SQLskills is giving away free training for their performance tuning and optimization classes. My entry for the competition is below. If you decide to enter for yourself, entries are due by 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Sunday, August 13th, 2017.
Watch this week's video on YouTube
I would love to attend the Immersion Event on Performance Tuning and Optimization — Part 1 training with Paul and Kimberly of SQLskills.
Why do I want to attend?
I want my brain to be filled past the brim with SQL Server internals and performance tuning knowledge. And I know this class will provide that opportunity.
I saw Kimberly present at PASS Summit in 2013. In 75 minutes, I had filled 4 pages of notes about skewed table data and how it affects statistics. I received great information that was immediately applicable to the queries I was working on back at the office.
I've never seen Paul present live, but I've been responsible for more than a few dozen hits to his blog posts on DBCC IND and DBCC PAGE. Whenever I have a question about SQL Server internals, I inevitably think "does Paul have a blog post on this topic?"
I've heard from others that IEPTO1 is amazing (and exhausting…in a good way!). I've learned so much from reading SQLskills team's blog posts, watching Pluralsight, and sitting in at SQL Saturday sessions that I am certain that I would thoroughly enjoy a week of intense training with Paul and Kim.
How would I use the knowledge?
By giving back to the community.
Every week I write blog posts and create videos teaching analysts, developers, and DBAs how to improve their SQL querying skills. I speak at local user groups, SQL Saturdays, and at conferences. I help coworkers and those on Twitter with solving their SQL problems.
By taking this training, I will advance my own technical understanding, which in turn helps me be a better SQL mentor.
My favorite type of performance tuning challenge
I love it when I can decode some of the "magic" that SQL Server is doing behind the scenes.
For example, recently when learning to work with JSON in SQL Server 2016, I was mystified by how SQL Server could quickly filter JSON data using a non-persisted computed column index. Was it truly parsing JSON on the fly or was it doing something else?
That curiosity led me to investigate further with DBCC PAGE. To my surprise, SQL Server really wasn't persisting my parsed JSON values on the data pages; it was however persisting the parsed JSON property on the index pages.
One more SQL Server mystery revealed.
Thank you.
Thank you for running this competition and giving people the opportunity to receive world-class training.
Additionally, thank you for all of the blog posts, newsletters (book reviews!), Pluralsight courses, and everything else you do to help the SQL community; I have benefited tremendously from all of these resources over the years.