Kendal Van Dyke

Looking Back – PASS Summit 2009 Day 5

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Since this was my time visiting Seattle I opted to stay an extra day and take in the sights and sounds of the city. I wasn't signed up for any post-cons so I was able to sleep in past 8 for the first time all week. I met up with Aaron Nelson (Blog | Twitter) for breakfast then headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out. I had collected enough SWAG to have too much to pack in my carry on so I made a stop by the FedEx store to ship some things back home (right in the convention center, how convenient!). I could have checked my carry on and used the plastic PASS bag to haul stuff around, but for almost the same price as checking a bag I had a traceable, insured package and no worries about security checkpoints or theft along the way.

I spent Friday afternoon at the Space Needle with Michelle Ufford (Blog | Twitter), Aaron Nelson (Blog | Twitter), and Mike Wells (Twitter). Mike and I continued on to the Pike Place Market to wander around and grabbed a coffee at the original Starbucks while we were there. From there we headed to dinner where we met up with Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter), Rick Heiges (Blog | Twitter), and Wayne Snyder. After dinner Mike stayed behind to meet up with relatives who were in town while the rest of us shared a ride to the airport. Wayne and I were on the same flight together so we sat for a few hours and talked about PASS and other SQL related things while we waited to catch the redeye.

I finally arrived back in Orlando Saturday morning. It was tough getting back to reality (and East Coast time) but the things I saw and did, and the people I met at the Summit during the week made it worth it. I'll be back next year – count on it!

Looking Back – PASS Summit 2009 Day 4

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Thursday started off with a meeting of the SQL Saturday minds over breakfast at Top Pot Donuts a few blocks away from the convention center where we spent about an hour talking about how to engage the local community and grow the SQL Saturday brand. I got sucked into another work related problem, but I had an aircard so I could stay and enjoy a local establishment that I don't have at home.

The final keynote presentations were…a roller coaster. Things started with Wayne Snyder giving a very genuine and heartfelt delivery of a special award presented to Kevin Kline (Blog | Twitter) for his many years of service to PASS. Then Dell's rep put everyone to sleep by mailing in their 20 minutes (no kidding, he said "blah blah blah" at one point!). Dr. David DeWitt of Microsoft's Jim Gray Systems Lab saved the day with a fantastic technical presentation that included zero marketing. A deep technical talk delivered to an audience full of geeks made it the best keynote of the week, hands down. I live blogged it here, but honestly I didn't do it justice. Thankfully Dr. DeWitt's keynote will be included on the Summit DVD set and is reason enough alone to drop the $125 for a copy.

I spent next hour closing out the problems from work earlier in the day, then sat with Jack Corbett (Blog | Twitter) at the OPASS table in the dining hall for the chapter leader lunch. We didn't get anybody else from the Central Florida area, but it wasn't a big deal as we had a few random folks join us to talk shop.

After lunch I lingered around the couches on the 4th floor to network (and pick up one of the Starbucks cards Steve Jones was giving away), then spent the rest of the afternoon in the speaker ready room getting ready for my Transactional Replication session at 4 PM. I had about 30 people come - not bad for the final session of the last day. I made all the key points I needed to, fielded lots of great questions, but had to skip some demos due to lack of time. I didn't get thrown off stage though, and I heard positive feedback from a few folks afterwards so I feel confident that I did an OK job. Obviously I am anxious to see how the speaker evals turn out, and hopefully I get the chance to come back and talk again at the 2010 Summit!

The end of the Summit felt like a bit of a letdown to me. I walked back out to the 4th floor couches after my session and although there were a few people I knew hanging out there wasn't anything official to signal the end of the conference. I think some kind of simple reception with closing remarks (no food necessary), maybe a re-announcement of who won awards during the week, a final thank you to volunteers, and a chance for people to say their goodbyes would have been fine.

Dinner Thursday night was with fellow Friends of Red Gate. The folks at Red Gate really treated us well – easily the best dinner of the week – and I felt privileged to sit at the same table with Adam Machanic (Blog | Twitter), Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter), and Paul Nielson (Blog). The great food and conversation more than made up for the lack of any official close to the Summit. It's too bad it couldn't end like that for all attendees.

With the summit done (save post-cons on Friday) it was time to let loose. Monday night's karaoke shenanigans at Bush Garden were so fun that several people went for an encore. Word must have spread because the place was packed with summit-goers. We stayed until closing time, enjoying the singing, drinks, and new found friendships that had been forged throughout the week. Good times all around!

…Day 5 and final thoughts coming tomorrow.

Looking Back – PASS Summit 2009 Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:15:00 +0000

I started Wednesday planning on going to the Quest sponsored breakfast (plus presentation about DMVs) but when I bailed when I saw the line of 50+ people leading out the door. I ran into Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter), Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter), and Greg Larson (Blog| Twitter) on the way to the dining hall; the four of us grabbed some breakfast together and talked shop before making our way to the keynote.

I lived blogged the keynote, but if you haven't read it or heard it elsewhere it was focused on BI in SQL 2008 R2 – mostly PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for Sharepoint. Basic gist – only 20% of decision makers have the data they really need and it's up to us IT folk to give it to them or "that guy" will create some hodgepodge solution in Access that we will end up having to support. (Now if I could just figure out those fancy cube thingies I might be able to help with that…)

After the keynote I caught Paul Randal's (Blog | Twitter) session on logging and recovery. Unfortunately I got the inevitable call from work about a problem so I spent half the time listening and half the time trying to put out a fire. Regardless, I thought it was a great session that reinforced some of what I already knew (good) but I was still able to pick up a few new things (better). One thing I'll mention that I was surprised he didn't – you can use DBCC SQLPERF(logspace) to see a summary of transaction log size, % space used, and status for all databases on the instance.

From Paul's session I went to the Women In Technology luncheon where I think I was one of about 20 men in the room (it was dark though, so hard to count). Honestly, I'm disappointed that more men didn't come to this. The food was great (better than the dining hall!) and the speakers – Jessica Moss (Blog | Twitter), Kathi Kellenberger (Blog | Twitter), Cathi Rodgveller (Twitter), and Lynn Langit (Blog | Twitter) – were fantastic. If you haven't read it, check out Michelle Ufford's (Blog | Twitter) live blog of the event. A nice bonus is that I won a Zune 120 at the end which I plan to give to my daughter as a Christmas present (keeping with the theme of introducing women to technology, of course).

After lunch I made my way to the exhibitor's hall and spent an hour and a half talking with Red Gate and SQL Sentry. I didn't realize it at the time, but the exhibit hall was only open through Wednesday and I had arrived in the last few hours. Lucky for me, because I walked out with books and a stack of T-Shirts to give away back home.

Since I had just been sucked into a production issue earlier in the day I thought it was a good time to go visit the SQLCAT clinic and see if they could help me figure out what happened. All I can say is those cats are smart! No surprise I got the answers that I needed…and felt like what I knew about SQL was tiny and insignificant compared to Bob Ward (who I happened to get paired up with).

I wrapped up the afternoon by going to the PASS Board of Directors Q&A session. I'm not sure if there were more people up on stage or in the audience – and yes, that's a knock against people who didn't come. There was a virtual donnybrook over the BOD elections this year (see here, here, here, and here if you don't know what I mean) and I'm surprised that more people didn't show up to ~~grill the board~~ express their opinion. There were some interesting questions asked, but nothing too pressing or controversial. I'm sure it could have gone worse. Either way I'm glad to see the BOD recognize that the SQL community is paying attention and is willing to show some transparency into what they are doing for us and how.

Wednesday night's party was courtesy of Microsoft – they rented out GameWorks across from the convention center, paid for food and drinks, and gave everybody swipe cards for unlimited games. It was there I made the biggest networking blunder of the Summit…I met Ted Kummert (as in the Ted Kummert who gave the opening keynote the day before) and, thanks to some tips I learned from Don Gabor, was able to keep a conversation going despite not knowing him personally or otherwise having much in common. My big mistake, though, was not giving him my business card before parting ways. Would he have chucked it in the trash? Yeah, probably…but I didn't even give him the chance to.

I left GameWorks to join up with my friends Steve Jones, Andy Warren, and Jack Corbett (Blog | Twitter) for dinner at PF Chang's just down the road, then headed back to my room for an early night. I was presenting my session the next day and wanted to try to put some time in on it, but lack of sleep got the better of me and I fell asleep before midnight for the first (and only) time since I had arrived in Seattle.

…Day 4 tomorrow!

Looking Back – PASS Summit 2009 Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:00:00 +0000

Tuesday started early for me because I had to be at the bloggers table in time for the opening remarks and keynotes starting at 7:45 AM. I had just enough time to grab a quick breakfast from the dining hall before finding my spot. I live blogged the keynote if you want to read all the details. To sum it up: it was twice as long as it needed to be, a bit fluffy on the marketing side, and made it clear that BI is what Microsoft is concentrating on in the near future (*cough* PowerPivot *cough*). Note to Microsoft for next year: when presenting to a room full of DBAs showing off Visual Studio is probably not the best use of your keynote time. The most entertaining part was when the rack full of servers overheated, the fans spun up to max RPMs, and everybody on twitter was taking guesses about whether or not there would be an explosion on stage.

After the keynote I went to Michelle Ufford's (Blog | Twitter) presentation on how GoDaddy prepared for the anticipated load that Super Bowl 2009 would put on their database servers. Michelle was a first-time PASS presenter like me and I thought she did a great job speaking clearly, staying on topic, and answering questions that came up. Tony Davis (Blog), Editor of Simple-Talk, was in the audience as well and I took advantage of the opportunity to meet with him and talk DMVs while waiting for Michelle to finish answering questions afterwards.

Michelle, Tony, and I made our way to the dining hall for the Birds of a Feather lunch and ended up sitting at Kathi Kellenberger's (Blog | Twitter) table. I talked with Kathi for a while about using T-SQL to select random rows from a table and she was kind enough to give me a personalized signed copy of her book Beginning T-SQL 2008. Also at the table was Kathi's editor from Apress; I took advantage of the opportunity to talk with him about how to get into writing books, and I'll definitely follow up with him in the next week.

After lunch I went to Jimmy May's (Blog | Twitter) session on disk partition alignment. His session was very popular at last year's Summit and part of my motivation for writing my disk performance series earlier this year. I nominate Jimmy for best speaker giveaway: At the end of his session he put a few copies of Windows 7 Ultimate out and said "First come, first served". Unfortunately I sat midway back and didn't get to the front before they were gone (Lesson for next year: Sit at the front of presentations!). Anyways, what floored me the most was afterwards I think he was as excited to meet me in person as I was to meet him. Thanks Jimmy, I'm honored.

I skipped the next time slot to talk disk performance with Chuck Lathrope (Twitter), then hit the last scheduled session of the day - Kalen DeLaney (Blog)'s Index Internals. I was surprised that the room was only half full, but that was probably due to a misprint on the schedule that listed her talking about Data Warehouses. About halfway through her presentation I realized that I was sitting next to Erland Sommarskog (Blog) of "The curse and blessings of dynamic SQL" fame. Very cool.

Dell sponsored an "after hours" event in the exhibit hall from 6-8. I went but spent most of the time taking with Wesley Brown (Blog) about solid state drive performance. From there I headed to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with my friend Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter) and other folks from Florida (plus a few non-Floridians tag-alongs, more than happy to have them join!). I wrapped up the night at a fantastic party sponsored by SQL Sentry at the Tap House Grill where I had the pleasure of meeting PASS BOD VP Rick Heiges (Blog) and Andrew Kelly (Blog | Twitter), among the many that showed. Things wound down around midnight at which point I headed back to the hotel to call it a night and try to get a little sleep.

…Day 3 tomorrow!

Looking Back - PASS Summit 2009 Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:30:00 +0000

I intended to blog daily while at the PASS Summit last week. At least that's what I told myself I was going to do beforehand, then I realized that wasn't possible once I got there…at least not with the schedule I kept. This was my first time at the summit and after the first day I understood everything I had previously heard about being busy and getting very little sleep but having a fantastic experience. As much as I am glad to be back at home with my family part of me wishes I were back in Seattle doing it all over again. I know that won't happen (until next year's summit, that is!) so I'll do the next best thing and relive the experience by writing about each day one week after the fact.

I arrived in Seattle on Monday at 1:30 PM and, thanks to Twitter, met up with Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter) and Arlene Gray (Blog | Twitter). We shared a short ride in on the Light Link Rail for the low, low price of $2.50, which I also found out about thanks to Twitter. (Tip – when riding into town sit on the right side relative to the direction of travel – the view is much better). The walk from the rail station to the Sheraton was only a few blocks, and after checking in I met up with Aaron Bertrand (Blog | Twitter), my roommate for the week. (Side note – sharing a room is a great way to cut down on the cost of attending the summit!)

The first event on tap was Gabor's precon on Networking to Build Business Contacts. Before things began I had the chance to meet Tom LaRock (Blog | Twitter) in person for the first time, along with many other people I've met on Twitter in the last year and a few new faces. It's worth noting that about half of the people in Don's session were first timers at the Summit. I think that's a good indication that word about what PASS (and the Summit) is and does is spreading and people are getting interested in becoming part of the SQL ~~borg~~ community. Don gave some nice tips – some things I already knew, some new things – and shared a few secrets for remembering names before giving everybody a chance to try it out for themselves. I did OK, but clearly it takes practice to be good at it. Fortunately the week ahead presented plenty of opportunities to practice. By the way, Don's amazing at remembering names – he nailed at least 80% of people's names in the session after only a brief introduction and handshake at the door.

After Don's session I headed upstairs to the Welcome Reception where I ran into at least 20 more people I've met on Twitter recently. The food was OK (carved meats on rolls with veggies), but the real draw was the quiz bowl (Paul Randal (Blog | Twitter) and Kimberly Tripp (Blog | Twitter) smoked the competition!) and the announcement of the 1st annual PASS logreader award winners. I must have done something right because I won two categories – Best Blog Series for Disk Performance Hands On and Best Professional Development Blog Post for Off-Hours Work: A Guide For Managers.

Following the reception I headed to the SQLServerCentral party where I had the chance to meet Chris Massey (Twitter) and the folks from Red Gate. As in past years (so I hear) it was a casino style party where everybody got some chips and played different games around the room. I spent half the time socializing and the other half losing my chips. I didn't realize that at the end you could cash in whatever chips you had left and get raffle tickets for prize giveaways so I went all or nothing and lost. Oh well, next year I know better.

I caught word that a group of folks was heading to Bush Garden, a hole in the wall karaoke bar in the International District about a mile and a half from downtown. I tagged along where I met – you guessed it – even more people from Twitter for the first time (along with a few folks from Florida who I've known for a while now). I was pretty tired by that point so I just sat back and watched everyone else take turns singing. The group stayed until closing time, and for some reason we all thought it would be a great idea to walk back to the hotel at 1:30 in the morning. It was a good bonding experience for new friends, if nothing else.

I crashed once I got back to the hotel; by that point I think I had been up for close to 24 hours and the PASS euphoria only lasts so long. That and I had to be up to live blog the opening keynote that started at 7:45 AM the next morning. I'm pretty sure at that point Aaron was wondering what he got himself into by sharing a room with me.

…the adventure continues with Day 2 tomorrow!

PASS Summit 2009 Day 3 Keynote Live Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

10:25 AM – And that's it for the week! Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to order the Summit DVDs. David's keynote alone was worth it.

10:20 AM – Time's up for David. Mentioning key points. Waaaaay too much information on the slides to type before he's moved on to the next one. Other bloggers doing live keynotes were smart enough to grab photos of the screen. Hopefully they'll post the contents.

10:05 AM – David's comparing different compression techniques. Run Length Encoding, Bit-Vector Encoding, and Dictionary Encoding.

10:00 AM – Now talking about compression in column stores. Basically it trades I/O cycles for CPU cycles (remember that CPUs have gotten 1000x faster while disks have only gotten 65x faster).

9:51 AM – Boiling down the row store vs. column store discussion, basically we're looking at a 7X performance improvement in column store architecture for certain types of queries. "Select * from …" will never be faster though. Best bet: Store some data row wise and some data column wise.

9:45 AM – L2 cache misses are due to row store architecture. Now David's talking about column store architecture.

9:43 AM – David talking about why we have L2 cache misses in CPU when fetching data off disk. Highly technical, and my head is beginning to hurt!

9:36 AM – OK, lots of technicals on CPUs now. Too hard to write about what he's talking about. It's deep. Really deep.

9:35 AM – Now talking CPU trends. This is awesome stuff, really. Best keynote so far in my opinion.

9:34 AM – 1980, sequential/random 5:1; 2009 sequential/random 33:1. Takeaway: RDBMS must avoid random disk I/O when possible.

9:32 AM – Incredibly inexpensive drives & processors have made it possible to collect, store, and analyze huge quantities of data. But considering the metric transfer bandwidth/byte, when relative capacities are factored in, drives are 150X SLOWER today.

9:30 AM – After 30 years of CPU and memory improvements, relative performance of CPUs and disk are totally out of whack in terms of performance. The benefits from a 1,000x improvement in CPU performance and memory sizes are almost negated by the 10x in disk accesses/second. David thinks that SSDs will change our lives in this area. (Side note, I've got some GOOD stuff coming on SSDs soon. Stay tuned!)

9:27 AM – Drilling down into disk trends now. 10,000 x capacity, 65x transfer rates, but the BIG change is in seek times.

9:24 AM – Going back to 1980, comparing hardware then to hardware today. A LOT has changed: improvements of 2,000x CPU, 1,000x CPU Caches, 1,000X memory, & 10,000x disk.

9:21 AM – This is going to be a really deep dive into technical stuff: trends in CPU, memory, disk, and how they impact design. Disclaimer: This is an academic talk – no marketing speak (yay!)

9:20 AM – No product announcements, no motorcycles, but already a lot of humor. This is going to be interesting.

9:18 AM – Bill back on stage, introducing Dr. David DeWitt, Technical Fellow at Microsoft. He's going to present "From 1 to 1000 MIPS"

9:18 AM – Dell Keynote over…not a lot to mention, honestly.

9:05 AM – More talk about disaster recovery…(BTW, we're a room full of DBAs at PASS. I sure hope we all understand disaster recovery)

8:59 AM – Benefits of configuration management:

Provides clear picture of the SQL Server Environment
Improves operational efficiency
Drives priority for SQL Server Disaster Recovery and Consolidation

8:55 AM – Patrick talking about configuration management…types of data to collect (e.g. Name of server, Server Properties, CPU, Location Information, OS Version, SQL Server Version, etc). Basically stuff that anybody in IT should already know and be collecting.

8:50 AM – PASS business out of the way, now Patrick Ortiz from Dell's Infrastructure Consulting Services coming onstage to talk about "Managing SQL Server In The Enterprise"

8:49 AM – Thursday's To-Do List:

SQL Server Clinic
Hands-On Labs
Eat lunch with regional and local Chapter Leaders
Sign up for one of tomorrow's Post-Cons
Order Summit 2009 DVDs for $125
Submit your session and Summit evals
Drop comments & questions in the Suggestion Box

8:48 AM – Announcing 2010 PASS Summit, November 8-10 in Seattle again. Register now for $995. No contract signed for 2011 yet; feedback on location will be solicited.

8:47 AM – And now the new executive board: Rushabh Mehta (President), Bill Graziano (Executive VP), Rick Heiges (VP, Marketing), and Wayne Snyder (Immediate Past President)

8:46 AM – Bill introducing new board members Brian Moran, Jeremiah Peschka, and Tom LaRock.

8:45 AM – Wayne is tearing up telling stories about Kevin…Kevin receiving a standing ovation as he receives his award for 10 years of service.

8:44 AM – Kevin taking the stage now. Wayne Snyder joining in to present Kevin with a special award for his service.

8:43 AM – BIll thanking outgoing PASS board members Pat Wright, Greg Lowe, and Kevin Kline. Special video tribute playing for Kevin's years of service to PASS. Big applause for Kevin.

8:40 AM – Bill Graziano, PASS VP of Marketing, taking the stage now. Promises this will be the shortest keynote of the week. Big applause.

8:38 AM – I'm back for the final day of the 2009 PASS Summit. Today is the Dell sponsored keynote. Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" is blaring through the speakers as videos from the conference play on the big screens.

PASS Summit 2009 Day 2 Keynote Live Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:40:00 +0000

10:08 AM – And that's a wrap! See you tomorrow for day 3's keynote.

10:07 AM – Tom talking up the product roadmap.This is the first year there's ever been a simultaneous release of Office and SQL. Reminding everyone that "you make the difference".

10:06 AM – Whet's next for PowerPivot here at PASS?

Learn more about Microsoft BI at PASS
Kick the tires and ask the experts
Register for CTP updates
Get social at Facebook (www.facebook.com\powerpivot) and Twitter (@powerpivot)
Learn and contribute at the BI resource center

10:03 AM – Announcing the PASS PowerPivot Sweepstakes: http://www.powerpivot.com/contest/default.htm

10:00 AM – Amir's demos done..Tom showing off more examples of reports in SharePoint. Again, cool stuff…but I'm a DBA. I want to hear something more technical, like what I need to be prepared for to make all this work under the covers.

9:48 AM – Shifting gears…Amir now showing off what's in it for IT workers. Demoing the integration of the PowerPivot management dashboard with SharePoint. We can see which Excel spreadsheets are popular over time. IT gets more insight into SharePoint. DBAs still not allowed to touch anything under the covers.

9:45 AM – The cover comes off the box on the stage. It's an out of the box Windows 7 touchscreen PC. Tom's showing integration of SilverLight 3.0 into SharePoint 2010. Users can use gestures to navigate through, slice, and dice data.

9:43 AM – PP for Excel has some really useful features…but 133 MB documents aren't the way to share data. Segway into PP for SharePoint demo.

9:30 AM – Demo time again…Amir Netz showing off PowerPivot for Excel. Over 100 million rows in Excel on the desktop. Online sorting, filtering, etc. all from within Excel querying AS.

9:27 AM – Helping "that guy" is what PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint is all about. Tom jokes "it just rolls of your tounge, doesn't it? You can just call it PowerPivot for short". At least MS has a sense of humor about themselves.

9:26 AM – As much as we vilify "that guy", the truth is he's the go-to guy that we need to help. Who is "that guy"? About 20,000,000 Information Workers.

9:25 AM – Testimonial done…Tom telling everyone that relevant information is everywhere. We have to make a change to get information to people, or "that guy" who uses Access and Excel will. I love that he's knocking on the crapass solutions that get built like this. I'm an IT guy, and I know exactly what he's talking about.

9:17 AM – Rob talking about how 3,000 people are getting information out of Premier's data warehouse. Reports that ran for an hour before run in under a minute now. Charts, graphs, reports coming out of Premier's BI stack have helped a lot with understanding what's going on and they couldn't be happier.

9:16 AM – Customer testimonial time. First up: Ron VanZanten, Directing Officer BI and Software Development at Premier Bank Card…9th largest issuer of credit cards in the US.

9:15 AM – Technology advancements on the hardware side are enabling us to do exciting things in software, yet we're also being asked to do more with less.

9:10 AM – PASS is the place to "B-I". 2 dedicated BI tracked, 50+ BI related sessions, 31% of attendees chose DW and BI as their track.

9:08 AM – Tom challenging everybody to be agents of change. He says only 20% of decision makers have access to the data that they need to make good decisions.

9:06 AM – Now taking the stage, Tom Casey, Microsoft General Manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence

9:05 AM – Make sure to come by the PASS BOD Q & A session at 4:30 today too. And don't forget about the Microsoft Appreciation Event at GameWorks tonight!

9:03 AM – Rushabh plugging the Women In Technology Luncheon and the MVP Deep Dives book signing, both today at 11:30 AM

9:00 AM – A big congratulations to the 2009 PASSion Award winners:

Charley Hanania (International)

European PASS Organization Committee
Leader of the Swiss PAS Chapter
4 years of service to PASS
Managed the entire 2009 PASS European Conference

Allen Kinsel (North America)

Program Committee volunteer, Volunteer & Nomination Committee volunteer
5 years of service to PASS
Program Manager for the 2009 Program Committee

8:50 AM – Wayne Snyder on stage to recognize outstanding PASS volunteers

Tim Ford - Program Committee, Quizbowl
Grant Fritchey (wearing a kilt today!) – Editorial Committee, SQL Server Standard Editor
Amy Lewis – Co-leader & Volunteer coordinator for BI Virtual Chapter
Jacob Sebastian – Chapters Regional Mentor, Head of PASSS Member Outreach in India

8:48 AM – Rushabh encouraging people to become an official PASS member by registering (free) on www.sqlpass.org. It's also important to engage with the community by becoming involved with local chapters, virtual chapters, networking, and consider sharing knowledge by speaking. If speaking isn't your thing, consider volunteering.

8:44 AM – Total project revenues in FY 2010: $3.2 million. This represents a 15% reduction in revenue yet there's been a 40% growth in community spend. FY 2010 saw investments in infrastructure and PASS HQ, however there was a 67% reduction in IT expenses. The European PASS summit is profitable.

8:43 AM – Rushabh says PASS is committed to financial openness and communications. All members can log into www.sqlpass.org/governance to view BDO minutes and more.

8:41 AM – New PASS President Rushabh Mehta is on stage for the opening comments. He's planning on talking PASS financials today.

8:39 AM – I'm here and ready for the day 2 keynote to begin. Video highlights of day 1 are showing on the screen as everybody makes their way to their seats.

PASS Summit 2009 Day 1 Keynote Live Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:45:00 +0000

(Note: Updates are listed newest first)

10:15 AM – And we're done! The rooms empty out to grab spots at the first set of sessions for the day. See you tomorrow for the next keynote!

10:15 AM – Now the official announcements:

SQL 2008 R2 November CTP available, RTM targeted for 1st half next year
Azure feature complete CTP is live, try it out today
Two new editions of SQL 2008 R2:

SQL 2008 R2 Datacenter
SQL 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (formerly know as project "Madison")

10:08 AM – Now previewing a new Data Sync tool available later this month to synchronize on-premises databases with SQL Azure. Pick which tables, columns, and rows you want to synchronize. I can see this coming in very useful

10:06 AM – SQL Azure is now feature complete and showing off features. Using SSMS to connect to a SQL Azure DB. You can manage it just the same as on-premises instances.

10:05 AM – Wait, more demos after all…now a SQL Azure demo.

10:03 AM – Demos are done, now talking SQL Azure. Unfortunately the keynotes are running long and people are making their way for the exists to head to the first set of sessions for the day.

10:00 AM – Now showing off features of new report builder 3.0. Unfortunately this demo's as lost on me as the Visual Studio 2010\.NET 4 Entity Framework features.

9:55 AM – Next demo: Loaded 60 million rows to a server farm with 320 cores using powershell at a rate of 3 Terabytes per hour.

9:52 AM – More demos, this time of Master Data Management. Showing a data validation demo.

9:47 AM - Showing off examples of StreamInsight - a Complex Event Processing Technology. It'll be included in SQL 2008 R2. Imagine watching MNF online and being able to pick your own camera angle. Neat stuff!

9:40 AM – This is interesting stuff, I think. Honestly though, it's a bit lost on me since I'm a production DBA.

9:33 AM – Now a demo of what's available in .NET 4 and the Entity Framework.

9:30 AM – Demoing the new Data Tier Application project type on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. To deploy there's a new "upgrade" option in SSMS – no more alter scripts, or needing to understand the order of operations needed to apply the new code (including schema changes). Hmm, I wonder if it understands changes against replicated databases. In the demo they added a new column in between existing columns. You can't do that on a replicated table today.

9:25 AM – Now showing off the dashboard for multi-server management. It looks polished, and the integration of monitoring along with PBM is really going to put some pressure on 3rd party tools.

9:23 AM – Multi server management – a simple 5 step process to set up. Uses Policy Based Management under the covers.

9:15 AM – Dan Jones coming on stage to give a demo of Application & Multi-Server Management.

9:11 AM – Listening to user testimonial about how First American Title is using SQL 2008 to run their business. It's a rundown of SQL 2008 features – better performance, compressed backups, transparent migration.

9:08 AM – Scale up & scale out SQL 2008 R2:

Scale up to 256 logical processors
Scale out with massively parallel processing 10s to 100s of TV with low TCO

9:05 AM – Talking releases for the next year. Everything based on building on a solid foundation.

9:00 AM – Ted talking the Top 5 reasons to be at PASS:

You are part of the world's largest gathering of SQL Server Professionals
You can take your questions directly to the "source"
We've got Wayne & Rushabh
You can work hard & Play hard (talking about renting out Gameworks Wednesday night for the SQL Server Appreciation even)
You will build skills and knowledge on the #1 database in the world.

8:55 AM – SQL 2008 R2 will be released in first half of 2010. SQL Azure begins billing after Jan 1, 2010.

8:50 AM – Next up, Ted Kummert – Senior Vice President, Business Platform Division.

8:45 AM – Now talking cloud based computing. Between private clouds and public clouds, clouds are all the buzz, and they're going to affect all of us IT Workers. Death of the DBA? Perhaps not, as Bob says the skill sets we have as DBAs today will be able to be leveraged in the cloud.

8:39 AM – Demo time: Live migration with Virtual Machine Manager. Showing off moving Hyper-V VMs' between hosts. It's as simple as a right click and selecting a Migrate menu option. The best available host is automatically selected and the virtual machine is moved with zero loss in connectivity. Nifty!

8:38 AM – A "journey" is occurring from the traditional datacenter to a virtualized datacenter.

8:29 AM – SQL 2008 R2: New OLTP world-record performance TPC-E benchmark of 2,012 tpsE; Record DW performance on Windows TPC-H 3TB: 102,778 QphH. 20,0000 users w\ sub-second response time for Dynamics CRM xRM business applications. If you understand benchmark numbers that's some serious performance!

8:25 AM – Showing off a rack full of servers running SQL 2008 R2 with 192 CPUs!

8:19 AM – Bob talking about his first week on the job, running into Bill Gates, and Ashton Tate SQL Server – includes floppy disks in the box!

8:18 AM – Bob Muglia (President, Server and Tools Business) taking the stage for the keynote.

8:16 AM – Wayne talks twitter and the live twitter stream on the #sqlpass hashtag.

8:15 AM – Wayne encouraging everyone to get the most they can out of the conference – go to sessions, meet people, get involved!

8:05 AM – Wayne talking about the growth of PASS: SIGs have been renamed to Virtual Chapters. 50 energy events in 12 countries last year; PASS to promote and fund as many local events as possible in 2010. 24 hours of PASS - 3,500 people from 64 countries attended. SQLServerStandard re-launching as free premium content on sqlpass.org; First article of 2009 posted this week and all back issues available online.

8:00 AM – PASS President Wayne Snyder on stage for opening comments. Almost 3,000 registered attendees and 98 MVPs. Wayne wonders "where the heck have you all been?" (referring to attendance vs. past summits)

7:50 AM - I'm at the 2009 PASS Summit getting ready for the keynotes to begin. People are pouring in getting ready for the day to begin.

My PASS Summit 2009 Schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Hooray! The PASS Summit is upon us (finally)! Here's what my plans look like for next week:

Monday
My week starts with the cross country flight from Orlando to Seattle-Tacoma International, arriving at 1:30 PM (Want to split the fare for a ride into town? Drop a comment, send me an email, or tweet me and let me know. Otherwise I'm planning on trying out Seattle's illustrious public transportation to make my way downtown). After checking into the Sheraton I'm heading to Don Gabor's "Networking to Build Business Contacts" pre-con at 4:30 PM, followed by the welcome reception and quiz bowl at 6:30 PM. I'm finishing up the night at the SQLServerCentral party, then back to the hotel where I will presumably collapse from exhaustion before the first full day even begins.

Tuesday
I'm assuming I'll be up bright and early since my body will still be on east coast time. I'm shooting for the welcome breakfast at 7:30 AM and the keynotes afterwards. I'll be at the Birds-of-a-Feather lunch (no idea what table I'll sit at though, there's lots of interesting topics and people to choose from!), and throughout the day I'll try to hit as many technical sessions as I can. I'm headed to a by-invitation sponsor dinner\event Tuesday night.

Wednesday
The day starts at 7:00 AM with a breakfast sponsored by Quest where the topic will be "Simplify SQL Server Management with DMVs". I'll try to make the keynotes and as many technical sessions as I can fit in. No firm plans for lunch, but I'm leaning towards going to the Women In Technology luncheon. The title alone suggests that this would be for women only, but as was pointed out to me earlier this week it's open to all; Since my sister works for NASA and I've got a daughter who's as smart as a whip there's some interest in this for me. Wednesday night you'll probably find me at the SQL Server Appreciation Event from 7-10 PM.

Thursday
No plans for breakfast (maybe the Quest breakfast again?) and I may hit the keynotes. Otherwise it's technical sessions all day. I'll probably go to the Chapter Lunch, or maybe venture outside the conference for once to grab something nearby. The big event of the day for me is my session - Transactional Replication: Beyond The Basics - at 4 PM in room 606-607. I'll finish the night at another by-invitation sponsor dinner.

Friday
By now my brain will be complete mush, so I'm leaving the day open to do whatever comes my way. That probably means shopping for gifts for the family back home and some kind of sightseeing. My flight leaves at 10:20 PM, and since I don't get home until 9:30 AM Saturday morning I'll likely spend the flight catching up on all the sleep I missed during the week.

Other Things I'm Doing During The Week
I have no idea when they'll happen, but these things are on my list of to-dos:

Meet people. The list of people I want to meet up with is too long to go into detail here, so I'll just put it this way: If you follow me on Twitter, or I follow you, or you read my blog, or come to my session I want to meet you.
SQLCAT Clinic. I've got a few things I need to talk to these folks about.
Visit the expo hall. There are a couple of vendors I want to meet with for product demos and to just say hello.
SQL Saturday tweetup? There was was some talk about a tweetup with people who have presented at SQL Saturday events. If it happens I'll try to be there. I'm bringing my shirt from SQL Saturday #1 (for bragging rights) just in case.
Find some really good coffee. I love good coffee and I hear there's a shop or two in Seattle worth visiting.

B-I-N-G-O
Finally, a quick mention that I'm a square in SQLServerPedia's Twitter Bingo contest. If you play it could be worth a $50 Amex gift card (2 winners per day!). Read the rules, print out a card, and see if you can find me next week!

SQL Saturday #21 (Orlando) Presentation Downloads

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Here are the slide decks and code samples from my sessions at SQL Saturday #21 Orlando on 10\17. I've also cross posted these over on the SQL Saturday #21 event site.

Download: Performance Tuning With DMVs
Download: Configuring SQL Access for the Web Developer & Admin

SQL Saturday #21 (Orlando) Recap

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:45:00 +0000

Saturday, 10\17, marked the third year for SQL Saturday here in Orlando and each year it gets bigger and better. With 56(!) sessions across 9 tracks and some big name speakers there was plenty of SQL goodness for everyone who came out for the day.

Pre-Event Happenings
Although the main event was Saturday things started for me with dinner Thursday night with Andy Warren, Jack Corbett, and Buck Woody (Blog | Twitter). Buck is a SQL Server Technical Specialist and Program Manager at Microsoft, and an all around interesting guy to know. I didn't do too much talking – mostly listening to him spin some great stories about SQL Server. If nothing else I found the perspective from someone inside Microsoft interesting to hear.

Friday night was the speaker party at Jax Fifth Avenue. I enjoyed getting the chance to catch up with old friends and SQL Saturday "regulars", and meet several people who I've talked to on Twitter for the last year (too many names to name!). The party was scheduled for 6-8 PM but at least half of us ended up staying until 10ish talking about the upcoming PASS summit, Patrick LeBlanc's SQL Lunch, what it takes to become an MVP, and a variety of other SQL related topics. I've done a lot of SQL Saturdays and enjoy the speaker parties almost as much as the day of the event; besides the PASS summit there aren't many chances to get that many presenters and leaders in the SQL world in the same room together and I appreciate the intangible networking benefits that come from it.

The Main Event
I was on the schedule for three regular sessions and one 15 minute mini. My first session, Performance Tuning With DMVs, was a new presentation for me and it went as well as I could have expected for the first time. While the venue had wifi access VPN was blocked which kept me from showing results from servers that had been running and accumulating DMV data for a while. I reverted to running demos against a virtual machine on my laptop which took a bit away from the wow factor (it's hard to show missing indexes when nothing's been run!). Aside from that I found a few things to clean up\clarify and the next time I give this presentation it'll be even better.

The 15 mini session was a demo of Red Gate SQL Backup Pro that ended up being a personal conversation with the one person who showed up and was interested in what it could do.

My second full session was a panel discussion along with Andy Warren and Jack Corbett on how to get started in blogging and technical speaking. Surprisingly (in a good way) we ended up having 25 people attend – standing room only – and went 5-10 minutes over our scheduled time. There was a lot of interest in both topics and some great questions asked. If only one person starts a new blog or signs up to present at a future SQL Saturday I will have considered the session a success.

My last session, Configuring SQL Access for the Web Developer, was the kind of session every speaker fears thanks to my VMs freezing up right as I went into the demo portion. For a demo heavy presentation that wasn't good news. I had a few people bail (I suggested they still had time to make other sessions), but most stayed and we chatted for about 10 minutes until things started responding again and I finished up as best as I could. I have to think about if\how to give this one again in the future. It's a topic of interest – I had 20+ people show up when I've previously presented it – but the demos are tough because I run a full Active Directory domain inside virtual machines all from a laptop and sharing physical resources gets a bit tricky.

The day ended with a SWAG raffle and an after party back at Jax Fifth Ave, but due to other obligations I had to skip the after party.

Misc. Thoughts

Of all the SQL Saturdays that I've been to signs seem to be a recurring problem. Despite living in the age of the GPS just having clearly visible signs strategically placed make it helpful to know if you're supposed to be in this parking lot of that one. #21's signs were black letters hand written on a neon background and I don't think they were visible enough nor placed in the right spots.
There was a visible lack of sponsor presence. I know Andy and Jack tried hard to get quality sponsors in the door and they just weren't biting due to the economy, but how often do you get hand fed a super focused target audience? I'm no marketing guy, but it seems like you'd have to spend a lot more money than what was being asked to get that kind of reach.
Large maps and schedules were posted in the main hallways and it worked really well. I ended up referring to these more often than the printed schedule I was given at the beginning of the day.
Between Andy and Jack coordinating things, volunteers who took care of logistics, sponsors who provided cash and SWAG, speakers who gave their time and talent to present, and the 200+ attendees it was a fantastic day!

Other Recaps
In case you might have missed it, here are some other write-ups about the day:

Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter): Notes from SQLSaturday #21 – Part 1, Part 2 , and Part 3
Jack Corbett (Blog | Twitter): A Week of SQL Server, SQLSaturday #21 – Orlando Recap, and SQLSaturday #21 – Orlando What We Can Do Better
Jonathan Kehayias (Blog | Twitter): SQL Saturday #21 – Orlando Recap
Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter): SQL Saturday #21 Orlando – Recap
Devin Knight (Blog): Post SQL Saturday #21 Orlando
Aaron Nelson (Blog | Twitter): Highlights from SQL Saturday #21 in Orlando
Ronald Dameron (Blog | Twitter): What a week of training!
SQL Saturday Blog: Event Evaluation Results
Joe Healy (Blog | Twitter) posted plenty pictures of pictures he took throughout the day. Click the preview picture on the right to launch a slideshow in a new window

Off-Hours Work: A Guide For Non-Managers

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:15:00 +0000

In my last post I talked about how I think managers should approach off-hours work with their teams. It's a two way street, however, so today I'll share my thoughts on how non-managers (i.e. the rest of us!) should handle the situation.

Understand what's expected of you
Imagine you've been called in to work on a weekend and show up thinking you need to do A, B, and C while your manager really wants you to do X, Y, and Z. If you don't figure that out before you start working you're in for trouble. Do yourself (and your manager) a favor then and make sure you understand exactly what your manager expects to get accomplished while you're there.

Be the solution, not the problem
Sure, it's the weekend and you'd rather be anywhere else besides work. Guess what? Your manager feels the same way, and so do all of your co-workers. Talking about what you'd rather be doing or how much it sucks that you have to work on a weekend isn't likely to win you any sympathy points. Rather, it'll probably create tension and make you look like a complainer, and no one likes a complainer. Instead, focus on finishing what your manager called you in to do and remember the phrase, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all!"

If you are unhappy – and sometimes you have every right to be – take a minute to write down your reasons then give it some time to let your emotions settle. Revisit your list later and see if you can create some positive suggestions for how to do things better the next time, then bring them up in a one on one meeting with your manager or at a post-mortem when people are open to constructive criticism.

Minimize distractions
Shut off TweetDeck. Avoid logging into Facebook. Close Outlook & Gmail. Do whatever it takes to eliminate distractions so that you can focus on getting work done (and as mistake free as possible). The plus side of working during off-hours is that no one's there to interrupt you with their problems every 15 minutes. With no distractions or interruptions you're putting yourself in a zone of super-productivity. The more productive you are the sooner you finish what you came in to do. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can go home and log into Twitter, Facebook, and do all those other distracting things.

Work first, negotiate later
When your manager tells you that he\she needs you to work outside of normal hours it's natural to try and negotiate up front for overtime pay or extra time off as compensation but I believe that you shouldn't if possible. Do the work first and then talk compensation once you know how much time you put in. By contributing to your manager's success first and putting yourself second your manager will probably be more than willing to help you out in the end.

Note that there's a difference in negotiating for compensation and setting expectations. For example, if you're getting called in but you had a previous commitment that you can't back out of it's OK to work out what time you can come in beforehand…but it's not OK to tell your manager that you expect a few hours off on Monday because you are coming in on a Saturday.

The Big Picture
We all value our personal time, but from time to time we're going to have to give some of it up to go into work outside of normal hours. When it happens, remain positive, focus on getting the job done, and be a professional about it. Handle it wrong and you'll have to dig yourself out of a proverbial hole, but handle it right and you'll earn yourself a few extra karma points which may come in handy at some point in the future.

Off-Hours Work: A Guide For Managers

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0000

If you work in software development or IT long enough eventually you're going to find yourself in a situation where you have to work during off-hours; it's just the nature of the job and can happen for a variety of reasons like: hardware failure, a new client is brought on that spikes CPU or bandwidth, or maybe you're just really behind schedule and need to catch up.

It's happened to me a few times in my career (and will happen again, no doubt), and after the most recent occurrence I started thinking about the best ways to deal with the situation. Today I'll share how I think managers should approach off-hours work.

Set expectations
You don't always have the luxury of time at your disposal (e.g. when hardware fails), but when you do the more advance notice you can give people so they can make plans the better. If you're telling people they need to work outside of normal hours then level with them, let them know what you expect, and be honest about it. Make sure they know that you realize the circumstances aren't ideal and appreciate their help. "Look, I know you don't want to work on Saturday, and neither do I, but we need to meet the commitments we've made. I need everyone here on Saturday from 9 AM until at least 5, maybe later if we're not done" will go over a lot better than "Be here at 9 AM Saturday and I don't want to hear any excuses!". Be sure to deliver the message in person or by phone, not by email.

Take care of people
If people are giving up their personal time for work you need to take care of them. Provide breakfast\lunch\dinner if they're working through those hours (and tell them in advance that you've got that covered). Make sure coffee\sodas\snacks are available. If the dress code is usually business casual then let everyone wear shorts to work if they want to. If everyone feels comfortable they'll be more productive and less hung up on the fact that they're working when they'd rather be somewhere else.

On the other hand, if people feel like you're forcing work out of them without concern for their well being you're not only going to have a bunch of unhappy people to deal with but you may end up causing long term damage to your credibility\working relationship with them. Reasonable people will only put up with that kind of treatment for so long before they move on.

Focus on the task at hand
The last thing people need is you standing over their shoulder saying "WTF" or to see finger pointing and hear blame. Likewise avoid the temptation to get distracted by talking about what you're going to do to keep from getting into the same situation again. Save all that for a post-mortem when you're back in the office during normal hours. People will be much happier if you help them finish what they came in to do so they can get back to whatever they really wanted to be doing in the first place.

Don't ask your team to do anything you wouldn't do yourself
I once had a manager tell me at 2 PM that I had to stay that evening to do a release to production. It was something he knew about for a week but didn't tell me about until that day. To add insult to injury, while I stayed until 2 AM to get the work done, he went home. He lost a measure of my respect that day that he never gained back. Don't be that manager – if you're going to ask your team to work during off-hours, be prepared to come in too.

The Big Picture
You've called in your team because you need something done that can't wait until everybody is back in the office during normal hours. You're asking them to make exceptions so be prepared to make a few yourself. If you handle the situation right at worst you've got some slightly unhappy but understanding team members. Handle it poorly and you'll likely be dealing with more problems than you started with. Seems like no-brainer stuff, right? Amazingly, some managers don't get it. On the other hand, neither do some employees. In my next post I'll flip the coin and talk about how I think about how they should deal with having to work during off-hours.

SSMS "Connect to Database Engine" Prompt Behavior When Dragging And Dropping Files

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:00:00 +0000

A minor annoyance of mine for a long time has been how SSMS will sometimes prompt you to connect to a server and sometimes just connect automatically when a file (or files) gets dragged into the window. Thanks to an "aha!" moment with a coworker I've finally figured out why.

A connection is automatically made when SSMS is run for the first time and a server is highlighted in Registered Servers or Object Explorer. The connection is made to the server highlighted in the most recently viewed panel. If no server is highlighted in either panel and multiple files are dragged into the window SSMS will prompt you to connect for the first file and all other files will open with a connection to the same server. However, once you open a new query or a file using the File\Open dialog SSMS will no longer automatically connect when files are dragged into the window and you will always receive the dialog prompting you for server information.

I know, this sounds like a trivial tidbit of information, but imagine you need to open a bunch of scripts to run. Now you know how to avoid the frustration of having to deal with a new dialog box for every single file. Enjoy!

Networking While On Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

There's been a lot of attention given to professional networking (e.g. Andy Warren's blog posts) recently and if you recall I'm planning on kicking off my PASS Summit experience this year by attending Don Gabor's pre-conference session on starting conversations. It's perfectly reasonable to go to a conference, code camp, or SQL Saturday with the expectation that you're going to meet people who share a common professional interest and that you'd like to connect with, but how many of us put those networking skills to use outside of that context? For example, say you're going on a vacation...does your networking mojo go on one of its own too?

I just got back from a cruise celebrating my 10th wedding anniversary and on a whim before I left I grabbed a handful of business cards. Cruising can be a very social event if you want it to be – think thousands of people in the same setting for several days, and in most cases you run into the same people repeatedly at dinner, ports of call, and other activities around the ship. It's a perfect setting to practice conversation\networking skills. It turned out to be a good thing that I grabbed those business cards because I ended up meeting a sales rep for a large software company, a developer for a well known tax software company, and sat at dinner every night with a fellow IT person for a home hardware company. Will I gain anything from having given them my card? That's hard to say, but the chances are much better than had I not given them anything at all. One interesting note – of the three that I met, only one had a business card to give back to me.

The moral of my story – and the lesson I learned for myself – is to always keep those business cards with you, even when you go on vacation, because you'll never know who you may run into that you'll want to stay in touch with.

How To Get Table Row Counts Quickly And Painlessley

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Just a quick note to call out that I've had an article posted on SQLServerCentral that shows how to retrieve table row counts by using sysindexes & DMVs instead of select count(*). It's a 2 minute read – check it out here (free registration required) and if you like it let me know!

Why Does Code Outlining In SSMS Only Work When Connected To SQL 2008?

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Code Outlining has been part of Visual Studio since VS.NET 2002. If you're not familiar with it, code outlining is a feature that allows you to expand\collapse regions of code in the editor to make it easier to focus on specific sections of code.

SQL Server Management Studio is based on the Visual Studio editor but it wasn't until SSMS 2008 that IntelliSense, which includes code outlining, was added. One of the drawbacks, however, is that IntelliSense only works when connected to a 2008 server…sort of. As it turns out, code outlining works if you open a multi-server query regardless of what versions the servers you're connecting to are running.

Given this fact, I personally don't think that code outlining should be tied to SQL 2008 connections and I've opened a Connect feedback request to let Microsoft know. If you agree with me please take a minute to visit and vote for Connect ID 480714.

I should also point out that if you want code outlining NOW you're in luck – check out the SSMS Tools Pack from Mladen Prajdic at http://www.ssmstoolspack.com, which includes not only code outlining but a slew of other useful features that will improve the SSMS user experience.

Things You Need To Know If You Use DFS Replication

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:45:00 +0000

In addition to being a SQL DBA I'm also a network administrator, or at least I pretend to be. This is a bit off-topic from my usual SQL Server fare, but I figured my pain is your gain. Today, July 31, is System Administrator Appreciation Day. If you use DFS Replication in your company, give your sysadmin a gift by forwarding this on to him\her.

Background - What Is DFS Anyways?
DFS, or Distributed File System, is a feature built into Windows Server that allows you to organize multiple SMB shares into a single DFS share. Accessing the DFS share automatically redirects (under the covers) to one of the SMB shares that are part of the group. It's a neat bit of technology that provides location transparency and redundancy simultaneously. Another part of DFS is the ability to replicate changes made to a file (or files) in one of the SMB shares to all of the other SMB shares in the group. Prior to Windows Server 2003 R2 this feature was called File Replication Service and, while it worked, it was less than efficient because any change to a file resulted in the entire file being copied (imagine making a 1 line change to a 100 MB file). Beginning with Server 2003 R2 it was renamed to DFS Replication. Along with it came some nice improvements which included scheduling, bandwidth throttling, and most importantly Remote Differential Compression which detects and replicates only the part of the file which changed and not the entire file.

DFS (and DFS replication) is really nifty when it works. My company uses it to keep content synchronized on servers across multiple datacenters. However, there are a few caveats that you need to be aware of. I'll call them lessons learned, and unfortunately I had to learn them the hard way. I'm going to share them with you in the hopes that you won't have to go through the same pain that I did.

Lesson #1 – Be Very Careful When Removing And Re-Adding Members To A DFS Replication Group
Let's pretend you've got DFS Replication set up and you want to add a server (referred to as a member) into your group. You start with a blank target directory on the member and a short while after adding it to the group it gets populated with the files & folders from the other members in the group. At some point in the future you need to remove that member temporarily and then re-add it. Thinking you need to start with a blank target directory like the first time you wipe the directory clean and then add the member back to the group. A short time later you start to see the opposite of what you expect – instead of the member receiving the files & folders from the other members they start disappearing from every member in the group. What the heck happened?!?

It turns out that when you delete a member from a DFS replication group information about the member isn't actually deleted from the DFS replication database. Instead, the member is marked with a 30-day tombstone flag. If the member is added back into the DFS replication group the flag is deleted and the original objects for the member are reused. Any changes made to the recently re-added member are then replicated to the other members. So deleting those files from the member before re-adding it? They get picked up and replicated to the other members.

This "feature" and 3 workarounds are documented in Microsoft KB article 961655. Do yourself a favor and read it.

Lesson #2 – Back Up Your DFS Shares
Lesson #1 leads to lesson #2, which should a no brainer – Back up your DFS shares. DFS Replication will replicate all changes to files, including deletes. Would you like to explain to management how you just lost all your files permanently because someone mistakenly deleted all of them and you weren't taking backups? I wouldn't.

Lesson #3 – Recover Deleted Files In A Pinch
Suppose you didn't learn from lesson #2, files got deleted by mistake, and you don't have backups. All hope is not lost. It turns out that DFS Replication keeps a hidden, private folder which contains a copy of the deleted files. It's limited in size so it's not foolproof but it just might save you in a pinch.

Ned Pyle, a Technical Lead for the Directory Services team at Microsoft, posted a handy VB Script that you can use to restore data if you're in disaster recovery mode. I've used it and it saved my butt. By the way, remember lesson #2 about backing up your DFS shares? (hint, hint)

Lesson #4 – Files With The Temporary Attribute Won't Replicate
Filters can be applied to exclude files from replicating based on their extension (e.g. .BAK), but what about when a non-excluded file just won't seem to replicate? It might have the temporary attribute set. DFS Replication won't pick up changes to those files. You wouldn't know that unless you found the single line mentioning it in this TechNet article (see if you can find the line!) or came across this post on the Microsoft Storage Team's blog.

How do you fix that? One way is to use Robocopy to strip the temporary attribute off the file(s) when copying into the DFS share. The switch is: /A-:T

Lesson #5 – Monitor DFS Replication Performance
One big downside to DFS Replication is that unlike other Microsoft products there's no shiny GUI to monitor DFS replication performance. That doesn't mean it can't be done – it just requires a little extra work. There's a command line executable included with DFS called dfsradmin that will create an HTML report showing DFS Replication's health status. There's a nice writeup here and here on how to automate DFS replication health reports. I highly recommend that you take the time to read it and implement your own automated reports.

Conclusion
I hope that my lessons learned the hard way will save you some of the pain that I had to go through. Despite the hiccups that I've had with DFS I remain a big fan of using it to keep content synchronized across multiple locations. One last bit of advice – be sure to check out the File Cabinet blog from the Storage Team at Microsoft. It's a fantastic resource for DFS information that's helped me out many times and will no doubt help you too.

SQL Logins For Windows Domain Accounts Limited To Pre-Windows 2000 Format

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0000

You may have noticed that when you create a login on a SQL server that's mapped to a Windows domain account you have to use the pre-Windows 2000 format [domain\login]. Did you also notice that there's a limitation of 20 characters on the login portion of this format?

Let's pretend that you use nice descriptive names for application accounts, for example:

Sales.ReportUtil.ProdService
Sales.ReportUtil.ProdWebuser

When you try to add these logins the 20 character limit cuts them both off at "Sales.ReportUtil.Pro". In other words, without employing a workaround (e.g. create AD groups for these accounts and add logins for the groups) you cannot add both of them to the same SQL Server. There just so happens to be another format, User Principal Name (looks like username@domain), that is not limited to 20 characters…but is not supported by SQL server. Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is 2009 and you can use the UPN format in just about every other product Microsoft makes.

I'm hoping there's not some ugly technical reason why the UPN format can't be used and that it was just a minor oversight on Microsoft's part that it was left out. Assuming the latter, I've submitted a suggestion to Microsoft Connect to correct this. If you're annoyed by this too please visit connect and vote for Connect ID 477636.

Interested In Free SQL Training? Attend A SQL Saturday Near You!

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Can't make the PASS summit? Or maybe you're going but looking for something whet your appetite between now and November. How about attending one of these SQL Saturday events happening soon?

Baton Rouge, LA – Aug 1
South Florida (Miramar, FL) – Aug 8
Redmond, WA – Oct 3
Gainesville, GA (just north of Atlanta) – Oct 9 & 10
East Iowa (Iowa City, IA) – Oct 10
Orlando, FL – Oct 17
Louisville, KY – Oct 24

Why go to a SQL Saturday? How about:

FREE training – in additional to local presenters you'll get the chance to see pros like Steve Jones (Baton Rouge), Tim Mitchell (Baton Rouge), Michelle Ufford (East Iowa), and Andy Warren (South Florida). The speakers list isn't finalized for some of these events yet; folks like Brad McGehee and Joe Celko have been at past events so you never know what kind of talent you'll get the chance to learn from.
FREE swag like books, shirts, software, and other fun stuff to barter with back at the office (or keep for yourself!)
FREE food (depending on the event – some events ask for a minimal donation to cover lunch)
An opportunity to build your professional network by meeting other SQL DBAs & developers in your area

These events are also a fantastic opportunity for you to jump into public speaking. SQL Saturday focuses on local speakers and many events are still looking for speakers. SQL Saturday is how I got my start in speaking and helped me gain the experience and confidence necessary to speak at the PASS summit coming this November. Speaking experience is also a great addition to your resume. I encourage you to consider answering the call for speakers if you're interested in advancing your career or even just giving back to the SQL community.

On a personal note, I'm scheduled to present three sessions at South Florida on Aug 8:

We all know times are tough and many companies are cutting back on training budgets or cutting them out altogether. How can you argue with FREE training, swag, and food plus the chance to mix and mingle with other SQL professionals? Sign up for a SQL Saturday in your area today!

So You Want To Meet People At PASS…But What Do You Say?

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Going to the PASS Summit this November? Let's fast forward and pretend it's November 2. You've made it to Seattle and are at the convention center for the welcome reception. While there you spot so-and-so whose blog you read or so-and-so who you follow on Twitter. You'd like to say something to them so you walk up and introduce yourself. Do you: a) strike up a meaningful conversation and finish by exchanging contact information…or: b) pause awkwardly for a few moments, struggling to figure out what to say next, only to walk away empty handed?

I'd be willing to bet that most people (including me) stand a fair chance of having answered the latter. In this day and age we tend to be pretty good at tweeting, texting, and emailing, but for many holding a conversation can be difficult. Unlike email which gives you time to articulate your thoughts (or delete them before hitting the send button!) on your own terms and time, holding a conversation is an engaging exercise that requires you to be quick on your feet. I've been in many circumstances where I've completely fumbled my way through the conversation, even with people who I know fairly well. It happens to the best of us.

There are a lot of people I know I want to meet at PASS this year and probably just as many more I'll want to talk to once I'm there. What do I say to break the ice? How do I remember their name? How do I keep the conversation interesting? This is PASS, the place for people who work with SQL Server to see and be seen. I'd rather not find myself in the middle of those long awkward pauses so I'm going to do something to help hedge my bets. Right before this year's welcome reception there's a special 2 hour workshop held by Don Gabor called "Networking to Build Business Contacts". I'm going and I think you should too.

$60 gets you into the session plus a signed copy of Don's book How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends. Not sure if it's worth it? Read Andy Warren's 6 part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6) chronicling his personal coaching sessions over the phone. I happen to know Andy personally and I've seen him put Don's advice into action. Trust me, $60 is a steal for the kind of ROI that knowing how to hold a good conversation will net you.

The bonus is that not only will I pick up some valuable skills that I hope will last well beyond the conference but I'll get to meet some of the people on my list who are also going to the workshop (e.g. Tom LaRock and Grant Fritchey). If you're going to PASS and you care about building your professional network, I strongly encourage you to sign up too. If you do, make it a point to find me and say hello. Lucky for us we'll both know a few tricks to hold a great conversation.

Replication Snapshot Errors Caused By Compatibility Level Setting

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:30:00 +0000

I ran across an interesting replication error recently that's worth sharing. It happened while using a distributor running SQL 2008, a publisher running SQL 2005, and the published database set to 2000 (80) compatibility. When adding a new subscription (version and compatibility of subscriber are irrelevant) the snapshot agent failed with the following error (extra details omitted for readability):

Error messages:
Source: Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo
…

Message: Script failed for Table 'dbo.Template_HeaderFooter'.
…

Message: Column HeaderFooter_Value in object Template_HeaderFooter contains type NVarCharMax, which is not supported in the target server version, SQL Server 2000.
…

The distributor was recently upgraded from SQL 2005 where this wasn't a problem. A quick search of Microsoft's KB turned up nothing on the error. After some tinkering I was able to figure out a workaround: change the compatibility level of the published DB to 2005 (90). While this works, it's less than ideal if your DB is already live because you may break code by changing the compatibility level.

Unfortunately I haven't found any other workarounds to the problem so if this is happening to you your best bet is to pick a time when no one is using the DB, change the compatibility level, take your snapshot, then change the compatibility level back. Of course an even better strategy is to work with your development teams to get the DB moved up to 2005 compatibility permanently.

SQL Quiz #4 - Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Chris Shaw posts SQL quiz #4, I make an observation on Twitter about who gets tagged, Brent Ozar tags me for ~~complaining~~ being a squeaky wheel, and then I wait ~~3 months~~ a really long time before posting a reply. Well, better late than never so here goes…

Question: Who has been a great leader in your career and what made them a great leader?

First I want to lay out my criteria for what makes a great leader:

A manager who keeps things moving towards a goal or in a particular direction
A motivator who keeps everyone enthusiastic about working towards that goal
Someone who challenges you to do things that you don't know how to so that you can learn and grow
Someone who sees your potential and puts opportunities in front of you
Someone who sets an example by walking the walk (the opposite of someone who says "do as I say, not as I do")

That said there are two people who stand out in my mind: Ryan (last name withheld to protect the innocent), a manager I've had in two previous jobs, and Andy Warren (last name not withheld – practically everybody in the SQL community knows who Andy is!).

Ryan
Ryan was a lead developer at my first job out of college. He was a rock star – he "got" technology and software and he was the go-to guy that everyone sought out when they needed advice or help fixing a problem. On the other hand I had a "me" complex – I thought I was hot stuff so I didn't like Ryan much because I saw him as competition. It didn't take me long to realize that I knew squat and that I needed to get over myself and start learning from the people around me. I'm guessing Ryan noticed my change in attitude because after that he seemed to look out for me as he advanced into management. In particular he sent me for my CCNA certification and eventually put me in charge of the production infrastructure. Ryan later left for another job but sought me out to come work for him again where he put me into a role that helped me grow both technically and professionally. We worked together for a few more years before parting ways (permanently? who knows…), and I will always appreciate the doors that he opened for me. Of all the managers that I've ever worked for he was the only one that met every one of my criteria for a great leader.

Andy Warren
A few years ago I was introduced to Andy Warren by a coworker. Andy was looking for local speakers to give presentations at OPASS and, being the kind of person who's up for new challenges,I volunteered…and completely bombed it. But as bad as I thought it went, Andy still give me constructive feedback on how to do better and asked me if I wanted to try again at the first SQL Saturday in Orlando. I took his advice and did a much better job; In fact, I liked speaking so much that I started volunteering to give more technical presentations whenever the chance presented itself. I also enjoyed reading Andy's blog every day and thought about starting my own. Andy was more than encouraging when I talked with him about it, and that's always been the case with him no matter if I've needed help with something or just a different way of looking at things. I'm fortunate to have become friends with Andy and it's his leadership that helped me become active in the SQL community and lead to being selected as a first time speaker at this year's PASS summit. I hope that one day I have the opportunity to emulate Andy and help someone up and coming in the SQL community the way that he helped me.

I'm not going to tag anybody else since the train left the station on this one a few months ago…and I promise that I'll respond quicker the next time if I still get tagged!

The Best Thing I Learned At PASS

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Note: I'm writing this as part of the "Best Thing I Learned At PASS" contest. Why? Because if I win it's worth a free registration or hotel stay for the 2009 Summit, and I like free!

Let me start by making a small confession: I've never actually been to the PASS summit in person. So how in the world can I write about what I've learned? Because I've been there vicariously through the blogs and Twitter streams of people who were there last year. Thank goodness, because before the rise of blogging\social networking if you had asked me what happens at the PASS summit I would have said…I honestly don’t know what happens at PASS besides a bunch of technical presentations given by people who write books and magazine articles for a living. My ignorance about what PASS is became clear to me last November as I read about the daily keynotes, the community sessions, and the nighttime parties. I came to realize that PASS is about so much more than just sitting in technical presentations. It’s about learning from people just like you who are doing the same things as you do every day. It’s about uniting with your peers and meeting new people who share a common interest. It’s about escaping the daily workload to reenergize and reinvigorate the passion to do our jobs as best as we possibly can when we return. So even though I haven’t been to PASS in person, I’ve learned one important thing: For the sake of my career, I need to go to PASS. If I can figure that out without actually having been to PASS, just imagine what I’ll learn when I do go this year.

See You In Seattle For PASS 2009!

noreply@blogger.com (Kendal Van Dyke) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Last Friday I got the official notice that I've been selected to present a community session at the 2009 PASS summit in Seattle. I've also had 2 other abstracts selected as alternates. Ecstatic doesn't even begin to describe how I feel right now. I've never been to the summit before and now not only do I get to go but I get the chance to talk on a national stage about something I love doing. Very, very cool!

Here's what my session is about:

Transactional Replication: Beyond The Basics
At some point in every DBA's career they'll be probably be asked to work with transactional replication but most DBAs don't look under the covers once they're done walking through the setup wizards. In this session we'll take a deeper look at setting up, monitoring, and calibrating transactional publications plus share some tricks and tips gleaned from years of experience working with high volume, multiple datacenter topologies.

Session Goals:

Understand core concepts of transactional replication including: replication topologies, publishers, distributors, agents, & agent profiles. Learn how to configure advanced options such as vertical and horizontal filtering
Demonstrate how to monitor transactional replication performance
Learn advanced troubleshooting techniques to apply when problems occur