Tag: blogging

Blogging at SQLPerformance.com

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I am honored to be a Guest Blogger at SQLPerformance.com. As a member of the SentryOne Product Advisory Council (PAC) I will be writing occasionally for the site. You can catch my first blog post It’s Not You It’s Me (I/O Troubleshooting) through simple changes. SQLPerformance.com is about providing innovative and practical solutions for improving SQL Server performance. Whether you are running a 3rd party application database where very little can be changed, or you are a DBA at a site where getting the application developers to change anything is next to impossible, they cover both the “how” and the “why.” Continue Reading

Ooops! Was that me? (Blog Challenge)

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We have all made mistakes in our careers, I thought I’d share one of mine as a quick tip to others so that you don’t make the same one. Everyone has their SQL Alerts setup right? If not, I have included the script below and here is the MSDN link to find out more (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180982.aspx). For those who have setup their alerts, how many of you have remembered to set the DELAY BETWEEN RESPONSES setting? When I worked at the Port of Virginia, I was a little less experienced in SQL and didn’t notice this lovely little option. I of… Continue Reading

Hide and Group Columns in SSRS Using a Parameter

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Ever had users come to you and request another version of a report just to add another field and group data differently? Today, was such the day for me. I really don’t like have multiple versions of the same report out there. So, I got a little fancy with the current version of the report and added a parameter then used expressions to group the data differently and hide columns. For those new to SSRS I’ve embedded some links to MSDN to help you along the way. Current Report The report gives summarized counts by invoice date.  It currently has… Continue Reading

T-SQL Tuesday #84 – Helping New Speakers

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Ok everyone; here goes my first crack at replying to a T-SQL Tuesday. For those that don’t know what it is, it’s a Monthly blog topic hosted by a member of the SQL Community. It was started originally by Adam Machanic (t | b) This month’s topic hosted by Andy Yun (t | b) is on Growing New Speakers, which I find to be a perfect topic for me to leap off from, since this was my first year speaking and blogging. How did I get started? I 100% blame Derik Hammer (t | b) whom at the time was running my local user group. After attending… Continue Reading

Challenge Accepted

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My life for the last 2 years has been a constant battle of putting out fires with system performance; finally user complaints have moved getting this resolved as my top priority. Let’s see how I tackled the problem… Symptoms: Very High Disk Latency as high as 300,000 milliseconds (ms) is not unusual Average: 900 – 15,000ms Memory Pressure Slow User Experience Problem: Bad hardware Over-provisioned VM Hosts (what happens on one VM effects the other) Old NetApp SAN No infrastructure budget for new hardware Challenge: Make the system viable with no hardware changes or tweaks Step 1: Brain Storming (in… Continue Reading

The Shield

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How many of you are known as the “Grumpy DBA” or have a bad reputation with users because you are always saying no or they have to wait? I know many DBAs that have this reputation. To avoid this, I use my manager as a shield and suggest you do too. As a Lone DBA, with an extremely full plate, I learned that having that shield is necessary. It prevents me from being seen as the bad guy and protects me from work overload. We all experience what I call, “Drive Bys”, when people are asking for stuff on the fly. Telling someone… Continue Reading

SQL Family: The Wonder Years

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Last week, Bill Wolf aka @SQLWareWolf and I somehow got onto the topic of High School pictures. So in jest, I decided to post mine and hash tagged it with #SQLHSPics on Twitter. I challenged others to do the same, only really expecting @SQLWareWolf to respond in kind.  I was floored with over 100 picture responses from #SQLFamily. Many of them went searching through attics, yearbooks, called relatives, and other great lengths to be part of it. As always the response was heartwarming and hysterical to say the least. The reason why I am taking the time to blog about it is… Continue Reading

Back to Basics: Why not parameterize?

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I think sometimes those of us that have been doing database administration/development for a while take it for granted that everyone knows the basics. One such basic is parameterizing stored procedures. This allows us to potentially consolidate multiple stored procedures into a single procedure.  It’s as simple thing to do that many don’t. I try to parameterize as many stored procedures as possible. This not only minimizes the amount of procedures I need to maintain, it in my opinion is a much cleaner way to code. It disturbs me when I see multiple stored procedures that pull the exact same… Continue Reading

QUICK & DIRTY: Table name change for all stored procedures

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Recently, I was tasked to find all stored procedures in a database that use a particular table and change them to utilize another table. I needed to get this done quickly so I decided to think simple. Since it was a quick and dirty answer I figured I would share, it’s not rocket science, but useful none the less. The quick answer that I came up with is to script out all of the stored procedures into a single query window.  This can be done easily through the GUI.  Once that is complete, I can easily do a “Find &… Continue Reading

November #SQLChat – How to Build your Name Recognition and SQL Network

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For those who don’t know Idera Software sponsors a SQLChat on Twitter once a month. This month I got the privilege to host and had come up with a topic and questions for discussion. Below are the questions and answers I provided as well as some from others that chimed in. I think these are worth noting and give some valuable information especially to newbies of the SQL Community. Q1: How have you benefited from networking with SQL professionals? My Answer: As a lone DBA networking has gained me “co-workers”. I now have people to bounce ideas off of. I… Continue Reading