I’m trying out a new web site from Microsoft called Curah! that is all about curation. Curation is basically what blogging started out as. Blogs, short for Web Log, was really just a collection of links you’d visited recently and what you thought about them. But it’s grown into all manner of things, the least of which is a collection of links and what I thought about them. However, the concept of a useful set of links, why they might be useful, what you’ll find there, these concepts still have value. Hence the rise of curation. As a concept, I get it. I don’t think it deviates radically from what we do with our blogs, our resources pages (see the links above), and other similar functions. But, it is rather focused and it might lead to differences in use, derivation, direction… heck, I don’t know. It’s shiny.

My passion is of course performance and performance optimization, query tuning, execution plans, monitoring and all the rest. So, in keeping with that, I’ve started putting together some curations (is that a word, well, it is now). I’m actually using my Reference slides from some upcoming presentations as a foundation for a collection of interesting links. I’ve put together three so far. The first is all about execution plans. I think that’s a seriously decent collection of links to resources you really should be using. Yes, some of those links are to my book, but there are other resources there too. The second is to a collection of links on how to monitor and troubleshoot the relational storage engines we have available to use through Azure. No links to any of my work in that one. In fact, it’s almost all Microsoft links because they have some of the best material still. Finally, my initial experiment with Curah! was to gather together the best links I could find on sys.dm_exec_query_profiles. Don’t know what that is? Well then, this page is going to be very useful for you.

I’m not convinced this is a viable mechanism for the delivery of content superior to what we’re already delivering through our blogs and other mechanisms. For example, I’d rather direct everyone and their brother to my blog so that you see my brand and brand material (the rest of the blog) as much as humanly possible. Sending you over to Microsoft strikes me as less than effective. However, the experimentation just takes a little time and I have nothing against trying stuff out. If you can, let me know what you think. I’m curious. For example, the little pyramid up there, I think that’s bogus. Curation is a step above commenting, certainly, but it’s not above producing. Am I right?

Speaking of performance tuning, execution plans and monitoring, I’m going to be on the road a bunch in the near term. Next week is SQL Intersection where I’ll be talking execution plans and Azure monitoring. It’s not too late to register by clicking here. In May I’m going to be putting on an all day seminar on query tuning in Louisville, KY. Click here now to register. Seats are disappearing for this one. I’m also taking that same seminar to Albany NY in July. There’s an early-bird special in effect through June. Don’t wait to register. Click here.

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