Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

  • In Memory of Andrew Clarke, AKA Phil Factor

    One of the parts of getting older that really sucks is I seem to attend more funerals than weddings. It’s a sad fact of file, and this was one of the reasons Andy Warren and I created SQL Memorial, to keep those we’ve known close to our hearts.

    In a few internal posts, and a few external ones, I keep seeing this picture:

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    It’s one I took in 2016 with a selfie stick I’d gotten just before my trip to Redgate. There are a lot of familiar faces in here, but this was the content team at that time with myself, Grant, Tony (far right) and Andrew somehow in the center.

    This is a memorable picture and likely taken after lunch when Tony, Andrew, and I had visited a pub somewhere in the Cambridge area. I will treasure those memories of us sitting together, chatting about various work or non-work topics and enjoying a break from the office. Those chaps were some of the few that would have a pint at lunch, and I was pleased to be invited along.

    My most fond memory of Andrew was on one of the Redgate outings, where we’d taken the entire Marketing department out for a day. I happened to be in Cambridge and we visited a small printing museum in a little town, we had to draw a self portrait, and here’s my incredibly poor effort:

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    The thing that struck me from that day was how Andrew was quite the Renaissance man. He was interested in everything, how technology worked, including the old printing presses. He delved into how books used to be produced and could give me an education of some of the historical aspects of both how to bind a book as well as the history of some famous books from ancient times.

    Perhaps one of the more interesting things we discussed was life in the country. Andrew had a small farm where he raised some crops and animals. He had an old water wheel he was refurbishing that would either produce power to grind crops into flour, or it would be retrofitted to produce electricity. He explained to me how this horizontal wheel in the river would be placed to capture energy.

    Over the years we had many chances to discuss various topics. He even came to PASS a few times, one of which I captured below. That’s Andrew on the left.

     

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    Of course, there’s never enough time with friends. Andrew lived an amazing and long life, but it sadly ended before any of us who knew him expected it.

    I feel lucky that I had the moments and memories with Andrew that I did.

  • BBQ in Dallas (and a little database talk)

    Who wants to get some great BBQ in Dallas next month? Last time I was there, I went to Terry Black’s BBQ. It was amazing.

    bbq

    In just a couple of weeks the PASS Data Community Summit goes on Tour in Dallas, with 2 days of learning on Monday and Tuesday. The next day is the Redgate Software Summit, where we discuss lots of important and pertinent topics with myself, fellow advocates, and industry experts. We also have a separate track for Redgate software demos, tutorials, and presentations.

    Come join me at one or both events, and tell your co-workers. It will be a fun few days in Dallas. I don’t know if I’ll get to Terry Black’s, but I’ll be looking for some pit BBQ.

  • The Book of Redgate: Meetings

    I think we might have forgotten this a bit, but on one of the pages, we have this title: A Meeting without an Objective is a Chat.

    You can see it below, with a few funny things.

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    I don’t get too many meetings, at least not too often when I’m working remote. When I’m in the office, I’m usually there for meetings, and if I get 5, 6, or more a day, that’s fine.

    I do think that most of the meetings I’m involved in (outside of sales) are worthwhile and helpful. They tend to focus on topics or work that needs collaboration in real time. There can be a few that get scheduled and aren’t needed, but I find lots of people quick to end meetings early and not trying to draw them out for the scheduled length.

    I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.

  • Monday Monitor Tips: Searching Procedures

    A customer was asking about how to track all the stored procedures that execute on their system. We have a section in Redgate Monitor that’s set to look at stored procedures, and you can easily find information about them.

    This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts.

    Finding Stored Procedures

    If I go to the SQLServerCentral_Test system on monitor.red-gate.com, I can scroll down and see the top queries for the time period selected. Here’s an example of a query. The main query window shows SQL, but these are parts of procs.

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    If I expand to the full query, we see this is part of a proc. That’s good, in that if the query causing problems is part of a procedure, I can track that down.

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    However, what if I know people are reporting a problem that is related to this proc. Can I find it knowing the name? I can’t in the Top Queries.

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    However, we’ve added a Top procedures item to the right. That’s the place to focus on if you use stored procedures. And you should, since they create a looser coupling between your schema and the various business things your app needs to do.

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    On this test system, there are relatively few procedures running, but on many systems in production, this is a large list of things. To the right (not shown) there are various metrics that help you determine which of these items might be stressing your system because of execution counts, duration, CPU, etc.

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    If I know I have a procedure, I can search using the box. Here, I’m searching for UserA, but you might be searching for FinanceReport, hoping to find which of the FinanceReport_A, FinanceReport_B, FinanceRepot_Prep, etc. procs is using resources.

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    Expanding any of these (clicking the arrow) gives you more detail, as you would get in the Top Queries section.

    Summary

    Tracking down which queries are stressing your system and why can be hard. We added the focus on procedures as this is an easier way for some customers to determine what part of their workload is causing issues. In the top queries, sometimes procedures get lost, so this section lets you drill down into how your system is performing.

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