This is probably a topic near and dear to the hearts of Grant, Brent, Paul #2 (White), and plenty other more well known speakers in the #sqlfamily community that often present on the topic of writing more efficient code. They do a fantastic job and if you get the chance to see any of these three, take it.
Recently I saw someone on Twitter ask for more query tuning sessions at SQL Saturday and larger conferences. These seem to be very popular sessions, usually well very attended. Despite this, I don’t see a lot of these sessions compared to the popularity. I sometimes wonder if this is because relatively few speakers want to tackle complex challenges? Or maybe many don’t feel confident portraying themselves as experts in this subject? Is query tuning 101, or even 201, boring and less interesting for speakers?
I don’t know, and I’ve avoided the topic myself. Part of this is to not conflict with friends, but also it’s a complex topic to try and cover. Despite that, I keep thinking that some more basic concepts would be welcome by many that attend SQL Saturday events. I expect that a there could probably be some sort of performance or tuning talk every hour at a conference and plenty of people would attend. That makes me think I ought to do a tuning session of some sort, just to help ensure this topis is covered more often.
Picking a mix of topics and levels is often a difficult task for many organizers. As this year’s Summit sessions were released, I’ve seen a number of speakers bemoan that their favorite topic has few, often just one or two, talks scheduled. I think this is somewhat inevitable as new technologies get folded into the Microsoft Data Platform. I know that many of us are excited about one thing, the item that we use most often, or that we’d like to use more. I think the addition of Python is great, but it’s a small part of the platform, it’s new, and I don’t know how many other people want to use it. The same thing could be said for containers, for Query Store, and more.
Building a schedule for a conference is about making choices and decisions that give a variety of topics, but also include some depth and detail in those areas that are popular. If you’re attending (or attended) a conference this year, the Summit, SQL Bits, a SQL Saturday, etc., what do you want to see on the program? Should there be more performance tuning sessions or do you like a wide variety of topics that let you choose what might suit you?
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcast
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Voice of the DBA 