Upcoming Speaking Engagements
I’ve got a couple of more sessions before the big two at the PASS Summit. Tomorrow night, October 20th, I’ll be speaking at the Southern New England Network Users Group on SQL Server Best Practices. It’s the first time I’ve talked on this topic, so it might be fun to watch. After that I’m previewing one of my two Summit presentations for Brian Knight (blog|twitter) and Pragmatic Works in a webinar on Identifying and Fixing Performance Problems Using Execution Plans. Go here to register.
After that, it’s off the PASS Summit.
Sarasota SQL Server Users Group
Tonight I’m presenting for the Sarasota SQL Server Users Group. If you’re interested in attending, you can join in using this link. The topic will be “Query Performance Tuning 101.”
And in case you can’t make that, Thursday, June 17th, I’ll be on Quest’s Pain of the Week. It should be fun too.
Cape Cod .NET Users Group
Tomorrow night, Wednesday, September 23, I’m going to present on “Best Practices for Working with SQL Server Execution Plans” for the Cape Cod .NET User’s Group. It’s basically a rehearsal for the presentation that I’ll be doing at the 2009 PASS Summit in just 5 weeks. Can you believe it’s already almost here? I’m so jazzed. This year is going to be a great summit. I can’t wait to see everyone again… I… Where was I, oh yeah, come down to Hyannis if you can make it. It should be a fun evening. Not quite as good as the Summit, but a good time.
New England Data Camp Evals
Anyone reading this who attended the New England Data Camp and filled out an eval, for any of the sessions, thanks. For those 63 evals between the two sessions that I received, thanks. Here are the aggregates on my sessions:
Using Visual Studio Team System Database Edition:
| Average of Knowledge | 8.344827586 |
| Average of Presentation | 8.482758621 |
| Average of Preparation | 8.103448276 |
| Average of Interesting | 8.172413793 |
| Average of Overall | 8.275862069 |
| Number of Submissions | 29 |
Understanding Execution Plans
| Average of Knowledge | 8.647058824 |
| Average of Presentation | 8.617647059 |
| Average of Preparation | 8.705882353 |
| Average of Interesting | 8.529411765 |
| Average of Overall | 8.625 |
| Number of Submissions | 34 |
These are all on a scale of 1-9. I’m really quite happy with the results. Here are the average results for all the speakers and all the sessions at the Data Camp:
| Total Average of Knowledge | 8.407843 |
| Total Average of Presentation | 7.912109 |
| Total Average of Preparation | 8.130859 |
| Total Average of Interesting | 7.962891 |
| Total Average of Overall | 8.096004 |
| Total Number of Submissions | 515 |
Overall, both sessions beat the average. My knowledge level was marked down a bit on the Visual Studio session and I attribute that (mostly) to a lack of rehearsal and preparation. I changed that slide deck just the week before the Data Camp and it showed. Same problem with the Visual Studio session regarding preparation. What practices and rehearsals I had done were on my desktop at work. I found out that morning that my laptop didn’t have the GDR release installed, so I had to RDP to my desktop. It created several technical issues. I’m glad that people picked up on it. It really does keep me honest. I guess the session on execution plans was well received (despite the fact that I kept saying page when I meant leaf when referring to an index structure, bleh).
There were some really nice comments, thanks everyone. A couple of the comments on the Visual Studio session talked about market penetration and the readiness of the tool set. I had about 60 people in the audience and only three (3!) were using the tool. More were using the Team Foundation System, but not to the extent we use it where I work. I don’t think that’s because the tool isn’t ready (although I think it has a few shortcomings in & around deployments, especially incremental deployments) but rather the fact that it costs a bloody fortune. Few individuals can afford it and not that many companies are going to be willing to pay for it, especially in this economy. Other than that, no suggestions for improving the presentation, despite the fact that I got marked down a bit on this one. I’ll take the preparation more seriously next time.
I only got one negative on the Understanding Execution Plans session and, unfortunately, it’s only marginally useful. One person gave me a 2 on “Interesting” (in a sea of 9’s a few 8’s and two 7’s). This person wanted to see a session on query tuning and optimization. But, that’s just not what the session is about, at all. So it’s hard to take this as a mechanism for improving my presentation on what is an execution plan and how do you read one. However, it does let me know that I should probably try to come up with some kind of performance tuning & tips session that I can give from the new book. Unfortunately, this is such a full field with great presenters like Gail Shaw already showing exactly what I’d show (except better) that I’m not sure what to do about it. I need some idea to drive the session, a hook like Gail’s “Dirty Dozen” (fantastic name). I’m thinking about this one.
Anyway, there are the results, all out in the open. Thank you again for sending in your evals (even the 2 was very helpful) and your comments. The compliments were extremely nice to read, thank you.
UPDATED: Typed Gail’s name wrong AND forgot to link to her site.
Presentation Last Week
Last week I presented at the Southern New England SQL Server User Group (SNESSUG) where I’m the Program Director. I presented from the book, Dissecting Execution Plans, that is supposed to be published any day now. I kept it basic and it flowed very well. The audience seemed receptive and there were a few questions. Mostly around figuring out what to do when you saw certain problems within the execution plans. Since that was the goal of the presentation, I was ready for most of the questions. I got stumped once on a Constant Scan operation.
I finally looked it up this morning and feel silly. Here’s the query:
INSERT INTO [AdventureWorks].[Person].[Address]
([AddressLine1]
,[AddressLine2]
,[City]
,[StateProvinceId]
,[PostalCode]
,[rowguid]
,[ModifiedDate]
VALUES (‘1313 Mockingbird Lane’
,’Basement’
,’Springfield’
,24
,’02134′
,NEWID()
,GETDATE());
Silly simple right? It creates an execution plan that starts with the Constant Scan operator. For those who aren’t snickering behind their hands because I forgot this simple fact, the Constant Scan operator creates a blank row, or rows, for the query in question to begin filling in. Simple. I still feel goofy that I didn’t remember it.
Home of the Scary DBA 