November and December were a career-changing period for me; things happened that were good, but left me extremely busy at work.  I chose to spend my free time focusing on family time, and I let other things (like my blog and my contributions to the SQL Server community) slide.  Since it’s now a week into January, I thought I would start anew, and try to kick off the year on a good foot.   Instead of making specific resolutions (which I’ll probably break), let me pick a direction and head that way.

First, I want to continue to focus on my family. Last year was an amazing year for me; I got married during the summer, and I had to relearn some things about a healthy family structure.  The first rule is that it takes more than just time; it takes an effort to communicate about things, including those things that are not always easy to say.  If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know that this is my second marriage; my first marriage ended in part because I stopped participating.  Hopefully, I’ve learned from that.

However, I didn’t just bring me into this new union of souls; I have two teenage daughters that I’ve brought along with me.   They need time to get to know their new extended family as well (they now have 10 grandparents, and uncles, aunts, and cousins), and I need to make sure that I keep investing my time in them as well as my wife.   I love these three women very much, and I need to do everything I can to make sure that they know that.   I guess I’m just stating that to lay out the framework for the principles that are following.

Second, I need to focus on my new career.  I got promoted to a management position in mid-November.  I’ve worked for this company for 9 years, and although I’ve been the senior member of the development team for most of that time, this is my first management position ever; I’m now the manager of a newly-formed team of Database Administrators, which means it’s a strange new world for me.  I’ve got to learn to do things a little differently; my goal is not to solve problems, but rather to empower others to solve problems.

Third, I want to be more diligent about my contributions to the community.   This means that I need to lay out specific time for blogging, and other community activities (I’m the treasurer for AtlantaMDF, as well as the organizer for the Eleventy-First SQL Saturday).  I also need to be more focused in my activities; I’ve spent a lot of time recently on StackOverflow, and I probably need to be less obsessive about that; I need scheduled activities, not hit-or-miss.

So there you have it; my simple return to blogging and my New Year’s “resolutions” all wrapped up in a simple package.  I’m still going to have to find time to finish the last series I started, but I’m hoping to find some time in the next few days.  Take me back, just one more time. Please?

One nice thing about this topic is that it seemed to resonate with several bloggers who had either strayed away from T-SQL Tuesday or had never participated; hopefully, the bug to write will stick (and I’m pointing the finger at myself for this one as well).

Beginning at the Beginning:

Pinal Dave in his gentle teaching style covers several different questions and answers about JOIN techniques. Great way to review the basics and get conversations started with beginners.

KenJ is a bit esoteric, but a great reminder of what resources there are to learn more about SQL Server.

JOINs In The Real World:

Tracy McKibben demonstrated a very simple tuning tip based on real production experience: the Nested JOIN

Rich Brown reminds us that good query construction often involves understanding how the optimizer handles JOINs under the covers.

Andy Galbraith (Yet Another SQL Andy!) reminds us to Respect Your JOINs. It’s funny how often we assume that database queries are logically well-written when we start looking for performance problems.

Bob Pusateri points out that WHERE clauses influence JOIN behaviors. You have to look at the entire SQL statement to make sure you’re getting what you’re supposed to be getting.

Matt Nelson reminds us that unnecessary JOINs are bad, and sometimes you need to dig a little deeper when performance tuning.

A Little Deeper:

Rob Farley toasted my brain a little on this post about Joins without JOINs.  It’s a well-written explanation of what an Ant-Semi JOIN is.

Brad Schulz finished the cooking job with a take on Semi-JOINs, among other things.  Is Brad really Rob in reverse?

Muthukkumaran Kaliyamoorthy covered the internal join mechanisms, and why the optimizer chooses merge, hash, or nested loop joins.

Robert Matthew Cook has a couple of great metaphors for explaining Merge, Hash, and Nested Loop JOINs.

Wayne Sheffield pointed out some interesting syntactical ways of writing JOINs. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with some of them, but they may be of some use in certain edge scenarios. Or, if you just want to mess with the guy who reviews your code.

Richard Douglas offers up a short-but-sweet explanation of the relationship of Key Lookups to JOINs.

The Future is a Ticking Time Bomb…

Thomas Rushton points out that Denali may finally force us to clean up our code.

My Portugese is Not Up To Par…

 
Finally, Ricardo Leka wrote a post that I had to use Google Translate to interpret.  I think I lost something in  translation, because I’m not sure how the example relates to JOIN’s, but thought I would include it anyway.  http://leka.com.br/2011/10/04/t-sql-tuesday-23-joins/

Time once again for another edition of T-SQL Tuesday!  What’s that, you say?  Early?  Why yes, indeed.  Due to the potential schedule of conflict of PASS’s Summit 2011 occurring on the second Tuesday of October (the normal date for T-SQL Tuesday), I’ve gotten special permission to bump it up a week. 

To participate in this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, your post must go live between midnight UTC on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 and midnight UTC on Wednesday, October 5.

Your post needs to link back to this blog, and if you use the image, anchor it to this post.  Make sure you leave a comment or a trackback to this post (so I can find it later, when I write up the summary).

Topic d’jour?  JOINS (I’m in a fundamentals mood lately).  Note that I also like creative and esoteric posts, so if you can find a way to apply SQL as a metaphorical language for community activity, I’ll read it and enjoy it.  If you just want to tell me in a simple fashion the difference between a HASH and MERGE join, I’m cool with that, too.

Do me a favor, though, and please spread the word about the early date.  Looking forward to reading your submissions.

Another reason to celebrate?  I got accepted to speak at SQL Saturday 64 (Baton Rouge).  I’m excited to head back home for good food and good times.  I needed a little affirmation after the disappointment over Summit.

Anyway, I may not blog much in the next few weeks; please stay tuned, because good things are happening.

Here’s the rundown (copied and pasted from the original, with some notes below):

Professional

Technical Skills

• I want to learn something new every month.  My goal is to tackle something challenging, and be able to understand the ins and outs of it within 30 days.  For example, I want to finish tackling XML (including XSD’s) in SQL Server. 

I think I’m doing OK on this one; I haven’t really done great this month, but I have spent a little time each month working on something new.

• I want to upgrade my certifications by the end of the year; I’ve been dancing around the MCITP exams for a while, and I need to finish them.

Spent a little time studying, but I need to get on this.

Presentation

• I want to make at least 6 technical presentations by the end of the year; last year, I managed to eke out 8, but given some of the recent changes in my personal life (see below), I think 6 is reasonable.

I have two presentations scheduled for SQL Saturday 70 next month.

• I will blog at least once a month about some technical topic (see the first bullet point under technical skills).

See the above point; as I learn, I blog.  I did miss the T-SQL Tuesday blog for Feb (which makes me sad).

Management

• I will understand the SCRUM methodology, and learn how to implement it with my team at work.  Although I’m not a team leader, I AM the Senior Database Architect, and I need to code less, and teach more.  This is my year to do so.

I’ve done this; I’m moving on to something larger. 

Personal

Health

• I’m getting married again this year, and I want to look good for my new wife.  I also want to avoid long-term health issues.  I was losing weight last year (until I started dating), and I want to get back on track.  I’d like to lose 50 lbs by October.

Started Weight Watchers and have lost about 10 pounds so far.  Have tapered off a bit, and I need to get back on this bandwagon.

• I have apnea, and I’ve been horrible about using my CPAP on a regular basis.  I will use it regularly.

How about irregularly?

• I need to exercise more, so I will find 20 minutes a day to do SOMETHING, even if it’s just walking around the office for 20 minutes.

Blech.  I did OK for about two days.

• I will drink at least 8 glasses of water per day.

Does Diet Coke count as water?  Sigh; it looks like I’m not doing so hot in the Health area.

Spiritual

• I’ve slacked off in my religious activities; my faith was nourished by church attendance during my divorce, and I need to start growing again.  I will find a new church in the next two months (my old church is too far to drive on a regular basis), and become a regular attendee.

Checked out a church; didn’t like it.

• I choose to absorb the goodness from people who love me, and I will reject the poison from those who do not.  I will focus on the important things in life (like my kids, and my future bride), and worry less about the unimportant things (like who’s mowing the grass).

Mixed results on this; while I think I do a great job at spending time with my kids and my future bride, I’m still struggling with ways to handle conflict in a positive fashion.  My strategy now is direct confrontation, rather than continuing to tap-dance around issues.

Social

• I will listen more to my children, my family, and my friends.  I will find ways to let them know I love them.

See above.

• I will nurture my own friendships; while I love my fiance’s friends and family, I want to bring more to the table than just me.

Need to do better about this.

Financial

• My divorce pulled me way off course.  While I’m a long way from being out of debt, I will continue to make strides in that area.  I will pay off at least one credit card ahead of schedule.

Not really making a lot of headway here;  this one may have to wait until my fiancee and I combine households (thus saving on rent payments).

• I will save more; I plan to find ways to cut costs (like taking advantage of coupons, and eating out less).

Ditto.

There you have it; a mixed bag.  I think I’m making some positive steps in the right direction, but I’ve still got a long way to go.

Resources:

• My company provides me with a mid-tier (LOW mid-tier) laptop for development.  While I can load some software on it, I’d rather not load my own personal development environment onto it.  I’ve thought about virtual machines, but it’s really incapable of doing much more than it already does (SQL Server Management Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 can barely be opened at the same time).  It’s also a brick; traveling with it is NOT fun, but I have to carry it with me in case I need to securely access our network.
• I have a desktop PC that was state-of-the-art 4 years ago, running Windows XP.  I’ve loaded Win 7 onto it, and the motherboard doesn’t like it.  I mostly use this PC for some minor development work, balancing my checkbook (Quicken), and browsing the Internet or watching my SageTV recordings.
• I have a MVP MSDN subscription that I won at SQLSaturday 51 in Nashville; I know a few people were surprised that I won it (because they assumed I already had it), but I’m not an MVP (at least not an officially recognized one; see Paul Randall’s shout-out to @sqlagentman on this post.).  While I can get bits and pieces of this software to work on my home machine, I really think I’d be better off with a new environment.

Factors Influencing My Decision:

• Budget is top priority; I have limited funds for this project.  I’d like to spend less than $500 upgrading my environment.
• Mobility.  I do plan on traveling some to make presentations; the question is, how much of my development platform needs to be mobile?   Can I just get a superfast desktop, and do minor road development on my laptop?  On the other hand, I am spending a lot more time on the road between my apartment and the office (and my fiance’s house) these days; should I invest in a laptop, even if means I have to carry two laptops from place to place?

So, there you have it; resources and factors.  I’ve thought through a couple of scenarios, but I’m very open to suggestions:

1. I could make my home PC a kick-a$$ development platform for under my budget.  Not very mobile, but cheap.  A couple of parts from TigerDirect, and away I go.  I might even have enough scratch left over to invest in an Android tablet or iPad for presenting (yeah, presenting; that’s how I plan to explain it).
2. I could buy a cheap but beefy laptop and replace my home PC; not as powerful, but probably capable of doing dev work.  It’s mobile when I need it to be, but it does mean I would probably have to carry two laptops when I travel.  I’m worried that it won’t be powerful enough, but the i3 machines are pretty tasty these days.

Please feel free to leave comments with ideas; I’d love to hear some suggestions.  I’d also love to hear suggestions on 64 bit vs 32 bit (I’m assuming 64 bit); how would YOU build a cheap development platform?

Professional

Technical Skills

• I want to learn something new every month.  My goal is to tackle something challenging, and be able to understand the ins and outs of it within 30 days.  For example, I want to finish tackling XML (including XSD’s) in SQL Server.
• I want to upgrade my certifications by the end of the year; I’ve been dancing around the MCITP exams for a while, and I need to finish them.

Presentation

• I want to make at least 6 technical presentations by the end of the year; last year, I managed to eke out 8, but given some of the recent changes in my personal life (see below), I think 6 is reasonable.
• I will blog at least once a month about some technical topic (see the first bullet point under technical skills).

Management

• I will understand the SCRUM methodology, and learn how to implement it with my team at work.  Although I’m not a team leader, I AM the Senior Database Architect, and I need to code less, and teach more.  This is my year to do so.

Personal

Health

• I’m getting married again this year, and I want to look good for my new wife.  I also want to avoid long-term health issues.  I was losing weight last year (until I started dating), and I want to get back on track.  I’d like to lose 50 lbs by October.
• I have apnea, and I’ve been horrible about using my CPAP on a regular basis.  I will use it regularly.
• I need to exercise more, so I will find 20 minutes a day to do SOMETHING, even if it’s just walking around the office for 20 minutes.
• I will drink at least 8 glasses of water per day.

Spiritual

• I’ve slacked off in my religious activities; my faith was nourished by church attendance during my divorce, and I need to start growing again.  I will find a new church in the next two months (my old church is too far to drive on a regular basis), and become a regular attendee.
• I choose to absorb the goodness from people who love me, and I will reject the poison from those who do not.  I will focus on the important things in life (like my kids, and my future bride), and worry less about the unimportant things (like who’s mowing the grass).

Social

• I will listen more to my children, my family, and my friends.  I will find ways to let them know I love them.
• I will nurture my own friendships; while I love my fiance’s friends and family, I want to bring more to the table than just me.

Financial

• My divorce pulled me way off course.  While I’m a long way from being out of debt, I will continue to make strides in that area.  I will pay off at least one credit card ahead of schedule.
• I will save more; I plan to find ways to cut costs (like taking advantage of coupons, and eating out less).

Anyway, there you have it: my New Year’s resolutions for 2011.  May it be a good year for all.

So, at the first FreeCon, a bunch of writers gathered together and talked about stuff. Most of the stuff we talked about was how to be a better technical writer, as well as how to blend our writing skills with our own personal and professional goals.  We dismissed from that conference eager to write, and looking for opportunities to hone our skills; this particular series of posts was born of that collaboration, and I hope that other series will follow.  While I could list out each individual post in the Twelve Days of SQL series, it’s probably more fun to start at the beginning.  You’ll eventually get back to this one, I hope (if you don’t poke out your eyes after seeing David Stein’s Christmas ornament).

Most of the other posts have described their favorite post of the year.  Me?  I wanna go out with a bang, a celebration of those posts that we all rely on but rarely celebrate.  At the heart of the technical blogging community is, well, the technical blog post, and it’s these posts which rarely get attention.  We often celebrate those witty and well crafted posts, but we rarely celebrate the “how to do this” posts.  Sometimes these posts are little more than scripts; sometimes they’re well-crafted opera describing how to do a single thing.

Why do I sing praises of these short-but-sweet articles?  I’ll answer that in the form of a metaphor…

The Ghost of SQL Past

All blogs begin with a first post, and that first post leads to another.  Many of us that are regular (or irregular in my case) bloggers began our blogs with a few scripts and sample code.  Why?  Because it was a useful place to dump content that we wanted to remember.   Some fine examples of this are Aaron Nelson’s early posts on PowerShell and Ken Simpson’s XML to Pivot scripts.  These early works are indicators of great things to come; their blogs are littered with samples and ideas.

But good technical blogs are born not only of coding tricks; writers craft their works by expanding their repertoire beyond scripts and samples, and move on to include their observations of life.  Sometimes these observations are a bit too revealing (as in Brent Ozar’s self-professed love of amphibians); usually they are fascinating insights into the character of a person.  When Andy Leonard comments that Iteration = Maturity, he’s not just talking about software.

The Ghost of SQL Present

In recent days, newer bloggers have carried on the tradition of the technical post, but are finding ways to blend in a sense of community as well (like David Taylor’s exposition on #sqlhelp).   A quirky sense of humor works as well, as in Julie Smith’s opera of concatenation (I won’t spoil it for you, but there may be magic involved).  Successful technical blogs should be both fun to read, as well as provide some insight into how to do something.

The Ghost of SQL Future

Not much to say here, because we’re not there yet.  Hopefully, what I’ll see in the future is an evolution of what we’ve seen so far in the Past and the Present, but I hope that you’re reading this because you want to understand how to be a better blogger.   Technical blogs need technical content, but good technical blogs need a sense of whimsy, a touch of your personal style, and a nod to the community of content out there. Others have far better posts than I on that subject, but the simplest piece of advice I can give you is:

Write.

That’s it.  Write, because when you write, you force yourself to think, and thinking is the strongest tool in the toolbox for a technical person.   Believe me, I’m pointing the finger squarely at myself on this one as well; I have been far too reticent in my writing as of late, and I hope to rectify that shortly.  But back to you; next year, I hope to celebrate your writing in a similar post.  Tell me how to do something; share your experiences, and educate your peers. 

Up Next?  Steve Jones, for the cleanup!

It’s been wonderful being in a healthy relationship with someone after having lived through a unhealthy one; my fiancée’ actually LIKES me, and that’s made all the difference.   When I’m with her, I feel good about myself, and when I’m away, I can’t wait to spend time with her (hopefully, that explains my absence from blogging a bit).

However, I have kids with my ex, which means that I can’t completely break away from my past; I love my children, and in order to do what’s best for them, I’ve had to continue holding my tongue and restraining my anger when their mom and I disagree.  I would have thought that I would be a master of that by now, but it continues to be a struggle for me.  Anger is a seductive emotion, in some ways more so than love.  It’s far too easy to dwell on the hurts and pains caused by the other person, and to either lash out in revenge or obsess about the misdeeds of the other.  While both of those reactions are normal, neither of them will feed the spirit for any length of time.  So, I’m writing this post to draw a line in the sand; I refuse to live in the shadow of anger any longer.  I will not dwell on the perceived injustices caused by others, but will instead find ways to enjoy life. 

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure that I will continue to encounter situations where anger is justified (and I plan on getting angry when those times arise).  However, I refuse to continue looking for those things that offend me; I choose to live my life filled with love and laughter.  Life is too short to waste dwelling in darkness.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year; may your lives be blessed with peace, prosperity, and challenges to grow.