Adam Machanic

SQL Saturday #220 (Atlanta): Demos

2013-05-18T18:33:00Z

Today at SQL Saturday #220 in Atlanta I presented a new brand new session , "SQL Server Query Plan Analysis: The 5 Culprits That Cause 95% of Your Performance Headaches." This session is designed to help people quickly analyze query plans and find likely culprits without being query tuning experts; I find that in a huge number of cases the root cause of problems is one of just a few potential situations. Thanks to everyone who joined me today for the deliveries! In addition to it being a new session...(read more)

INSERT SELECT is Broken. Ask Microsoft to Fix It.

2013-05-15T16:42:00Z

Imagine that you're moving thousands or millions of rows between two tables . Maybe it's between a staging table and a data warehouse in an ETL process. Maybe you're manipulating some data via a temp table as you're preparing lookup data for your OLTP system. Maybe you're preparing data for an end user. It doesn't really matter what your use case, because there are so many of them. We, as database developers, spend all day moving data back and forth . Unfortunately, sometimes our processes break...(read more)

SQLCLR Performance Session at TechEd US

2013-05-08T16:14:00Z

I am super-excited to visit New Orleans next month for Microsoft TechEd; it will be my sixth time speaking at the show. My session takes an in-depth look at some of the techniques I've developed for using SQLCLR modules -- and some of the great performance gains I've been able to achieve. Hope to see you in NOLA! If you're not attending the show, the video will be available on demand a few days after I give the talk....(read more)

More Fun in Atlanta: Parallelism at SQL Saturday 220

2013-02-25T19:25:00Z

May 18, SQL Saturday returns yet again to the Atlanta area. At this point I've become a bit of a regular at Atlanta's events; this will be my third one in a row. The team that puts them together is amazing, and produces top quality, super fun and educational days every time. Plus: Taco Mac . Friday, May 17, the event is running a few pre-conference seminars, and I'll be delivering one focused on parallelism in SQL Server . This is an updated version of the seminar I delivered at the 2010 PASS conference;...(read more)

Capturing Attention: Writing Great Session Descriptions

2013-02-22T14:00:00Z

One of the best ways we can differentiate ourselves and further our careers is to get out of the office… and onto a stage . Presenting can give you name recognition; open doors to new opportunities; help you gain a deeper understanding of technology (teaching a topic often forces you to learn it at a much deeper level); and for many people it's simply a fun and satisfying pastime. Each year there are dozens of speaking opportunities available to you: brown bag talks at your workplace, local user...(read more)

Itzik Ben-Gan in Atlanta: May 13-17

2013-02-05T21:10:00Z

This year Data Education is offering a few more classes with Itzik Ben-Gan, the world's foremost T-SQL instructor . Our first offering has just been announced: Atlanta, May 13-17 . Neither Itzik nor his class needs much introduction, but click through for a full outline and other details. We think that Atlanta is a great city, with an amazingly vibrant SQL Server community. Hope you'll be able to join us there ! By the way: if you're joining the class stick around town for a SQL Saturday event that...(read more)

[New England] SQL Saturday #203: April 5-6, Cambridge MA

2013-01-29T16:10:00Z

SQL Saturday returns to the Boston area this April , with what is certain to be an exceptional speaker and session lineup . (The actual schedule will be posted soon, but in the meantime you can see the submitted sessions .) The free event ($10 if you'd like to eat lunch) will take place on Saturday, April 6. Highly recommended for anyone in the area who is interested in bettering your database skills! Friday, April 5 , as a lead in to the Saturday event, I'll be delivering my popular full-day " No...(read more)

[New England] Mark Souza on Big Data and Cloud at NESQL

2013-01-13T18:33:00Z

This Thursday, January 17, at New England SQL Server we'll be featuring Mark Souza , General Manager of the Data Platform Group at Microsoft. Most of you are probably familiar with that name; he's the guy who founded the CAT team , and he's been in a number of key roles in the SQL Server organization for the past several years. Mark's topic for Thursday is Big Data and Cloud at Microsoft . The talk should be an interesting look into how the company is approaching these key areas. If you're in New...(read more)

Query Tuning Mastery at PASS Summit 2012: The Video

2012-11-13T14:49:00Z

An especially clever community member was kind enough to reverse-engineer the video stream for me, and came up with a direct link to the PASS TV video stream for my Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Parallelism talk, delivered at the PASS Summit last Thursday. I'm not sure how long this link will work , but I'd like to share it for my readers who were unable to see it in person or live on the stream. Start here. Skip past the keynote, to the 149 minute mark. Enjoy!...(read more)

Query Tuning Mastery at PASS Summit 2012: The Demos

2012-11-12T04:00:00Z

For the second year in a row, I was asked to deliver a 500-level "Query Tuning Mastery" talk in room 6E of the Washington State Convention Center, for the PASS Summit. ( Here's some information about last year's talk, on workspace memory. ) And for the second year in a row, I had to deliver said talk at 10:15 in the morning, in a room used as overflow for the keynote, following a keynote speaker that didn't stop speaking on time. Frustrating! Last Thursday, after very, very quickly setting up and...(read more)

CloudSeeder: CLR Stored Procedures For Creating CPU Pressure

2012-10-23T19:49:00Z

Sometimes, in the interest of testing various scenarios that your server might encounter, it's useful to be able to quickly simulate some condition or another. I/O, memory, CPU pressure, and so on. This latter one is something I've been playing with a lot recently. CPU pressure in SQL Server creates all sorts of interesting side-effects , such as exacerbating waits and making various other conditions much easier to reproduce. In order to make this simpler, I've created the attached CLR library. This...(read more)

SQL in Boston -- Red Gate Style

2012-08-16T19:03:00Z

You might have heard of Red Gate's famous SQL in the City events: free, full-day educational events where you can learn from Red Gate's own evangelists in addition to various MVPs and other guests. With just a tiny bit of marketing thrown in for good measure (don't worry, it's not a daylong sales pitch). Red Gate is doing a US tour this fall, and I'm happy to note that my fair city of Boston is one of the stops ... and I am one of the speakers. The event takes place on October 8 . I'll be delivering...(read more)

Excellent Job Opportunity: SQL Developer in Boston MA

2012-08-09T16:09:00Z

Want to do interesting, in-depth SQL Server development work for a great company? If the answer is yes, you should drop me a line immediately. Send me your resume at [my first name] @ [the name of this site]. More information: This job is working on a data warehouse for a financial services company in Boston, MA. I cannot publicly mention the company name or say much about it, but if you e-mail me a resume I'll be happy to share more information. What I can say is that it's a solid company with a...(read more)

Your Transaction is in Jeopardy -- and You Can't Even Know It!

2012-06-27T01:10:00Z

If you're reading this, please take one minute out of your day and vote for the following Connect item : https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/444030/sys-dm-tran-active-transactions-transaction-state-not-updated-when-an-attention-event-occurs If you're really interested, take three minutes: run the steps to reproduce the issue, and then check the box that says that you were able to reproduce the issue. Why? Imagine that ten hours ago you started a big transaction. You're sitting...(read more)

SQL Saturday 111: Manhandling Parallelism - Demos

2012-04-16T01:30:00Z

Another year, another fantastic Atlanta SQL Saturday. Hats off to the team that created the event for delivering a top notch day for the attendees. Thanks to everyone who attended my "Query Tuning Mastery: The Art and Science of Manhandling Parallelism" session. Demos are attached. Enjoy, and I'll see you at the next one!...(read more)