Goodbye Pragmatic Works

Normally when I write a blog, I start out will a Hello to my Dear Reader.   Not today.  This was almost a blog I didn't write because I didn't know where to start.  So let me start with the people and see if it moves along from there.


To the Consultants

You are an amazing group of women and men.  The amount I have learned from you and with you over the past four years has been staggering.  I say this to those who have left and those who remain.  It was my privileged to work with you every day.

We have too many fun memories for me to count.  I went through my pictures and found hundreds.  I think that speaks well of the times we had together, because it was important enough to take those pictures.

I've said my fair share of mushy goodbyes, listened to Baz Luhrmann's Sunscreen way to many times, and rambled on about coffee filters.  There are some words that you say in life, there are those whose meaning you know intimately because emotion surrounds them.  When I say brother, sister, call someone buddy or big guy, those words have far more meaning than their surface value.

 Each of them is the embodiment of love and relationships that have been built over time.   When I use them my heart thinks of those people in my life and those times when those words were made noble to me.

Team Ball will forever be one of those words now.

 To the Management Team

Thank you for the opportunity to be a leader.  Not just in the community but to a staff that I count as close friends.  There were challenges, struggles, loses, and wins.  The ability to shape the direction of a company is a strange and powerful gift.  So my parting advice to you is so much more simple.  Don't mess it up.

I don't say that to be glib or short, you did great before I was there, and I'm confident you will do great after I am there.  That is my hope for you.  So let me explain.

You've built something special and great.  You have an environment where people come to work with one another as part of their passion.  In my time with you I've learned just how critical proper and constant communication is to everyday success.

There is no book that tells us what to do, or how to lead or grow this company.  There will be trial and error.  Remember to listen to employee concerns, don't change course too quickly or too many times, most importantly remember Why you do what you do.  If you start with Why good things will always follow you.

You have a fantastic team.  I'm very proud to have counted myself as one of them.

 WHERE ARE YOU GOING

For everyone else reading, the next question is where am I going.   Here's a hint.

 Thank you Dear Friends.  I'm sure I will talk to you soon.

Thanks,

Brad

Looking Out for Others Helps You Lead

I'm sitting on a plane. I'm in an exit row, still a big guy in a little seat. I go to sit down and notice the seat to my left has water on the seat. Not so deep that it is a puddle. 5 to 10 big drops. Enough that you wouldn't want to sit in it. The person who this seat will belong to hasn't made an appearance yet.

I sit down and try to politely wave and smile at a flight attendant to get her attention. I think she sees me, but she doesn't respond by acknowledging me.  I want to fix this before the seat is filled.

It would be a rotten way to start a trip by finding tour seat with water on it. It's a modern conundrum.  How do I attract attention on a plane when the line is boarding, while not becoming that guy who attracts the wrong kind of attention.

I wave again and try to smile as I think I am acknowledged.  Still didn't work.

The call attendant light!  That's the ticket. I hit my button, eyes locked on the flight attendant. BINGO!  She sees me.

She mouth the words from across the plane, "Did you push the button?".

"Yes", I mouth back.

"Hit the button again", she says across the plane.

Okay I think, now I can simply point this out and get it taken care of. The water will be cleaned up. Everything will be right and in order before the seat gets filled. Wrong.

After I turn off the light the flight attendant goes back to talking with the people at the front of the plane. She must have assumed I did it on accident. Again I am discouraged.  I mean it's not even my seat. If I just wait when the person arrives they can hold up the line and at that point it will have to be fixed.

I can't leave it like that.

It is something simple, but it is so much more than that.  As a kid I loved Superman. I was always a fan. I probably slept in a cape more times than I didn't. I tried too, at least. My Mom was convinced that I would strangle myself in my sleep, if she caught me wearing one she would make me take it off.  And I would. Until she left the room.

Link to original

The thing about Superman was he helped people. That was important, even as a child I knew this. I think at that age we all do. We are supposed to look out for other people. We should help them. As an adult we tend to get jaded about that.

We realize there is only so much that we can do. We can't help everyone.  We cannot donate all of our time or all of our money to charity if we have a family or children at home. It wouldn't be wise, as a matter of fact that would be wrong.  We have to take care of our families first.  So we begin to make realizations over time. The innocence of our childhood fade away.  We realize we cannot save everyone.

During my brief time as a football coach for my boys a couple years ago I had a phrase I fell in love with. You play how you practice, you practice how you play.  Simple but true.

I still tell my kids that on a weekly if not daily basis. If you have a good strong work ethic at practice you carry that over to the game. If you quit at practice you will probably quit in the game. If you are sloppy at home or lazy about getting things done... you practice how you play.

If we cannot look out for others over simple things, how can be expected to look out for our coworkers, our customers, or our clients.  It's simple, but it is more than that. We have a responsibility to make the world better.

Period. Not just better in business. Better.  Period. End of sentence.  It doesn't matter if the goal is to lead employees, a team, or any effort that we under take in life.  We have the chance to effect change for the better in every action we take.   We can act with others in mind, and by doing so we will make things better for them.  You practice how you play.

This thought was fresh in my head because of work.

I lead a team of highly skilled highly talented consultants. We love fresh and new ideas. At Pragmatic Works, my job, we have had a very innovative approach to raises and reviews that allowed people to control their own destiny. Like many ideas it looked good on paper, but after several years we could see cracks in the system.

For the past four months we've been working to replace to old and determine the new. This isn't new to us.  Every year we take the feedback from our teams and we look at how we can do things better, how we can make changes that benefit us personally and professionally.  However, this year marked our largest set of changes we've introduced since I've been with the company.

The core thing that drove us was how we would grow, encourage, and support our team.  How do we help them?  Not just internally for the company, but how do we help them technically and professionally.  If people are here for years or only a short while, the goal is to help them leave better than when they arrived.  We need to help make you better.  As leaders for our company it is our job to help our employees.  Period.

We sat down with people and had a lot of 1 on 1 meetings discussing ideas and asking for feedback.

We took that feedback and kept some things and threw out others. We increased vacation, changed the review process, increased the benefits to help people be active in the SQL Community, and other technology communities.  We are working on redoing our mentoring program and some other very cool things to help people grow.


After all if you are in the business of helping people, which we are; what good are you if you cannot help the people who work for you.  You practice how you play.

"So Balls", you say.  "There was this water in a seat...."

Thank you Dear Reader.   So I stood up, waved to the flight attendant, and in my most polite southern accent I asked if I could get a napkin to clean up the water in the seat next to me.


She walk over to me with a puzzled look, as though I had spoken is some foreign tongue. As we both looked at the water she realized why I had been waving. She rushed off to get a couple napkins to clean it up. About 20 minutes later I began to laugh inside.  The seat next to me was still empty.

What if it was all for nothing and no one sat down.

Before long an elderly woman boarded late and took the seat next to me. Her seat was nice and dry.  I think my kids would be happy with me, after all you practice how you play.

As always Dear Reader Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

When the Problem is Not Them. It’s You.

Hello Dear Reader!  I’ve been the Data Platform Management Lead at Pragmatic Works for almost two years now.  It’s been an interesting journey that I’m enjoying.  I’m the tier 3 support in a lot of cases, play the role of manager, mentor, and fellow fighter in the trenches when required.  Today I wanted to write about something that deals with professional development.

In IT facts are facts, data is data, things perform well or they do not.  All of this leads to trust.  I do a lot of presentations on the Internals of SQL Server.  It is a fun and topic I enjoy it. *cough* nerd alert *cough*.  I do this not just for fun, but because knowledge is powerful.  It gives me the ability to let my clients have confidence that I understand what I’m talking about.  Very rare are any instances where I have been paid when I actually needed to flip hex to decimal and look through the binary that was produced.  The ability to display that knowledge when needed is crucial to ensuring you’ve got a second shot when you need it.

Projects, jobs, and opportunities come and go.  I’ve seen cases of spectacular success.  As anyone who has experienced success well knows, the path is littered with those who have failed before you.  Some projects are easy, some are hard.  All can be successful, but you have to have the right mindset.  When projects do fail it can be for a variety of reasons, typically it comes down to poor communication. 

I could be the typical marketing magazine and now list out ways projects fail, how communication is important, but Dear Reader you deserve better.  What you really want to know is how you fix it.  

IS IT TOO LATE FOR A RETRY

Unless all trust is gone it’s not too late.  When you are walking out the door, or being asked to walk out the door it is too late.  As long as you are still on the team, you should take that as validation to be part of the process.  In business everyone wants to be successful.  Everyone wants to win.  If you can help with that, then it is never too late.

The Upgrade Part 1

I was with a billion dollar company and we were upgrading their SQL Server boxes for their main application that the entire business ran off of from SQL Server 2000 to 2008 R2.  We had a very well thought out project plan, an itemized list and timeline of what needed to occur, and over 100 people including a team of VP’s that were on hand to monitor the event.  Leading up to it we hit a pretty big snag.

We were migrating the users from SQL Server 2000 to 2008 R2 and an odd thing happened.  The logins stopped working.  We caught it in Staging.  There was another consulting company that was also working with my client.  Often you will work with consultants or contractors for many different organizations, and you have solid and good relationships.  This was not one of those cases.  

The competing company took this opportunity to state very loudly that I didn’t know what I was doing.  That we could not just go from SQL 2000 to 2008 R2.  The hash had changed for logins, and you had to stutter step to SQL Server 2005, then re-export the logins to SQL 2008 R2.  This added an increased level of complexity, and threatened to blow our timeline.  I left the office dejected and the client questioning my experience.

You don't want to do IT.
You want to go home and rethink your life.

The EDW Part 1

I was with a client in the financial industry.  The mission to help pull data from a database, not SQL Server, to a new Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).  The plan would have us pull from our Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) system to move the data over.  They already had an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) DW.  The data was Extracted, Transformed, and Loaded (ETL) from the OLTP system to the OLAP system.  The columns where not the same, they didn’t match up fully.  This was using a 3^rd party product so we didn’t have full visibility into the data mappings.

The business trusted the OLAP system.  Even though the OLTP was the source, they wanted us to validate our imported data against the OLAP, not the business rules and calculations provided to us using the raw OLTP data.

I didn’t agree with this approach.  A source system of this type that had pure 100% financial data, that financial decisions were made off of daily, should be the trusted source.  We should not be replicating the OLAP data but finding that the business calculations produced, validating them off of the source data and moving that data.  After many meetings on this subject I found myself in a room with the entire project team.  I realized that I was the only one passionately arguing this point of view.  In fact I found everyone was unified in one direction.  That direction was that I was wrong.

FIXING THE ISSUE (YOU)

Once you have realized that you are the issue the next step is to find a way to reestablish trust.  Learning, adapting, and putting the goals of team forward showing you can be a productive member goes a long way.

The Upgrade Part 2

When I started thinking about the issue I knew I wasn’t wrong.  Either that or I had gotten unbelievably lucky for every upgrade from 2000 to 200x that I’ve ever done.  Either way I wanted to know which it was.  If I had been lucky, well let's just say I would have a lot of phone calls I would need to make.

In order to be sure it was time to take a close look at the Microsoft provided scripts for transferring logins for SQL 2000 and guidance for SQL 2005 and up.  What I found was that the hash output was indeed different.  To test this I stood up a SQL 2000 box, made a user and a password and exported them.  I did the same on SQL 2005.  There were differences.  The length was different.  The 2000 scripts generated a password hash that was 102 characters long.  The 2005 and up were only 42 characters long.  Then it struck me those characters matched the SQL 2000 output exactally.

I used the SQL 2000 script to transfer the user to a SQL 2008 R2 instance.  Then I logged on as the user.  It worked.  I deleted the user, and ran the 2005 scripts.  It worked.  Those 42 characters were the important part.  That didn’t solve my issue with the client.  Our passwords were not working.  On a wild hare it struck me that the passwords were all lower case.  I tried camel casing them.  They worked.  I found by default that SQL 2000 passwords were case insensitive.

Poor password management had led them to record the passwords as lower case.  The hash had saved the camel case, and on export had enforced it by default on 2005 and up.  I brought this to my client the next day.  We realized that the passwords they had stored were not always correct.  In order to fix this we had to reset and update every application and it’s password before we could proceed. 

We did, and the upgrade rolled on.

The EDW Part 2

I stood at the front of the room and realized every eye was on me.  I realized that the business firmly believed in the process they had laid out.  I also realized, I was the only one not on board.  This was a definitive moment.  I could stand my ground, but very quickly I could see that would lead me off this project.  Failure is not an option.  So I went for option 3.

The process of not trusting the source is, and this is an understatement, not good.  Even with that staring me down, I could see an opportunity.  If I was onboard with the plan, I could work from the inside to validate that the source data was what we needed.

So I did just that.  I wasn’t excited, but I smiled big.  I wasn’t 100% convinced, but I threw in my hat, hard work, and rolled up my sleeves.  That first day the grin on my face may have been strained, by the end of the next 4 weeks it wouldn’t be at all.

We didn’t have all the business rules or the ETL logic for the 3^rd party data warehouse that the business trusted.  The people in the room knew that.  They were committed to getting this right, and putting the puzzle pieces together.  The process would be painstaking, but as I made my change of heart and discussed the validation we would need to do, mapping documents we would need to create, business logic we would need to confirm, validate, and how we would validate the imports it started to come together.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

“So Balls,” you say, “That’s great that you fixed it. How do we fix it?”

Great question Dear Reader.  These stories both had a positive outcome.  They happened because I didn’t give up, and I continued to work to help the team succeed.  I don’t want to paint this as if I’m never wrong.  Just ask Adam Jorgensen (@AJBigdata | Blog), he’ll tell you that I’m wrong quite often.  I’ve also blogged about learning from mistakes, mistakes are important.  Be humble in the way you interact and listen to people.  People who believe they are never wrong, suffer defeat far worse than those of us that recognize it as part of growing.  

 

If I was wrong about the passwords from 2000 to 200x I wanted to know.  I wanted to understand why, and what we could do to fix it.  Had I been wrong, I would have sung it from the mountain tops.  I would have blogged on it and gladly advised people on it.  Instead I found the answer I was looking for and the logic to back it up, I share that just as freely as I would have my failure.

When everyone is fully committed to an idea that you do not agree with instead of assuming they are wrong, consider that you are.  It changed my point of view on the project.  It allowed me to embrace a team that wanted someone to take them on the path towards success and be part of that team.  It also reinforced a very simple fact, I am not always right and I need to listen to others.

In each case you have to want to achieve the end goal, and that has to be more important than being right.

As always Dear Reader, thanks for stopping by!

Thanks,

Brad

Why You Should Go to SQL Saturday

SQL Sat Puerto Rico

Hello Dear Reader!  Soon SQL Saturday #318 in Orlando FL will be here.  The SQL Community does a lot of work at SQL Saturday’s, present at them, and help put them on.  When talking about them, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is: “Why should I go to a SQL Saturday?” 

Almost 4 years ago I attended my first SQL Saturday, attending was a last minute decision and one that has changed my life.  I have a real passion for SQL Saturdays, and while results may vary, my simplest answer is “they can be life changing”.  Here’s how I got there.   

Summit 2013 - Denny's awesome Party

The only SQL Event I had ever attended was the first 24 Hours of PASS.  I loved it.  I watched with eager anticipation, this was the first SQL training I’d ever been to.  Every company I’d worked for thus far had balked at sending me to training. 

I desperately wanted training.  When I discovered the 24 Hours of PASS I became a fan, FREE SQL Training on the internet!!! What a concept!  Of course it was to plug the PASS Summit, and if training was a no go you can guess what my chances of ever going to the Summit in 2009 were. ZERO.  This was as close as I could get, but closer than I’d ever been before.

So as the PASS Summit 2010 was gearing up there was another 24 hours of PASS.  I reserved conference rooms at my company, registered for the events, had a router for network connections set up, and I pumped up the “free” training to the other DBA’s. I worked for two days from there as the sessions were streamed. 

Jorge at SQL Sat Jacksonville

While talking with the other DBA’s that when the magic moment happened.  My friend Greg and my buddy Dan Taylor (@DBABulldog | Blog) said, “If you like the 24 Hours of PASS you’ll love SQL Saturday”.  What’s a SQL Saturday I asked?

A free event where Consultants, MVP’s, and SQL Community members set up tracks and have free presentations all day long.  I was stunned.  It was like I was a child hearing about “FREE CANDY” given out at Halloween for the first time.  Where was this? When was this? This weekend!  In Orlando!  I can do that!  I had to pay $5 for my lunch, but other than that no cost.  I almost felt like I was getting away with something.  As if someone would stop me at the gate and say, “Sorry Sir, you get to sit in the lobby only paying attendees get to see the sessions.”  It didn’t happen.  I got in just fine.

Tom Larock kicking
off SQL Sat OC 

It was everything I’d wanted.  Sessions on Wait Stats, PBM, CMS, Indexing, two deep dives one on partitioning and another on CPU!  I met DBA’s that understood my pains, issues with hardware stressed beyond capacity, aging relic’s with critical LOB apps that we couldn’t get new hardware for, 3^rd party vendors with bad indexes, bad code, and little support.  People trying to find a way to survive with NEW insights and experiences sharing openly and free.  People who understood my issues without having to pretend that they actually understood.   

I met Tom Larock (@SQLRockstar | Blog), Argenis Fernandez (@DBArgenis | Blog), Jorge Segarra (@SQLChicken | Blog), Patrick LeBlanc (@PatrickDBA | Blog), and 1 half of my future law firm of Biguns and Balls Jack Corbett (@Unclebiguns | Blog).  There were more.  Lot’s more.  That could take me pages more.  The point is I made it and it was like coming home.

Jason and Steve at SQL Live 360 

That day started it off.  Without Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA | Blog), Andy Warren (@SQLAndy | Blog), Karla Landrum (@KarlaKay22 | Blog), and Jack putting on this SQL Saturday 49 I’m not here today.  

I submitted to be a speaker at the next event I could, I started a blog (you may be familiar with this one), got on Linked-In, and even got a Twitter account.  That event, that one SQL Saturday lead me to presenting at 7 more the next year.  

Getting a spot in the 2^nd chance track at SQL Rally, getting voted in by the community at the PASS Summit 2011, and being invited to be on the planning committee for SQL Saturday Orlando #85 the following year after I’d first attended.

Summit 2013 with the guys

At the end of SQL Saturday Orlando every year we stand up top of a stair case and throw out t-shirts and give away raffle items.  In 2012 Andy Warren looked at me while we were tossing out t-shirts and asked “How’s the view from up here?”  I grinned imagining about 50 different replies, but in the end it was a simple “amazing” that left my mouth.

My second job after college took me to Virginia.   A friend had recommended me for the position.  He met me at the airport, as I flew in for my interview, so I would see a friendly face.  I thanked him.  He told me “I showed you the door, you have to walk through it”.  He was right.  I did.  That job taught me a lot and led me new places.

SQL Saturday was the same way.  It showed me the door.  Walking through it brought me new acquaintances, some new friends, new ideas, to SSUG’s, the PASS Summit, Dev Connection in Las Vegas, SQL Live 360 in Orlando, two books, and a pretty awesome job at Pragmatic Works.

Summit 2013 - Karaoke at the Pragmatic Works Party

This is just the journey so far.  Funny how close yet far away 2009 feels. There is always the question, Dear Reader, of where tomorrow will take you.  We all start somewhere.  Everyone has to have the first time.  That brings us back to the question. 

Why should you go to SQL Saturday?  Because they can be life changing.  Hope to see you at one soon, click here to register for Orlando.

As always, Thanks for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Up Coming Speaking Events

Hello Dear Reader!  We are 2 months into 2014 and the New Year is off to a busy start. This year already I've spoken to 3 User Groups and had 1 Workshop on Performance Tuning. This is only the beginning.  Between  now and May I've got 12 more presentations.  While I'm out and about I hope that I will get to see and meet up with a lot of SQL Family.

First Up Tampa!

SQL Saturday #273 is just around the corner.  I am one of a whole host of other great SQL Server Experts that will be on hand for the free training and free learning.  Stop by!  

February 22nd

SQL Saturday Tampa #273

Trimming Indexes Getting Your Database In Shape! (Click the link to go sign up)

Do you have the PASS Summit Blues?  We are 11 months away from the next great gathering of SQL Minds.  During this time of the year you watch your DVD's/Downloads/Streaming content from last.  You look at the presentations at the SQL Saturday's and start to wonder what will be planned for next year.  You miss your friends, you miss the atmosphere, you miss the Summit.

Well Pragmatic Works has the cure for the PASS Summit Blues.  All this month we have been doing our presentations from last year for Free, as part of our Training on the T's.  Next week you will get a chance to see my presentation from the Summit, Plus a little extra content as I take up not ONE, but TWO time slots.

Hope to see you there!

February 25th

Pragmatic Works Training on the T's

SQL Internals Deep Dive Part 1 (Click the link to go sign up)

February 27th

Pragmatic Works Training on the T's

SQL Internals Deep Dive Part 2  (Click the link to go sign up)

This March SQL Server MVP Jorge Segarra (@SQLChicken | Blog) and myself take our two man show on the road.  We did Tampa last month, next up Reston VA.  I'm hoping to catch up with some old friend's while in VA, and I'm sure you want to miss the two of us in action.  We still have seats, but they are going fast!  (Click the link to go sign up)

March 18th - 20th

Pragmatic Works

Performance Tuning Workshop  (Click the link to go sign up)

Reston, VA

Last year one of my favorite all time memories was SQL Saturday Boston.  I'd never been to Boston when I submitted and I'd always wanted to go.  Little did I realize that I would end up back in Boston 5 more times before the end of 2013.  I can't wait to go back and join the amazing speaker line up that Mike Hilwig(@MikeHilwig|Blog) has put together!

March 29th

SQL Saturday Boston #262

Trimming Your Indexes Getting Your Database In Shape  (Click the link to go sign up)

I'm in Portland Oregon for the first time ever.  As if that wasn't enough reason to show up, I'm presenting with none other than my colleague Roger Wolter(@RWolter50 | Blog).  Roger is a former PM for SQL Server for Microsoft.  He has forgotten more about computer science that I've ever known.  He's a nice guy and he's flat out brilliant.  He has worked on some of the largest and most complicated Service Broker installations in the world, he has vast in the field experience with SQL Server.

Roger and I are teaching the Performance Tuning Workshop not once, but twice this year.  I hope to see you there, because this Dear Reader is going to be a lot of fun.

April 8th

Pragmatic Works

Performance Tuning Workshop  (Click the link to go sign up)

Portland, OR

My good friends Jose Rivera(@SQLConqueror|Blog) and Guillero Caicedo(@SQLTitan|Blog) invited SQL MVP Jorge Segarra and myself to present a full day Pre-Con for SQL Saturday Puerto Rico.  I've gotten to know Jose and Guillero quite well from different SQL Saturday's and the PASS Summit.  This is a great honor as it will mark my 1st ever Pre-Con for a SQL Saturday!

Jorge and I will be pulling out all the stops to give you a full day of information and Performance Tuning knowledge that you can use.  I hope to see you there!

April 11th

SQL Saturday Puerto Rico #283  (Click the link to go sign up)

Full Day Performance Tuning Workshop

April 12th

SQL Saturday

Puerto Rico #283

TBD

Roger Wolter and I tackle SQL Server one more time in the Mile High City.  Denver is a beautiful town and I cannot wait to come out and visit will all the #SQLFamily out there.  We will also be presenting at the SQL Server User Group on the 29th.

April 29th-May 1st

Pragmatic Works 

Performance Tuning Workshop (Click the link to go sign up)

Denver, CO

April 29th 

Denver Colorado SSUG

TBD

Jorge and I will be taking our two man show over to SQL Saturday #298 Jacksonville.  When Devin Knight(@Knight_Devin | Blog) called me up and asked I was stoked!  This will be the 4th time that Jorge and I have presented together this year and I can't wait!  Come out and join us for some learning and fun!

May 9th

SQL Saturday Jacksonville #298

SQL Server Performance Tuning and Internals  (Click the link to go sign up)

May 10th

SQL Saturday Jacksonville #298

TBD

As you can see Dear Reader this year will be busy. There are more plans right now that we are working on that go all the way out to the end of the year.  More on that in the next couple of months!

As Always, Thanks for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

SQL in Chicago

Hello Dear Reader!  I've got some very exciting news!  Pragmatic Works is holding a Two Day Performance Tuning Workshop in Chicago Illinois on Wednesday April 3rd and Thursday April 4th.  Headlining this act will be the wonderful Kimberly Hathaway(Linked-In), and lil old me!

I was born and lived most of my young life in Peoria Illinois.  The last time I was in Chicago was for a field trip to the Museum of Natural History, aka the Field Museum, with my Boy Scout Troop.  I was one of the Boy Scouts and it wasn't a reunion.

Chicago is home to some of the best resturants in the country, a main spot on shows like Man vs. Food, Diners Drive-Ins' and Dives, and Anthony Bourdain have made multiple episodes on the Windy City.

I've grown up a life long Cubs fan who has watched them in Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Miami, never in the Mecca of Wrigley Field.  Sadly the Cubs are out of town, heck even the Wrigley Field tours don't start until the week after I'm gone. I'm still hoping to stop by Wrigley and at least get a photo.

"So Balls", you say, "There was a Performance Tuning Workshop?"

Thank You Dear Reader.  My love for Chi-Town aside, I cannot wait for this workshop.  Kimberly and I are going to working very hard for you Dear Attendee, to make sure that in two days we can paint a picture and bring a lot of complex topics home.  Here's a link to the class if you're in town and would like to sign up (Some changes are coming to the outline, content will stay the same, but the flow will be streamlined)!   We are already 75% sold out, and space has been filling up fast. Space is limited so get your seat while you still can!


BUILD IT THE RIGHT WAY

A lot of the problems I see in servers deal with them not being set up correctly.  Most of the time it is a simple oversight.  When troubleshooting there are things that we will check for, and some of them are simple fixes.

Did you use SQLIO to baseline you're hard drives?  Did you take a perfmon baseline?  Do you know the correct calculations for PLE? Cough cough *hint*!  What about the best ways to set up and things to consider when using Virtualization?  Are your BIOS driver's up to date?  Do you have Green Driver Settings on, what is your Windows Performance Plan set to? All this and we haven't even installed SQL Server!

Our Configuration are only just beginning.  Once we install SQL Server there is more to do.  Have we set up Instant Database File Initialization, based on our security can we?   Max Memory, Lock Pages in memory, Max Worker Threads, Maxdop, Cost Threshold for Parallelism, and many other settings need to be considered.  We will cover each of these and what the best practices are for each.


Next up we will cover the Internals of how a Query flows through SQL Server.  We'll discuss the Optimizer, Statistics, and plan costing before diving into the Plan Cache and Execution plans.  We'll round things out by a full discussion on Indexes and end the day with a dive into Locking/Blocking and Deadlocks.

TROUBLESHOOTING SHARPSHOOTING

Anybody can run a DMV, (anybody with the right permissions on a SQL Instance that is).  Interpreting the results is what turns Troubleshooting into Sharpshooting.

To fine tune the process we will cover Waits and Queues, making sure we understand Preemptive vs. Cooperative Processing and how that helps us get Wait Stats.  We'll troubleshoot various types and discuss what we've seen.


We'll go back to our Baselines and talk about what to look for when things go south and how to start diving into the problem.  We'll use Extended Events to single out specific data and show how you can use them and powerful tools in your arsenal.

We will discuss some of the free tools, our SQL Community, and of course #SQLHelp.

We'll step into the BI world to discuss some performance issues you will see there, and how to troubleshoot them as well. Finally we'll get a hands on lab that we can all really get into.



THE WHOLE D@MN TEAM

One of the best things about the class?  When you get one of us from Pragmatic Works you get the whole crew. ( I call dips on being Nick Fury)

They might not be there in the class with us but great SQL Community members and teammates SQL MVP's Jorge  Segarra (@SQLChicken | Blog) and Jason Strate (@StrateSQL | Blog), .

Former Microsof-ties like Kathi Kellenberger (@AuntKathi | Blog) and Roger Wolter (@rwolter50 | Linked-In).

Finally Tremendous Sr. Consultants for Pragmatic works such as  Gareth Swanepoel (@GarethSwan | Blog), Chad Churchwell (@ChadChurchwell | Blog), Kimberly, and myself all had are input on the class and worked on making the demos.

For $300 it's a can't miss!  Hope to see you there! (Click Here to Sign Up while Seats are still available!)

As always Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks,


Brad

Pragmatic Works Has Balls...SQLBalls

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That is right Dear Reader, I am making the jump, Starting Monday February 6th I will be a Sr. Consultant with Pragmatic Works.  Over the last year I've gotten to know quite a few of the people that work with Pragmatic Works.  As a company and as individuals they are staples of the SQL Server Community.  If you've been to a SQL Saturday, SQL Rally, 24 Hours of PASS, SQL PASS Summit, or countless other SQL related gatherings you have undoubtedly come across someone from Pragmatic Works.

"So Balls," you say, "Sr. Consultant does this mean you're no longer a DBA?  Are you now jumping ship to become a Business Intelligence guy?"

No worries Dear Reader, even though DBA isn't in my official title I'll be up to my elbows in all kinds of DBA goodness!  A big part of what I'll be doing is working with other DBA's and clients with DBA issues.  Now let's jump right in.

START WITH WHY

Brian Knight(@BrianKnight|Blog) has written about Why he started Pragmatic Works, read Community Manifesto at Pragmatic Works, but the real question is Why would I join Pragmatic. 

I mentioned Simon Sinek (@Simonsinek |Website) yesterday.  I was introduced to him by my now fellow Co-worker Tom Brenneman (@TomBrenneman).  If you haven't watched Simon's How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED Talk, take a  break click on the link here.  I'll be here when you get back.  It's good stuff.  Heck it's amazing.  If you're like me when you watched it your mind was exploding with ideas and possibilities afterwards.  Take a deep breath, now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

"So Balls," you say "What's your Why?"

You are on your game today Dear Reader.  I believe at our core we as people all have something that we want to fundamentally believe in. Along the way of life I picked up a simple oath, "To Believe in the Life of Love, To Walk in the Way of Honor, To Serve In the Light of Truth.  This is the Life, the Way, and the Light".  Simple words, but I found I believe in them.  I believe in Love, Truth, and Honor.  When we were kids there were things that we wanted to do, not because of a paycheck, not to get ahead, but the things WE believed in.  We believed in those things so fiercely that they shaped what we wanted to become. 

I found that I really liked working with Computers, and so that became my major in college (eventually), and that was the field I went into (eventually).  It's a little hard to draw a parallel there.  At the best of times I like my computer, at most I'm happy with it, I certainly don't love it.

 What I found was I enjoyed learning, and I was in the right field for it.  Heck I didn't just enjoy it, I found I loved it!  Later I got to mentor and work with others.  When I saw them grow and learn it filled me with a sense of pride, but never so much that I didn't hold dear to the idea that I always have more to learn.  Eventually I got to the point where I would learn on a topic and I would get to educate others on it.  That led me to begin presenting on topics internally for the places where I worked and to the people I worked with.  Then last year I started presenting to the community, I started blogging, I started volunteering, and most importantly I stated participating. 

Doing so I started finding things that I really loved.  I love speaking, I know I'm weird but I like getting up in front of a room and talking about something technical.  I love teaching.  Jumping in to situations where I don't know a lot about an environment and I'm learning on the fly to overcome a critical system outage, almost as fun as white water rafting.  There is a certain Truth to unabashedly teaching, to not withholding information.  When I've worked for a place I've taken great efforts to make sure that when I leave they know what I know, documentation, information, scripts, you name it I want them to have it.  If I have to keep something from you in order to seem important, then what I'm doing is wrong.  In our business Ideas are important, but recognizing that People have to think them, and that People are more important is critical.  And finally if you act with Love and Truth towards others, there is no way that you cannot be perceived as Honorable.

So Why am I going to work for Pragmatic Works?  Because I see a company that believes in empowering people through education and technology.  I see a Company that uses the Pragmatic Works Foundation to train the unemployed and helps Veterans transition to technology jobs after they leave the service.  And not only do they help train people, but they hold recruiting fairs, they work actively to place people.  To top it all off they started doing this during the HEIGHT of the Recession, when our economy was at its worst.  When profits were at an all time low for others, Pragmatic was giving away two free seats in each of its training sessions to an unemployed technology professional.  I see a company that not only believes in the SQL Community but actively encourages it's employees, and offers incentives, for them to participate. 

In short my Why is because I believe in Love, Truth, and Honor.  And I believe in what Pragmatic Works is doing as a company, and I'm very excited to participate.

WHO BETTER TO LEARN FROM

I attended the Pre-con that Pragmatic Works did for SQL Rally.  I have sat in their presentations, and I have learned from them.  They are SQL MVP's they are Instructors for the SSAS Maestro Course that is as close to a Business Intelligence MCM that Microsoft Currently has.  If you were going to learn about SSIS you would be hard pressed to find people more qualified than Brian Knight, Mike Davis (@MikeDavisSQL|Blog), and Devin Knight (@Knight_Devin|Blog).  From a DBA perspective there are top notch SQL guys like MVP Jorge Segarra(@SQLChicken|Blog), Gareth Swanepoel(@GarethSwan|Blog), and Chad Churchwell(@ChadChurchwell|Blog).  If SSAS is your bag then I would point you no further than Mr. Adam Jorgensen(@adam_jorgensen|Blog).

I cannot say enough good things about this team, and there are many more amazing MVP's and MVP caliber people that I haven't listed.  At Pragmatic I will learn How to be the absolutely best technology specialist I can be throughout a wide range of Microsoft technologies.

Throughout all that learning I'll be Consulting, Teaching, Presenting, and Blogging.  I'm very excited to get started, and I hope you will come along as I explore this next phase of my career.  Until next time Dear Reader.

Thanks Again,

Brad

Presenting on SQL Internals, Recovery Models, & Backups! OH MY Today

 Today I’m presenting “SQL Internals, Recovery Model’s, and Backups. OH MY!”, for Pragmatic Works.  I did this presentation once before for SQL Saturday 79 and it was a big hit.  I had a lot of great feedback from the people in the audience that day, and my friend Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA | Blog) attended and gave me some great notes and tips. 

My goal is not to make you an expert, but to give you a good base knowledge so you can continue to learn on the subject.  There is a lot to cover and we will scratch the surface of a lot of topics.

“So Balls”, you say, “Why should I come listen to you talk about Internals if I’m not going to become an expert?”

Great question Dear Reader, let’s dive right in!

WHY LEARN ABOUT INTERNALS?

I’m not a mechanic, but if I was I would expect that I could look at that picture to the right and tell you what I see.  And I’m not talking, it’s a car and an engine, but what are the components.  What is that pink thing?   What about the blue thing?  I look at that picture and I know the basics and that’s about it.

I am a DBA, and if someone shows me a SQL Instance, a Database, or asks me to perform a task then I should be able to tell them a thing or two about it.  The more you learn about internals the more you know about what you use every day.

As I’ve continued to learn about SQL I’ve noticed some common terms, some information that formed a common baseline.  I want to pass that information on to you because l want to make it easier on you.  I want you to go out and learn, and this information will help you.

You need to understand how a Transaction Log works, that SQL has internal components, what the data hierarchy is, what Recovery Model’s are, how they affect the backups you will take, and how that will affect Service Level Agreements you have with your user. 

From ACID to Transaction Isolation Level’s we are going to make a run at it.  I’ll upload the deck and the Demo’s when the presentation is over.  Click HERE to go to my Resource Page and get a copy of the presentation and the Scripts. 

Click HERE to sign up and join me today!  I hope to see you at 11 am.

Thanks,

Brad

Thank You Pragmatic Works!

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Hello Dear Reader I just wanted to say Thank You to all of the people that attended my webinar for Pragmatic Works on Tuesday.  My Slide Deck and Demo’s have been uploaded.  You can access them by going to my Resource Page at the links on the Top of the Page.

“So Balls,” you say “How did it go?”

This was the largest audience that I have ever presented to!  Almost 200 people tuned in and we kept around 190 of you for the entire time.  WOW!  200 that still brings a smile to my face, Thank You for showing that we the SQL Community are eager to learn about the technology we use every day!

The feedback I’ve gotten is has all been really positive, this is a tough subject to fit inside of 1 hour.  I know there where questions that I was not able to get to and I would encourage anyone who still has questions to use the Contact link at the top of the page to shoot me an email.  I’m slowly going through them all but I will respond to each and every one that I have received.

THANK YOU PRAGMATIC WORKS & ATTENDEES

But the biggest thing I want to say is Thank YOU.  Thank You to the Attendees and Thank YOU to Pragmatic Works.  We wouldn’t have these webinars without your commitment to the community.  I want to thank Devin Knight (@Knight_devin | Blog ) for offering to let me be a part of one of your webinars.

I see the Pragmatic Guys out there in the community, actively teaching, writing, and participating in every SQL Community event that comes their way.  And I am honored to say that I contributed!

This was a lot of fun and I had a blast!

Thanks,

Brad