I have no idea if Ernest Hemingway ever wrote those six words or not. Nobody else seems to know either. Those six words remind me of the power in short sentences.

I’ve been blogging and writing for over ten years. If there is one common thread I have seen in that time is that many of the best writers are advocates for short sentences. David Ogilvy, the noted marketing genius, once offered similar advice to his staff with “Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches” and “Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.”

Who am I to argue with such men?

That is why the book Writing That Works: How to Communicate Effectively in Business appealed to me when it came across my suggested reading list. As someone who lives inside their email inbox every day I recognize how important it is to have effective communication.

Portions of the book served as a good reminder for previous lessons learned. For example, email does not replace an actual conversation. Also, using the “High Importance” flag for every email you send is not as effective as you may think.

But along with such review items came some interesting tidbits such as:

• The average US worker receives over 200 messages (email, telephone, snail mail, instant messages) each day. Reading and answering each email takes anywhere from 2-4 hours.
• Address emails (and memos, if you still use those) only to the people that need to take action. You cc: people that you want to keep informed, and you should limit this number.
• When building presentations delete the first few paragraphs of your outline and you will find your real opening line halfway down the page as people tend to take too long to warm up
• Never send out the first draft of anything important; go through your draft and ask What can I remove?

I also enjoyed the story regarding the overuse of quotation marks for emphasis:

When the head of a large company put quotation marks around a word in an important paper, his administrative assistant asked him why he did that. He replied it was to stress the truth of the point. The assistant asked whether it would stress the truth if he were to register at a hotel as John Durgin and “wife”.

Brilliant.

I also enjoyed reading about how it is common for middle managers to write the worst emails: lengthy, meandering, full of buzzwords, and often with poor grammar. The executives at the top don’t have time for such communications as they need emails written in a short and concise manner. That’s why we joke about executive needing graphs and charts; those devices help them consume information quicker and allow them to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time. “There still seems to be some correlation between literacy and seniority”, was the conclusion of the authors.

I’ve added this book to my SQL Server Books page, you can find it in the Professional Development section.

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I’ve written earlier posts regarding how to do a job search as well as the interview itself. If you have done all that work to get yourself an interview, you should know what types of questions you may be asked, right? And if you are doing the interview you should have an idea of what to ask someone with little to no practical DBA experience.

Again, the rules for the interview process are very much like going on a blind date. Someone else has arranged for the two of you to meet and you want to leave a good impression so the person will call you again the next day. I have explained that to you once before that interviews should not be a trivia contest, they should be a conversation.

Here are my top platform agnostic questions to ask during an interview for a junior DBA. Are these all the possible interview questions? Probably not, you really need to tailor your set of questions for your own shop, but these can hopefully set you on the right path. If you keep in mind that you are looking for someone that you can work closely with, and mentor, then the conversation you have should flow naturally during the interview. So, here are the best interview questions, in no particular order.

What is a database?

Let’s start with the basics. This would be like asking your date “so, what do you do for work?” While it may seem silly to ask this question keep one thing in mind: there are no silly interview questions. No matter how ridiculous a question may seem to both the person asking it and the person responding, they will always serve a purpose. In this case you may find the candidate talking about MS Access, or Filemaker, or whatever they have been exposed to previously. Let their response be an indication of their fundamental knowledge of some RDBMS system. See if they can explain the difference between a data and a log file, for example.

What is the Cloud? NoSQL?

I’d ask this question to learn if they have any experience with any service technologies. What I consider to be service technologies are the platform-as-a-service (PAAS), software-as-a-service (SAAS), or infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) providers that are breeding faster than rabbits on a honeymoon. This is similar to asking your date if they prefer to eat out a lot or if they always prefer cooking at home. Most people like to have a nice mix of both, and any junior DBA you are looking to hire should be aware of all available options. I’m not saying they need to be an Cloud expert, just to have awareness of things like Hadoop, Cassandra, Azure, MongoDB, AWS, etc.

How do people connect to a database?

This is about the same as asking them “where do you usually go to meet up with others?” What you want here is to gauge if the candidate knows the basic difference between Windows Authentication and SQL logins. Perhaps they do, in which case you might want to see if they understand connection strings, or how different apps might try to connect to a database, or even some basics of ODBC connectivity. You are not looking for a expert, but you do want someone to understand that different people and applications have different connectivity needs or, at the very least, someone you can train to understand the differences. Bonus points here if they can explain why Cloud applications need to have standard retry logic baked in to their DNA.

Who is the most important user of a database?

This can be considered identical to the line “seen any good movies lately?” What you want here is to get an understanding if they candidate knows who the stars are. And who are the stars? Well, everyone. That’s right. Every connection to a database server is as important as any other. What’s that? You say it is only a development server, so it is not that important? Well, a development server is considered a production server to a developer. In other words, every person and every connection is important, no matter if they sit in the corner office as CEO or not. If the candidate lists out only a handful of people or groups (perhaps the Data Scientist team) as important and fails to understand that everyone (all users, regardless of rank or stature) is important, consider that a red flag. I’d also hand out bonus points if they feed you the line “everyone is important, but some are more important than others”.

Are you active in any social networking? Do you blog?

It should be clear that this is the same as asking them “are you seeing anyone?” Why do you care if they are? Well, it’s simple. You need to know if they are amenable to working with others, either getting help or giving help. As a DBA you will often need to work with a wide range of people, sometimes they will need your help, sometimes you will need theirs. If they are not used to interacting with others then you may have an issue should they join your team and continue to work in a silo. So, unlike a real date, here you are looking for someone that admits to spending time with others. Note that I’m not interested in reviewing the Facebook updates as much as I am if they are using tools like Twitter (and the #sqlhelp hashtag) or DBA StackExchange in order to engage with others online for giving (and getting) help.

What’s your best way to relieve stress?

A very standard question in any interview and similar to “what do you like to do for fun?” Really this question is best for helping to foster a non-work related conversation. If you cannot talk to someone about their life outside of work, then you either should not hire them or not be the one giving the interview. You simply must be able to converse with your coworkers from time to time about non-work related items. It is the best way to really get to know someone and develop a solid professional working relationship. If the candidate says they do not do anything to relieve stress then either they are nervous, cannot focus, or are lying. Everyone has stress to some degree. Recognizing the signs of stress and knowing how to deal with it is a necessary step in any professional career.

Which is faster: Inserting one million rows of data, or updating one million rows of data?

This could be one of the more technical questions you could ask a candidate and it equates to asking them “what kind of car do you drive?” You are not looking for the correct answer, which is “it depends”. If they do answer correctly then examine the scenarios they lay out before you. It could be very insightful, you could get a real sense for how they think. Chances are they will guess at one or the other, which gives you the chance to explain something to them. And when you do so take the opportunity to see how the discussion goes. If they ask you lots of questions, that is a very good sign. If they just sit there, listen to your every word, accept everything you say as the truth, then consider that another red flag. No one is perfect, not even you, and you do not want to surround yourself with someone that just follows your every word, you need someone that is insightful enough to ask you more questions, someone that is always looking to learn.

If I asked you to learn how to tune a query, where would you go?

This is not necessarily a question you would find on a date, it is more about the hidden signals your potential partner is giving you. Does the candidate look like a person that tries to take care of themselves? Do they show some ambition? Do they read any web sites with regularity? Have they ever opened a user manual? Who do they consider to be an expert? In short, how would they start to look for answers when you are not around?

Have you ever built your own database, or application?

The question that comes to mind here is not really something that you would ask on a date (think Weird Science). What you are looking for in their response is an indication of their passions. Do they have a passion for building things? Solving puzzles? Do they know the difference between SMALLINT and BIGINT? Have they ever heard of 3rd normal form? Any experience with building a  reporting solution? You want someone that is familiar with computers, so they should demonstrate a passion for something technical in some way. Bonus points here if they have deployed an application to the Cloud in some way.

What motivates you?

I like this question much more than “what do you want to be doing a few years from now?” Everyone should want to be successful, to aspire to be more, so asking them what they want to be doing is only going to give you the same bland answer from one candidate to the next. However, ask them about their motivations and you will gain some valuable insight into their character. Some people are motivated by money. Some are motivated to help others. Some are motivated to be a success because of external pressures, like their family. Whatever the reason may be, if you know their motivations then it is going to be easier for you to get them productive quickly when they start, rather than spending time trying to figure it out later. Also you may be able to weed some people out who are motivated for the wrong reasons.

Most of the time a company is looking to hire a junior DBA that they hope will become a senior DBA in time. If the candidate does not have motivations that take them in that direction, then you can also consider that to be a red flag. If someone is motivated to be a CEO, then spending time as a junior DBA may not be the best fit for them.

Our on-call policy is [blank]. Is that OK?

This is something that cannot be stressed enough. A DBA is always in demand, and always on the hot seat when things go wrong. And things always go wrong. You need to make it very, very clear that this person will be expected to be on-call. This would be the same as if you asked them “can I call you any time, even drunk dial you at 3AM?” This could easily scare some people away. That’s fine, you don’t want them. What you want is the candidate that looks you back in the eye and says “let me give you four different ways to reach me at all times of the day.”

How do you troubleshoot problems in your current role?

I thought about what kind of date question this would be and the closest I could come up with is “when did you know your last relationship was in trouble?” The ideal candidate will be able to clearly explain their thought process in how they troubleshoot something. Developers will most likely discuss with you some piece of code that worked well on one server but not on another. A Windows admin might talk about a service that stopped and would not restart no matter how many times they clicked on that little arrow. In either case, you want to identify someone who is articulate to a certain degree, can explain themselves, stand up for their decisions, and also be open to the possibility that there was more than one way to solve the problem at hand.

Remember, you are looking for a junior DBA, someone with little to no experience as a DBA. If you expect them to understand everything about how transaction logs operate, what spindles are, or to draw a data page map then you are looking for someone a little more senior. What you want is someone that has demonstrated their ability to learn as well as some initiative or motivation towards technical aptitudes. Oh, and keep in mind that the more junior person you hire, the more hand holding they will need. So, if you really want someone senior, because you don’t have the time to hold someones hand most of the time until they get wet behind the ears, but only want to pay that senior person a junior salary, then you have come to the wrong blog looking for help.

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We are born helpless. Totally dependent upon others for our survival.

When my daughter was born she needed to have formula dripped into her mouth to avoid dehydration and death. This lasted for a few weeks until she could feed on her own. Will she remember my waking up every few hours to help feed her?

No, and not just because she was too young.

She is more than likely able to tell you about all the times I told her she could not have donuts for dinner, or ice cream for breakfast, or not play with shards of broken glass.

Like most humans my daughter is going to remember the times she was told “no” vividly, and less likely to remember all the times she was told “yes”.

In my book DBA Survivor I speak as to how this translates to our lives as adults:

“No one cares about effort, they only care about results.”

If someone needs a quick answer from you on an obscure topic and you deliver they are likely to walk away happy. If they come to you ten times in a row and you deliver 9 out of the 10 times guess what sticks most in their mind? That’s right, the one time you couldn’t deliver is what sticks; those other nine don’t matter.

And that sucks.

And it is so very….human.

It is also human for us to not want to fail, to not disappoint others, so we get in the habit of over-promising. This often leads to under-delivering. It’s eerily similar to how virtualization works (which makes sense, since virtuallization systems were built by humans). It’s not the over-allocation of resources that is the issue, it’s when your resources are over-committed that performance suffers.

And that’s when people complain. They only remember the one failure, they never think about all the times their applications ran smoothly. When was the last time someone called and thanked you for an overnight batch process running fast?

I touched upon this in my Someday talk. People never stop to think about all the Somedays that they have already accomplished. They tend to focus more on the things they haven’t obtained yet. Not enjoying what they have, when they have it. Instead they clamor for more, and for things to never go wrong.

Humans are needy. They have a default setting of “yes” for their needs. It starts at birth and never stops.

And that’s why we only remember the “no”.

At the end of the day the issue isn’t as much with you as it is with the expectations that others place upon you. This also means that you, as a human, are often placing expectations on others. It’s a vicious cycle.

That’s what needs to be managed.

The post They Only Remember The “No” appeared first on SQLRockstar - Thomas LaRock.

One thing I have noticed in all my years as a data professional: few users understand (or care) how far away they are from their data. Quite often they expect instant results from their queries despite there currently being an upper bound due to things like network bandwidth, the speed of light, and the data sitting on a server on the other side of the world.

SQL Server makes it easy to connect to and query data from remote data sources. The common way of getting this done is through the use of a linked server, which is little more than an OLEDB data source.

The beauty of a linked server connection is that it allows an end user to write a query that looks like any other T-SQL query. For example, here is a query against a local table:

SELECT col1, col2 FROM [databasename].[schemaname].[tablename]

And here is a query that would be written that would utilize a linked server:

SELECT col1, col2 FROM [linkedservername].[databasename].[schemaname].[tablename]

To someone with an untrained eye they would think the data is as easily accessible as any other. You don’t have to do anything special to write a query against a remote data source other than include the name of the linked server.

But the dirty little secret here is that SQL Server is going to make decisions for you as to how to mash all the data together and return you a result set.

People love using linked servers. Because data can (and does) exist everywhere, users naturally want to write one query that joins as much data as possible with no regard if it is local or remote. Even a DBA with many servers to manage will be tempted to build out a series of linked servers in order to capture monitoring details in a central location.

There is also the case where data is going to be too big or cumbersome to move around easily. In that case you are going to want the query to be executed on the remote server and only return the data that is needed across the network. What this means that you should make an effort to help SQL Server make the right choices.

Here are the top three issues I have seen when it comes to linked server (AKA Distributed Query) performance:

1. Insufficient Permissions

Without a doubt this is the number one reason for why linked server query performance suffers. Historically in order for SQL Server to take advantage of using statistics on the remote server then the login used to make the connection on the remote servers needed sufficient rights. The role needed would have been one of the following:

• sysadmin
• db_owner
• db_ddladmin

If you don’t have sufficient permissions then you aren’t able to use stats, and this is killing your performance across that linked server connections. So for everyone that has been assigning the db_datareader role to remote logins you are sacrificing performance for security. While that may be an acceptable tradeoff in your shop, I am willing to wager that most admins have no idea about this silent performance killer.

A good example of identifying these symptoms are contained in this article: http://www.sql-server-performance.com/2006/api-server-cursors/

In SQL 2012 SP1 the permissions to view the statistics on an object have been modified so that a user with SELECT permission would be able to use the stats on the remote tables. Check this link for more details in the ‘Permissions’ section towards the bottom.

2. Query join syntax

Conor Cunningham gave a great talk at SQLBits X on Distributed Queries. In that talk he discussed some different join types and whether or not they were good candidates to be executed remotely. For example, a simple query that wants to pull data from just one remote table is likely to be executed remotely and only pull back the necessary rows. But what about a join between one small local table and one large remote table? What happens then?

You’ll need to watch the video to listen to Conor explain all the nuances of distributed queries. The lesson I learned from the talk is simple: when possible, give the optimizer some help. If you can rewrite your query to only pull back the smallest rowset possible from the remote server, the better chance you have of that query being executed remotely.

3. Functions

Some functions, like GETDATE(), won’t be executed remotely. This make complete sense to me because if I am trying to execute (and filter) a set of data on a remote server (where the time could be very different than the local server) then the concept of GETDATE is lost due to the fact that the servers could be in multiple timezones. SQL Server knows this and as a result it likely won’t execute the query remotely.

OK, let’s say you have identified a linked server query that is not performing well. What can you do?

The way I see it, you have two options available for helping to tune a linked server query.

The first option is to force the query to run remotely. This is done by using the OPENQUERY() function. This function will force the query to be run on the remote server and by default will use the permissions defined in the linked server. We’ve already talked about the potential issue with permissions up above, so I won’t do that again here.

The second option is to try rewriting the query. (I know many developers that just screamed at me to “STOP BLAMING THE CODE!”) Start with one table and the necessary predicates and add in additional tables and predicates until you find the one that changes the results from being executed remotely into ones that are done locally. That will help you identify which part(s) of the query are making SQL Server to switch to running locally. Once identified you can then go about exploring some rewrite options.

I’ve been writing queries for linked servers for about a dozen years now. These are the top three performance killers I have found to be common to many shops. Microsoft has done well to help remedy the permissions issue. However they are not so good as to write your queries for you (at least not yet). Until that day happens you are going to want to spend the extra time testing your queries to make certain that they are behaving as expected.

The post Top 3 Performance Killers For Linked Server Queries appeared first on SQLRockstar - Thomas LaRock.

It’s the question I get asked first whenever I am working as a booth babe. Attendees approach and ask “what do you do”? I’d estimate that 98% of people working in booths take that as an opportunity to talk about themselves for the next 3-5 minutes.

I can’t think of anything more dreadful. Here you are, presented with an opportunity to engage someone in a conversation that helps you learn more about THEM and you spend it talking about yourself.

“I love listening to vendors talk about themselves for the first fifteen minutes when we meet.” – Said no one, ever.

It’s similar to how most vendor presentations start with the same typical sentence:

“Our company was founded in…”

As soon as I hear that phrase my first thought is how Nintendo was founded in 1889 but didn’t start making video games until the 1970′s and NO ONE CARES WHEN YOUR COMPANY WAS FOUNDED. If I want to know about your past, I’ll ask. Until then, let’s talk about the now, and how your product is going to be of value to me, my project, and my business environment. In short, let’s talk more about ME, and less about your company.

I suppose I have an advantage over most in this area. Having been the person forced to sit through some of the most boring vendor presentations on Earth I know what resonates with me.

The best vendor sales presentations do not follow a script. They don’t force me to look at slides right from the start. Instead, they start with a conversation. The slides may come later, or they may not. The conversation will focus on my needs, what I want to get from the product, etc. Then the presenters will spend time talking about how they can help, and do so without tossing jelly all over the place in the hope that something will stick.

Now that I am the person giving the presentations I want to avoid delivering the same stock material that everyone else delivers.

Consider this example. Let’s say I meet someone at a networking event, or on a speed date, and I talk about myself in the same manner as if it were a standard vendor presentation. It would go something like this:

Thomas William LaRock was founded in 1970 and specializes in data management and design. His headquarters are located in the USA with offices in Massachusetts and Colorado. He has traveled North America and Canada as well as Europe. With 6,000 followers on Twitter and a Klout score of 64 he has a global presence. Thomas has spoken with thousands of people that work for companies you may know. Using a proven methodology called the Cardiovascular System, Thomas is able to operate independently and be a solution provider by using a wide range of products (such as hands).

At six feet four inches tall Thomas stands out from the competition as a trusted resource to reach onto high shelves in his household and most grocery stores. Thomas also helps his children solve their math homework, often with just a few calculations, in order to free up time for other activities such as watching Doctor Who or chasing rabid squirrels with sticks.

How dreadful that would be for anyone to listen to, either during a presentation or at a networking event.

Contrast that response with this one:

“I help people smile more by making their jobs easier.”

Which one is likely to engage the other person to want to know more about what I do? Which one is likely to lead to a better conversation?

Four Ways To Make Your Communications Stick

When I am writing and building a presentation here are the tips I follow:

1. Know Your Audience First

If you don’t know who is in the room then you aren’t likely to know what to say to them either. Take the time to know them first. Ask them where they are from, or what they do, or why they are attending. This will enable you to help them the most.

2. Know The Value You Offer

If you don’t know your value, then you’ll find yourself rambling on and on about anything and everything until something you say makes them stop yawning. It is best to understand what it is that you have to offer. You also need to understand the difference between having a valuable skill and being able to deliver value to someone else. This point deserves its own blog post at some point.

3. Tailor Your Message

Once you know a bit about them, and assuming you also know your value, you should be able to help connect the dots from there. You can craft your message to make certain it focuses on their needs. Remember, this should be about them, not you.

4. Practice, Practice, Practice

I cannot emphasize this point enough. You need to have confidence and deliver your message in a natural way, as if you were having a conversation. Because you *are* having a conversation.

Earlier I mentioned the term “jelly”. The term is from the book The Jelly Effect: How to Make Your Communication Stick, one of my favorite books on effective communication. Author Andy Bounds talks about how he learned to communicate efficiently with others as a result of helping his blind mother since he was a boy. I re-read the book at least once a year, and leaf through it often.

I recommend that book to anyone that asks me for help on speaking, building presentations, and writing. It helps you understand that when someone asks “what do you do” your answer needs to be something of value for THEM, and not about your resume.

The post Are You Making Your Communications Stick? appeared first on SQLRockstar - Thomas LaRock.

WASD does not support the WITH ENCRYPTION option for objects such as stored procedures, user defined functions, triggers, or views. So the idea of migrating an object that was compiled with that option is simply not feasible.

If you have a system with encrypted objects and you try migrating to WASD you will get “Validation of the schema model for data package failed. Error SQL71564: The element…cannot be deployed as the script body is encrypted.”

To unencrypt this proc you have three options: you can use a 3rd party tool, find various scripts through a quick internet search, or take the source code and issue an ALTER command without the encryption option.

I prefer the latter option. Just take the source code and remove the WITH ENCRYPTION statement.

I would also like to remind you that WITH ENCRYPTION does not encrypt anything. It obfuscates the object code, nothing more. It really should be named WITH OBFUSCATION, but that probably wouldn’t be clear for most end users. If you have a requirement to encrypt your source code you should go back and ask for more information as to why it is necessary. Chances are the WITH ENCRYPTION option is not meeting the original requirements.

After you update the object you’ll be ready to complete your migration to WASD. At the very least, you’ll get past that error message!

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Imagine my surprise when I went through my RSS feeds today and found this blog post from Chris Skorlinski, written just last week.

Great minds, right?

I decided that instead of tossing my post altogether, or waiting a few weeks to publish an updated version, that I would just go ahead and share with you the one thing that Chris forgot to mention in his post.

First let’s talk about why I felt this topic was important enough for a post: because people fear change.

I mean…I *hate* it when someone moves my cheese or my wine. Especially when one or both of those items are just out of my reach.

When the topic of WASD is mentioned in certain circles I often hear comments about how WASD is lacking the features and functionality that exist in the on-premises version of SQL Server.

Two of the most common examples that get mentioned to me are the lack of Extended Events and/or SQL Profiler. It doesn’t matter if the person raising the objection uses those tools, they just want them available if needed. When I ask what they want to do with those tools that they cannot do with DMVs currently I get back a fairly common response:

Deadlocks.

While I highly doubt these same people are going to start using WASD even if those xEvents or Profiler were available I thought it was worth sharing that WASD makes it EASIER to troubleshoot deadlocks that a traditional on-prem instance of SQL Server.

That’s what Chris has done for the most part, except for one thing.

What Chris Is Missing

As much as people fear change, people love to look at pictures even more.

Chris shows how to view the XML for the deadlock event. If you want to see the graph then you just need to save that file as an .rdl file and then re-open. It’s so easy I decided to make a video to show you how it is done.

The end result will be this:

Consider how you have to capture and review deadlock details in on-prem SQL Server 2012 today and I think you’ll find WASD to be much simpler. You don’t need to do anything in advance to capture deadlock information, or historical deadlock information. For more information on how to resolve deadlocking I will point you to Bart Duncan’s blog posts as a great first step (and likely the only step you will need).

Reducing the amount of administrative overhead for tracking and analyzing deadlocks is one example of how Microsoft is making an effort to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) with WASD.

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