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T-SQLTuesday #42! The Long and Winding Road

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC, TSQL Tuesday

Tags: SQLFamily, TSQL Tuesday

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 14, 2013

The Long and Winding Road

It is time for another installment in the monthly blog party for SQL Server professionals known as TSQL Tuesday.

This month we have the pleasure of being hosted by Wendy Pastrick (blog | twitter). The topic for the month requires a bit of introspection (almost like the self-evaluation piece of an annual review). Quoting direct from her blog, here is the gist of the topic:

Here’s what I thought it would be fun to share with the community this time around – we all experience change in our work lives. Maybe you have a new job, or a new role at your company. Maybe you’re just getting started and you have a road map to success in mind. Whatever it is, please share it next week, Tuesday May 14th. Make sure you note what technologies you find are key to your interests or successes, and maybe you will inspire someone to look down a road less traveled.

For me, this is an interesting topic. It was my theme of choice last month with a major announcement (see here). And because of that, I am even using the same image – slightly changed. Only this time, I will go back a bit further into my career and the road I traveled to get to today.

I am going to go back to a decision point in my career that had a huge impact on where I am now. That decision point was shortly after having moved to Las Vegas about four years ago. After having moved to Las Vegas, I made the decision to become more active in the SQL Community. The first step was to regularly attend the user group meetings.

Prior to moving to Las Vegas, I was a member of PASS. I had been to SUMMIT. I knew of the local user group meetings in the Salt Lake City area. I just never forced the issue due to timing etc. This was something that I felt needed to change.

By making that conscientious decision, I became more involved in the online community. I soon started presenting. And before long, I was involved in the scheduling of speakers for the Las Vegas UG.

By becoming more active in the community, my skillset started to rapidly grow. I found myself blogging more and researching more about SQL Server. I really started to learn about SQL thanks to that decision. Prior, I feel I was good. Now, I feel I am much better because I invested more time and effort and I am trying to share the skills that I have learned.

I have said it before and it is worth saying again. If you really want to learn a technology, try teaching it to somebody. By taking on that extra step, you will find yourself researching a bit more and you will find that you may have to answer questions about it that you had never considered until you tried to teach it. Being active in the community has helped me to become better at my trade. I am sure it will help others as well.

May 2013 Las Vegas UG

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC, SSSOLV

Tags: Community, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 14, 2013

Spring is in the air, I think.

With that scent in the air, we have a nice juicy topic coming up this month for any and all that are interested.

Chad Crawford will be presenting to the group on the tastiness that is Service Broker.

Service Broker in Action

SQL Server Service Broker is a messaging framework built into the SQL Server engine. It enables SQL Server to handle messaging between servers and applications with light setup and overhead. The flexibility of the framework enables Service Broker to queue event notifications, task execution requests or other messages while leveraging the strength of SQL Server transaction management, reliability and recoverability. In this session we will see how to set up Service Broker, discuss case studies where it has been implemented in industry, and step through a practical example implementing an audit log.

Session Level: Intermediate

Chad Crawford’s BIO

Chad has been working with database engines for 14 years, the last 12 focused specifically on SQL Server. He has filled a variety of roles spanning architecture, development and administration. Chad is currently the Database Architect at Henry Schein Practice Solutions in American Fork. When he isn’t optimizing a query, you will find him running, dreaming about airplanes, or looking for a new strategy board game.

Meeting Details

Attendee URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/UserGroups/join?id=KWRMQ3&role=attend

Meeting ID: KWRMQ3

Las Vegas April 2013 UG Meeting

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: Corner, News, Professional, SSC

Tags: Community, PASS, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: April 9, 2013

AlwaysOn – Finally, A usable ‘mirror’!

In the past, High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HADR) had many limitations. Clustering and Mirroring are great, but the mirror/secondary database is not very usable since it is not online. Finally, AlwaysOn solves this limitation by merging both multi-node Clustering and mirroring. AlwaysOn also allows the secondary database to remain ONLINE, so we can use it for reporting purposes without resorting to a Snapshot! Come see this lively session with extensive demos of setting up, configuring and testing AlwaysOn. We’ll also test automatic fail-over using a real web app to see how well this feature works.

Jim Murphy

Jim Murphy has been using Microsoft SQL Server since version 6.0 back in the 90′s. He is the President/CEO of SQLWatchmen, LLC., a managed DBA service provider for smaller companies who do not need a full-time DBA. He runs the Austin SQL Server User Group: CACTUSS Central and sits on the board of SQLPOSSE.com. He has been a professional DBA and developer for over 20 years and has run a consulting company full-time for over a decade.

LiveMeeting Information:

Attendee URL:https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/UserGroups/join?id=834ZNP&role=attend

Meeting ID:834ZNP

March 2013 LV UG Meeting

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC, SSSOLV

Tags: Community, PASS, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: March 11, 2013

Another month and we have another installment (meeting) for the Data Professionals of the Las Vegas area.

This month we will be getting back on schedule with the usual meeting time and place. We had a slight divergence last month due to that heartsy holiday.

We are excited about some of the upcoming speakers and feedback we have been getting of late. We are feverishly working to get some presenters on Big Data and Hadoop. If you are in the market to present on these topics, ping me.

Here are some of the details for the meeting.

Presenting is Jason Kassay

Jason Will be presenting to us on the topic of “The Accidental Programmer.

Most people in the database world have heard of the term, “The Accidental DBA”, those programmers who have to work with databases. How about the other side of the coin? What about DBA’s an Dev’s who have to write code or have to work closely with programmers? This presentation is a best practices guide for working with SQL Server in a .Net environment. You will learn how to recognize when bad code is written that interacts with the database, how to track it down, and most importantly how to fix it. On top of that you will also receive an introduction to object oriented programming concepts such as data abstraction, encapsulation, tier architecture, and class objects so that you can better communicate with your programmers.

BIO

Jason has been a software developer for over 10 years and currently works at EZFacility, providing scheduling, management, full-service billing, and membership solutions for the sports, health, and fitness industries. He has worked primarily with .Net (C# and VB) and SQL Server as well as HTML, CSS, and Javascript. When he is not coding or spending time with his awesome family, you will find him either running (to train for the zombie apocalypse) or stopping hockey pucks as a goaltender.

LiveMeeting Information:

Attendee URL:		https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/UserGroups/join?id=DC769N&role=attend

Meeting ID:		DC769N

VERY IMPORTANT

The meeting location has changed. We will no longer be meeting at The Learning Center. New meeting location is M Staff Solutions & Training / 2620 Regatta Drive Suite 102 Las Vegas, NV 89128.
We are also moving to meetup for meeting management. Please join us for free at http://www.meetup.com/SQL-Server-Society-of-Las-Vegas/

Las Vegas February 2013 UG

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: Corner, News, Professional, SSC

Tags: Community, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: February 12, 2013

I know it is right in the middle of TSQL2SDAY when this post is to go live. If you don’t know what that is, you should go check out this months edition here. The topic this month is good and should drive up a lot of participation.

It also happens that this week we have a group meeting for the Las Vegas User Group. We normally meet on the second Thursday of each month. It just so happens that this month that lands on the 14th of February. If you can’t fathom why we changed our meeting date, maybe you should Google the date or something (just joking).

This month we have a first time presenter. I have been bugging her for months to try to get her to come out of her shell to present. And now she is doing it so be gentle and check out the meeting.

Presenting this month is Terrie White. She will be presenting on Replication Technologies and High Availability solutions.

Here are some of the details for the meeting.

Presenting is Terrie White

Terrie White Will be presenting to us on replication technologies and high availability.

LiveMeeting Information:

Attendee URL:		https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/UserGroups/join?id=WD4TSW&role=attend

Meeting ID:		WD4TSW

VERY IMPORTANT

Fast Starts

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC

Tags: Community, SQL Cruise, SQLFamily, Training

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: January 8, 2013

We are barely under way with the New Year and it is shaping up to be a busier year already. Not quite as busy as has been published by the folks at Confio – but busy nonetheless.

The first thing up for me is to get my SQL Learn on. I will be joining a bunch of geeks and some of their families for a week at sea. Yes, you heard that correctly – at sea.

I will be SQLCruising out of Miami through the Caribbean. This should be a good learning/relaxing SQLcation. Yes Tim, I took a little liberty to add the water ripple to that logo. Just getting excited to be on the water and rippling water helps. It’s almost time to go pack for this trip.

Right after I get back from Cruising, I will be in Albuquerque for SQL Saturday 183. I will be joining people like Steve Jones, Aaron Bertrand, Tjay Belt, Denny Cherry, Ben Miller and a host of other talented people. You can see the schedule here.

Here is what I am thinking about attending.

Time	Presenter	Topic
8:30 AM	Jeff Renz	Data Vault Data Warehouse Architecture
10:00 AM	Carlos Bossy	Using Columnstore Indexes in SQL Server 2012
11:15 AM		I will be presenting
1:45 PM	Rob Mandeville	Virtualizing our Environment
3:00 PM	Michael Fal	Exposing the Core: SQL 2012 on Server Core
4:15 PM	Chris Shaw	Outages: Dispatchers, Cops and Detectives

That brings us to early February. At some point I expect to retake the Lab exam in February or March. And then I expect to be presenting at a couple more SQL Saturdays within the next few months.

Most Interesting People…

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC

Tags: PASS SUMMIT, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: November 21, 2012

Here are the most interesting people I met at PASS Summit 2012

Mickey Stuewe (sqlmickey)

Neil Hambly (neil_hambly)

Bob Hovious

Gail Shaw (sqlinthewild)

Ed Watson (SQLGator)

This is the short list of the many many many people I met while at Summit 2012 (the list is too long). I appreciate the opportunity I had to meet each person whether mentioned in this post or not from the past week (Karla and Rodney Landrum, Tony Davis, Rob Farley, Jason Strate, Robert Davis, Wes Brown, Jes Borland, Martin Catherall, Tim Ford, Jim Murphy, Mike Fal, Louis Davidson, Kevin Kline, Jorge Segarra, etc, etc) . This short list happens to be a list of people that I had a good amount of time to sit down around a table and chat for long periods throughout the week. Some of them I even had the opportunity to chat multiple times. They are all interesting for different reasons. And some I have known for a fair bit longer than just this last week at Summit through online interactions and so forth – but I never actually met them until this last week.

Why are these the most interesting five?

I found them interesting for different reasons. You should have your own list of most interesting people you met. Here are my reasons for them being the most interesting in the order I met them at Summit.

Neil Hambly

I met Neil briefly for the first time at the MCM study group Sunday evening. Two things that stood out immediately was his accent and that he was blunt and to the point. Neil strikes me as a person that pulls no punches and tells it straight. I like that.

Neil is very personable and very funny.

Ed Watson

Ed has an easy going southern kind of charm. I met him Sunday evening as a bunch of us gathered at The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We sat and joked all evening. We talked about amusement parks for a bit and mostly talked about a lot of stuff that was inconsequential. Like myself, Ed has no problem having Cheesecake as a meal. I frequently prefer to have my desert first, so thought this was cool that somebody else was willing to go against the grain.

I ran into Ed several times throughout Summit and we had several opportunities to chat. I enjoyed meeting him and having so many opportunities to just chat and joke.

Gail Shaw

I have known Gail longer than any of the others on this list. But I had never actually met her in person. Like Neil, Gail will tell it to you straight. She too has a thick accent being from South Africa.

With being busy at Summit, Gail was still finding time throughout the day frequently to continue to help people online. That stood out to me quite a bit. There are some very good reasons for why she was doing it too. But in the true sense of giving of her time, she was making time to continually try and help people. She was even asked last minute to fill in and present.

If you have the chance to get to know Gail, you will appreciate the opportunity.

Mickey Stuewe

The timeline for meeting Mickey gets a little grey here. I actually ran into her the first time at the Exceptional DBA awards party. We didn’t actually sit down and do a lot of chatting until Friday evening though.

Friday evening, a bunch of us met at the Crab Pot. The food was really good and really too much! There were about 12 of us in the group and Mickey and I were sitting across from each other. We had a good long conversation about things from health to Summit to volunteering to performance tuning.

Mickey laughed a lot. She also happened to be wearing her own design of SQL jewelry. Should you get the chance to meet her, you will probably find her laughing. If she isn’t laughing – you should probably be able to make her laugh.

Bob Hovious

Bob (known as the Dixie Flatline on SQLServerCentral) is a grey haired gentleman with a lot of insight, good stories and deep knowledge. Bob is a former lawyer and is a hoot. I enjoyed him prodding at Gail from time to time for a reaction. Gail just played along – but it was fun.

I really enjoyed many of the stories that Bob shared. Bob and I shared a lot in common and that is a big reason as to why we talked a lot. Bob is a personable man with plenty of southern charm. Bob is a good person and it seems to me that he likes giving back to the community.

Who are the five most memorable people you met at Summit?

Part of going to Summit is the huge opportunity to network with others. If you are reading this, think about the people with whom you socialized during Summit week. Who are the most interesting people you met?

T-SQL Tuesday #36 SQL Community

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: News, Professional, SSC

Tags: Community, PASS, PASS SUMMIT, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: November 12, 2012

Community – What is it?

Community is something that is improperly defined with words alone. Community is best defined through first person experience. Community is a feeling and a sense more than it is a definition in “pick your dictionary here.”

So how do you experience this thing we call the SQL Community (or SQLFamily as we have dubbed it)?

Let’s examine that question next…

Experience the SQLFamily

The SQLFamily has been really good about putting itself out there and helping others. If you use twitter you may have become acquainted with the #sqlhelp hashtag. If you use twitter and participate in some of the discussions streaming nonstop from various corners of the family, you can see how quickly you might have been adopted into the family.

Still with the twitter theme, you might also see on frequent occasion something posted to the #sqlfamily hashtag. Personal news might be posted to this hashtag from time to time. In times of personal duress, the family comes together to show some strength. Though not as tough as what others may have posted, I saw this first hand last year when away from the family on business and my daughter had an almond experience of the third kind. You can read about that here.

Outside of twitter, the SQLFamily has been very progressive in getting more training out to the masses. This training comes in the form of SQL Saturday and PASS Summit. PASS Summit just wrapped up on November 9 and was a rather large family gathering.

At Summit, you may run into some princesses, some kilts, and maybe even some red lights along with all of those really big names that you see on twitter, the intertubes and so forth. Here is a bit of what I mean (all pictures used with permission by Pat Wright (twitter) and can also be found on his flickr stream here).

From the Princess (Rumor has it she will be starting a blog soon. This Princess has a name and it is Andrea Allred (twitter) ).

To a PASS Tradition – yes those are kilts.

Maybe even some flashing red lights (this might have been after SQL Karaoke)

And rounding it out with the Community Zone (I blogged about that here). You might recognize some of the SQLFamily here (Tim Ford (twitter), Sarah Strate (twitter), Allen Kinsel (twitter), Louis Davidson (twitter) in far background to name some of them).

And this was all from the Emerald City of Seattle. We will miss you next year Seattle as we visit Charlotte.

Community in the SQL world is not always about straight laced SQL and nerdery about the product we dearly love. But it is about relaxing and having a good time with your friends too. And when you are in this family – there are many friends. The family is very open and accepting. When they greet you, don’t be surprised if they attempt to hug you – it’s family.

Conclusion

Thanks to Chris Yates for hosting the TSQL Tuesday party this month. You can read the original invitation here. The rules for participation are in the invite. Check it out along with anybody else that may have submitted an entry this month.

SQLSat153 Recap

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: Corner, News, Professional, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSC, SSSOLV

Tags: Community, SQLFamily, SQLSaturday

Comments: No Comments

Published on: October 24, 2012

You may not know that this past Saturday ( October 20, 2012) was SQLSaturday 153 in Salt Lake City. If you knew about it, awesome. If you attended – even better. You probably don’t know that I was there presenting this year. I was a huge slacker in getting the word out about presenting at SQLSat153.

I am hoping that this recap will help atone for that grievous mistake.

Pat Wright (twitter)and company did a great job putting the event together and it appeared to run without problem. I did what I could to help where possible. I showed up early to try and help with setup and also to make sure demos and equipment would work.

Notice that I was there to make sure my there wouldn’t be equipment issues. I had the first presentation of the day and I wanted it to run smoothly. I’ll also throw out there that it was a first time presenting that topic for myself. Well, I hope the feedback is as good as the turnout.

I had a packed house! I had a couple of other presenters find me afterward because they had heard my session was packed. A little razzing about stealing their attendees was to be had and it was welcomed.

The session that was packed (and the empty chair was a momentary absence so he could answer his phone) was on Extended Events in SQL 2012. This was a fun session and the topic is really good. Unfortunately we did not make it to the bonus material. I think the bonus demos would have been very good to discuss. I hope we can get to that material next time.

Despite not reaching the bonus material, I have included the material in the zip file that I uploaded to the event website.

I did present two sessions Saturday and was part of the open forum panel that consisted of Cindy Gross (twitter), Randy Knight (twitter), Ben Miller (twitter) and myself. Now you may know that Cindy is an MCM. You might also know that Randy and Ben have both passed the MCM Knowledge exam (Ben is taking the Lab as I type). That made the panel full of SQL Knowledge (we joked that it was equal to two full MCMs giving Ben, Randy and myself 1/3 each for having passed the Knowledge Exam). This Q&A session went over quite well too.

If you didn’t make it out, I hope it was a really good reason. I also hope that you can make it next time because the sessions were outstanding and the opportunity to learn is top notch.

Lions and Tigers and Bears…

by Jason Brimhall

Categories: Corner, News, Professional, SSC, SSSOLV

Tags: Certification, SQL Server, SQLFamily

Comments: No Comments

Published on: October 15, 2012

Last Thursday I found myself on a journey of sorts. There weren’t any lions or tigers or bears, but there were plenty of “Oh My”‘s.

It all began on a dark and gloomy night. Well, I am sure it was dark and gloomy somewhere. In reality it was before dusk and the sun was shining. I was heading out of town for a quick trip. My family was to drop me off at the airport so we could have dinner together before I left.

We ended up at a McDonalds. We let the kids play in the play area while we chatted with some of the other parents in the area. For all intents and purposes this is where the journey began.

Our timing was pretty good to arrive at dinner. We had just missed the commotion. A family had just been robbed at gunpoint. A rare thing on this side of the river in the woods.

Finishing up with the excitement and dinner we were back on our way to the airport. When arriving at the airport, I found that my flight was to be delayed by about an hour. Apparently, the flight from San Francisco was delayed causing us some big delays. In turn, this resulted in me getting to my hotel after midnight.

At the hotel after a few hours of rest, I was awake and prepping for the day. The most nerve racking thing was about to happen and I had no clue it was coming. I had taken the elevator downstairs to get some breakfast. After having eaten, and needing to leave within the next 20 minutes, I was back in the elevator on my way back up to the room. Five of those minutes were consumed in that elevator as it decided to stop working between floors. It was as if the elevator took a break or decided to reboot. Needless to say, I took the stairs the next time which was the last time.

Now why does any of this matter? Well, it was certainly an interesting situation as I was heading to the Prometric test center to take the MCM Knowledge exam. The exam was intense enough without the added complexity of travel. For now, the only option (besides paying extra for remote delivery) for people such as myself living in Utah is to travel out of Utah. This exposes us to that extra complexity and challenges such as getting stuck in an elevator. I was a bit anxious thanks to that experience, but I made it to the center in time for my exam. Thankfully I was planning on being there extra early.

Moral of the story – plan ahead. I considered flying in and out the same day to take the exam and then reconsidered. I didn’t want to take the risk of flight delays causing me to miss it. Having that extra time, it made these lions and tigers and bears all the more bearable and I still was able to take the exam.

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SQL RNNR

T-SQLTuesday #42! The Long and Winding Road

The Long and Winding Road

May 2013 Las Vegas UG

Service Broker in Action

Chad Crawford’s BIO

Meeting Details

Las Vegas April 2013 UG Meeting

AlwaysOn – Finally, A usable ‘mirror’!

Jim Murphy

March 2013 LV UG Meeting

Las Vegas February 2013 UG

Fast Starts

Most Interesting People…

Why are these the most interesting five?

Neil Hambly

Ed Watson

Gail Shaw

Mickey Stuewe

Bob Hovious

Who are the five most memorable people you met at Summit?

T-SQL Tuesday #36 SQL Community

Community – What is it?

Experience the SQLFamily

SQLSat153 Recap

Lions and Tigers and Bears…

Now Reading

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Current books:

Recent books:

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