his gift. The tearing of the veil brings a few lessons to mind…

It was torn from top to bottom – This was an act of God – not of man. God made the step of sending Christ for us. God opens our hearts to allow us to accept (or reject if we so choose) Christ. When Christ’s redeeming work was complete on the cross, the veil in the temple was no longer necessary. We didn’t need to go through a High Priest and religious ritual to get to God. Not because we changed, not because we were any better.. But because God Himself bore the weight of our sin and opened that path in the person of Jesus Christ.

Significance for believers today – We should look to the veil that was once separating the temple as a reminder of the separation our sin creates from God. We should remember how we were when we were dead in our sins and what life is like now. It is also important to remember that the veil was torn from top to bottom..  God didn’t just cause the veil to be torn, God also paid for our sins. Our salvation is nothing we could earn (even if we wanted to!), we didn’t make the first move – God did. This should help us to remember to love others with the love we are called to, it should help us to stay grounded – we aren’t any better than anyone – we are sinners who happen to have accepted the grace of God.

We should remember what the veil signified also – separation. Even after believing, our sin can separate us – in a sense – from God. No, we aren’t cast away, we aren’t out of a relationship but our fellowship can be broken. God wants what is best for us. He wants us walking as Christ walked. He wants us intentionally choosing to live lives of Worship and let our direction be guided. When we don’t do that. When we let our flesh get in the way – that relationship is busted… We are still His, we are still Heaven bound saints but our relationship isn’t what it could or should be. Our fruit won’t be what it could be, our lives aren’t the examples of Christ likeness they could be. We’ve put a veil up and we need to let God tear it down by getting back to Him. We need to be in prayer, in the Word, in fellowship with other believers and seek daily to die to ourselves and live for Christ (A verse from a Bible Study I’m doing with some brothers from the SQL community comes out here – Luke 9:23 – “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” If we aren’t willing to do those things, that second veil won’t be lifted and our lives aren’t going to be what God intends for them to be.

Significance for non-believers – Quite simply, there is still a veil between you and God. If you have never trusted Christ but are leaning on your own goodness, leaning on a set of rules you try to follow, leaning on letting your good outweigh your bad, or a set of works – the veil to a relationship with God is still there. The Bible tells us that no one is good enough to cross that barrier for we have all sinned (I do daily, Billy Graham does daily – even your grandmother did/does). So there is a veil between you and God. On one side stands God – perfect holiness, absolute justice but also perfect love and mercy. On the other side is you – an imperfect person who has committed sins as small as a white lie – but just as much a sin to a holy and just God as any other. That veil is there because we can’t enter into a Holy God’s presence like this. He can’t accept us like that and still be just, Holy, Righteous and perfect Truth. The veil is thick and real. When Christ died and that physical temple curtain was rent in two, he provided a gap in this veil of your heart. That’s the heart of Christianity. That’s the theme of the Bible – God is perfect, we ‘aint – yet He provided a way that only He could provide. You can let Christ show you the gap through that veil, you can let Christ tear this veil in your heart from top to bottom. That’s the message of resurrection Sunday – that Christ was victorious over death – and because He lives – we can too.

That’s it…

I hope this Easter season we can reflect on the physical veil and contemplate the spiritual veils in our hearts. I can tell you that I’ve built and accumulated a lot of threads that have built a veil in my heart. I am God’s but I can’t say that I’ve lived Luke 9:23 every day or even many days. How foolish of me. I’m an adopted son of the living God’s and yet I try to lean on me, try to go it alone instead of in complete reliance and utter dependence on the one who wrote the book of life and already wrote it’s ending. Let’s work on our diligence in chasing after God and let Him finally remove the remnants of any veil over our hearts. Drop me a note if I can pray with you for anything.

God Bless and Happy Easter. He is risen!

The post The Veil Was Torn appeared first on Straight Path Solutions, a SQL Server Consultancy.