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I think I’ll forever associate Charlotte, NC with my middle son. We were heading back to Denver from Virginia Beach a few years ago after a vacation. Our flight was scheduled to go through Charlotte before heading to Denver. My daughter and my middle son were sitting with me as the plane sped down the runway in Virginia Beach when about halfway down the pilot slammed on the brakes. If you’ve never experienced that, it’s very unnerving. My daughter gripped my arm as my son looked up and said

“Are we in Charlotte?”

Totally serious since he’d been engrossed in a book. My daughter, who looked like she might cry up to this point started laughing. She told him we hadn’t even taken off.

There was a problem with the plane, and we ended up spending another night with grandma, which pleased her and the kids. Everything was fine, but it is one of those events that sticks with you.

This morning I’m heading to Charlotte, no kids, to SQL Saturday #33, to speak and see some friends. I’ll be giving my Modern Resume presentation and also part of the keynote presentation. Andy Warren and I, along with PASS President Rushabh Mehta, will be up to talk a little about the history of SQL Saturday and it’s current transition to PASS.

It should be a great event, and the list of speakers is impressive. Kevin Kline and Joe Webb from TN, Denny Cherry from CA, Jessica Moss and Andy Leonard from VA, Aaron Bertrand from RI, Patrick LeBlanc from LA make this one of the more impressive events outside of the national conferences.

Recently I wrote about the disaster recovery issue recently at SQLServerCentral. Someone sent me a note asking why I didn’t set a transaction when doing the INSERT in case I made a mistake.
Two reasons. First, I could undo the inserts since they were simple. I actually had the IDs and it would have been easy to delete the data.
However this was a live production system, and the area in which I think these posts are in the database was receiving a ton of activity. I was watching my email, and could see responses coming in from other threads that are physically near this one in the clustered index.
So I didn’t start a transaction since I was worried about locking and timeouts on the site. I couldn’t easily check things since I can’t see the web on VPN and needed to disconnect, drop my RDP session, check things, and then go back. Despite the idea that my remote session shouldn’t get killed (and thus the transaction), I didn’t want to take the chance.
The decision to begin a transaction on a production system as a DBA, especially one that might take their time checking the impact, should not be taken lightly. If you do start one, make sure that you have your test scripts ready to go so you do not hold locks any longer than necessary.

When you volunteer, you greatly enrich your life. I saw a post recently from Jason Brimhall talking about the volunteering efforts you can make, and how rewarding they can be. I talk about this as a way to make yourself more marketable, and it can be. You can build skills, get experience in an area, show leadership, or show that you are a well-rounded individual.

However it’s important to remember that these are commitments. They aren’t optional activities that you can skip if you don’t feel like it on a particular day. Choosing to volunteer is optional, but once you’ve done it, you need to follow through.

And you need to perform at the best level you can. Don’t shortcut your efforts for a volunteer organization. You can not volunteer again, but for the duration of what you’ve committed to, give them the same effort, or even more, that you would if you were being paid.

When starting with a new organization, volunteer in small ways, and make small commitments. That way if you don’t like it, you can stop without leaving them in a bind. If you do like, you can always increase your efforts, but pulling up short isn’t fair to the organization, or the people that depend on it.

At the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta this past weekend in Denver, I presented a talk on “Beginning SQL Server”, a high level look at the product for non-technical people: managers, analysts, project managers, even very new technical people. I’ve heard this requested a few times at SQL Saturday events in 2009, so I put one together, with the idea that I’d explain to people at a very high level what SQL Server is.

And that’s hard.

I had spent quite a few hours over the last 4-5 weeks looking for analogies that would make sense to a laymen for databases. I used Excel, filing cabinets, and a few more ideas, mostly with images, to convey to laymen what a database was, and how SQL Server compared with other databases. There were a couple other local SQL Server pros on hand, I think mostly to support me, and they thought the explanations made sense. I also got quite a few complements from others that were non-technical people. A business analyst, an older gentleman from the VAX/COBOL era, and a couple other people mentioned that this made sense for them in understanding how SQL Server fits in an environment.

However I learned a few things as well.

1. Lots of people don’t understand what a virtual machine is, and I struggled to explain it. So I need to work on that.
2. The .NET framework needs to be added to my talk. I had someone struggling to figure out what it is and how it fits with SQL Server.
3. I need a few more examples of how SQL Server data is used. I tried for some common sites (YouTube, NASDAQ, Amazon), but had a few blank looks.
4. I need to better explain some differences between Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2
5. I need another analogy for SSIS. I used Import/export,  and Extreme Makeover, but I need something that’s easier for the laymen to get.
6. I might need to drop Service Broker, or shorten that section. It’s not necessarily that important.
7. I need a way to explain what a set of data is, and how to manipulate a set of data at a time

Overall it went well, and I’ll be looking to put this on the site, as well as present it at some of the other events I attend. I’m going to try and get it scheduled as an early morning session or a first thing to get people up to speed.