I learned yesterday that Ken Henderson passed away last Sunday. If anyone reading this blog does not know who he is, just do a Google search for Ken and the word “guru”, and you will get back plenty of links. Ken was one of the best in the industry, and he will be sorely missed.
For me, Ken was one of the “Rock Stars”, a group of people I look up to and cite as references whenever necessary. I have lost track of the number of times I have simply used the line “Ken Henderson says so” when discussing something related to MS SQL. My memories of Ken on a personal level are limited, and I wanted to share some of them here so that I can keep the memories in print before they are dropped from my brain cache.
The first time I ever had the opportunity to talk directly to Ken was at a PASS conference, I believe in 2005 at Grapevine. Our team here was struggling with linked server deployments, trying to come up with a standard as far as naming convention, provider options, etc. One question that we had involved the number of linked server definitions. Was it better to limit the number of defined linked servers, or was it okay to have as many as needed?
So, I waited for an opportunity to approach Ken. I had not been a DBA for long, but I knew enough about Ken that he would have an answer. Actually, I think I asked Bill Baker first, and he redirected me to Ken, so you can see why I want to write these thoughts down before they are lost forever. Still, I knew Ken by name recognition, so I gathered up the nerve, found my chance to introduce myself and asked for a moment of his time. My question was simple, is it better to have three or thirty linked servers, or does it not matter? His answer was that the load on the server is the same, regardless of how many links you have. I took the answer back to my team here and it allowed for us to put forth the standards we still have in place today.
The next time I saw Ken was in Barcelona for the PASS European conference in 2006. He was part of a day long pre-conference seminar that included Bob Ward. Raise your hand if you were there that day. Ken started his part of the seminar by spending about thirty minutes reviewing definitions of terms he would be using during his actual presentation. Needless to say, I felt as if I was in over my head right from the start. It was at that moment I knew just how far I had come as a DBA, and how much further of a journey remains.
Later that week my wife and I were in the lounge at the Hotel Fira Palace. There was a small group of people, about four or five locals, enjoying themselves on the other side of the lounge. A few minutes later some airline pilots came in and grabbed a table close to ours, making things a little more crowded. My wife and I were just relaxing, enjoying the atmosphere, watching the world around us when I saw him. In comes Ken with two others, I believe. They grab seats on the other side of the lounge and I nudge my wife to tell her about Ken. I am describing Ken as the “best in the business”, trying to get my wife to understand who he is, what he has done, and why I am putting him into my “Rock Star” category.
I sat there, in awe, telling my wife that when it comes to what I do for a living, Ken is at the top. And that Ken has shown me just how much of a mountain I have in front of me should I aspire to also be at the top. She says she understands and we sat there a while longer. I got to see Ken as just another person as well, sitting around a table with some friends, relaxing. It was nice to know that he was also human, and not some robot stuck at a computer, hacking through code all day long, writing books, etc. It made me understand that as I go along my journey, there are more important things in life.
The last time I saw Ken was at the PASS conference in 2007, in Denver. Ken had a Q&A session moderated by Kevin Kline (another Rock Star). So many people showed that they had to remove a wall partition and rig up some extra speakers. We spent about ninety minutes with Ken that day and it reaffirmed just how human he truly was. He talked about how he took a job with Microsoft just to get access to the SQL source code. He talked about the long hours spent writing books. He talked about SQL Nexus. He talked about his family. He talked, and we listened. He could have talked about anything and we would have listened.
Ken, I am sorry I never had a chance to thank you. Thanks for showing me how much more there is for me to learn. Thank you for showing me that there is more to life than just work. And thanks for walking this Earth during the same time I was allowed to do so. And while I can say I will miss your presence, and I hear it from others as well, I am certain your family is missing you even more today than any one of us could dare to imagine.
Rest in peace.
