SQLSaturday #34 Recap

This past weekend was SQLSaturday #34 in Waltham, MA, which is close enough to Boston that I should just say it was in Boston so that everyone outside of New England would have an idea as to where it was. But then I remembered that everyone outside of New England only knows of Boston whenever they see the letters ‘MA’, so when they see the name ‘Waltham” they are already thinking ‘how close is that to Boston?’ Well, it’s close enough, unless you are driving in rush hour. In that case, it’s about an hour away. And if it is raining, it’s about two hours.

I am about a 90 minute drive from Waltham, meaning in order to make it to SQLSaturday for the 8AM start time I was up even earlier than I would be for a routine day of work. That’s how much I love SQL Server. And box lunches. But mostly the SQL thing. I showed up, was recognized by Adam Machanic (@AdamMachanic) and Grant Fritchey (@gfritchey), Grant immediately called for security, and I ducked into the speaker room to chat up Tim Ford (@SQLAgentman).

There were six session slots lined up for the day, each one lasting about 75 minutes. I was able to attend six talks during the day, which I thought was a fantastic way to spend a cold winter day near Boston. Who wouldn’t, right?

The first talk of the day was by Mike Walsh (blog | twitter), speaking on “As a DBA, Where Do I Start?” Mike had some great advice to give to new DBA’s (whom he called ‘reluctant’ DBA’s), including a brief section on meeting expectations. He had a couple of things I wish I would had included in my book but it is too late to stuff anything else in there. I spoke with Mike briefly afterwards and found it it was the first time he had given the talk. For a first take on professional development, Mike did a great job.

The next talk I attended was by Grant Fritchey talking about “Best Practices for Working with Execution Plans”. It was the same talk that he presented at the PASS Summit this past November. The room was packed, I would estimate about 120 people. I still had my jacket on and needed to get some fresh air so I ducked out after about 15 minutes. But Grant was doing very well, he really knows how to work a room.

I left Grant’s session in the hope that I could sit in on the last part of Aaron Bertrand (@aaronbertrand) talk “Management Studio Tips & Tricks”. But a funny thing happened on my way to see Aaron. I got sidetracked by the guys from Confio sotware. I enjoyed learning more about their product (Ignite) and would encourage you to download a free trial. In a nutshell, their product is focused on performance gathering and they use wait stats in order to help you diagnose issues quickly.

The next session was by Matt Van Horn and it was on “Developing with SQL Azure”. All I can say about this is that if you are planning to work with SQL Azure, or to give a talk that includes a demo on SQL Azure, you should make sure you can connect to the intertubz. Unless, of course, you either (1) want to show people the biggest reason to not push your app to the cloud or (2) show people what to do when they lose connectivity and how important it is to have your data local, just in case. Still, Matt gave about 30 minutes before he ended his talk, and I did manage to take away a few items even without a demo. I also spent a few minutes chatting with Matt afterwards and I hope to stay in touch with him in the very near future.

After lunch it was time to listen to Tim Ford talk about “Index DMV’s”.Tim did a great job despite being heckled from the front row by myself, Grant, and Aaron. We had our own MVP corner right there and more than once when Tim would ask a question he would have to tell us to not bother answering in order to let someone else answer. Tim also told me that every time I shrink a database I am feeding a live kitten to an alligator. Which actually sounds kinda cool. I mean, n alligator’s gotta eat, right? I have no idea what they eat, it could be stray cats for all I know, so I decided to shrink a few hundred databases today.

The next talk was by Dean Richards from Confio, his talk was “Tuna Helper for SQL Server DBA’s”. I had no clue what the title was about and later fund out ‘tuna’ was a play on the word ‘tuning’, so I can only assume Dean spent time in Boston at one point. As clever as the title was, the content inside was just as good, and so was Dean’s polished delivery. I am guessing he has spoken at least once or twice before. And during the talk he gave me a glimpse into ‘SQL Diagramming’, a concept he attributed to Dan Tow. If you already know about SQL Diagramming, then you are lucky. If you don’t, then get to know about it, because it is something that can make a marked improvement in performance.

The last talk as by Peter Tassmer, “Storage Design for SQL Server”. Peter gave a nice overview of how to tune your database server regardless if you are using DASD or SAN storage. His method of delivery was god as well, he could tell a story well enough and knew how to work the room. You could tell he had spoken before to large groups, and that he was comfortable with the material. While some of the details he shared were already familiar to me, he did raise my awareness for the need to define an acceptable iops threshold for an application and to measure against the iops periodically. If we are not getting the throughput we require, then we need to present our empirical evidence to our storage team and work together on a solution.

Overall I would say that the event was a smashing success. I only wish I had more time to spend learning and sharing knowledge with colleagues. I look forward to the next SQL Saturday and expect to present at that one.

Thanks to Adam and Grant for getting this event done.