Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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There has been lots of speculation in the SQL Server community as to what the official name of the next release of Microsoft’s flagship database product SQL Server will be. Today I made a discovery on one of Microsoft’s very own sites that indicates that the name will not follow the “R2” naming convention that has been named in the past.

At the PASS summit last year Microsoft officially released information about a new feature called “Hekaton” in the next release which you can read about here. As this is such a breakthrough piece of functionality it stands to reason that this will not be a minor “R2” style release but a major release. Incidentally Intel also have a major/minor release strategy which they label the Intel Tick Tock Model and is an interesting read for all you hardware geeks out there (you know who you are).

It was widely believed that “SQL Server 2012 R2” would be the name of the next version mainly due to articles such as “Microsoft may be stepping up the delivery pace” on CNET which showed what was believed to be a Microsoft authored roadmap. This document showed SQL Server 2012 R2 being released in H2 of 2014.

So, why do I believe that 2012 R2 is not the next name?  Well, the reason is that whilst I was looking for a whitepaper (part of my Learn something new each day mantra) I came across something quite astonishing. The image below clearly shows that Microsoft currently intend for the product to be called “SQL Server 2014”. At the time of writing, this link will show the same screen http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418471(v=sql.10).aspx how long it will remain active I do not know. Unfortunately all the links do point back to current or previous versions.

Whether this will be the official name at release remains to be seen, there is of course the chance that it may slip into 2015.

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Before we dive in to the post, I’d like to give a big thank you to Bob Pusateri (Blog|Twitter) for hosting this months T-SQL Tuesday “Presenting and Loving it!”. T-SQL Tuesday was the brainchild of Adam Machanic (Blog|Twitter) you can find out more about the concept here.

Coincidentally I am actually giving a presentation on baselining the evening that this post goes out!

Here’s the remit we were all given for the topic:

What’s the Topic?

This month the prompt is how did you come to love presenting? What was the first time you gave a presentation in front of a group and really enjoyed it? Was it something that was required of you in school? Something you did in the workplace? Were you inspired by other SQL community members and thought “I think I can do that too”? Whatever your story is, I’d love to hear it. Not a presenter? Not a problem! Feel free to chime in with whatever you like that’s related to either presenting or SQL Server in general.

Seeing as Bob has written a number of questions down for us it would be rude of me not to answer all of them, so this post is going to be more of a Q&A style interview rather than an essay on my experiences.

Was it something that was required of you in school?

Kind of, my school wasn’t the type of academic institution where we’d all be creating technical papers and reading them out in an assembly, but there was a good music department. I was asked to go for a trombone audition during a class lesson and the brass professor suggested the trumpet would be a better fit.

Why am I bringing this up? Believe it or not there is a parallel. While I’m not suggesting that every session is a performance (although it can be) having a musical background does allay the fears of larger audiences. I used to play at a pretty decent level having passed my grade 8 ABRSM exam. The youth symphonic wind bands and symphonic orchestras I played in pretty much wrapped up all the major awards for our age groups. This meant that we were invited to play at the Royal Albert Hall on no less than four occasions. The reason that I bring this up is that an audience in a venue like that can hold thousands of people, I would imagine the times we played were probably around the 2,500 mark.

The reality however, is that ensemble and solo work are different and in solo work nerves do play a bigger part. Although I do still get nervous, I am thankful for the training that playing in ensembles have provided.

Something you did in the workplace?

Up until my current role no. I did try to organise a few things at other companies but there wasn’t much interest so rather like my attempts at the high jump it never took off the ground.

In my current role however it’s a completely different story, I regularly present webcasts on SQL Server topics as well as live product demonstrations to potential clients. I do get a kick out of this, I hear about some really interesting implementations and can provide input on where I feel things may be improved and how solutions could be improved with feature x of our portfolio as well as provide advice on best practices.

It all comes back to wanting to help the community, but more on that in the next section…

Were you inspired by other SQL community members and thought “I think I can do that too”?

In a word, “yes”. Going to SQLBits in Manchester completely changed my career. Here were a bunch of guys (and girls) who were willing to give up their own time to help educate others from their own experiences. It was absolutely mind blowing to think that there was this whole community that I never knew of before and I only found it from Googling (sorry Microsoft) “SQL Training” or something similar.

Suffice to say that one event led to another and another and now I have founded my own PASS affiliated user group in Maidenhead – http://www.SQLStudy.org and I am on the organising committee for a national event in the UK called SQL Relay which will be holding 8 free events over 8 days in 8 different venues across the UK this June. Go to http://www.SQLRelay.co.uk for further details.

I now present fairly regularly at my own user group and will also be presenting at SQL Relay. Local user groups are a great way of cutting your teeth when it comes to presenting, go and support your local user group by attending a few sessions. You’ll then get to know a few people and nerves won’t be so much of an issue. I promise it will make the whole process a lot easier.

Don’t think you have enough content for an entire session? Don’t worry, many user group leaders would love to have more participation from members and will no doubt let you do a 5 minute “lightening talk” or “nugget”.

What was the first time you gave a presentation in front of a group and really enjoyed it?

Being a DBA I get a bit retentive about certain things (a shock I know), as such I don’t really enjoy the first time at a new venue or presenting a new session as there is too much “unknown”. Once I have done a presentation a few times I find that things flow more naturally, I can fit in more audience participation elements and hone the presentation based on feedback and gut feeling on what seems to have worked and what hasn’t.

The other aspect here is the topic, some topics seem to have audiences more enthused than others. From my perspective I tend to judge things by how much I feel the audience has gained something from the session. To date I think that the best session I do is one called “Natural Born Killers, performance issues to avoid”, the reason for this is you can see peoples whole demeanour change when you show them something they thought behaved one way and actually does something else.

I like to think of this kind of reaction as a eureka moment, as soon as you reach one of these audiences are a lot more receptive to what you have to say.

How did you come to love presenting?

I think “love” is a bit strong, I now enjoy presenting and look forward to doing it a lot more. If I had to put the label “love” to something, it would be that I love helping others. Presenting is a device that enables me to do this to more people in less time. If you would like to see one of my presentations why not check out the presentations section of my blog to see if I am doing a session near you any time soon.

Extra Credit

The following are not required, but might be a good idea.

- Include “T-SQL Tuesday #41? in your blog post’s title.
- Tweet about your post using the #tsql2sday hashtag.
- Make one or more references to bacon or other pork products.

This post was written whilst eating a chicken burger topped with cheese and bacon, as such at least two animals were harmed during the creation of this post.

As an “extra” that isn’t listed, why not check out my recent interview with Kevin Kline on presenting.

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Follow Richard here:

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Follow Richard here:

This weekend was full of a range of emotions for me. Grab a beverage and I’ll tell you all about it….

The Journey

On the Friday I had arranged to take my 70-451 exam at lunchtime at a test center just outside Birmingham which would provide me with a nice jaunt down the M5, or so I thought.

Drove to the test center, took and passed the exam and all was well with the world. I was pretty happy. Unfortunately there were quite a lot of roadworks on the M5 and driving down to Devon with a bad back on a Friday afternoon probably wasn’t the wisest decision I could have made.

As it tuns out my journey faired a lot better than some of the other presenters who decided to travel down later in the day.

The arrival / venue

I never told anyone this at the event, but I managed to get lost oops oh well! Eventually found the hotal and parked across the road which was really convenient. At this point I’m sore but glad to be here.

The hotel itself was OK, the staff were pleasant and courteous – you can’t ask for much more than that and it was in a pretty good location for those travelling in being not too far from the bus and train stations.

I’m going to skip ahead a bit here and then double back later in a Tarrantino style edit so stick with me. After the speaker meal (stick with me) I mentioned I didn’t have my pass so was ushered downstairs to where the event was taking place. Jonathan, Annette and the team had managed to attain 4 fair sized rooms plus two other rooms for use as a speaker room and an exhibition hall for the event itself. It was a hive of activity these volunteers, organisers and sponsors put in a lot more hours than regular attendees would realise.

The social bit

It’s become a bit of a tradition to have a speakers meal before events now and we all headed down to a Spannish tapas establishment where I spent a very pleasant meal sat between Denny Cherry (Blog|Twitter) and Mark Broadbent (Blog|Twitter) with Mr and Mrs (to be) Dave Morrison opposite. I should point out that Dave’s fiance isn’t going to take his first name as well – that would be too confusing!

It was great to catch up with so many of the #SQLFamily, I’ve ended up committing to speaking at a few more events as well as pulling in a few favours and booking others to speak at my user group.

There were a full range of conversations with various people from bewildered looking first timers unsure of what to expect from a community event to a really deep chat with Thomas Kejser (Blog | Twitter) on the future of SSD and how it could change our whole perception of performance tuning with SQL Server.

The sessions

I made a conscious decision not go to many of the sessions during the day because I was getting quite a bit of pain from my back and didn’t think it would be fair on people if I needed to stand up and walk around whilst someone else was trying to present! I really do regret this decision as there are so many talented people in the UK and Jonathan, Annette and the team made a great job of creating an interesting and varied programme.

There was one session that I did sit in on and that was Thomas’s session on compression – for those that missed it he has blogged about it and you can read it here – http://blog.kejser.org/2013/03/11/quantifying-the-cost-of-compression/

Thank you’s – Sponsors

Due to syndication rules, I can’t really speak about the companies which were there as it’s similar to product placement. Suffice to say there were companies there providing blazingly fast IO subsystems, training providers, more traditional software vendors and a few consultancy firms.

Your support was appreciated as without your sponsorship events like this would not be possible.

Thank you’s – Organisers

A big thank you has to go out to the organising team headed up by “Mr and Mrs Father Jack” aka Jonathan and Annette Allen who run the SQL SouthWest user group. Jonathan, Annette and the team really put a lot of effort into organising this event, which is especially impressive when you consider that they are also working on other projects such as SQL Relay.

You can gain a little bit of insight into their lives with the “New Year Aspirations” interviews I conducted with them back in January: Jonathan, Annette

Thank you’s – Volunteers

Being a volunteer is a very selfless task and can be very hard work, so I’d like to thank all the volunteers and let them know that we all really appreciated their part in the days proceedings. Especially my room monitor who didn’t seem to mind that I went a few minutes over!

That brings me on neatly to my session…

My session – “Natural Born Killers, performance issues to avoid”

I was very humbled to be billed alongside several MVP’s, MCM’s, MCA’s and authors. As this was my first ever SQL Saturday I was a little unsure exactly what to expect.

My session was billed last, whether this was because they saved the best till last (doubtful – see my comments about the highly esteemed counterparts above) or they though everyone would have gone home by then (much more plausible).

I was actually very pleasently surprised by the turnout. As this session is a summary of a number of core performance issue topics and I knew that some of these topics were being covered in other sessions throughout the day I thought there would be me and the room monitor watching the rugby on the big screen. The reality was very different with just a couple of empty seats at the front.

From my perspective things seemed to go pretty well, I haven’t recived the feedback yet, so whether that feeling was reciproated is under dispute.

What I can say that I did manage to get some audience participation going and there seemed to be some genuine enthusiasm and I could see a few lightbulbs going off. Add in some random sweet throwing to people who answered questions correctly and I was very happy.

The end?

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stick around for the raffle and wrap up and had to shoot off atraight after my session, but not before I was asked to pose for a photo which was a little strange! If I ever receive a copy I’ll update the post with a picture.

It was a really enjoyable time and I would recommend that everyone does try to support the community by goingto these kinds of events. You may even want to try your hand at presenting…

Presenting Tips

If you’re interested in speaking or have just started speaking why not check out the indepth interview I did with Kevin Kline (Blog | Twitter) on presenting.

Upcoming events

If this has whet your appetite for finding out more about community events, this post of mine lists all the events based in the UK for March 2013.

If you are living elsewhere in the world why not check out http://www.sqlsaturday.com/events.aspx to see if there is a SQL Saturday event taking place near you.

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Unless you’ve entered “100th blog post” into your favourite search engine and clicked on pot luck (or whatever it is) you’ll know that I pretty much always blog about SQL Server. Not this time!

Today, I thought I would share a little bit about me and my blogging experiences. I’ll probably do an update post at 200 and compare what has happened.

Why do I do it?

Why I blog is a very good question, I wrote something on it a little time back, you can read about it here if you’re interested.

What motivated me?

There seems to be something in me that wants to help others and give something back. For years I played the trumpet and wanted to be a brass teacher, I used to be in the cubs and then scouts and went on to become an assistant Scout leader for a while.

It seemed innevitable that once I was settled in a career in SQL Server that something like this would raise it’s head again.

How did I get started?

Blogging was becoming more and more popular and it started seeping though into search engine results for problems that I was experiencing. At that point I started to follow a couple of people including some chap called Brent Ozar.

Brent wrote a series of posts on How to start a blog. I mulled it over for a while, quite a while, and then some. Eventually I decided that I should give it a go. If you are thinking about blogging then do have a read. I found it a big help and probably wouldn’t have taken the plunge without it.

Has it proved popular?

To be honest I have no idea, what is good is people saying I really enjoyed that post on X or I didn’t know that about Y thanks. Feedback means a lot, not just to me but every blogger. It can be hard creating content and wondering if anybody is gaining anything from it.

If you find something useful, then please leave a comment and/or share it with others though social media. Far too many bloggers stop writing great content because they think that nobody cares!

Some metrics

Due to the fact I syndicate my blog in a few places I don’t have a complete picture of the number of people that read content that I create (another reason why comments are so important). What I can share with you are some of the metrics from my site via Google Analytics.

As you can see from the number of visits, things have picked up over time. Hopefully that’s some encouragement for people just starting out.

It’s hard to tell from the image above just how many visitors my blog has received. I included this just so you knew it wasn’t all me hitting F5 !

To my surprise, I seem to have had visits from readers all over the world.

You might be able to tell from the shading that the top 3 locations are the U.S., the U.K. and India.

The image below shows the top 10:

Well, that’s it for my 100th post. I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

I’d love to hear back from you on your experiences of blogging or if this has inspired you to start your own blog.

If you want to contact me about a SQL Server problem or blogging a little less publicly than leaving a comment,  you can always Contact  Me using the Menu at the top of my website, or the page list at the  bottom.

Here’s to another 100 blog posts!

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Welcome to the first of what I plan to be a regular recurring theme. Right here I will list out all of the UK events for all you busy people who forget to go over to http://www.SQLServerfaq.com to check what SQL Server events are happening in the UK.

It’s an exciting month for SQL Server in the U.K. with 9 different events taking place, including the second ever SQL Saturday to hit our shores! I’m sure Jonathan and Annette Allen and the rest of the team will do a great job.

Finding a group near you…

Due to professional and personal commitments not every group meets every month, if you can’t see a meeting near you in the table above why not check out our map!

SQL Server User Groups in the UK and Ireland

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Follow Richard here:

Thanks for agreeing to do this Gina; from your emails things do sound quite frantic at the moment so I really do appreciate your time!

Thank you for the opportunity to present this information about myself and our Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group!

Before we start on the main part of the interview, tell us all a little about yourself.

Professionally, I work as a Systems Integration Advisor in the Global Infrastructure Consulting Services of Dell.  I have a solid network and systems background as well as strong SQL skills which are useful in the large Datacenter Migration projects that we are currently involved with.  These projects encompass SQL Assessments, Health Checks, Consolidations, Virtualizations, etc. 

I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer from way back (NT4 to current) and have worked in IT since keypunch cards!  I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Project Management Professional in addition to having numerous SQL certifications.

On a personal basis, I live in Pittsburgh PA and have two wonderful sons.   The weather here is sometimes tough, and I would love to move south.  However, since I can’t convince the six-time Super Bowl Champion Steelers to relocate with me, I will stay here! 

How did you start in SQL Server?

My career with SQL Server was (as for many of us) completely accidental.  I was happily advancing in Systems Administration and Networking when someone realized that I could spell SQL!  It was an interesting challenge and career change, but I believe it is good to live outside of that comfort zone.

Something that I discovered quickly is that SQL is a “community” of people.  I would like to thank the leaders – too numerous to mention here – for creating such a community where newcomers and seasoned SQL vets alike can feel comfortable and have support.  These folks are willing to freely share information and help individuals grow their SQL skillsets, while having a great time!   

I have found that putting energy back into the SQL Community is very exciting and rewarding.  My passion is training and helping others grow professionally and personally, so volunteering to be the Chairperson of the Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group is a perfect place for me!

Can you tell us a little about your group and what you think it adds to the local community?

The Pittsburgh SQL Server User Group is a community of local SQL DBA’s, developers and database professionals, who meet once a month for networking and a technical presentation. The first half hour of our meeting is a discussion about the group, issues, topics, ideas, networking etc.  Attendees are eager to learn and network with like-minded folks and discuss their day to day issues and find solutions for the same.  The presentation topics vary from Big Data to Query Plans and Performance Tuning.  

In addition, we recently conducted our first PASS SQL Saturday which is an entire day of free SQL training. This event was a huge success with attendance of 125 members, 5 tracks and over 30 presentations. The SQL Saturday event generated more interest and attendance to our regular monthly meetings and we have plans for an even larger event in 2013. We can provide these services to the SQL Community due to our dedicated volunteers and sponsors who support our group!

I’d be interested in your thoughts on Women in Technology in the U.S.  Have you seen any or experienced any problems working in I.T. during your career?

Having been in IT for 30 years (yes, I did say keypunch cards), I have seen and experienced my share of the “glass-ceiling” that women in technology experience.  When I first started, and long before my current position at Dell, I was the only woman on the Network and Systems teams for decades. Over the years, it has become better, but there is still clearly a shortage of women in the IT industry. We see very few women working as developers and DBA’s, and less in management positions and business owners.  We hope to change that through leadership and education.  

Last year at our SQL Saturday in Pittsburgh, we had only one woman speaker but this year we will strive to have several more.  We are also organizing a “Women in Technology” session this year as one of our monthly presentations and as part of our 2013 SQL Saturday as well.

In the U.K. I have seen more and women coming to SQL Server events over the last few years, have you seen a similar theme in terms of employment and attendance in the U.S. within the industry?

Definitely, there are a lot more women coming to the events and participating, which should reflect an increase in employment as well.  Within our group, we have almost an equal number of women volunteers as men, which shows that women are eager to participate in the SQL Community. We rely on these volunteers for the success of our events. 

Organising any kind of event can be a daunting task. These days SQL folk demand swag, feeding, to be entertained and educated all at the same time.  How do you cover the costs for these events, do you charge a membership fee?

Dell is the primary sponsor of our local SQL Group, and has been since its onset almost ten years ago.  They help us to provide pizza and appetizers for our monthly feedings, er, I mean meetings.  

The cost for a SQL Saturday event requires us to solicit additional sponsors, and we sincerely appreciate their contributions!  Confio was instrumental in getting our first SQL Saturday off the ground and our other sponsors’ contributions allowed us to provide cool swag and prizes to the attendees. 

There is no membership fee for our local group meetings, although we offer interesting swag, free training classes and lots of fun networking events!  SQL Saturday is a free training event, however we ask the attendees to cover their lunch.

A lot of people don’t realize this, but speakers for our local group, as well as for SQL Saturday, cover the cost of their own transportation and lodging.  They should be commended for their contribution to the SQL Community!

What kind of things do you give away at your meetings and how do you handle this? I’ve seen them given away as spot prizes for questions and also the method I use is a raffle using the feedback forms.

We offer plenty of swag for our regular meetings, from T-shirts to book bags and free software. Currently for those attending our next meeting, we offer a chance to attend a free 2 day SSIS class.

For SQL Saturday 2012, we raffled a Kindle Fire for the overall event feedback and maintained close to 90% attendance for the closing event.

For each training session we had a raffle for those turning in evaluation forms.  The prize was a free book (we had close to 35 books from different sponsors) for each session.

Each event sponsor was provided a raffle box.  If attendees entered the sponsor raffles, they could be selected for the swag that the sponsor offered such as free training, free software, Kindle, Nook, SQL magazine subscription, USBs, etc!  Really fabulous prizes!

Content must be king at an event, how do you go about finding speakers who are willing to come and present?

We encourage speakers from inside our group and the Pittsburgh area, since this is a great opportunity for the local speakers to show their talent and skills.  In addition, we communicate with other SQL Groups in Ohio, DC, Philadelphia, etc. as well as solicit nationally known speakers from PASS and the SQL Community.   We do our best to provide a good mix of topics and skill levels.  Once the speaker submits their sessions, the organizing committee selects the speakers, based on topic, the speaker’s popularity, etc.

Do you have a lot of people wanting to try their hand at presenting?

We have been fortunate to have a good turnout of excellent speakers, but we always need more!!  To present at the local level or for more information about the SQL Saturday2013 Call for Speakers, candidates can contact me directly or at PittsburghSQLSaturday@yahoo.com.

One of the things I am keen to start up is a series of study groups, are these big in the US?

Our meetings start out each month with ideas and suggestions for future meetings and this is certainly a good one to add to the list!  One suggested topic that just came up recently is to have a session on Database Design as a group activity.  Once a specific database is described, the attendees work first individually then as a group to design the database.  The different backgrounds and experience levels should provide a learning experience for all!

Where should people go to find out more information about joining a SQL Server user group?

For more info about our local Pittsburgh group visit http://pitssug.sqlpass.org/  or contact me.

For info about all PASS SQL Server Chapters, visit http://www.sqlpass.org/ 

What tips would you have for somebody who would like to start up a group in their area if they don’t have one locally?

PASS greatly helped us to form a group, but one can also form a group without affiliation.   Regardless, start with a group of 3 to 4 people who are true believers in giving back to the community and are willing to contribute their time and effort.  At regular intervals, poll the audience as to what they want and how the group can help them.  Be ready to change and adapt to the requirements and recommendations of the group. Create a Linked-in or Meetup group and introduce yourself via other groups. Use technology such as Twitter accounts.  Ask a couple of big companies in your locality to sponsor or provide a space for a meeting every month.  And always ask for volunteers and community involvement! 

What has been your most memorable moment at your user group so far?

Our user group meetings are always fun!!  One moment that comes to mind was the infamous “Swag Toss” at our SQL Saturday.  T-shirts, socks, pens, etc. were offered to those ready and willing to catch them.  This provided a lot of attention to the companies that donated swag and kept our attendees on their toes! We had many good comments about it and no injuries were reported!

Finally, what are your ambitions for 2013 both for yourself and your group?

My ambition is to grow and expand our group in membership and depth of content.  We currently deliver excellent technical presentations but strive to offer forums and discussions that will provide more advanced technical skills and professional development for our members.  I would also like to expand our current website to include help with recruitment, training and networking.  Our group looks forward to growing our SQL Saturday event and offering more free training events to the local SQL community.

Thanks for your time Gina all the best for 2013!

Following this post from a syndicated source and want to read other interviews in the series? The anchor post for this series can be found here.

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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Do you use the FLOAT datatype? If so you had better read this……

Today I came across an issue somebody posted on the Microsoft Connect site citing a bug with how the FLOAT data type was calculating a value when being cast to various other datatypes. You can read the original connect item here – CAST money AS FLOAT then INT returns unexpected result for 0.57 when FLOAT is multiplied by 100

PRINT CAST(CAST(CAST(0.57 as money) AS FLOAT)*100 AS INT)

I would expect the result to be 0.57 but the result returned is 56. Also returns unexpected values for 0.29 and 0.58.

The reason I am blogging about this is that Microsoft state the following in their documentation:

“Approximate-number data types for use with floating point numeric data. Floating point data is approximate; therefore, not all values in the data type range can be represented exactly. “

The above quote has been taken from this source – float and real (Transact-SQL)

Because of this I suggested converting to a decimal datatype (as this resolves the FLOAT rounding issue) instead of a float which does not exhibit the same behaviour.  I would suggest that if you use float for anything matchematical that you review your code pretty sharpish!

The original contributor did not show how he found the issue, but I have run the following test which does confirm his results and thought I would share them with you.

The first step is to create a table to hold our results. The first attribute holds the initial value we wish to convert. The second attribute holds the value being converted via the FLOAT datatype and the third attribute is the value after being converted with the DECIMAl datatype. Here’s the code:

 CREATE TABLE #Results
(InitialValue SQL_Variant
,FloatMethod INT
,DecimalMethod INT);
GO

There’s a choice at this point to go down the RBAR route or create a set based solution. RBAR means a lot more code and well it’s rubbish so let’s go set based as it’s pretty straight forward in this case.

The first thing to do is to populate the table with a list of numbers we wish to convert. In this case I am building up a list of numbers using some system tables rather than builiding a while loop and inserting that way:

INSERT INTO #Results (InitialValue)
SELECT TOP (999)
 ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY sc.object_id) * 0.001 AS [InitialValue] FROM SYS.COLUMNS SC
CROSS APPLY SYS.TABLES ST
GO

The next thing to do is to update the values that are not yet populated. We’re going to do this with a single UPDATE statement. I’ve had to use a conditional case statement otherwise things go a little awry.

UPDATE #Results
SET FloatMethod =
 CASE WHEN LEFT(CAST(InitialValue AS CHAR(6)),4) = ’0.00′ THEN
  CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS FLOAT)*1000 AS INT)
  ELSE CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS FLOAT)*100 AS INT)
 END, 
DecimalMethod =
 CASE WHEN LEFT(CAST(InitialValue AS CHAR(6)),4) = ’0.00′ THEN
  CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS DECIMAL(9,4))*1000 AS INT)
  ELSE CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS DECIMAL(9,4))*100 AS INT)
 END;
GO

Now we have our table populated all we need to do is to return the data where the values for FloatMethod and DecimalMethod differ:

SELECT
InitialValue,
FloatMethod,
DecimalMethod
FROM #Results
WHERE FloatMethod <> DecimalMethod;
GO

DROP TABLE #Results;
GO

You can of course write this as one statement, but the above is easier to conceptualise. If you want it in one statement then here it is:

SELECT
 InitialValue,
 FloatMethod,
 DecimalMethod
FROM
(SELECT
InitialValue,
FloatMethod =
 CASE WHEN LEFT(CAST(InitialValue AS CHAR(6)),4) = ’0.00′ THEN
  CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS FLOAT)*1000 AS INT)
  ELSE CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS FLOAT)*100 AS INT)
 END, 
DecimalMethod =
 CASE WHEN LEFT(CAST(InitialValue AS CHAR(6)),4) = ’0.00′ THEN
  CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS DECIMAL(9,4))*1000 AS INT)
  ELSE CAST(CAST(CAST(InitialValue as money) AS DECIMAL(9,4))*100 AS INT)
 END
FROM
(SELECT TOP (999)
 ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY sc.object_id) * 0.001 AS [InitialValue] FROM SYS.COLUMNS SC
CROSS APPLY SYS.TABLES ST) A) B
WHERE B.FloatMethod <> B.DecimalMethod; 

I’d love to hear if you use the FLOAT datatype for mathemetical computations and if this post has helped.

Rich

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

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As a former mentor Christian is used to me asking him all sorts of random questions, but this time it’s going to be published online. I’d also like to thank you for allowing me to be a technical reviewer in your latest book: Professional SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting.

Before we start on the main part of the interview around being an established author, tell us all a little bit about yourself.

I’m 35 years old, married with two great kids, and I run the consulting practice at Coeo — a Microsoft Gold Partner based in the UK with a great deal of expertise in SQL Server. I enjoy supporting SQL Server community events and I’ve co-authored five books on SQL Server.

How did you start in SQL Server?

Sometime around 1998 I was a young, confident contractor focused on optimising NT4 domain environments.  I’d transitioned from Novell Netware over the previous couple of years as Microsoft was the new, cool kid in town for managing directory services but I started to feel like I needed to specialise further and Microsoft Exchange 5.5 was the natural evolution of my skills.  A contractor friend of mine already knew Exchange and convinced me to pick up SQL Server instead so we’d have all the bases covered — back then the application tier was only really Exchange and SQL Server so I bought a book on SQL Server 6.5 and never looked back!

So, you’re an MVP, MCM and an MCA! Which if these would you say was your biggest accomplishment?

MCA was certainly the hardest so if I had to pick one it would have to be that but it’s definitely the least well known.  I’m a big fan of the MCM though and encourage all my team to pursue it which has had a really positive effect for the team and for the business because we now have more SQL Server MCMs than any other Microsoft customer or partner in the world. The best bit about that though is that they all passed the MCM because of the job they do at Coeo every day. Being an MVP is an honour and a privilege but I don’t see it as an accomplishment because I don’t do anything specific just to be an MVP, it’s an award for doing what I do anyway.

How did you first become involved in a book project?

A good friend of mine had been involved in a BizTalk book 6 or 7 years ago and I approached his publisher to say I was interested in writing about SQL Server. A few months later I was invited to join the authoring team for Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning and that became my first published work. My mum was very proud!

You have been a lead author for a number of books now, how does the role of lead author compare to that of a contributor?

It’s really, really hard and you never appreciate the role of the lead author until you’ve been on both sides of the fence or you write with someone that isn’t good at it.  The lead author owns the structure of the book so the chapter titles and themes come from them but a good lead will take a very active role in all the content of the book.  If a multi-author book reads like the authors worked on it all together, it’s usually because the lead author has done a good job in editing the chapters to ensure consistency and to add helpful cross-references. The lead author is often the only technical person that reads and edits the whole book.  It’s a tough job that has very little visibility but it’s the only way to ensure the project stays true to the original vision.

Being a co-author or contributor also has a lot of challenges as your role can leave you feeling isolated when you’re only involved as you need to be; you might write a chapter early in the project and then not have anything to do for 6 months when all of sudden you get a load of work back on a tight timescale.  Technical feedback can also be hard to take during the project when you’re an expert in your field and it takes practice to emotionally detach yourself from it and edit your work to make your points clearer. A technical editor represents the intended audience and while you might disagree with their feedback there’s a good chance your readers might feel the same and you now have an opportunity to pre-empt those concerns by editing your work before it’s published.

How do you go about building a crack team of authors for a book such as Professional SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting?

You have to know a lot of good guys that you can trust to work hard and weather the up and downs that are a part of every authoring project.  The success of the SQL Server 2008 version of the book helped a lot to recruit the team but the fact that the author list changed so significantly from the last version of the book reflects just how emotionally challenging it is to be an author outside of your day job.

You’ve worked on a couple of different kinds of technical books, is there a particular type of book that is easier to write than others?

No — I think you always feel like the grass is greener.  When you have a blank piece of paper you yearn for some structure to help guide you but when you’re given structure it can feel restrictive and less creative.  When I wrote for an exam guide it was hard to make basic concepts sound compelling when they didn’t excite me anymore and writing sample exam questions was a horrible experience; creating valid wrong answers is a long, painful process that produces a very unimpressive output.

On a more positive note, I think writing about something you don’t know very well is probably the easiest from a motivational perspective because you’re learning as you go and your enthusiasm seeps into your writing.

Do you think you’ll take a leaf (or possibly a page being a SQL interview) out of Mark Russinovich’s book and write a fiction book?

It’s funny you should mention that, I have a passion for historical fiction and narratives and renaissance Italy is a particular interest of mine. I have an idea for a series of books set in that period that I’m slowing developing but it’s a long term project and doesn’t have a compelling event that is driving a timescale so I think it will be 5 to 10 years before anything solid comes from it.

We’ve spoken at great length before about your writing style and how easy you make it to break down and comprehend complex solutions. What process do you go through to make this happen when explaining a concept?

I like to think it’s because I need things to be simple for me to understand them and once I’ve broken something complex down for myself, writing is just the process of passing it on for other people to benefit from.  It works for me and people seem to respond positively to my writing so that’s the process I try and reproduce as often as possible.  I also use the “would my Mum understand what I’ve written” test to measure the readability of my work; if you need to be an expert to understand what I’ve written then I’m not doing it right.

I remember you telling me the story of your daughter drawing you a picture of a Princess to put in your book. How do you cope with running a company, having a family and on top of that a major project like a book?

It’s certainly not easy to juggle those priorities. I’m lucky in that writing SQL Server books has a value to my business from a marketing perspective so that helps to justify some of the effort but the hardest part is managing time with your family.  Its manageable if you’re very efficient with your time but I find that inspiration for writing comes in bursts and I have to keep going when I’m in the zone so getting your family to buy-in to the end goal is absolutely critical. Ultimately, a writing project has a fixed timescale so it’s not like a hard job that has no definite end but it does take about a year to create and finalize the content which is long time to lose so much free time.  I’ve had to write during two family summer holidays which is a really hard thing to do so I try and involve my kids as much as possible and we hunt for Daddy’s book whenever we see a bookshop. If they don’t have it on the shelf, then it “must have sold out”; my kids must think it’s the most popular book ever written

If somebody such as myself wanted to take the jump and go from blogger to author what would you recommend?

Approach a publisher for books that you like and tell them that you’d like to become an author.  I’d definitely recommend being an author on someone else’s book for your first project to get a feel for the level of work that one or two chapters requires. Writing severely impacts your free-time and it’s vital that you complete whatever you commit to so start small and give yourself the best chance of success.

Without giving too much away what are your ambitions for the company in the New Year?

I enjoy developing people and helping them to discover and use their strengths to do their best work so I’m looking forward to doing more of that as we continue to grow Coeo this year and hire more great people.

From a company perspective, we’re usually associated with Mission Critical SQL Server platforms but we also do a lot of great work in other areas like Private Cloud and Business Intelligence which we’re less well-known for, so I really want make those projects more visible this year.

Thanks for your time Christian it’s been a pleasure as always, all the best for the New Year.

You can find out more about Christian Bolton at his blog http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/christian/

You can find out more about Coeo’s services at http://www.Coeo.com

Following this post from a syndicated source and want to read other interviews in the series? The anchor post for this series can be found here.

Richard Douglas

Richard is a Systems Consultant for a vendor of SQL Server solutions where he specialises in SQL Server providing solutions and system health checks to organisations across the EMEA region. Richard has recently taken on the responsibility of being Editor in Chief of the community site SQLServerPedia which provides articles on SQL Server and a blog syndication service, other duties see him regularly presenting webinars to both US and EMEA audiences. He is also a keen member of the SQL Server community, he founded and runs a PASS affiliated chapter in the UK (www.SQLStudy.org) and is on the organising committee for a national event called SQLRelay. Read more about Richard.

More Posts - Website

Follow Richard here: