Why Teaching Makes You a Better DBA and Performance Tuner
I’ve known for a long time now that teaching makes me a better database administrator and performance tuner. But I’ve had a hard time figuring out why.
3 Things Every Junior SQL Server DBA Must Know
Sometimes we learn things in the wrong order. Or skip a step. If you’re just starting out as a SQL Server DBA, here are three questions that you need to be able to answer at any given time. If you aren’t 100% sure that you can handle these questions at 3 AM when you’ve had a few drinks, it’s time to revisit them.
How to Write a Presentation Abstract for a Tech Conference
I Hate Writing Abstracts.
I love writing presentations. I like outlining them, I like writing the demos, putting the slides together. I even like reconsidering everything, backing up, scrapping it, and starting from a new approach!
But I hate writing abstracts. It’s just tough to capture your vision in the format a conference organizer wants. And often, if I’m writing the abstract before the presentation is done, I’m wary about possibly describing something that I’ll want to change later.
3 Ways Availability Groups Beat Database Mirroring
SQL Server Availability Groups are growing up. SQL Server 2016 adds more features and improvements, and these include options to run SQL Server in different domains, or without a domain.
Free, Open License Datasets at Data.gov
Want a new kind of sample data? Maybe you want to use it to learn, or to do a project with it. Either way, you can blog about to build up your experience, resume, and share it with the community.
My Wordpress Setup: Canvas, MailChimp, GravityForms and Other Tools
I recently gave LittleKendra.com a bit of a refresh. I wanted the website to be colorful, personal, and approachable.
Joins, Predicates, and Statistics in SQL Server
Joins can be tricky. And where you put your ‘where’ clause may mean more than you think!
Take these two queries from the AdventureWorksDW sample database. The queries are both looking for data where SalesTerritoryCountry = ‘NA’ and they have the same joins, but the first query has a predicate on SalesTerritoryCountry while the second has a predicate on SalesTerritoryKey.
/* Query 1: Predicate on SalesTerritoryCountry */ select ProductKey, OrderDateKey, DueDateKey, ShipDateKey, CustomerKey, PromotionKey, CurrencyKey, fis.SalesTerritoryKey, SalesOrderNumber, SalesOrderLineNumber, RevisionNumber, OrderQuantity, UnitPrice, ExtendedAmount, UnitPriceDiscountPct, DiscountAmount, ProductStandardCost, TotalProductCost, SalesAmount, TaxAmt, Freight, CarrierTrackingNumber, CustomerPONumber, OrderDate, DueDate, ShipDate from dbo.FactInternetSales fis join dbo.DimSalesTerritory st on fis.SalesTerritoryKey=st.SalesTerritoryKey where st.SalesTerritoryCountry = N’NA’ GO