I’m Speaking at SQLSaturday #156–Providence

I’m excited to be back on the speaking circuit.  I was able to attend SQLSaturday #122 – Louisville thanks to Idera and the ACE program.

Now I’m on the schedule for SQLSaturday #156 – Providence.  I’ll be presenting Transitioning from SQL Trace to Extended Events.  This has been a very well-received presentation at SQLSaturday #142 – Waltham, SQLSaturday #122 – Louisville, and Rochester PASS.

This event has a great lineup of speakers.  Here are the sessions I’ll try to attend, although I’ll probably be stuck at the PASS table most of the day:

• Andy Roberts – DB Development ALM with SQL Server Data Tools
• Alex Papadimoulis – Database Deployment Done Right
• Andy Novick – BIggest Loser Database Edition
• Andy Roberts – SQL Server 2012 Availability Groups
• Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter) – The Ins and Outs of Contained Databases

If you are there be sure to stop by the PASS table and say, “Hello”

SqlSaturday #71–Boston Recap: An Upscale Saturday

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at SQLSaturday #71 – Boston on April 2nd.  Adam Machanic (Blog|Twitter), Mike Walsh (Blog|Twitter), Tom LaRock (Blog|Twitter), Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter) and crew did a great job putting on the event.  The event was held at the Babson College Executive Conference Center which is a great facility.  The rooms were large and, except for the large room, theatre-style so the all the attendees could see.  There was also an on-site pub for the after-party that made it easy for attendees to stay and network after the event.  I was surprised that more didn’t, but the crew that did was very lively.

Highlights

Meeting Paul White (Blog|Twitter) – I’ve “known” Paul for awhile online through SQLServerCentral and Twitter, but this was my first opportunity to meet him in person.  I’m always excited to meet people in person, especially when they are among the best and brightest in the SQL Server community, which Paul is.  It was also great to hear that he was rightly awarded SQL Server MVP status in the latest round.  If you don’t read his blog you should. 

Food Service – In order to use the facility the event had to purchase food through the facility and it was the BEST food at any event I’ve attended.  There was fruit, drinks, muffins, etc… throughout the morning at several stations in the facility, and the event staff kept everything stocked.  It was actually so well-done I wasn’t sure it was for our event because I’ve never seen it done like that before.  The lunch buffet was unbelievable!  Tampa has a good lunch at their event, but it did not compare.  I can’t even mention all the items that were available, including the desserts.  There were even servers keeping you water or other drink filled and clearing your plates.  Even the Summit doesn’t serve a meal like this!  Then, to top it off cookies and fruit appeared at the snack stations in the afternoon!  Thank goodness I stayed on my feet throughout the day or I would have gained back half the weight I’ve lost! 

Seeing old friends and making new ones – There is never a time when getting together with old friends in the community is not a great time.  People like Andy Leonard (Blog|Twitter), Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter), Karen Lopez (Blog|Twitter), Chris Skorlinksi and others that make every conversation a learning experience.  Then some new friends, many of whom I interact with online, like Mike Hilwig (Blog), Michael Coles (Blog|Twitter), Andrew Kelly (Blog|Twitter), Stefan Krzywicki (Blog), and Allen White (Blog|Twitter).  Each one of the folks I interacted with during the day made a full day of #sqlwinning.  I know I’m leaving out a bunch of people, but there are too many to include.

My Session

I presented my Introduction to Triggers session in the first slot and I had at least 15 people (that’s how many evals I got), which is about my normal crowd for this session.  Overall it went well, although I lost my train of thought a couple of times, and I was a little nervous having Paul White in my session.  Paul actually was a great help in the session as he asked some great questions that reminded me of some points that I need to make or emphasize.  I am guessing that is why he asked those questions because I’m pretty sure he knew the answers, and I’d be shocked if he didn’t.  There were a lot of good questions from the rest of group as well, especially when we talked about DDL triggers.  We actually spent more time on that part of the presentation than normal because of the questions.  It is always nice to get the evaluations right at the session, especially when they are good .  I had 3 fours and 12 fives for the overall quality of the presentation which is always nice to see. Here a few comments:

“Great session – learned a lot!”

“Great Speaker.  Accessible and sincere”

“On the slides, yellow urls against a blue background are hard to read”

“Lively, engaging speaker”

“Test his code! ” – I did have a couple of oops’s

“Very good @ recovering from the “gotchas”.”

“A little extra on the real basics of what a trigger does and when it fires”

I’ll definitely be working the ones that involve doing something better, but very happy that everyone enjoyed and learned something from the session, including me!

Sessions I attended

I only attended 2 sessions, Paul White’s SQL Query Optimization: It’s Not Rocket Science session, and Karen Lopez’s session, Database Design Contentious Issues.

As I expected, Paul’s session was great and deep!  I know I’m not at his level in understanding the internals of SQL Server and he gave a great overview of how the query optimizer works, ways you can “play” with it, and ways you can “help” it.  The fact that you can help the optimizer by trying different ways to “declare” what you want to see which one brings out the best plan.  This session should be followed by Grant Fritchey’s session on query plans.

Karen’s session was very interesting as it was very interactive.  We talked about surrogate keys vs. natural keys, when to use varchar vs. char, and naming conventions.  Each of which is definitely a contentious issue, and we didn’t even talk about NULL’s!  The key thing I took from this session is that the “tools you use affect the decisions you make”.

Constructive Criticism’s

I’ve never attended a perfect event, so here are a couple things I’d suggest for next time:

1. SQLSaturday signs on the way into the event location.  Once you got to the Babson campus it seemed like you had to drive through the whole place to find the event.  I was looking for SQLSaturday signs and there weren’t any.
2. Include the speaker name on the schedule handed out at the event.  I know a lot of people want to know who is speaking as a the tie-breaker between sessions.

Other than those 2 things I don’t have any other things to change.  Check-in, which is often a problem, went smoothly, and the day seemed to flow very well.

Thanks for putting on a great event and I hope to be back next year!

Upcoming Engagements

I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been busy tweaking my resume, working on PASS SQLRally, serving at church, and spending time with my family.  Things aren’t going to be slowing down anytime soon, but I wanted to let those who do read this blog know that I’m still around and about my upcoming speaking engagements:

Wednesday, March 9th 3pm

I’ll be doing a web cast on Security, Performance, and Maintenance Advantages to Using Stored Procedures over ORM Tools where I share my opinions on why Stored Procedures are better than an ORM tool for a data access layer.

Saturday, March 26th 10:50am

I’ll be presenting Introduction to SQL Server Profiler at the Orlando CodeCamp.  I’ve given this presentation several times, but will be tailoring for developers so that they can really see what their preferred ORM tool is doing.

Saturday April 2nd 9am

I’ll be presenting Introduction to Triggers SQLSaturday #71 – Boston.  I’ll be giving a brief overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server (DDL & DML) and then go into more detail on how and when to use DML triggers. This session will cover misconceptions about how triggers work, when triggers should and shouldn't be used (we will discuss options), common mistakes, and how to fix the most common mistakes.

Speaking at SQLSaturday #62–Tampa

I’ll be speaking at SQLSaturday #62 – Tampa this Saturday, January 15th.  I’ll be presenting:

Why I Use Stored Procedures

With the proliferation of ORM tools like Entity Framework, nHibernate, and Linq to SQL, many projects have decided that stored procedures are not needed and slow down development. While these tools have their place and have improved greatly, stored procedures still have their place, and, in this speaker's opinion, are the best way to do data access. In this session I'll discuss my reasons for using stored procedures and hopefully stimulate some discussion of other access methods.

Session Level: Intermediate

Every SQLSaturday is a great time and great opportunity to upgrade your skills and network!  Pam Shaw and crew have done a few of these so they know what they are  doing.

I’ll also be attending Denny Cherry’s (Blog|Twitter) Day of Data seminar on Storage and Virtualization for the DBA on Friday, January 14, 2011.  You can still register and get by 2 get one free deal.

Hope to see you this weekend!

SQLSaturday #52 – Colorado Recap

I had the good fortune of being able to travel to Denver for SQLSaturday #52 the weekend of September 25, 2010.  I was able to go because my wife, Alice, had connected with Steve Jones’ wife, Tia, because of their mutual interest in horses.  So Alice was able to head out to the Jones’ ranch on Saturday to spend some time with Tia and the horses.  This worked out well as this trip was close enough to Alice’s birthday to double as a birthday present.

We flew out to Denver on Friday afternoon and had a good flight.  Our hotel was only about 1/2 mile from the speaker dinner at Great Northern Tavern, so after settling in at the hotel we walked to the dinner.  We had a GREAT time at the dinner.  I was able to reconnect with many people I already knew: Steve, Tim Mitchell, Jen McCown & daughter, Dean Richards, Nadine (from Confio), and Jason Strate.  There were also many new people to meet as well like: Meredith Ryan-Smith, Marc Beacom, another Steve, Rob, Jeff, Tom, Todd, Jason, Brandon, Michelle (from SQL Mag), Paul, Patrice, and Kate.  I’m sure I’m leaving someone out, but I feel pretty good that I remembered that many names, which is 19 out of about 25 attendees.

On Saturday Alice and I headed to the event at about 7:15am since the first session was at 8am.  The event was at the Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church, which was a beautiful facility, and worked out well.  The gym was used as the lunch room and there were 4 session rooms in the main church building and 2 session rooms in the same building as the gym.  Registration was going smoothly when I arrived, and, since I was presenting in the first session, I headed to my session room.  The only problem I saw with the setup was that there were not enough signs, a common issue, especially when hosting your first event.  They could have used a large sign by the church entrance, more signs directing people to the correct rooms (they get some slack here, as there were last minute room changes), and signs on each room door with the sessions schedule for that room.

My first session was at 8am, not the best time for me, and was my presentation, Why I Use Stored Procedures, which covers why I prefer using stored procedures for data access over other methods, specifically the Microsoft ORM tools, Linq to SQL and Entity Framework.  I had between 15-20 people in the session and had some good discussion.  The interesting thing about this session was that most of the attendees had no experience with ORM tools.  I’ve given this presentation a few times and this is the first time that there has been a majority of attendees without some exposure to ORM tools.  I had made the mistake of reworking my demos on Thursday night and, as expected, one did not work.  I demonstrate the use of Linq to SQL and Entity Framework in .NET 4 and 3.5, and by changing my demos I had broken my Entity Framework demo when using .NET 3.5.  Other than that the session went very well.  I consider any session where I get questions and stimulate some discussion to be a success and there were plenty of questions and discussion with this group.

My second session was from 10:30-11:30, just before lunch, and was my Introduction to Triggers session and was the 3rd time I’ve done this session.  This session was a little different because the hookup for the projector was towards the back and side of the room so I had to present from the side of the attendees when I was doing demos.  This session is mostly demos so it was a bit awkward, but worked.  Again, there were a lot of good comments and questions which made the time go quickly.  I really like doing this session as it gives people something to think about and take back to work to use, whether it is using DDL triggers or improving DML trigger code.

Lunch was nice sack lunch with a sandwich, chips, pasta salad, and piece of fruit.  They did 2 different things at lunch.  The first was to have Steve Jones give a short talk, like a keynote, and the second was raffling off some of the swag during lunch.  I really liked having a raffle at lunch as it gives everyone a chance to win something, even if they don’t stay for the whole event.

In the afternoon I attended 3 sessions: Glenn Berry’s session on Azure, Jen McCown’s T-SQL Code Sins, and Tim Mitchell’s session on Programming the SSIS API.  All three sessions were well-attended and informative.

The day ended with a raffle, and once again I didn’t win the iPad that FusionIO was giving away.  This went smoothly and when it was finished there was a good crew who helped clean up and put away chairs and tables so the church would be ready for Sunday services.

Because my wife had our rental car out at the ranch I hitched a ride to the after party with Lynn Pettis, a good friend from SQLServerCentral, who I met in person for the first time at the event.  The after party was at the Baker Street Pub, where we had a small section just for SQLSaturday attendees.  There was a great turnout of between 50-60 attendees out of about 160 total event attendees.  They had a nice little bingo card that attendees could fill out by talking to other attendees and you could win a gift card.  I managed to get the first bingo and win a $20 Micro Center gift card which I used to get a small PowerShell book and an older DNN book, so I can do a better job on the OPASS web site.

Sunday we went up to Boulder on the recommendation of Paul Paiva and rented bikes to ride around town.   We spent the afternoon biking on the Boulder Creek Path.  We got to see some beautiful mountain scenery, some of deer, and a bunch of prairie dogs (neither Alice or I had seen these anywhere before).

  

It was a great trip.  Actually the best SQLSaturday I’ve attended so far.  I think it was for 2 reasons: Alice traveled with me and the people at the event, speakers, organizers, and attendees, were very friendly and made me feel very comfortable.

Great job by Marc, Chris, Patrice, and crew!  I hope we do as well with SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando.

SQLSaturday #52 – Colorado Here I Come!

Well, I’ve been waiting to book hotel and rental car for SQLSaturday #52 – Colorado because I wasn’t sure if my father-in-law’s health issues were going to cause us to cancel the trip, but fortunately his health is looking up, so we booked our hotel last night and our rental car this morning.

This trip is a short getaway for my wife, Alice, and I and her birthday present.  Alice has connected on-line with Steve Jones’ wife, Tia, as Alice loves horse and Tia has them and trains them.  So while I’m at SQLSaturday soaking up knowledge and networking, Alice will be heading out to the ranch to hang with Tia.  We really appreciate Steve and Tia opening their home for the day.  Alice and I aren’t sure what we’ll be doing on Sunday (we’ll be attending church in the AM) and Monday (flight is in the evening), but I’m sure we’ll find something. 

I’m scheduled to give two sessions at SQLSaturday:

Why I Use Stored Procedures

With the proliferation of ORM tools like Entity Framework, nHibernate, and Linq to SQL, many projects have decided that stored procedures are not needed and slow down development. While these tools have their place and have improved greatly, stored procedures still have their place, and, in this speaker's opinion, are the best way to do data access. In this session I'll discuss my reasons for using stored procedures and hopefully stimulate some discussion of other access methods.

Session Level: Intermediate

Introduction to Triggers

This session will give a brief overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server (DDL & DML) and then go into more detail on how and when to use DML triggers. This session will cover misconceptions about how triggers work, when triggers shoul d and shouldn't be used (we will discuss options), common mistakes, and how to fix the most common mistakes. After attending this session a person will: 1. Identify different types of triggers and when to use them. 2. Be able to identify when a trigger is the right solution 3. Be able to write triggers that perform well

Session Level: Beginner

Finally, the organizers are doing some good work on this event by with a food drive:

Giving Back - Help local food banks and the Boulder fire victims!

In spirit of this community event and giving back to the community, we have decided to run a food drive to help out others in our area.  Attendees that bring in can goods or provide a financial donation, all of which will be going to local food banks and help out the Boulder fire victims, you will be entered into a special drawing.  This drawing, for a special prize, will be held during lunch at SQL Saturday #52 – Colorado.

This is a great idea especially as we close in on the holiday season.  We need to remember that most of us in the technology field are blessed with good salaries where out needs are met, and we often have more that we can give back.  Take the time to help out those less fortunate than us by bring something for the food drive.

Can’t wait to get there!

Space Coast User Group Recap

I had the pleasure of making my second annual September visit to the Space Coast SQL Server User Group in Melbourne, FL, last Thursday, September 9, 2010, to present, Introduction to Triggers.  This is small user group, but they are a lot of fun and ask good questions.  Because of the small size it is a very informal group so I took some time to talk about SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando, the pre-con on Database Design with Louis Davidson, and SQLRally before getting on with my presentation. 

The presentation went well and they caught me on one of my demos.  The demo in question demonstrates a common mistake I see in triggers and mention before doing the demos.  So, when I get to it I ask, “Can anyone see the problem with this trigger?”, and in this  case someone noticed I had left out the code, “SET NOCOUNT ON;”, at the start of the trigger body.  This was right after I had mentioned that you should always include this statement, unfortunately, this was not the problem I was trying to point out.  And, no, I’m not going to tell you what the answer I was looking for was.  If you want to get that, you’ll need to come see me present at SQLSaturday #52 – Colorado on September 25th.  Other than that, all the demos went well and the attendees learned a few new things.

Afterwards we went out to socialize at the restaurant at the local Holiday Inn where we talked SQLSaturday, football, and paper mills.  Why paper mills?  Well, it turns out that one attendee worked for the paper company that used own the mill I used to work at, and we had mutual friends in the company, and another attendee used to work for the company that wrote the truck scale software that we used at the paper mill I worked at.  It’s amazing how small the world is!

I’m tentatively scheduled to return next September, as we might as well make this an annual event!  Topic to be announced.

Upcoming Engagements

I haven’t been speaking a lot lately as I’ve been busy working, planning SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando, and planning PASS SQLRally, but I do have some upcoming engagements that I hope to see some of you at.

Introduction to Triggers on Thursday, September 9th 6:30pm, Space Coast SQL Users Group.

This session will give a brief overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server (DDL & DML) and then go into more detail on how and when to use DML triggers. This session will cover misconceptions about how triggers work, when triggers shoul d and shouldn't be used (we will discuss options), common mistakes, and how to fix the most common mistakes. After attending this session a person will: 1. Identify different types of triggers and when to use them. 2. Be able to identify when a trigger is the right solution 3. Be able to write triggers that perform well

SQLSaturday #52 – Colorado on Saturday September 25th

I’m scheduled for 2 sessions at this event.  I’m attending this event for 2 reasons:

1. My wife has connected with Steve Jones’ wife, Tia, online and they both love horses.  Tia has horses, so my wife, Alice, will be spending the Saturday at the ranch with Tia and the horses.
2. An opportunity to go to a part of the country I haven’t been to and to connect with some new people.  There are several people I know from SQLServerCentral and Twitter that I have not meet in person yet, and this will be a great opportunity to do that.

Why I Use Stored Procedures

With the proliferation of ORM tools like Entity Framework, nHibernate, and Linq to SQL, many projects have decided that stored procedures are not needed and slow down development. While these tools have their place and have improved greatly, stored procedures still have their place, and, in this speaker's opinion, are the best way to do data access. In this session I'll discuss my reasons for using stored procedures and hopefully stimulate some discussion of other access methods.

Introduction to Triggers

This session will give a brief overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server (DDL & DML) and then go into more detail on how and when to use DML triggers. This session will cover misconceptions about how triggers work, when triggers shoul d and shouldn't be used (we will discuss options), common mistakes, and how to fix the most common mistakes. After attending this session a person will: 1. Identify different types of triggers and when to use them. 2. Be able to identify when a trigger is the right solution 3. Be able to write triggers that perform well

SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando on Saturday, October 16th

In addition to planning and and running this event I’ll be presenting one session.

Profiling: It's Okay in SQL Server

Learn how to use SQL Server Profiler/Trace to troubleshoot SQL Server performance and errors. This session will cover how to use Profiler to capture SQL Server events, creating server-side traces, creating custom templates, saving trace data, and interpreting trace data.

I hope to see you at one of these events.  Please come up and talk to me, share your business card, and ask questions.  My favorite part of these events is meeting new people and re-connecting with people I haven’t seen recently.

SQLSaturday #40 – South Florida Recap

I had the great privilege to be able to attend and speak at SQLSaturday #40 – South Florida this past weekend (July 31, 2010).  Kudos to Scott Klein and crew for another GREAT SQLSaturday event.  They had close to 600 people register, and based on past experience that means that there should have been 400+ attendees.  There was a great lineup of speakers and everyone I spoke with at the event had a great time.

The speaker dinner was at Longhorn Steakhouse and there was a great turnout as almost all the speakers made it to the party.  I spent most of my time talking with Tim Ford, Adam Jorgensen, Troy Gallant, and Don Gabor, as they were the folks sitting closest to me.  It was a little tough to move around, but overall a good experience.  My one comment to future SQLSaturday planners is to try to get a private room, if you can afford it.  It can be tough on the wait staff, attendees, and other customers if you aren’t in a private area.

I arrived at the event just after 8 am and check-in was running very smoothly, in fact one of the smoother check-ins I’ve been through.  The only problem was that I didn’t know where to go after check-in, no one told me and there were no signs.  They had Brent Ozar and Tim Ford do a keynote to start the day, which I missed, but heard it was good.  The space for the keynote was a little tight, and apparently the AC wasn’t scheduled to kick on until 9.  In South Florida in July, AC is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

I spent the first session in the sponsor area, talking with sponsors.  Sure, I had a ulterior motive, I want them all to sponsor SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando, but it is still good to thank them for their support and learn about their products/services.  I did have an interesting discussion with one sponsor who told me that they only go to events where they can get the electronic attendee list, something we normally don’t offer in Orlando.  I understand where the sponsor is coming from because in addition to the sponsorship cost they also pay to have people attend the event.  With privacy laws being what they are, it can be hard for events to share that information, and, as part of the registration process now, attendees MUST opt-in to allow direct contact from the sponsors.  I haven’t seen the numbers on how many attendees opt-in (I’d guess very few), so I’d hate to offer the list to a sponsor and only have 10 names on it.  I don’t think that would be good for the sponsor relationship.

The second session, I attended Brent Ozar’s Blitz: 60 Minute SQL Server Takeover session.  This was a good session, totally using code examples, no PowerPoint, where Brent shares what he does when taking over administration of a SQL Server.  Some highlights for me were:

1. Checking for stored procedures marked as startup.  He even mentioned that some monitoring products (unnamed) create startup procedures and the uninstall does not remove them.
2. Checking recovery models and making sure that DB’s in FULL have log backups happening.
3. Cleaning up msdb, especially the backup history.  I’ve been burned by this one.

This was a very good session and be sure to check Brent’s website (www.brentozar.com) for the scripts.

The third session and last one I attended was by Dave Levy and was titled, Getting Out from Behind the Curtain - The New DBA.  In this session Dave covered what the perceptions are of a DBA and how to change them.  He did a great job covering areas where DBA’s can stop just being a person that “keeps the lights on”, but can demonstrate their value to the company.  A big part of the session was staying on top of the industry by continuously learning and then working on your soft skills (leadership, communication, and documentation).  Sessions like this should be required for DBA’s, especially in today’s economic climate.  If you aren’t communicating the value you provide, then why shouldn’t your work be outsourced, if it is only “keeping the lights on”?

Lunch went fairly well, with boxed lunches from Firehouse Subs.  IT seemed like lunch went pretty smoothly with seating in the Commons area (where the sponsors were setup) and outside.  I saw lots of talking going on during lunch and didn’t really notice anyone eating alone.

After lunch I relaxed and mentally prepared for my session.  Some of that preparation was just talking with other speakers and event organizers about how the day was going and experiences with sponsors.  I like to be sure I’m relaxed and I don’t really like to go over my presentation that day, I like to think I’ve prepared well enough ahead of time for the presentation to go well.  My session was in the 3:20 block, the last block of the day.  For some reason that seems to be the default for me, and I’m not sure if it is a compliment (you can keep tired attendees awake) or not.  Either way it is always fun to present no matter what slot you are in or the number of attendees in the session.  My session was titled, Don’t Be Trigger Happy: Safe Use of Triggers.  Not a great name, and after this event and being on the PASS Summit 2010 Program Committee, I’ve decided to no longer try to be creative with my names.  I’m going to stick with simple, descriptive names and try to have a really good abstract.  I had about 15 attendees in the session and I thought it went really well, especially for a first-time presentation.  I was able to cover all my material and answer all the questions in the time allotted (about 2 minutes over).  All my demos worked, excepted for the blank SQL script, but, fortunately, I could handle that one live.  I was able to cover basic DDL triggers with a couple of basic examples and the basics of DML triggers with examples as well.  I also covered the basic do’s and don’ts of DML triggers.  Things like:

1. Do be set-based.  Triggers work on sets, not individual rows.
2. Don’t rely on outside resources in a trigger, liked linked servers or xp_cmdshell.
3. Do remember that triggers are part of a transaction and an error or rollback in the trigger rolls back the entire transaction.

I also covered some other options you have in SQL Server other than triggers.  I didn’t go into detail, but just covered technologies you should look into.

I felt like the attendees were engaged in the session and had specific things that they could take back to the office and implement.

The raffle at the end of the day seemed crazy!  There was a ton of SWAG to give away and it seemed like almost everyone took something home.  In reality, I really like the way Atlanta gave away the books and smaller SWAG, by giving each presenter a few books to give away in their session to people who turned in session evaluations.  This meant that the end of the day raffle was focused on the “Big” items like the XBOX, iPod, iPad, and software licenses.  The raffle is always exciting though.

I chose to make the long drive home immediately after the event, which is always a tough decision for me to make because I love going to the After Party to continue to meet people and to get to know people I’ve already met better.  At this event I met several “new” people from Twitter, like Dave Levy (@dave_levy), Karen Lopez (@datachick), Noel McKinney (@NoelMcKinney), and others I didn’t follow on twitter, like Sam Abraham (@wildturtle21) and Elliot Lipson (@BigE54).

As I said, overall it was a great event.  Here are some thing I learned from it:

1. You can’t have too many signs.  This was one area I thought the event fell short.  I didn’t see any signs.  I had to ask where the sessions were because they were on the second floor, but there were no signs to tell me that.
2. Make sure you have the event rooms on the schedule along with the track names.  There was a schedule with track names and a map with the room numbers and track names, but the rooms being used for the event didn’t stand out.  Again, I had to ask where the rooms were.
3. Offer value to sponsors.  They were able to get some Platinum sponsors by offering a table in the sponsor area AND a table in one event room with one minute at the start of each session to introduce themselves.  This was a very creative way to offer more value to the sponsors AND get some more sponsor dollars to make the event better.

Again, kudos to Scott Klein and crew for a great event and I hope I can make it down for next year’s event as well.

Speaking at SQLSaturday #40 – South Florida

I finally get to head down to Miramar to speak at SQLSaturday #40 – South Florida.  I really wanted to go last year, but I was in New England at the time, so I couldn’t make it.  So this weekend, July 30-31, I’ll be making the drive down to attend the speaker dinner and the event on Saturday.  I have one session titled:

Don’t Be Trigger Happy:  Safe Use of Triggers

This is a beginner level session that will give an overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server and then will focus on specifically on the safe use of DML triggers. We will talk about when to use triggers and touch on other options. I will demonstrate of both safe and unsafe triggers

If you didn’t notice already, I do struggle with titles and abstracts although my abstract writing has improved since I wrote this one because I read over 150 as part of the 2010 PASS Summit Program Committee.  You can’t help but get better when you read that many abstracts.

I hope to see you there.  If we haven’t met and you read this blog, be sure to find me and introduce yourself.  If we have met, you hopefully won’t have to introduce yourself again.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

I have few speaking engagements this month that I want to let you know about:

Thursday, July 8 6:00 PM PST – SQL Server Society of Las Vegas

I’ll be delivering my Introduction to Profiler session remotely.  I don’t have the Live Meeting link yet, when I do I’ll post it.

Wednesday, July 14 10 AM MST – PASS DBA Virtual Chapter

I’ll be delivering my Why I Use Stored Procedures session.  You can see my abstract and get the Live Meeting link here.

Saturday, July 31 All Day – SQLSaturday #40 – South Florida

I’m actually just assuming I’ll be presenting at this event as they have not officially posted a schedule yet.  I have submitted 2 sessions:

Don’t Be Trigger Happy: Safe Use of Triggers 

Getting Started in Blogging and Technical Speaking – I’m borrowing this one from Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA) as he can’t make this event and it has been a popular session.  I’ve been part of his “panel” for this discussion twice and he has graciously given me permission to present it in South Florida, if it is accepted.

What Has Jack Been Up to?

It has been awhile since my last post mainly because I was on a working vacation in northern New England with limited internet access, but also because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about. 

Working Vacation

You may be wondering how a technical professional can have a working vacation without internet access so I’ll give you a quick overview of how that works for me.  Technically, I don’t have a job, I have a ministry.  I work for/at New Tribes Mission as support missionary.  This means I don’t go out an evangelize, I work in an office building and maintaining business systems that allow others to evangelize the world.  New Tribes Mission does pay me a salary, I had to go out and meet with churches and individuals who believe in the ministry and mission of New Tribes and fund raise a salary.  These churches and individuals send money to me through New Tribes because they believe in the work that New Tribes is doing and that the work I do at New Tribes.  Since my salary comes from these churches and individuals I have to go back to visit them on occasion and tell them what I have been doing and how it has helped New Tribes accomplish its goals, basically a performance review.  So that’s what I did over the last three weeks.  My family visited 7 churches and many individuals over three weeks to tell them what we have been doing with their money.  That’s a real quick overview, if you have any questions feel free to email me (corbett.jack@gmail.com) or check out our ministry/family blog.

Speaking

Also while in New England, I had the opportunity to present Profiling: It's Okay in SQL Server to the SeacostSQL User Group in Portsmouth, NH.  I was looking forward to this since I would be able to see my friend Mike Walsh (@mike_walsh) and meet many new people.  Unfortunately, for me, I only got see Mike very briefly because he had to bring his wife and new child home from the hospital that evening (congratulations again), but I did get to meet about 25 new people which was great.  I also had the opportunity to work on my User Group leader skills because Mike had asked me to run the meeting since he couldn't be there and one of the other leaders was on vacation and the third person had a production issue at work (he actually made it a bit later).  The evening went very well and the session was well-received.  I’m very excited to see a user group started and hopefully thriving in New Hampshire.

PASS

I’ve also had the privilege of being on the 2010 Summit Program Committee as part of the selection committee for the Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment track.  I’ve spent many hours the last 10 days or so rating abstracts and talking with the other members of the committee to try to make that the 2010 Summit is the best ever.  Based on the abstracts I’ve seen, I think that’s a good possibility.  One of the best parts is that I’ve learned what makes a good abstract by reading so many.  I’m planning on taking what I’ve learned and putting it together in a blog post once the entire process is done.  I’ve had the opportunity to review abstracts for SQLSaturday here in Orlando, but there is definitely a difference in the quality of the abstracts.

What’s Next?

Coming up I have couple of remote speaking engagements, one for the PASS DBA Virtual Chapter and one for the SQL Server Society of Las Vegas (SSSOLV).  Blog posts with more about this up-coming.  Then there is continued planning and begging contacting sponsors for OPASS and SQLSaturday #49 – Orlando.

Presenting "Profiling: It's Okay in SQL Server" to Seacost SQL Server Users Group

I'm excited to be presenting Profiling: It's Okay in SQL Server to the Seacost SQL Server Users Group in Portsmouth, NH next Tuesday, June 8th.  I was invited to speak by friend Mike Walsh (@mike_walsh) who is one of the founders of the group.  This will be the 5th time I've done this presentation although each time is different.

Session Abstract

Learn how to use SQL Server Profiler/Trace to troubleshoot SQL Server performance and errors. This session will cover how to use Profiler to capture SQL Server events, creating server-side traces, creating custom templates, saving trace data, and interpreting trace data.

It's really funny that I am presenting at a user group in New Hampshire when I live in Florida when I never attended a user group in the 7 years I worked with SQL Server while living in New Hampshire.  I'm not even sure if there were any user groups in New Hampshire when I lived there.  I know that there weren't any up in my neck of the woods, but southern New Hamshire might have had one.

If you are in New Hampshire, southern Maine, or northeastern Massachussetts I hope to see you there and would love to talk with you.

SQLSaturday #41 - Atlanta Session Recap

Last Saturday, April 24, I presented my session, Why I Use Stored Procedures and You Should Too, at SQLSaturday #41-Atlanta, see my event summary here.  My session was in the last block of the day, which at this event was at 4:45PM, so it was a long day for attendees, thus I was very happy to have 20 attendees in my session.  At the end of the day, especiallyafter attending 6 other sessions, it can be hard to hang around for that extra hour, so I appreciate everyone who toughed it out.

I started out by encouraging the attendees to become involved in their local user group, about 50% said that they had attended a user group at least 4 times in the last year, and in PASS. 

In this session I give the reasons I believe that stored procedures are the best way to access data in SQL Server and I encourage discussion of other access methods (Linq to SQL, Entity Framework, nHibernate, etc...).  I have 3 main points that I cover:

1. Security
2. Maintenance
3. Performance

I finish the session, as time allows, by demonstrating different methods of data access in a .NET application.  I show the difference between Linq to SQL, Entity Framework, and the various ADO.NET methods (string concatenation, SQL Command using parameters, and Stored Procedure calls).  I also run Profiler to show the SQL generated by the tools, and the impact on the procedure cache.  Prior to .NET 4.0 both Linq to SQL and Entity Framework could cause cache bloat/pollution when using string parameters, but this has been improved in .NET 4.0.

I had some good interaction, but, as you would expect at a SQL Server event, it was hard to find a proponent of ORM tools so I had a friendly crowd.  Prior to my session I had a good discussion with Chris Eargle (@KodeFuGuru) who does a presentation on RESTful Data that uses an ORM layer for data access.  He was in a tough spot in the speaker room with multiple DBA's present, but was a good discussion.  I need more of that.

Based on the speaker/session evaluation I did a good job in communicating what the session was and covered the material as expected.  Here are the numbers (I had 2 blank evals):

Expectations:

• Did Not Meet - 0
• Met - 10
• Exceeded - 8

Overall quality of presentation (1-5 with 5 being the best):

• 1 - 0
• 2 - 0
• 3 - 1
• 4 - 8
• 5 - 9

There were no comments on the evals, but I'd like to know why I someone rated the presentation at 3, but overall I have to be pleased that I graded out above average, well based on these numbers.

I always enjoy attending these events and presenting just adds to the enjoyment.  Thanks again to Stuart (@StuartA) and  crew for putting on a great event.

Presenting at SQLSaturday #41 – Atlanta

I have the privilege of being able to attend and present at SQLSaturday #41 – Atlanta this weekend.  This will be my first SQLSaturday outside of Florida and the first time I will have presented outside of Florida.  I’m looking forward to seeing many “old” friends and making even more new ones.  My presentation is:

Why I Use Stored Procedures and You Should Too!

With the proliferation of ORM Tools like Linq To SQL, NHibernate, there has been a move to no longer use stored procedures for Data Access, I personally disagree. This will be a professional and polite open discussion starting with why I believe stored procedures are the best way to access data in SQL Server. Alternate view points welcome.

With the recent release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 there have been changes in the Microsoft ORM tools that alleviate some of the issues I have with ORM tools, but I don’t think all the issues I see have been addressed.  It’s interesting that at my office we just brought in a consulting company to work on a project with us and they are proponents of Linq to SQL, so I get to try my arguments with them and hear the other side of the argument. 

I’ll be flying into Atlanta Friday afternoon and should be at the speaker party of Friday night, but will miss the after-party on Saturday to be able to catch my flight back to Orlando. 

If you are attending please be sure to find me on Saturday.  I’ll have my contact cards, I hope you will, too!

If you have registered, but will not be able to attend please cancel your registration so someone on the waiting list can attend.  Thanks!

Speaker Evaluations for SQLSaturday #32 – Tampa

I recently received my Speaker Evaluations for my session, Why I Use Stored Procedures, from Pam Shaw (@pamshaw) and as is my custom I thought I’d share them here.  My event recap is available here.  THe basic layout of the evaluation is to rate if the session met, did not meet, or exceeded your expecations and then a 1-5 rating of the speakers presentation skills (1 being the worst).  Here are my results:
Presentation Expectations:

Did Not Meet	Met	Exceeded
0	11	4

This basically means that I did what I said I’d do in the session description.  I gave my reasons why I use stored procedures and, I think, some good examples as to why.
Speaker Rating:

1	2	3	4	5	Avg
0	0	0	7	8	4.5

I’d say that I’m happy with all 4’s and 5’s and a 4.5 average.  I take this to mean that I didn’t put anyone to sleep and that I at least sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
Comments:
I had 2 comments.  Very Clear and Nice Demo.  Not a whole lot to glean from that other than I apparently made the point(s) I wanted to make and stayed on topic.
I really enjoy speaking and would do more if time and finances permit it.  If you run a user group and need speakers fell free to contact me and I’ll see what I can do.

SQLSaturday 32 – Tampa Recap

I had the privilege to attend and speak at SQLSaturday 32 – Tampa this past weekend.  As I said in my event announcement, SQLSaturday is always a good time, and this one was no different.  My wife (yes, I brought my wife and she enjoyed herself, too) and I left Sanford about 1:30 Friday afternoon so we could beat the traffic and arrived in Tampa a little before 4:00 pm.  Our biggest problem on the way was that there was construction near the hotel so we had to drive around a little to find the hotel parking garage.

Friday

Once we got checked in we enjoyed a nice stroll around the historic Ybor City area where we ran into Aaron Nelson (@SQLVariant) and his dad, and the Pragmatic Works crew, Adam Jorgensen (@adam_jorgensen), Brian Knight (@brianknight), Patrick Leblanc (@patrickdba), and Jeremy from Boston (can’t remember his last name).  Then we made our way to The Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner and the speaker/volunteer get together.  This was our second mistake as all the other SQLSaturday’s I’ve spoken at have provided only appetizers so that’s what I thought would be provided so we ate dinner BEFORE the party and then found out that dinner WAS provided.  We still had a good time as I got to know Kevin Boles better and then met Troy Gallant (@GratefulDBA) and David Taylor (@dyfhid) for the first time.  The speaker/volunteer party is ALWAYS a good time as you meet new people and get back together with all the regular gang.

Saturday

My wife and I arrived at the event location on Saturday morning about 8:15, assuming that would give us time to check-in and then I could find my room and get set-up for my 9:00 session.  Well, it didn’t quite work out that way.  There was a glitch that slowed check-in so I skipped check-in and went right to my room to get set-up.  My biggest fear when speaking is that something technical is going to go wrong like not getting the projector to work, so I always get into the room as soon as I can.  I was glad that I did as I did have trouble getting the projector working, but I finally found a “cheat sheet” in the podium drawer and go everything working.

The check-in problems delayed the start of the first session, so I didn’t get started until between 9:10 and 9:15.  That little delay gave me some time to socialize with the early arrivers and find out that most were at their first SQLSaturday and did not attend a user group.  So I was able to encourage them to make an effort to attend their local user group and extol the virtues of user groups.  During the presentation I was also able to promote PASS and the PASS Summit.

The Presentation

My presentation was titles, “Why I Use Stored Procedures”, and I billed it a an open discussion, but, unfortunately, I still ended up doing most of the talking as I didn’t have anyone in the room who strongly held the opposite opinion.  My main points were that stored procedures offer benefits in the areas of:

• Security
• Maintenance
• Performance

I ended the session by demoing some of the different ways to access a database using .NET.  I had a simple windows form application with a textbox and 5 buttons, each of which used a different method to to query the database.  I used:

• Linq to SQL
• Entity Framework
• ADO.NET with Ad Hoc SQL
• ADO.NET with Parameterized SQL
• ADO.NET stored procedure command

During the demo I had Profiler running to show the SQL that was submitted using each method.  I traced the following events:

• RPC:Completed
• SP:CacheMiss
• SP:CacheHit
• SP:CachInsert

I wanted the attendees to see the following things:

1. That Linq to SQL and Entity Framework work similarly and that while they use parameterized SQL, the parameters (at least character parameters) are set to the length of the string.  This means that a new plan is built whenever you have a different length string passed.  One attendee mentioned that this is fixed in .NET 4.0.
2. That Ad hoc SQL has a new plan created if there are any changes to the SQL, including spaces and case.
3. That ADO.NET parameterized SQL and calling a stored procedure (using the stored procedure command type) build one query plan and re-use it.

Turnout for the session was good as the room was basically full which was nice considering the other sessions going on and the delay at the check-in table. 

Overall the session went well and the attendees seemed to have enjoyed the session and learned something.  The biggest mistake I made was that I forgot to put my contact information in my slide deck.  The positive side of that is that several people came to get my business cards and I think that was partly due to my forgetting to put the contact information in the deck.

All materials are available on the SQLSaturday site here.

Day Summary

I then attended a three sessions, Dmitri Korotkevitch’s “Getting familiar with SQL Server Storage Engine”, Geoff Hiten's “Clustering for Mere Mortals” (a great session since I don't have clustering experience), and Jonathan Kehayias’ “Real Time Problem Identification with Event Notifications” (another great session).  Then it was time to head out as we needed to get home to Sanford to pick up our kids.

As usual Pam Shaw (@pamshaw), Jorge Segarra (@sqlchicken), and volunteers deserve kudos for putting on a great event.  There are always a few glitches like at check-in, but those really don’t put a damper on the event at all.

Presenting a Live Meeting vs. a Real Meeting

I recently had the opportunity to present,  Nuggets Found by Mining the Default Trace, for SQLLunch.  This was my first time presenting via Live Meeting (or any on-line meeting functionality for that matter) and it was quite different.  I have presented technical contant at several user groups and SQLSaturday’s, and have spoken at many churches, but all of those times have been in the front of a roomful of people.  Presenting on-line is definitely different than presenting in-person.  Here are my first impressions:

Pacing

When presenting in-person you can tell by the attendees expressions and body language if you are going at the right pace, but on-line you don’t get that immediate feedback.

Personality

I’m not sure that your personality as a presenter comes across on-line as well as in-person.  Again, the lack of feedback from visual cues makes it hard to tell if your style and personality is coming through or if it is appropriate based on the audience.

Interaction

I thrive on interaction with the attendees and there is very limited opportunity for this on-line, at least with my limited experience.  I like to take questions throughout my presentations and tell some jokes and I found this more difficult to do in a Live Meeting

My Conclusion

I think Live Meeting and similar technologies are great even though I prefer to present in-person. I do enjoy being able to hear some great speakers through Live Meeting. 

Where I Think Live Meeting Fits Best

Remote locations to have some top speakers present.  Similar to where I use to live in northern New Hampshire.  Let’s just say that being 2+ hours from the nearest airport and 3+ hours from the nearest big city (Boston or Montreal) isn’t conducive to bringing in speakers from away, but Live Meeting would allow a group to have some top speakers.

For organizations like PASS to give a taste of conferences like the Summit through events like the 24 Hours of Pass.

Going Forward

As Co-President of OPASS, we are going to be having our first meeting with a Live Meeting presention at our January meeting with Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) presenting.  My co-President, Andy Warren (@sqlandy), is a big thinker and wants to try to send 2-way video so that the presenter can see the group and, if possible, take questions during the presentation.  We will be doing some testing before to see how and if we can make it work, and then try to make it work well.   

Speaking at SQLSaturday #32 – Tampa

I just found out that I’ve been accepted to speak at SQLSaturday #32 – Tampa on January 23, 2010.  My session will be:

Why Should I Use Stored Procedures?

With the proliferation of ORM Tools like Linq To SQL, NHibernate, there has been a move to no longer use stored procedures for Data Access, I personally disagree. This will be a professional and polite open discussion starting with why I believe stored procedures are the best way to access data in SQL Server. Alternate view points welcome.

I hope this will turn out to be a great, open discussion where there are different viewpoints presented and honest evaluation of the best way to access data in SQL Server.

Why Attend?

If you’ve never been to a SQLSaturday, I highly recommend that you check out the schedule as there are several events upcoming all around the US.  Where else can you find a full day of free training from some of the best minds in the SQL Server community.  There are usually several SQL Server MVP’s and authors presenting in addition to the best local SQL Server minds.  The time spent in conversation with your peers is well-worth a Saturday. 

Remember, YOU are responsible for your professional development.

Have Lunch with Me

I know you all are clamoring for the opportunity to have lunch with me so I agreed to do a SQLLunch on Monday, December 21.  Doing it this way will allow more people to enjoy lunch with me.

I’ll be speaking on Nuggets Found by Mining the Default Trace.  Lunch starts at 11:30 am CST and will last for about 30 minutes with some time for questions.