SQLUG Interviews

Monthly interview: Jen Stirrup

Steve — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

1. Full Name - Jennifer J Stirrup

2. Where are you born? - West Coast of Scotland

3. Where do you live? - London

4. What company do you work for? - Copper Blue Consulting Ltd, which I jointly own with Allan Mitchell

5. Education/Degree - I have a MA in Psychology from the University of Glasgow, in Scotland. I followed this up with a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence from Aberdeen University, which I did jointly with the Universite de Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. I also hold a Masters of Science in Cognitive Science from the University of Birmingham, in England.

6. Role - Data Architect

7. Number of years experience with SQL Server - This is showing my age! I started with SQL Server 2000 in the year 2000, having previously used SQL Server 6.5 and SQL Server 7 previously from 1997 onwards.

8. Tell us one of your SQL Server related horror stories you came accros in your carreer - I have lots of horror stories. I'm usually parachuted into a customer site since they really need things sorted out. Here are some examples:

One customer did their business intelligence testing on their production database, and wrote over all of their data. The data held the sizes of containers for holding goods, which were to be transported by sea. There was no back-up. As a consequence, none of the container sizes were correct and none of the goods could be transported since the container sizes were all mixed up. This took weeks to sort out since they had to individually go and sort out the container sizes, and put them all back in. Needless to say, this had a huge consequence on the supply chain.

I've also had to look at some very difficult and sad data involving healthcare. I find it difficult to look at data which involves children and healthcare. As a mum, I see the 'stories' of the lives behind the data, and i find that personally quite difficult. It makes me grateful that my son is now healthy, and a reminder of how fragile life can be.

9. Describe a typical day in your job - I never have a typical day, but I love it this way! I have a six year old son, and I drop him off at school and then head off to rescue someone's data, give a training course, provide custom consultancy, or look for patterns in data.

10. What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server? - I have lots of customer projects that I'm proud of, such as mobilising reports. I love knitting data together to stop people copying and pasting in Excel.

My greatest achievements are the ones where my work has made a difference to someone's life. I had one mother in tears once, since I had done some integration work that meant she didn't have to copy and paste every day. I was surprised by her tears, and she said that this work would save her almost an hour a day which meant she could go home to her young children earlier rather than working late to catch up. When you have that sort of impact to help someone, that's when I find Business Intelligence most rewarding. Sometimes it's not the complex projects that are the most rewarding; it's the feeling that you've helped someone.

11. What is your favourite new feature of SQL Server 2012? - Oh, tons of new features. If SQL Server 2012 was a person, I would cuddle it! I love Power View. I want to see businesses ask different types of questions of their data, and see new patterns.

12. What book(s) are your currently reading? - The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre. I like spy thrillers. I do not like 'chick lit' or 'Fifty Shades of Grey' or any of these girlish books. I would get bored. I want to be entertained.

13. Blog address - www.jenstirrup.com

14. Twitter handle - @jenstirrup

15. Hobbies - my six year old son keeps me busy!

Thank you Jen!!

Monthly interview: Brent Ozar

Steve — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:48:00 GMT

This month we were able to talk with Brent Ozar from Brent Ozar PLF.

Full name
Brent Gregory Ozar. My dad's John Gregory Ozar Jr, and my parents kinda wanted me to have that same name, but they didn't want a "the third" kid.

Where are you born?

Illinois. I grew up all over the midwest US, moving every couple of years as my dad opened up stores for Goodyear Tires. I've lived in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Michigan, and I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.

Where do you live?

Downtown Chicago, Illinois. I telecommute full time, so I can live anywhere. I like living in places that are really walkable - so far Chicago and Miami Beach are my favorites. Chicago's got a great mass transit system - very unusual for America.

What company do you work for?

Everybody's! I co-founded Brent Ozar PLF, a consulting firm that specializes in high-performance SQL Servers. We've worked with companies big and small including StackOverflow.com, AllRecipes.com, Discovery Channel, financial companies, hospitals, universities, and tiny 3-person software developers.

Education/Degree

I dropped out of college after a year and a half. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I didn't find any insights on campus, so I figured I'd be better off experimenting with different jobs out in the real world. After a handful of years managing hotels, doing budgets, and working in IT, the dot-com boom hit. I rode that for a while and enjoyed IT work the most.

Certifications

I'm a Microsoft Certified Master (or as they're renaming it, the MCSM) of SQL Server 2008. There's not many of us out in the wild - most Masters work for Microsoft, but I'm lucky enough to have started Brent Ozar PLF with another MCM - Kendra Little.

Role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)

Clients bring me in when database applications aren't performing. I track it down to the root cause - sometimes it's storage, sometimes it's hardware, sometimes it's queries. Being an MCM means I have to know the entire stack at a very deep level, so I'm able to follow the problem no matter where it goes.

Number of years experience with SQL Server (including which SQL Server version did you start with?)

I worked with 7 but only briefly, and I was really happy when 2000 came out. I've been working with SQL Server since the late 1990s.

Tell us one of your SQL Server related horror stories you came across in your career

I had a SAN firmware upgrade go very horribly wrong in the summer of 2007. We lost dozens of servers at once. We discovered that some servers were doing backups to the very same SAN that held their data, so we lost days of data. We worked a very, very long weekend - one guy worked 40 straight hours - and got the last of the servers up by Monday afternoon.

My only vindication was that the vendor's own staff flew in to do the same upgrade on another one of our SANs a few weeks later. They lost the entire SAN too.

Describe a typical day in your job

Nobody calls me when they're happy. Companies call me when the application's on fire, and their staff have been struggling with internal developers, sysadmins, and outside vendors all pointing fingers at each other. I put everybody in the same room (or on the same conference call), get to the bottom of the problem, and teach everybody how to fix it with the least amount of effort and expense. I'm usually in and out in 2-3 days.

It probably sounds like a terrifying battleground, but I love it. Every gig is different, and I get to work with all kinds of companies doing amazing things with databases. People are angry when I arrive, and I make them happy. It doesn't get much better than that.

What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?

This is going to sound strange, but my best accomplishment is helping other people take their skills and their careers to the next level. Sure, I can make jobs run faster, I can wring more performance out of existing hardware, but the real fun is watching somebody get excited about their job again. I love it when I can show someone a technique they've never thought of using, and suddenly it opens new doors for their work. Every now and then, somebody blogs about how my work made a big difference in their life, and that's just the greatest accomplishment I can have.

What is your favorite new feature of SQL Server 2012?

Without a doubt, AlwaysOn Availability Groups. I love solving high availability, disaster recovery, backup, and scale-out problems simply by implementing one feature. As I'm writing this, I've got 2 clients working on Availability Groups deployments plus another one planning it. This is the killer feature.

What book(s) are your currently reading?

For work, I'm reading Inside the SQL Server Query Optimizer by Benjamin Nevarez. It's not a practical book for beginners - it's for experts with a lot of time on their hands who are really curious about how the engine works.

For fun, I'm reading Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan. It's written from the point of view of a recently murdered woman who's watching her friends take a trip she'd coordinated herself, and she's watching the trip unravel. The author's voice is sarcastic, witty, and beautiful.

Blog address

My personal blog at http://www.BrentOzar.com has turned into a consulting company. Yay! I love watching it grow.

Twitter handle

I'm @BrentO. If this Twitter thing doesn't make any sense to you, check out the free ebook I wrote about it at http://www.BrentOzar.com/twitter/book/.

LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/in/brentozar - although I hardly ever update it. I love helping people get better jobs, though, so feel free to connect with me.

Hobbies

Life is like a role-playing game, and I'm working on leveling up. You can read about my Epic Life Quest at http://ozar.me/quest/, where I'm documenting the achievements I'm working on. In 2012, I'm running my second half-marathon, hiring our first employee at Brent Ozar PLF, and more.

Monthly Interview with Jonathan Kehayias

Steve — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:06:00 GMT

Last month, SQLUG.BE started with a monthly interview with one of the best SQL Server experts on the planet.
This month we were able to catch Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills for an interview.

Full Name
Jonathan Matthew Kehayias

Where were you born?
A small town outside of Memphis, Tennessee named Atoka in the United States.

Where do you live?
I currently reside in Boston, Massachusetts, but I own a home and hold permanent residence in Tampa, FL. I am currently in Boston because my wife is finishing her PhD in Psychology and has a year long internship/residency at a hospital in Boston. We currently plan to return to Tampa in Setptember of this year when her residency is complete.

What company do you work for?
SQLskills

Education/Degree
I have a BA in History from the University of Florida.

Certifications
I am a SQL Server 2005 and 2008 MCITP for Database Development and Database Administration as well as a SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master.

Role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)
My career has primarily been focused on Database Development and Database Administration, but my current role is as a Principal Consultant where I do a mix of Development, Administration, and occasionally BI work, as well as training for the SQLskills Immersion Events

Number of years experience with SQL Server (including which SQL Server version did you start with?)
I am approaching 8 years of experience with SQL Server in April 2012, and I started off working on SQL Server 2000, but I have had to support and maintain SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0 instances as a DBA in the past.

Tell us one of your SQL Server related horror stories you came across in your career
I've blogged about a few of my horror stories with SQL Server in the past. Two of them can be found on my blog post http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jonathan_kehayias/archive/2008/12/09/sql-quiz-1.aspx. However, I have to say that my worst horror as a DBA has to be finding out that a system was converted from development/test to production without my knowing it, and as a result the database backup configuration hadn't been changed to adequately cover the databases being used to allow for recovery when a problem occurred. As luck would have it, I only found this out because a problem occurred, and the result was nearly 2 weeks of lost productivity as data had to be converted manually from a legacy system into a rebuilt copy of the new production system and then verified by end users before being considered complete.

This occurred in my first year as a production DBA, and we were making a migration from SharePoint 2003 to MOSS 2007 as a proof of concept in the environment. The specific environment I was working in required segregation of duties for backups, and all of the SQL Server backups were managed by a separate backup administrator in the environment. The development/test servers used a weekly full, biweekly differential backup policy that was based on the ability to recover changes in the environment from source control if necessary, but no real consideration had been made for content as data in the original design of the policy. With SharePoint and MOSS the content data is incredibly important and as a part of the proof of concept a number of document libraries that were previously maintained on file shares had been migrated into document libraries in SharePoint to provide auditing and versioning control in the environment. This should have dictated FULL recovery with frequent transaction log backups, but the appropriate backups had not been configured, and to make matters worse, the backup retention for the development/test environments had been set to 7 days. At the point of disaster discovery, the most recent weekly full backups had occurred of the damaged databases, and the previous weeks full backups had been flushed from storage resulting in an inability to recover the databases using the remaining differential backups. The only recourse was to manually rebuild the environments and then attempts to reconcile any changes that had occurred to the data from copies stored on individual's systems.

The biggest lesson learned here was the importance of inter-team communications when working with distributed environments like SharePoint for managing backups. As a result backup retention policies for development/test environments was extended to 21 days allowing the ability to recover from multiple full/differential backups in the event of failure.

Describe a typical day in your job
As a consultant, I can't really say that I have a typical day. One day I am performance tuning code and the next day I might be performing a health check of an existing environment, and the following day I might be working with a VMware or SAN administrator to try and pinpoint the bottleneck in a specific environment. One of the things that I love about being a consultant is that there is never a dull moment, and I get to work on all kinds of environments. I've worked on a couple of the largest edge case environments in the last year where the problems are incredibly complex and challenging, and I've worked a number of the smallest environments where the problems are equally as complex and challenging due to the environmental limitations. One of the biggest challenges as a consultant is being able to tailor the best solution to the problem and environment that you are working in and this is what keeps things interesting as a consultant for SQL Server.

What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?
This is really hard to choose. Passing the MCM for SQL 2008 was a big accomplishment along with the first time I was awarded the MVP award in 2008, and being hired by SQLskills last year as a consultant, but I'd have to say one of my greatest accomplishments with SQL Server was writing the Extended Events Manager SSMS Addin for SQL Server 2008, which won the SQL Server 2008 Heros contest at PASS in 2008. This tool provides UI integration for Extended Events in SQL Server 2008 as a SSMS Addin. (http://extendedeventmanager.codeplex.com)

What is your favourite new feature of SQL Server 2012?
The UI integration for Extended Events along with the .NET API's for Extended Events management and the streaming provider, followed in a really close second place by Contained Databases and then Availability Groups.

What book(s) are your currently reading?
I am currently writing a book on SQL Server 2012 Extended Events which is taking most of my free time from being able to read new books, but the last book I read was John Grishams "The Litigators".

Blog address
http://sqlskills.com/blogs/jonathan

Twitter handle
http://twitter.com/sqlpoolboy

This is actually the third twitter handle that I've had since I started using Twitter. I started out using my name jmkehayias as my twitter handle but at that time autocomplete hadn't been implemented for most applications and people had problems typing in my last name so I changed to SQLSarg, a play on my current role in the Army Reserves as a Drill Sergeant. At SQL Connections in the Spring of 2011 as a joke I changed my handle to SQLPoolBoy based on a joke made by one of Kimberly's friends after I got her a napkin and it's been a ongoing joke between us ever since.

Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathankehayias

Hobbies
I have a number of hobbies that keep me busy outside of SQL Server. My favorite thing to do is spend time with my kids at the pool, on a playground or just being a goof around the house. I also like building things with my hands, and I have built a number of toys with my kids out of wood including an automated marble elevator and race track and a couple of furniture pieces. I also have a 1966 Mustang coupe that I was restoring when I lived in Tampa, FL that is waiting for me when I get back.

Monthly interview: Mr.Denny

Steve — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:32:00 GMT

As of now, SQLUG.BE starts with a monthly interview with the best SQL Server experts on the planet.
This month we were able to catch Mr. Denny for an interview. Mr.Denny was one of the speakers
a couple of months ago at SQL Server Days 2011.

SQLUG.BE: What’s your full Name?
Mr.Denny: Denny Cherry

SQLUG.BE: Where were you born?
Mr.Denny: Los Angeles, CA

SQLUG.BE: Where do you live?
Mr.Denny: Corona, CA (about 60 miles from Los Angeles)

SQLUG.BE: What company do you work for?
Mr.Denny: I’m an independent consultant, working for myself.

SQLUG.BE: What is your Education/Degree?
Mr.Denny: I’ve got no formal training besides working for various companies over the years and figuring all this technology stuff out.

SQLUG.BE: What certifications do you have?
Mr.Denny: I’ve got a bunch of Microsoft Certifications including all 12 of the SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 MCDBA, MCTS and MCITP Certifications. I also am one of the few people to hold the Microsoft Certified Master certification for SQL Server 2008.

SQLUG.BE: Describe your primary role (Production DBA/Development DBA/BI)
Mr.Denny: I’m a consultant so I’m mostly dealing with production database systems, but I also support storage arrays like EMC, NetApp, etc. and virtualization platforms like VMware’s vSphere and Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

SQLUG.BE: How many years of experience with SQL Server do you have(including which SQL Server version did you start with?)
Mr.Denny: At least 14 years starting with SQL Server 6.5 all the way up to SQL Server 2012.

SQLUG.BE: Describe a typical day in your job
Mr.Denny: It really depends on what client I’m working for, but it usually involves either planning a new server build out, or doing performance tuning of an existing system so that the business unit that uses the system can continue to use it without just throwing hardware at the problem.

SQLUG.BE: What is your best or greatest accomplishment with SQL Server?
Mr.Denny: My best accomplishment with SQL Server would probably be a client that I worked with a few years ago. They wanted a hardware upgrade for their only SQL Server as the hardware was already 6 years old. On top of that they wanted to do normal performance tuning to improve performance even further. After two weekends of work, and with no impact to the business we upgraded the system and did the performance tuning. The head of the business unit actually contacted the head of IT to tell him how great the system was performing.

SQLUG.BE: What is your favourite new feature of SQL Server 2012?
Mr.Denny: My favorite new feature is by far AlwaysOn.

SQLUG.BE: What book(s) are your currently reading?
Mr.Denny: At the moment I’m reading the EMC books to prepare for the EMC certification exams.

SQLUG.BE: Do you have any hobbies?
Mr.Denny: Riding my motorcycle, and playing games on my Xbox.

SQLUG.BE: Thank you Mr.Denny

Blog address: http://www.mrdenny.com has links out to all my blogs which include itke.techtarget.com/sql-server/ and sqlmag.com

Twitter handle: @mrdenny

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mrdenny

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