I always enjoy presenting at the DevLink conference, presented each summer in middle Tennessee. This year, I'm trying to be a better social media person and actually post my slides (in their most recent forms) on my SlideShare account for everyone to see and share. If you attended my session(s) and enjoyed them, feel free to download the content here. But it'd be even better if you also left a few words in the Comment section. Skip below to grab the slide decks. Thanks very much! Enjoy, -Kevin -Follow me on Twitter! -Google Author Microsoft SQL Server Internals & … [Read more...]
Join Me at the Ft. Lauderdale SQL Saturday on June 14, 2014!
Join Me at SQLSaturday #288 in Beautiful Ft. Lauderdale, FL SQLSaturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server. This event will be held Jun 14 2014 at 3301 College Avenue, Davie, FL 33314. Admittance to this event is free, all costs are covered by donations and sponsorships. Please register soon as seating is limited, and let friends and colleagues know about the event. Where Is It? This event will be held on Jun 14, 2014 at Nova Southeastern University 3301 College Ave, Davie, FL 33314. You need to go to the Carl … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Databases, PASS, Performance, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: SQLSaturday, Transact-SQL Programming
Amazingly Useful SQL Server Articles on SQLPerformance.com
Me and Aaron Bertrand, SQL Sentry flagbearers. One of the things we've been working on at SQL Sentry is building up institutional knowledge for the SQL Server community. There are three main ways that we're doing that on-line: Hard-core tech articles on SQLPerformance.com, edited by long-time SQL Server MVP Aaron Bertrand ( b | t ). Helping tune tough SQL Server transactions on Answers.SQLPerformance.com for free. Streaming videos at SQLSentry.TV. In addition, our monthly eNews newsletter keeps you up to date on all the latest happenings on all of these websites. Please subscribe! … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: DBA, Developer, Internals, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014, Transact-SQL Programming
Learn More About SQL Server IO and Query Tuning in These Webcasts
I'm doing two new webcasts next week on Wednesday, December 19th, one in the morning and the other after lunch. SSDs are a Game Changer for SQL Server Storage No, don't let the title mislead you. This session is not exclusively about SSDs. But this is my first session on IO and storage tuning that emphasizes SSDs over hard disks. As Bob Dylan said "Times, they are a'changin'". This session on Wednesday, December 19th at 11:30 AM EST, sponsored by Astute Networks, takes you through all of the basics of storage and IO tuning, regardless of the underlying storage technology. I'll … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Databases, IO, Performance, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Transact-SQL Programming, Video Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, Internals, IO, SAN, SQL Server 2012, SSD, Storage, Training, Transact-SQL Programming, Video
Help Me Update the History of SQL Server
I was chatting with my buddy, Buck Woody (Twitter | Blog), about a week ago and we were discussing that it's pretty hard to put together the entire history of SQL Server. Then the thought hit me that I'd already done this, to a degree, in my book Transact-SQL Programming. This was the first Transact-SQL programming book on the market way back in the SQL Server 7.0 days and even included full coverage of both Microsoft and Sybase variants of T-SQL. The thing is, I was never able to put out a second edition due to some legal and contractual issues. So, help me catch up on the history of … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cool Technologies, Databases, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer
Flexibility When Waiting on Locks
Speaking at a recent SQL Saturday, an attendee in one of my sessions wanted to know how they could more flexibly react to locks on their application than to wait for blocks to occur and then kill the SPID at the head of the blocking chain. They were also interested in some alternatives to using the SQL Server syntax like the WITH (NOLOCK) hint, since that might have unintended consequences due to allowing reads on uncommitted data. One alternative I suggested is the SET LOCK_TIMEOUT n statement. Since most of the attendees hadn't heard of this statement, I figured it'd make a good blog … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Coding, Databases, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: Developer, SQL Server 2012, Transact-SQL Programming
Dev Advice: Make a Tiny Dev Database Act Like a HUGE Prod Database
Here's an evergreen question. It's a question that never completely goes away. But lately, I've been getting it a few times per week. So I thought it's time to readdress the question, which usually takes some form of the following: I can't really do effective development on my little dev laptop because our production SQL Server database is 15 gazillionbytes, way too big for my workstation. What's a uber-nerd to do? Well, maybe they didn't use the word "uber-nerd". But you get my drift, right? The production database is really, really big - unmanageably big for keeping a local copy. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Transact-SQL Programming Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, Performance, Transact-SQL Programming
Everybody Needs a Test Harness
When you're developing new Transact-SQL code or modifying some existing code, do you just launch directly into programming? I know that I did just that, for years. It wasn't until I was trying to performance tune some existing code that I realized I hadn't actually taken caching of data and execution plans into account. So all those modified stored procedures that I was so proud of might not actually be faster than the first generation of procedures because I hadn't checked to ensure that I was testing cached programs against uncached programs (and, by extension, the data used by those … [Read more...]
SQL Server Migration Roll-Up
There are so many great tools out there for data professionals using Microsoft SQL Server. I really like to see all of these great tools made free to the public. On the other hand, I'm bummed that the tools are cast about in a very decentralized fashion. If you haven't done migrations before, you might want to start with these good white papers first. Here are a hand full of cool migration tools worth mentioning: Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL: Migrate from MySQL to SQL Azure or SQL Server with ease. Plus, here are a few related Knowledge Base (KB) … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, On-Line Resources, Performance, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Transact-SQL Programming, Virtualization Tagged With: cloud computing, DBA, Developer, MS-Access, MySQL, Oracle, PHP, SQL Azure, SQL Server 2008 R2, Sybase, Tools, Tools & Scripts, Transact-SQL Programming
Video: Maximize SQL Server Performance with SQL Tuning
This presentation is a bit old, but largely still applicable. It will help you understand Microsoft tuning techniques. It will teach tips and tricks for making queries perform better, and how to use tools to tune SQL. Posted March 27, 2007. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Presentations, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks, Tool Time, Transact-SQL Programming, Video Tagged With: Best Practices, DBA, Developer, SQL Server 2005, Tools & Scripts, Transact-SQL Programming, Video
