October 2016 – Curious..about data

PASSion Award and what it means to me

passionaward

2016 is going to be a special year in my life. There was an article on Oscar awards a while ago – on reasons why the oscar is the most watched awards ceremony around the world. No, it is not just because of movie stars. Everyone, secretly or publicly – longs for their ‘oscar’ moment. The moment when the world (or the equivalent of the ‘world’, a lot of people) would get to see who they are and what they did, and give them kudos for it. Not all of those people get to achieve that moment.

Many of us do not work in environments that are exposed to public scrutiny. Some companies offer ‘outstanding employee’ awards which come close to a form of public recognition- but are usually ridden with politics in how they are awarded. Personally – I have received two awards like this in places I worked at – I promptly got rid of the trophies after I left their employment. There was too much jealousy/back stabbing and politics surrounding it, many of which was revealed openly and not even private or polite. The memories associated with these were not pleasant or rewarding – and it often felt like a feeling of awkwardness for a long time later. I do not say work related awards do not mean anything – they do and must be appreciated, but they also do generate a lot of tension and politics in most places. The need for recognition and having ‘oscar moments’ though, is human and universal. Some people are able to get it met. For others, we have to dig deeper to find other ways of getting our needs for recognition – or , perhaps do work that is its own reward.

Part of the reason I started to work in community was that it was proactive work or service to people. It has no titles attached, no $$ attached, and it is a lot of hard work. It is work with people who do it because they enjoy doing it and nothing else.I wanted to be around that kind of people, and I wanted to grow that feeling in me – of finding rewards in what I do, not waiting for someone to call me out or give me something in return. This year was 10 years since I started the Louisville SQL Server User group – which started in the public library in 2005 with 12 people in attendance. Soon after that I also started running SQL Saturdays, we clocked 8 of them this year. I can’t claim to have been supremely happy all through these years – i’ve had my frustrations and low moments with it, but I did get a glimpse of doing work for the joy of work alone, serving people and working with others who thought and believed likewise.

My oscar moment came without asking – during the summit this year. I was given the PASSion award – the highest honor for a PASS volunteer for outstanding service, this year. The award was presented by PASS president Adam Jorgenson at a ceremony in front of a huge audience of 5000+ people. I was congratulated by hundreds of people – many of whom I do not know or have never met personally. It was a huge, huge honor and one that am still coming to terms with. There are many people I want to thank for this..the list is long, but there are some I can and must single out – as people who have inspired me to stick with community work as its own reward.

Kevin Kline – one of the founder leads of the PASS organization itself – he has educated me with many stories of the hard work and thought that went into the early days of the organization. He is always there for me as friend, mentor and guide.
Karla Landrum – would have been impossible for me to run so many events without Karla’s rock solid support to lean on. I’ve cried on her shoulder many, many times when I’ve been frustrated and tired – she has been there for me always as a true friend and guide. I will miss her dearly in the years to come.
Rob Farley – when I had some real moments of frustration some years ago with things not going well – Rob helped me understand the real purpose and meaning of community work, and to remember that it was often meant to be its own reward. Rob’s sense of humor and spirit helped me persist with what I was doing and got me where I am today.
Jes Borland – I met Jes on SQL Cruise six years ago. She and I are as different personalities as chalk and cheese (she is the cheese in that anology) – but she is on top of the list of SQL women I look up to – for sensitivity, understanding, guidance and just pure fun.

Thank you to all of you, and to the PASS Organization – for making my oscar moment happen. Not everyone gets to experience it – it is life altering, and it is a blessing of pure love and regard that is very hard to find elsewhere. I am humbled and hope to continue to live upto it.

Days 1,2 and 3 of PASS Summit 2016

Today is Thursday, October 27th already. For some of us the summit begins monday – with precons and PASS Volunteering related meetings on Tuesday. For most other attendees the first day was Wednesday.

I arrived in the afternoon on Sunday with six other friends from Louisville,including my good friend Chris Yates. I have been travelling to the summit 11 years now – this is the first year that I had so many co passengers from my town heading there. I plan to write a blog post entirely on that subject. But was proud and happy to see attendance and interest growing from our small town. Following arrival I met with one of my favorite friends in #SQLfamily, Arlene Rose – we went shopping at Pike Place market. I have been going to Pike place for many years now – was a bit sad to see a few of my favorite stores gone. They included a tibetan buddhist store selling masks, a consignment store selling gently used scarves and jackets, and a herbal store.It is a way of life and i hope they are well somewhere.

Monday, Day 1: I went in to attend Itzik Ben Gan’s pre con on Advanced TSQL. I have not been attending precons after they stopped recording the sessions – since it was too pricey and was easier to find cheaper equivalents at sql saturdays and other places. But Ben-Gan was someone you really want to learn T-SQL from, and he did not teach at too many other places. The class was worth every dime. The session was packed with tips and tricks and presented in elegant, simple, easy-to-understand ways. I greatly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it for anyone considering it next year. In the evening I had dinner with Chana Cohn, one of my old friends from my days at Kindred Healthcare. We had a great evening catching up.

Tuesday, Day 2: Tuesdays are usually reserved for PASS Volunteer related meetings – my meeting started with rehearsing for the keynote for wednesday. (More on that below). It was fascinating for me to witness the amount of work that goes on behind-the-scenes for the keynote – from staff at PASS and volunteers including directors and several others. We as attendees and even as volunteers at other levels do not normally see this – we owe them a thank you if we enjoy a keynote, and not just for the content. It is a ton of hard work to pull off. Following this we had the yearly meet-up of SQL Saturday organizers. Many items were discussed including funding from PASS, anti = harassment policy, website changes, sponsorship changes and so on.Overall it was a productive and informative meeting. In the afternoon we had a meeting of Regional Mentors. Could not attend the meeting for Chapter leaders as i had some work to take care of. But all meetings were useful and was great to meet with volunteer friends you don’t get to see otherwise. Attended the opening ceremony in the evening – which had some really good food options for vegans and vegetarians. I got my fill of dinner here and decided to pass up on the volunteer party – given the weather and the distance, a good six miles from where I was. Retired early since i knew next day was a long one.

Wednesday, Day 3: I normally do not dress up for any PASS event days. Just wear one of my many SQL Saturday shirts – and jeans to go with it. But today was special – today was my day as I had won the PASSion award – this news was communicated to me a month ago but was asked to keep it secret as NDA information.The PAssion award is a true honor – it is the highest award in the PASS community for service to the community. It is via nomination from fellow community members and approval by the board. I was humbled and honored to receive it. After a bit of make up and a tiara – I made my way to the convention center. I was given a special seat in the front row – which in itself was an honor – among so many outstanding volunteers, microsoft customers and VIPs. My good friends and directors – Grant Fritchey, Allen White and Argenis Fernandez were around to help with nerves. The ceremony was over quickly and social media started to near blow-up the phone with tweets and facebook messages of congratulations. It was a unique, once-in-a lifetime experience and one that I shall greatly treasure and remember. Sadly, there is no video recording available yet – I am told that it will be there on summit recordings. I will be happy to share a clip when I find one.

The rest of my day was taken with hugs and thanking many people – many of whom I did not know at all. I want to say THANK YOU again to the awesome sql community who made all this possible. Am very humbled and honored by your love and regard, and hope to continue to live up to it.

TSQL Tuesday #83 – The Stats update solution

TSQL Tuesday is a monthly blog part hosted by a different blogger every month – it was started by Adam Machanic. This week’s TSQL Tuesday is hosted by Andy Mallon – the topic is ‘We’re dealing with the same problem’. I have chosen to write about a common problem I have encountered at many places I have worked at. The problem has to do with queries or stored procedures that suddenly start to perform poorly – when no changes have been made to the code or to the server.

The common perception/misunderstanding I have encountered for this is that it is only an issue with statistics updates and updating statistics with full scan should take care of it. In many cases this is the real reason. In some cases it really isn’t. It could be an issue with parameter sniffing, and a plan being reused that was generated for a set of parameters and appropriate for that set of parameters. But, most people jump to fixing statistics. This is especially true when they don’t really have the runtime plan it used, can’t find it in the cache and are just going with some sort of past experience.

At one place I was at people would update statistics every 10 minutes or so in a frantic attempt to ‘fix the slow query’, which would at many times not respond at all. At another place they actually had an automated check for when the stored procedure finished running and if it was still running beyond its normal duration a full scan statistics update would fire off. None of these are wrong – but repeatedly doing the same thing when the query does not improve, and assuming that is the only reason for the problem is wrong.

What I do is to recompile the plan with different parameters – test it to see the performance. If you are able to get a difference in performance with a different set of parameters then it is probably a parameter sniffing issue. And, if the stats updates do not fix it it is probably that too. Statistics updates are never really a bad thing to do, but they may not fix every slow query there is. Check if the issue is with parameter sniffing also. Also make sure there are no changes that went out – to the code and to the environment, that may be contributing to it.