Two weeks ago I attended SQLBits in London. This is probably the biggest SQL Server conference in Europe, and this time there were around 1,700 attendees in a special edition of SQLBits – the Superheroes edition.
Between the various sessions and the exhibition hall, I met a lot of people and had a great time. There was a big superheroes party on Friday evening, where everybody came in with a superhero outfit. For example:
Yes, that’s me on the right… Don’t ask me what I was wearing, because I’m not sure about it. I’m not even sure if I was a man or a woman. But I felt like a superhero, so I don’t care…
Oh, I almost forgot… I also had a session on Saturday morning about common pitfalls when analyzing execution plans. I talked about all kinds of mistakes or misunderstandings related to execution plans. For example, a common mistake that I see is that people rely on the relative cost in order to focus their tuning efforts on the most expensive operator within the plan. The pitfall that many people fall into is that the cost is always estimated, even when you look at the actual execution plan. Now, if you’re tuning the query, then there is probably a performance problem, and in many cases query performance problems are caused by a wrong estimation of the optimizer, so the estimated cost are unreliable…
I promised to put all the session materials here right after my session. It took me two weeks. Sorry about that… But it’s better late than never…
It was a very busy week, beginning with SQLRally in Copenhagen, and then SQLBits in London. I also visited Berlin with my wife the week after, and I had a really nice vacation, but that’s another story…
The post I am a Superhero appeared first on .
