Microsoft is offering from 15-25% off selected Microsoft Certification Exams. In order to receive the discount, you must register, schedule, and purchase the discounted exams by December 31, 2009. Visit here for more information.
Here are the discounts available for the SQL Server Exams:
15% Off
20% Off
25% Off
If you missed out on some of the 24 free, live sessions that made up the 24 Hours of PASS, some of them can now be viewed here. To view them, you will have to register, whether or not you originally registered for the 24 Hours of Pass. As of Wednesday, September 9, the available sessions included:
Starting Saturday, September 26, 2009, I will begin a 30 day, 9 city, and 11 session speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. While I have been on several 2 and 3 week speaking tours, this will be my longest and most complex.
I have spent nearly a year making the arrangements, coordinating the tour with various user groups so I could make as many presentations as I could in the shortest time possible. This past two months have really been intensive, as I have had to book flights, train rides, and hotels for all these locations. The entire journey will include nearly 20,000 miles of traveling.
My first stop will be in Perth Australia, where I will be speaking at the .NET Users Group on Thursday, October 1, and the SQL Server Users Group on Friday, October 2. Mitch Wheat, who is the leader the .NET group, has helped me a lot in coordinating the Australia part of my tour.
Next, I speak at the Newcastle Coders Group on Wednesday, October 7, then I head to Wagga Wagga to make two presentations at the SQL Down Under Code Camp, on the weekend of October 10 and 11.
From the SQL Down Under Code Camp, I head to Melbourne to speak at the Melbourne SQL Server Users Group on Monday, October 12, and the following day, Tuesday, October 13, I speak at the Sydney SQL Server Users Group.
Next, I fly to New Zealand to speak at four different groups, one after another, four days in a row. My first stop is at the Auckland SQL Server Users Group on Monday, October 19, which is headed by Dave Dustin, who helped me a lot in coordinating my travels in New Zealand. On Tuesday, October 20, I am speaking at the Wellington SQL Server Users Group. Then on Wednesday, October 21, I speak in Christchurch, and on Thursday, October 22, I speak in Dunedin. Finally, I fly home on Sunday, October 25, back home to Hawaii.
Unfortunately, I won’t have much time to recover, as 4 days after I get back home, I am off to Seattle for the PASS Community Summit, and the following week I fly to Las Vegas to speak at SQL Server Connections. I will end up being on the road for 6 weeks, with only a minor reprieve. Fortunately, once I get back, my traveling for the rest of this year is over, and I will be taking a three week vacation the last three weeks of December, before starting the new year in 2010.
As I am on tour, I will try to blog almost every day, letting you know how things are going, and hopefully to provide you with some photos of the adventure as well.
In an experiment in SQL Server community involvement, the members of Red Gate Software’s software development usability team have created a new website called www.thefutureofmonitoring.com. This team, among other teams at Red Gate Software, are working Version 2 of its popular SQL Response software.
The goal of the new website is to get your input on what you would like to see in a SQL Server monitoring tool. For example, what do you dislike about software installers, or what memory counters do you think are the most important? In fact, you can even help the usability team design a new dashboard.
Whatever you think about SQL Server monitoring tools, feel free to share those thoughts with the usability team at their new website. In fact, I have already given the team my input on the next version of SQL Response, and they would really like to hear from you too.
For the second year in a row, SQLServerCentral.Com and Red Gate Software have sponsored the Exceptional DBA of the Year awards. DBAs are nominated by the SQL Server community, and the top five finalists are selected by a panel of judges. These five finalists are then voted on by the SQL Server community, and a winner selected.
This year, the top five finalists included Stuart Cianos, Chuck Lathrope, Raymond Laubert, Josef Richberg, and Alex Rosa.
The winner of the 2009 Exceptional DBA award, selected by popular vote was Josef Richberg. As the winner, Josef will receive a trophy, a license for Red Gate Software’s SQL Toolbelt, a full conference pass for the 2009 PASS Community Summit, and travel expenses to attend the summit.
To read an interview with Joseph, and to find out about his perspective of what it means to be an Exceptional DBA, visit this link.
On July 21, just a few short weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Rick Heiges, who is on the Board of Directors for PASS, asking me if I was willing to participate in the 24 Hours of PASS virtual conference, to be held on September 1, 2009. This was the first I had heard of this new project, which by the way, was Rick's idea.
I wrote him right back, saying yes, and offering several different sessions I could do, and he picked one on “How to Use SQLDiag to Troubleshoot SQL Server Problems”. Fortunately, I had done the same presentation earlier this year in Vancouver, at SQLTeach, so I didn’t have to start from scratch, creating a new presentation. The only problem was that my original presentation was designed for 75 minutes, and I would only have 40 minutes to give my presentation at the 24 Hours of PASS session.
On August 18, 2009, I finally got the PowerPoint presentation template I needed, so I got to work, trimming the original presentation down to 40 minutes, and at the same, transferring it to the new PowerPoint template.
Giving a presentation over Live Meeting--this is my forth time--can be a little tricky. It assumes that Live Meeting is working correctly and you know how to use it properly, that you have a fast Internet connection, that you have your screen resolution set correctly (1024x768), and much more. Because of the opportunities for problems, I scheduled a practice run with Rick and Kalen Delaney, where Rick lead both Kalen and myself throughout all of the steps, helping us to get used to using Live Meeting, besides going over the procedures for the event.
While I had used Live Meeting before, one new twist this time around was that I was going to use video as part of the presentation, and this, in itself, brought about new problems. For example, when you only have a 1024x768 screen to work with, and part of it is taken up with video, there is not much room left for showing much, especially if you want to do a lot of live demos, which I had intended to do.
Once the lesson from Rick was over, I was given two Live Meeting accounts, one for a speaker and one for a viewer, so I could simulate my actual presentation. I used one computer to practice the presentation on, and another computer to see what it would look like to the viewer.
After much experimentation, I determined that including both the video and live demonstrations did not work well, so I decided to use live video only for the introduction to the session, and for the Q&A session at the end of the event. That way, it was much easier to perform the demos so that they were easily seen on the screen.
I was scheduled to be the fifth speaker of the event, which was at 6:00P PM Hawaii Standard time, which was convenient for me, although for the east coast of the United States and Europe, it was a little late for them.
The moderator for my presentation was Richard Baumet, who is the president of the Vancouver PASS SQL Server users group. He introduced me at the beginning of the presentation, and at the end, read me the questions that people had submitted throughout the session.
Overall, I think my presentation went well, and I had slightly over 300 people attending at the peak of attendance. While I have not been able to watch all of the other sessions for the 24 Hours of PASS, I have watched some, and they all seemed to go very well. I think this is a result of the thorough planning that Rick did when he organized the event.
One thing that I found out shortly after giving my presentation was that the electricity in most of the buildings around the area where I live had a blackout right in the middle of my presentation. My home was only one of the few which had electricity, so I was very lucky. I am not sure what I would have done if the power had gone out in the middle of the presentation.
I want to thank Rick Heiges for coming up with the idea for this unique event, and for putting many, many hours into making it happen, along with many other PASS volunteers. I also want to thank the speakers, all of who donated a lot of time in preparing and giving their sessions. It is really great to see the SQL Server community come together to put on an event where we can share our knowledge among our colleagues.
While a recording of all the presentations from the 24 Hours of PASS will eventually become available on the SQLPASS.org website, you can download my presentation here.
The next annual Tulsa TechFest will be held on Saturday, November 7, 2009, at the Tulsa Community College in Tulsa, OK. This free, one-day event offers seven separate tracks, providing over 90 different sessions, covering such topics as:
For more information on attending, or speaking (the call for speakers is currently open), visit the Tulsa TechFest website. Attendance is expected to exceed 1,000+, so sign up early.
Microsoft has recently unveiled their newly updated, public MVP website, that does a great job of explaining exactly what a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) is, along with lots if interesting tidbits about the program, such as the fact the MVPs live in 90 different countries, speak nearly 40 languages, and collectively answer more than 10 million questions a year in public forums about Microsoft technology.
The website is divided into four sections:
If you have been thinking about becoming an MVP, this is one of the first places you should start your journey.
According to a study by PayScale, and published in the July/August 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine, Database Administrators make more than Web Developers, IT Managers, Programmer Analysts, and Software Developers (in this order of ranking).
In addition, the study shows that the more experience the DBA has, the more he or she makes. For example, a DBA with 10 years experience makes about 72% more than a DBA with 1 years experience.
About a year ago, the first edition of my book, How to Become an Exceptional DBA, was published. It was short, about 85 pages, and was written for people who were interested in becoming DBAs, and for current DBAs who wanted to become better DBAs. The focus of the book was on career guidance.
Through out this past year I have gotten a lot of feedback. Here are some short excerpts:
“Your Exceptional DBA book is excellent in terms of guidance and inspiration. Thanks a lot for coming up with such a useful information.” “At the moment, I am reading your book How to Become an Exceptional DBA. I just can't thank you enough for this book. This is something I was looking for and I am glad I have found it now.” “I just finished reading his book a few days ago and am planning on reading it back through, page by page, over again. This book is SO AMAZING and I just don’t want to miss or overlook any details in it. I have been waiting, what seems a lifetime, for someone who is willing to share this much information. Today, many people are not so willing to share their experiences like Brad; so refreshing!” “Thanks for your well written document about being an Exceptional DBA. I myself have about 15 years of experience, 10 of which as consultant, and I recognize just about all the points you mention. Your eBook was a pleasure to read.” “I’m just 25 years old and starting to enjoy the possibilities of this field. Everyday I’m becoming more interested in the science of information administration. Your book is inspiring, priceless, and has helped me redefine my professional inner vision.”
“Your Exceptional DBA book is excellent in terms of guidance and inspiration. Thanks a lot for coming up with such a useful information.”
“At the moment, I am reading your book How to Become an Exceptional DBA. I just can't thank you enough for this book. This is something I was looking for and I am glad I have found it now.”
“I just finished reading his book a few days ago and am planning on reading it back through, page by page, over again. This book is SO AMAZING and I just don’t want to miss or overlook any details in it. I have been waiting, what seems a lifetime, for someone who is willing to share this much information. Today, many people are not so willing to share their experiences like Brad; so refreshing!”
“Thanks for your well written document about being an Exceptional DBA. I myself have about 15 years of experience, 10 of which as consultant, and I recognize just about all the points you mention. Your eBook was a pleasure to read.”
“I’m just 25 years old and starting to enjoy the possibilities of this field. Everyday I’m becoming more interested in the science of information administration. Your book is inspiring, priceless, and has helped me redefine my professional inner vision.”
Because of the positive reception of the first edition of the book, I have written an updated, second edition. I have updated it to include feedback I have received from the first edition, and I added a lot of new content, including two new chapters. The new edition is now 172 pages long (part of that is because the book was reformatted using slightly larger type), but there is a lot of new content that has been added to all the chapters.
If you would like a free PDF copy of this book, you can visit this link and download it. You will need to click on the red button named “Download Your Free DBA Resources Now”.
Within the next 60 days, the book will be available for purchase, as a paperback, at Amazon.com. I will also be handing out a limited number of free paperback copies of the book when I attend devLINK in Nashville in August.
I hope you find this book worth reading, and please e-mail if you have any feedback.
I was recently talking to a friend from the U.K about how much notice a DBA should give to their employer should they decide to resign. I told him that the general practice for the U.S. was two weeks, but of course this could vary if the DBA signed an employment contract that stated a shorter or longer notice period.
He was surprised to here that only two weeks notice was standard. He expected it to be longer because of the importance of most DBA positions, and the common difficulty of replacing a DBA position in a timely manner. Then I got to thinking, in the several full-time DBA jobs I have had, two weeks notice was what the organizations I had worked for requested. Then I thought some more. I had answered by friend’s question based on my own personal experience, not based on any facts I had.
Next, I decided to see if I could find any facts about the typical resignation notice that DBAs give their organizations, but I couldn’t find any data on this. I guess its not the kind of data people research and publish.
So, here’s my question to you. Based on your past and current jobs as a DBA, has a two week resignation notice been the norm, or not? It will be very interesting to see what various DBAs experiences have been.
In the last year or so, there have been a lot of articles, blog entries,and forum posts on the kinds of technical questions hiring managers can ask a prospective DBA candidate in order to determine their technical proficiency. While technical skills are important for a DBA, I think a lot of hiring managers place too much emphasis on hard technical skills, and don’t place enough emphasis on the characteristics (personality traits) that DBAs need to have in order to be successful. In the rest of this blog entry, I want to suggest some characteristics that I think all DBAs should have.
Below, I have listed each characteristic, a brief explanation of it, and three questions you might consider asking that can help you tell if if a job candidate has that characteristic or not. While some of these questions include technical aspects about being a DBA, what you are wanting to determine is how well the job candidate fits a particular characteristic, not to judge the technical part of their response. There are no wrong or right answers below. What you are looking for is to see if the job candidate has the characteristics that you think make for a good DBA, and by asking these kinds of questions, you will be one step closer in determining if a particular candidate is best for your organization.
Enjoys Technology: If a DBA doesn’t enjoy technology, what’s the point of being a DBA.
Enjoys Challenges: A DBA’s life is once challenge after another. If a job candidate doesn’t like challenges, then he shouldn’t be a DBA.
Good with Details: A DBA’s job is all about small details, and doing them correctly.
Embraces Change: A DBA’s work is always changing, and you want someone who can keep up with fast-paced change.
Enjoys Learning: Database technology is constantly changing, and a successful DBA must keep current.
Accepts Responsibility: DBAs take on a lot of responsibility, whether they realize it or not.
Maintains Professionalism: I define professionalism as respect for others in an organization, which is important, as DBAs often work with a lot of different people.
Trustworthy: DBAs are privy to many company secrets, and you want to ensure that they are capable of keeping them.
Dependable: If you can’t depend on someone, who wants them around?
Can Work as Part of a Team: DBAs are almost always part of a larger team, and need to know how to work well with others to accomplish common goals.
Can Communicate Effectively: DBAs have to communicate with many different people to successfully execute their job.
Listens Well: Listening is just as important as communicating.
Realistic: DBAs need to be realistic about what they can and cannot do given the resources they have available to them.
Patient: Many DBA tasks take a long time, or it takes time for decisions to be implemented. DBAs must understand that patience is an important virtue.
Enthusiastic: You want a new DBA to land on his feet running when he starts his new job, and being enthusiastic about the job, and about being a DBA, is a good sign of this.
This is a long list of characteristics and questions, and if you asked them all, your interview might take hours. If you are a hiring manager, I suggest to pick out those characteristics above that are most important to you, and then ask the job candidate several questions about them. In some cases, you will know right away if a candidate meets the characteristic, and other times, you may have to follow up to be sure. In any event, by asking these kinds of questions, in addition to technical questions, you will end up with better information in which to select the best candidate for the job.
I have spoken at many conferences over the years, including the PASS Community Summit and SQL Server Connections, and one of the things I have noticed is that there is very little overlap between the DBAs and developers who attend each of these conferences. There seems to be a group who likes to attend the PASS Community Summit, and another group who likes to attend the SQL Server Connections conference.
In the past, and still today, SQLServerCentral.Com is a strong supporter of the PASS Community Summit. But because of the lack of overlap between these two conferences, we feel that we have been missing out on supporting those DBA and developers who choose to attend the SQL Server Connections conference. Because it is our goal at SQLServerCentral.Com is to be as inclusive as possible, SQLServerCentral.Com has now teamed up with SQL Server Connections to present our own SQL Server track at the conference. This will give us the opportunity to reach out to an entirely different group of DBAs and developers who we don’t normally interact with.
If you are not familiar with SQL Server Connections, it is part of a larger conference called DevConnections that is put on twice a year by Penton Media (they same people who publish SQL Server Magazine.) The annual spring event is held in Orlando, FL, and the annual fall event is held in Las Vegas.
The umbrella DevConnections conference include multiple, simultaneous break-out conferences, which include ASP.NET Connections, SharePoint Connections, Visual Studio & .NET Connections, and of course, SQL Server Connections. When you sign up for one event, you can attend any of the sessions among these concurrent conferences, which give attendees a rich learning experience.
The next SQL Server Connections is going to be held November 9-12, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Conference Center in Las Vegas, NV, and will follow this schedule:
Monday, November 9, 2009: Two SQL Server pre-conference workshops:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009: Microsoft Day:
Wednesday & Thursday, November 11-12 2009: SQL Server Connections and SQLServerCentral.Com Tracks
Friday, November 13, 2009: One SQL Server post-conference workshop:
For a list of all the speakers, you can visit this webpage, and for a list of all the sessions, you can visit this webpage.
The SQLServerCentral.Com track includes five speakers presenting a total of nine different sessions. If you recognize any of the speakers, that is because you have probably seen their contributions to the SQLServerCentral.Com and Simple-Talk websites. They include:
Joe Celko served 10 years on the ANSI/ISO SQL Standards Committee and contributed to the SQL-89 and SQL-92 Standards. He has written over 800 columns in the computer trade and academic press, mostly dealing with data and databases. He is author of seven books on SQL for Morgan-Kaufmann: SQL FOR SMARTIES (1995, second edition 1999, third edition 2005), SQL PUZZLES & ANSWERS (1997), DATA & DATABASES (1999) and TREES & HIERARCHIES IN SQL (2004), SQL PROGRAMMING STYLE (2005) and ANALYTICS & OLAP IN SQL (2005) and THINKING IN SETS (2008). Joe will be presenting two session: Darling, Your SQL is Sooo Last Season! and Naming and Modeling Data Objects.
Grant Fritchey, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, works for an industry-leading engineering and insurance company as a principal DBA. He’s done development of large-scale applications in languages such as Visual Basic, C#, and Java, and has worked with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant spends a lot of time involved in the SQL Server community, including speaking, blogging, and he is an active participant in the SQLServerCentral.Com forums. He is the author of SQL Server Execution Plans (Simple Talk Publishing, 2008) and SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled (Apress, 2008). Grant will be presenting two session: Scouting Out Execution Plans and MUQT: More Unnecessary Query Tuning.
Brian is a SQL Server author, columnist, and Microsoft MVP, focusing primarily on SQL Server security and administration. He currently serves as a database administrator / architect for a large bank where he can concentrate on his passion: SQL Server. He is a contributing author to How to Cheat at Securing SQL Server 2005 (Syngress) and Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration (Wrox). In the technical community, Brian is president of the Midlands PASS Chapter. Not only is Brian an active blogger at SQLServerCentral.Com, he is a prolific forum participant and is one of the top forum posters on the website. Brian will be presenting two sessions: Keeping on Top of Your SQL Server Using Dynamic Management Objects and Catalog Views and Best Practices in SQL Server 2008 Configuration Management.
In the months ahead, I will be doing interviews with all of these speakers so that you will get the opportunity to learn a little more about them.
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As most of you know now, the Call for Speakers for the 2009 PASS Community Summit is open from March 20, 2009 through April 10, 2009. Each year, the PASS Program Committee, which is responsible for selecting the sessions offered at the Summit, receives many more speaking abstracts than they can accept. If you want to increase the odds of being selecting, please consider the following suggestions:
Disclaimer: I am a PASS volunteer in charge of Speaker Management for the PASS Program Committee. While I have been involved in helping create the Call for Speakers website and the Call for Speakers Resource page, I don’t have any direct involvement in selecting abstracts. That task is done by separate PASS Program committee volunteer members.
This year, I was asked to participate on the PASS Program Committee Management team as the “Speaker Manager.” One of my tasks is to create a Speaker’s Resource page on the SQLPASS.org website to aid speakers who want to submit session abstracts for the 2009 PASS Summit, which will be held in Seattle, WA from November 3 — 6, 2009.
As part of this Speaker’s Resource page, I want to include a section called “Speaking Tips,” which will offer general tips on how to create and present a great session.
Instead of trying to write all the tips myself, I am soliciting your help. If you have spoken before any audience before, and have learned any tips of the trade that would benefit other speakers, please share them with me with on this blog. Once I get everyone’s suggestions, I’ll compile them and include them on the PASS website’s Speaker’s Resource page.
If you are asking yourself, where is the Speaker’s Resource page on the SQLPASS.org website, you are right, as it has not been released it. We are still working on it, but it will become available shortly before the PASS Community Summit Call for Speakers, which opens on Friday, March 20, 2009. When the page becomes available, it will be announced in my blog, on the SQLPASS.org website, and in the PASS Community Connector newsletter.
