December 27, 2013 at 8:51 am
Doing my first community level presentation at SQL Saturday Dallas. Being very nervous about how it would go, and then being very relieved that I didn't completely goof up, and finally being happy that the audience really liked it.
Hakim Ali
www.sqlzen.com
December 27, 2013 at 8:54 am
Best: Standing up a soup-to-nuts ETL process (package templates, logging, auditing, master-child execution arrangement, etc) for a proof-of-concept SSAS cube.
Most memorable: The Production server failing, and finding out the backup server was not ready for failover (drivers missing, etc). Longest night of my professional life.
December 27, 2013 at 9:06 am
1. Attending first SQL Saturday in DC.
2. Watching people stare in shock when Grant Fritchey (Carlos Chacon was doing the presentation, Grant was in the second row) read an excerpt from his own book on Execution plans at that SQL Saturday and quipped "What moron wrote this?" Utterly priceless.
3. Releasing to production a SQL Server based solution that centralized data we use to bill customers. This data comprises one of the biggest if not the biggest revenue stream for our unit and was previously kept in 40-odd separate spreadsheets (don't ask - it's a long story). I also connected the data to an Excel file with several pivot tables so supervisors and management have pretty much real-time summaries of their data - something they've never had before. It's way too much fun hearing people say, "WOW, this is cool!"
____________
Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
December 27, 2013 at 9:21 am
Getting sucked into the supporting the other SW our company produces and the hosted servers we have. From there I looked at the disarray that existed.
I setup an automated backup that changed recovery from days to minutes.
I cut down the upgrade process on over a hundred hosted server from weeks to days.
We now get daily reports on whether the servers are up.
The number of minor calls for server issues has dropped dramatically.
And now the rest of the team has gone from "WOW! That's cool." to "What did you come up with now."
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
December 27, 2013 at 9:24 am
Best SQL Server memory? 72 GB of RAM courtesy of our systems dept. 🙂
-------------------
A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html
December 27, 2013 at 9:31 am
There's been so much this year, I really can't decide out of three big ones:
1. Moving a production system to Azure with AlwaysOn, first steps into the cloud
2. Being solely responsible for the hiring and interviewing of my first member of staff to work under me, of which I was lucky enough to find someone very good
3. Completely redesign an existing database, I mean, how often do we get to do that??!
I think I've been pretty lucky this year, not that any of this was handed to me, and it's certainly not all roses doing what I do.
December 27, 2013 at 9:50 am
Steve,
The most rewarding was to write an ETL package using MS SSIS against three or the the logging databases I have developed in the areas of role based security and storing the data in a mart. This was particularly enjoyable because I finally got permission to move to Office 2010 and install PowerPivot. FYI - In state government things some of the time move rather slowly. By marting the data and then importing it into Power Pivot I have been able to start looking at the trends of many of our outward facing applications. Soon using some of the metrics gleaned from this type of data we can better understand frequency of use, if we are reaching the intended community, peak periods etc.
It is kind of cool, and shows that more will be coming as time allows.
M...
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
December 27, 2013 at 10:00 am
FYI - In state government things some of the time move rather slowly.
Miles,
I work in State government as well and we just got PowerPivot approved for use AND just got office 2010 (not everyone has it yet, but I keep preaching to users about how cool it is so hopefully they'll all get it soon).
Some of our business users that do a large amount of data analysis (financial/budget stuff) have been impressed with the demos they have seen of using PowerQuery/PowerPivot with some of the data marts. It's just taking a long time to get them to adopt the "change" of connecting to the data source instead of copying/pasting from a CSV file that's dumped for them.
Joseph
December 27, 2013 at 10:06 am
joseph_c (12/27/2013)
FYI - In state government things some of the time move rather slowly.
It's just taking a long time to get them to adopt the "change" ...
Joseph
Joseph this is so true, change comes slowly and people want to hold the data in their hands and make custom "corrections" etc... It is hard but once they are see the data in various visualizations they are led by interest and fascination into better understanding and using such tools. We are just on the threshold, but some eyes are already beginning to sparkle.
M...
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
December 27, 2013 at 10:31 am
My favorite SQL happening of the year is the job I've had since January, and how SQL Server and SSIS have enabled me to make an impact at my new company, with the added bonuses of recognition and job satisfaction.
I’ve used SSIS to automate many of the regular reporting functions that have been done manually using SSMS and Excel, and my resulting contribution to the department’s efficiency has been noted frequently as adding great value. At a division meeting summarizing the year, my senior manager listed one of my projects among our team’s best accomplishments of the year – a monthly report that used to require 30 to 40 man-hours, half a ream of paper (!) and multiple manual data entry and copy-and-paste steps in the production process, but now runs at the click of a mouse in just under 2 minutes.
- Adam
December 28, 2013 at 8:58 am
For me it was a SQL Saturday. At least I believe that happened in 2013. Anyway, it was a great learning experience!
Rod
December 28, 2013 at 1:50 pm
My favorite memory for 2013 was my first ever presentation at SQLSaturday in Lisbon.
Although I only in participated in Lightning talks, the efforts and nerves it took to assemble the content, it generated a huge energy boost.
Followed by my first full hour session at SQLSaturday Holland and another in Germany at SQLSaturday Rheinland.
I learned so much preparing it all and got energizing feedback.
Johan
Learn to play, play to learn !
Dont drive faster than your guardian angel can fly ...
but keeping both feet on the ground wont get you anywhere :w00t:
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press F1 for solution, press shift+F1 for urgent solution 😀
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December 29, 2013 at 9:10 am
I was thinking hard about a SQL memory from 2013 that was worthy of mention. I had that happen Friday night. I have been tutoring a 10 yr old in I.T. and programming. It was supposed to be fairly simple introductory topics. We started off slow in September but she was bored pretty quickly. I stepped it up a bit and introduced binary and hexadecimal arithmetic. I was surpised when she caught on to the concept of 1's & 0's representing stored data within two sessions. Each session is 1 1/2 hours.
In November she wanted to learn real programming. Her teacher wanted her to learn VB. So, I had her download the express products for VB.NET and SQL Server. In three sessions we put together a program to enter data from a collection of dolls she and her mother has. She did all of the work as I walked her through it.
Friday night I had coffee with the family to go over what we will cover starting in January. After we were finished with the coffee, my student brought out her laptop. She showed me a new program she wrote from scratch. Her school is still tracking data from their hot lunch program on paper. She wrote a program to do that. I was elated that she had accomplished this on her own. The program and database need some tweaking and we will go over SSRS to provide reports. That will be our January work. At 10 years of age, she is already a database developer! Her dad said that I beamed like a proud papa. I guess I did.
I ask her how she got some of the concepts we haven't talked about, yet. She said she took my advice and used Google to learn more. She studied the Microsoft walkthroughs.
This is my best SQL memory from 2013. 😀
Tom
December 30, 2013 at 2:58 am
Best SQL Server memory was related to resolving regular space issues in one of our production environment where we have multiple instances hosted(16). With scripts related to sytem tables, DMV's and cute baby default trace, we were able to resolve almost everything and got the server to a stabilized state till now and client was very much happy with the way things worked out. :cool:.
December 30, 2013 at 4:09 am
Nottingham - being mistaken for one of the entertainment crew. Making holes in the lawn with Hugo K and hearing his MERGE talk. Hearing most of Grant Fritchey's talk and saying Hi afterwards (wish I'd brought my books along to sign).
Finding a local user group - Maidenhead.
First opportunity to work with SSRS.
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