Category Personal

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Community Keynotes

Jan 6, ’12 7:00 AM

I go to a lot of conferences. If you ask my co-workers, I probably go to too many conferences. Going to a lot of conferences, I get a chance to see a lot of keynotes, closing keynotes, and plenary discussions. Different conferences have different keynotes, but the one thing that sticks out in my head is that the keynotes and opening talks at a conference set the mood for the entire event.

Conference organizers, take note: we form our impressions based on the first things we see. For first time visitors, the first thing they see at a conference is frequently the keynote. It sets the stage for the learning they’re about to experience. Three conferences stand out this year for their high quality keynotes: OSCON, CodeMash, and Surge

What Makes For a Good Keynote?

I don’t know what makes for a good keynote, but I do know that it should reflect your conference. The keynote sets the mood; attendees get a feel for what their day is going to be like at a conference based on how they feel after the keynote. Bombard them with two hours of marketing material and they’re not going to feel good about the rest of their day. Reward them with two hours of intellectually stimulating content and they’re going to look forward to another six hours of learning.

Attending OSCON is a heady experience – there are concurrent sessions on different topics. I could go from a talk about Big Data to Go, Google’s new programming language, to a talk about HTML and CSS in a two hour time period. The keynotes were no different. They showcased both the breadth of interests present at the conference. Talks ranged from DIY biotech startups to open source community to launching robots into space.

Surge featured a keynote from Bryan Cantrill talking about various failures throughout his career. As a conference of operations staff and professional generalists, Bryan’s remarks rang true with all of the attendees. We’ve all been in an “oh shit” situation where millions of dollars hang in the balance based on the code we’ve written and the actions we’re about to take. Bryan summed up the feel of the conference and set the stage for the next few days of learning.

CodeMash is a great event that’s run outside of Cleveland in the winter. If you’ve ever been to Cleveland in January, you’ll know that the primary reason to visit Cleveland in January is to remind yourself why you live somewhere else. There was several feet of snow on the ground and my car was indistinguishable from a snow bank. CodeMash is renowned as a fun and educational conference. Chad Fowler delivered a hilarious and topical keynote about moving beyond hearsay and misunderstanding and opening your eyes to the world around you.

What Do All Three Conferences Share?

The common theme is that all three conferences are community conferences. Sure, OSCON is put on by a huge book publisher but it wouldn’t be a success without the people who volunteer to make it a success. OmniTI support Surge, but they aren’t the only sponsor; Surge was a vendor agnostic event. And CodeMash is put on by a non-profit group with the goal of making the event as cheap as possible for attendees. These three events are built for the community.

All three keynotes opened my eyes to the conferences. I knew what to expect: the stage was set. A good keynote sets the expectations of attendees. A keynote doesn’t have to be timeless, there is a place for a product demonstration, but a keynote should say something. When a keynote says “We have you trapped, watch this demonstration,” attendees notice: they shuffle papers, they play games on their phone, they do anything possible to mentally escape from the situation. Unfortunately, it does a disservice to the conference because most attendees won’t remember who gave a bad keynote, they’ll just remember that a conference had a bad keynote.

When a keynote is good, people notice. They sit up and take part. They cheer, they clap, they tweet, and they blog. The most important part, though, is that a good keynote draws the audience in account and makes them more than a passive set of ears; the audience is brought into the fold and becomes a member of an exclusive community open only to the people in the room. Nobody else can take part. A good keynote – like a good conference – embraces, entertains, and educates.

A bad keynote is a commercial that I can’t turn off.

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Stir Trek: Thor Edition (the Aftermath)

May 11, ’11 8:00 AM

I spent the weekend at Stir Trek: Thor Edition in Columbus, OH. While I had a blast speaking about databases, I had even more fun attending and learning.

Programming the Cloud with HTTP/REST

I knew about REST before I attended this talk and I’ve done a bit of REST programming (right before I decided to nerd out on data), but Mike Amundsen did a great job of convincing me why I should care about REST as a programming paradigm for web developers. I’m not going to go out and start writing code to build my own REST services, but I have a better grasp of how I can work with developers to build robust data driven services and applications and do some incredibly cool things in the process.

CSS 3: Something for Everyone

John Keyes delivered a presentation about the basics of CSS 3. I knew there were some great features of CSS 3, but I also knew that the spec is incredibly broad. I was a bit worried that John’s presentation was going to be a whirlwind tour with very little depth. Instead of a shallow romp through CSS 3, John delivered a solid presentation that worked through some core features of CSS 3 in a practical manner and built up on them to demonstrate new techniques with real world value. Except for maybe the demo that made a rectangle swirl into a circle, that was just cool.

John gets mad props for filling his slide deck with Jurassic Park references. I had some laughs while I got my learn on, and that’s a good thing. I’ve worked with John on presentations in the past and he’s become a phenomenal presenter, programmer, and web developer in the time that I’ve known him.

Real World jQuery

Matt Nowack had the difficult job of speaking right after lunch. He gave a great talk about jQuery 1.5 and 1.6. It turns out that Matt wrote the talk for jQuery 1.5 and did a great job of introducing some of the newest features of my favorite JavaScript library. jQuery 1.6 came out recently and it made parts of Matt’s talk irrelevant. Matt took it in stride and wrote new content earlier in the week and delivered a top notch presentation that was educational and entertaining. I overheard one attendee say that they were rushing off to Matt’s presentation because it was bound to be good. They were right and I was also right to pay them 15 bucks and a box of Milk Duds to yell it at the top of their lungs. Good job, Matt.

The Rest of My Time

I spent the rest of my time preparing and giving my talk The Database is Dead, Long Live the Database. If you attended, the resources page will always be online at http://brentozar.com/stir-trek-thor-edition. If you missed it and you wanted to see it, you’ll be able to catch it on June 28th at 8:00 PM Eastern through the PASS Application Development Virtual Chapter.

I was incredibly flattered when Matt Casto asked me to speak at this event, way back at Code Mash. I’m glad that he was clearly drunk and thought I would make a great speaker. You can’t imagine how happy I am that he accepted the bribes I sent his way, just in case he sobered up and didn’t remember asking me to speak. Luckily, most of that’s a lie. I did, however, have an awesome time in Columbus hanging out with old friends, hopefully making a few new ones, and only telling one STD joke during my presentation; nice try, guy in row three!

In summation: thanks Matt, thanks Stir Trek, and thanks Columbus!

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PASS 2011 Session Abstracts

May 2, ’11 8:00 AM

PASS 2011 Session Abstracts

Every November, a bunch of database geeks gather for the Professional Association for SQL Server’s (PASS) international Summit. This year it’s going to be held October 11-24 in Seattle, Washington. I didn’t submit last year since I was involved with the abstract selection process. This year I’m not involved, so I decided to submit a few abstracts.

Rewrite Your T-SQL for Great Good!

Refactoring SQL is not like refactoring application code. This talk will cover proven SQL refactoring techniques that will help you identify where performance gains can be made, apply quick fixes, improve readability, and help you quickly locate places to make sweeping performance improvements. Jeremiah Peschka has years of hands on experience tuning SQL applications for performance, throughput, and concurrency.

Why I submitted this session: I submitted this session because it’s a fun session to give, it crosses boundaries between DBA and developer, and I’ve given it a few times before.

The Database is Dead, Long Live the Database

If relational databases are so great, why are people talking about NoSQL? Shouldn’t we explore other ways to store and manipulate data? We’ll look at four scenarios – caching, session state, flexible data models, and batch processing – and discuss how traditional databases perform in each situation and what other options exist on the market. At the end of this session, attendees will have a better understanding of how different workloads perform in RDBMSes, best practices, and alternative storage solutions to make your life easier.

Why I submitted this session: I wrote this session when I was asked to speak at Stir Trek: Thor Edition. Writing it has been a lot of fun and has started the process of crystallizing a lot of the ideas in my head around data storage. This talk focuses on a few areas where relational databases don’t do a good job and proposes solutions to pick up the slack.

Rules, Rules, and Rules

Computers are governed by the rules of physics: electrons, drive heads, and disk platters can only move so fast. Database systems are built according to those rules: memory is faster than disk which is faster than the network. Database schemas and queries are built within the rules of database systems. You will hit the limitations of these rules. If you know what the rules are and why they are in place, you’ll know when it’s time to break them… and how to succeed.

Why I submitted this session: This is also a session I’ve given before. Andy Leonard asked me to speak at the inaugural SQLPeople event about my passion. One of my passions is learning about computer science and how it can be applied to databases in a practical way. (There’s a lot of purely theoretical information that only matters when you’re implementing an RDBMS.) This session is an extended version of the talk I gave at SQLPeople. I’m incredibly excited about it and I’ll be bummed if it doesn’t get accepted.

The Other Side of the Fence: Lessons Learned from Leaving Home

Traveling the world changes your outlook on things, home just doesn’t look quite the same once you’ve traveled. The same can be said for SQL Server; working with databases like PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and Hadoop forced Jeremiah Peschka to re-learn concepts that he took as a given. Learn from his experiences about the importance of understanding isolation levels, data storage and retention, querying patterns, and even database functionality in this talk drawn from his experiences as a DBA, consultant, and developer.

Why I submitted this session: There’s a theme going on here – I’ve learned a lot about database and application design and how it’s sometimes necessary to move outside of my comfort zone to build an effective system. This is a 3.5 hour session that will cover a lot of features in SQL Server. I learned a lot working with other databases, and I hope that this information helps some other people.

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In the Event That Everything Should Go Terribly Right

Apr 25, ’11 8:30 AM

Astute readers and internet stalkers will have noticed that I left my job at Quest Software back in March. I wasn’t unhappy, I just had the opportunity to take my show on the road and go solo. I’ve had the idea of being my own boss in the back of my head for along time. Suddenly I was confronted with a situation where a former pipe dream was all too real. I talked it over with a few friends and made the plunge.

Right around the same time, I started talking to Brent about his plans. This turned into talking to Brent and Tim about their plans. Then we looped Kendra in. It turns out that we all have similar goals and dreams. It only made sense to join forces and fight crime together! After evaluating the insurance costs of fighting crime we decided to become consultants. And thus Brent Ozar PLF was born.

I’ve never been more excited to work with a group of people. Brent, Tim, and Kendra have always gotten along. I’ve never felt more supported and challenged by a group of people. My business partners are three friends who have always encouraged me to excel. Whether it’s been learning about SQL Server, Ruby, or non-relational databases, these three have been there supporting me every step of the way, even when we’ve disagreed.

I could make a list of all of the other reasons that I’m looking forward to building this business, but it all boils down to the way we interact. Brent, Tim, and Kendra challenge me to be better at everything I do. Whether it’s my SQL Server skills, writing, or presenting, they’re always there helping me get better. I couldn’t ask for a better core group of friends to join me on this new endeavor.

What does the future hold? In terms of business, I’m excited to be building a business with Brent, Tim, and Kendra. Our interests are similar enough that we complement each other but they’re diverse enough that I know we’re going to educate and challenge each other.

You can learn more about our services at http://brentozar.com. If you want to get in touch, you can do that too.

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SQLPeople the First

Apr 12, ’11 1:00 PM

This past weekend I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at the first SQLPeople event in Richmond, Virginia.

The Back Story

Back in February, Andy Leonard asked me to speak at a new event. The idea behind his new event was inspiration. Instead of focusing on educating others, Andy asked us to share our own inspiration. Instead of presenting a seminar or training course, the idea was to talk about my work, my vision, and my passion for database technology (to steal Andy’s own words).

It didn’t take me long to say “Yes!” It’s not every day that I get asked to talk about myself for more than 30 seconds, much less be openly invited to talk about myself with a group of people, slides, a projector, and a microphone. Can you imagine that? 40 minutes of nothing but me? Already, I could see that Andy was a man of vision.

My Original Idea

My original idea was to talk about federated databases, SQL/MED, and hybrid data. I’m really glad that Andy asked me for my abstract a second time; once he did, I couldn’t work those ideas together into anything vaguely resembling a coherent narrative.

The funny thing about inspiration is that it’s different from interest. I think federated databases are interesting; I’ve written about them enough. I think that SQL/MED is really cool; that’s how I dug into federated databases. I certainly think that hybrid data/polyglot persistence/buzzword du jour is an interesting idea; I’m talking about it at Stir Trek.

Ultimately none of these things get me excited at a base level: they’re interesting but not intriguing.

The Evolution

I sat down in front of the computer and brain stormed. I don’t think the idea really gelled until I was furiously re-typing my abstract over and over again. As I wrote, the core idea changed a number of times. Free-writing is a wonderful tool, but it’s incredibly painful when you’re trying to write something that you promised to a dear friend. Especially when you realize how late you are.

As I kept iterating over my original ideas I realized that I wasn’t excited and moved by them. I just kept typing, though. I know from experience that I can iterate through ideas over and over again and eventually get to something great. Turns out that’s exactly what happened. After slapping at the keyboard for a while, I cranked out this beauty:

If you asked Jeremiah Peschka to pick three things he’s interested in about computers, he’d say “data” and then look at you funny. If you asked him again, he’d saying “data design, database design, and designing around the limits of the first two.” This is a rapid tour of the building blocks of databases, how those choices affect what we do with data, and why we have to break the rules from time to time to get things done.

The Talk

I had a lot of fun talking about how different aspects of software design, database design, and hardware design influence the design of databases. The talk covered some of the theoretical underpinnings of databases at a very high level, it only scratched the surface of some of the things that I wanted to discuss. Computer science is such a broad field and even a small piece of it like database design can contain a huge amount of information that it’s difficult to pick and choose the relevant parts.

The twenty minute format was a welcome limitation; it forced me to focus on what was most important in my topic. I had to focus on what inspires me to keep learning and what inspires me to share part of my journey with the other people.

Thank you to everyone who put on the event and everyone who attended. It was a great opportunity to share the things I enjoy about this field.

The Future

You’d think things would end here, after all I gave a talk about my inspiration once, right?

I had so much fun putting the talk together and got so much great feedback from the attendees that I thought I would refine the short talk into a longer version. There’s a lot of stuff that I left out of the presentation. It’s not that it wasn’t relevant, but I had to trim material so I could finish the talk in 20 minutes. I want to revisit the talk an add more material; there’s so much interesting information out there that it seems a shame to not share it.

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Goals for 2011 – Early Update

Jan 22, ’11 10:11 PM

It’s a bit early to be updating my goals for 2011, but I’m really excited about this one. Over the course of last week, I wrote an article about loading data into Riak. I had a brief conversation with Mark Phillips (blog | twitter) about adding some of the code to the Riak function contrib.

This is where a sane person would say “Yeah, sure Mark, do whatever you want with my code.” Instead I said something like “I’d be happy to share. How about I make a generic tool?” About 40 minutes later I had a working chunk of code. 30 minutes after that I had refactored the code into a driver and a library. I wrote up some documentation and sent everything off to be included in the main Riak function contrib repository. A couple of days and a documentation correction later and you can now see my first code contribution to the open source world on the internet: Importing YAML.

While I’m really excited about this, and it’s very important to me, there’s more to take away from this than just “Yay, I did something!” We’re all able to give something back to our community. In this case I took code I had written to perform benchmarks and extracted a useful piece of demonstration code from it. Share your knowledge with the world around you – it’s how we get smarter.

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Personal Goals for 2011

Jan 4, ’11 9:00 AM

These aren’t all of my goals, to be sure, but I thought that it’d be a good idea to get some of them out in public and start sharing a bit more.

Be More Personal

I want to be more personal on this blog. Historically, I haven’t injected a lot of my personal details into my writing. I did it a few times last year when I talked about a bit of personal history and again when I talked about leaving the PASS Board of Directors. According to my blog, I’ve using the “goats” tag more than I’ve use the “personal” tag. Even when I do blog something personal, it’s almost entirely related to databases, presenting, or presenting about databases. I’m not going to start talking about my innermost secrets, desires, or even my home address.

I will put a bit more of myself out there for people to see.

Contribute

I’ve taken a lot from the community over the years. It’s safe to say that we all have, it’s part of why community exists. I’d like to contribute in a more direct way and in a way that I love. Over the course of the year I’m going to contribute directly to open source projects where I can help out. Contributing to the open source world is about writing documentation, testing, and giving back. It’s something that we all do every day, but for me it’s about putting my money where my mouth is and actively supporting free and open software.

Yes, I am aware that I work for a massive multi-national corporation that makes large profits through the sale of proprietary software. No, this isn’t a reaction.

I will give back and help people build better software.

Write

You could say that I write here on this blog, and that might be true, but it’s not the same as actively practicing writing. I used to write a lot more. There were have been a few months where I know that I have averaged close to a blog post a week day. While I don’t know that I
can always produce great content five days a week, I want to write more frequently. Writing is a craft. If you don’t practice it you get worse at it.

I will set aside time every day for writing.

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On Being Wrong

Nov 24, ’10 9:00 AM

When I first started blogging, I was nervous because I might be wrong. Not just “wrong” like “Gee Ted, I don’t know if I agree with your opinion about using Irish children as forced labor,” but factually wrong. And if I was wrong on the internet, people would see it forever and ever. Well, Google would know about it forever and ever. A friend of mine advised me that I would certainly be wrong on the internet, just like I’ve been fantastically wrong in real life, and that the only thing you can do is get up, admit you were wrong, and keep going again.

I had this opportunity the other day after blogging about Cassandra and HBase. I made a lot of mistakes in that post. At first I couldn’t understand what I had said or done wrong, so I reached out to the people who took issue with my post and said “Hey, help me correct my mistakes, leave a comment.” Todd Lipcon left a comment on my blog post. Ben Black emailed me. I looked at their suggestions and fixed to my post.

Turns out I was still missing something. Ben looked up my contact info again and talked to me directly via instant messenger. He helped me figure out what I was missing and why before walking me through some core concepts.

This wasn’t about SQL Server; this was about HBase, Cassandra, and Facebook. I’m a newcomer in that community. I effectively know every little. Yes, I was wrong, but people took the time to help me understand, learn, and correct my mistakes. That’s what great community is about: helping each other.

Being right or wrong isn’t important. How you react to being right or wrong is.

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SQL Saturday #61

Nov 22, ’10 9:00 AM

SQL Saturday #61 is right around the corner in Washington, D.C. It’s really Reston, VA but nobody knows where that is, right?

Anyway, I’m going to be in attendance as well as speaking about SQL Server internals. This isn’t a deep dive into any single part of SQL Server, but it is a nice whirlwind tour of what’s going on inside SQL Server. Yes, it’s an early session but I promise you that if wake up in time I will keep things entertaining.

What if you don’t want to learn about SQL Server internals at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday? You’re in luck! There are a variety of other things you could be learning about SQL Server. I’m not going to go over all of the sessions, you can do that for yourself. I will encourage you to head out to SQL Saturday #61 on December 4th. Hope to see you there!

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Speaking at SQL Saturday Nashville

Aug 16, ’10 8:13 AM

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It’s Going to be a Busy Week

This week is going to be an incredibly busy one. On Saturday I’m very honored to be presenting twice at SQL Saturday Nashville.

Fundamentals of SQL Server Internals: Want to know what makes SQL Server tick? Ever wonder what SQL Server is doing when you run a query? Ever wonder which parts of SQL Server are responsible for specific functionality? Want to know what a HOBT is? I can’t promise answers to every question, but I can set you on the path to knowledge about the inner workings of SQL Server.

Taking Control of Your Career: Raises, promotions, and job offers don’t happen by accident; you need a plan. Through careful planning you can create and reach impressive goals. But what’s the point of reaching your goals if nobody notices? “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply when you’re building your career.

“But Jeremiah,” you say, “you are clearly a slacker. Getting ready for two presentations can’t be that difficult for someone with as much ego as you!” And you would be correct; getting ready for two presentations isn’t difficult (mainly because I’m amazing). This week I am also travelling to beautiful Nashville for the PASS Board of Directors meeting.

The BoD meetings are always a good time, but they can be a little tiring (as do most meetings). This meeting promises to be a good one. As best as I recall, we’re going to be talking about PASS at a much higher, strategic, level. There will be less “down in the details” discussion and more “head in the clouds” type of talk. It’s good to put aside worrying about nitty gritty details and focus on the future of an organization. Too often we don’t do that.

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