Last year I wrote about why new year’s resolutions suck and why I’ll be setting myself some SMART objectives for 2016 instead. SMART objectives have the following five attributes: S pecifc M easurable A ttainable R ealistic T ime-related I’ve used SMART objectives in business because they are good for motivation and accountability. Most new year’s resolutions are broken because…
Filling big boots: I’m joining the SQL Relay team
SQL Relay means a lot to me. At SQL Bits in 2014 I was talking with Steph Locke about how I had just delivered my first technical session at a user group. She told me that I should start submitting to bigger conferences. I was nervous. I was just a sales guy from Redgate. What would experienced DBAs and developers…
GroupBy conference by Brent Ozar
I love when people challenge the status quo – and Brent has done just that with his new event: GroupBy I wrote last month about the challenges of continuing to fund free training events. Many of us love these free events but venues and travel and catering is expensive. One approach that a few people have taken is to move to…
DLM Digest issue 1 – Virtualisation
We’ve just released the inaugural Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) Digest, a monthly report of the latest developments in the world of database DevOps. You can read the full digest here. You can subscribe to future digests here. Just one email per month to keep your knowledge about all things DLM up to date. Here’s this month’s note from the editor:…
3 reasons why your business will fail if you don’t adopt DevOps for your database
If you do not adopt DevOps your business is going to fail. It is going to fail because you underestimate the cost of your slow and cumbersome IT delivery processes. Either you will realise this before your competitors, or they will realise it before you. Whoever adopts DevOps first will win. In the wise words of Ricky Bobby, “If you…
5 bold changes to support the scale problem of SQL Saturdays (and other data platform conferences)
I love SQL Saturdays. I love SQL Relay. I love user groups. Long may they continue, grow and thrive. I’ve attended as a speaker, as a sponsor, as a helper, as an attendee and as an organiser. I’ve personally benefitted significantly from my involvement in these events in each role. But in their current form they are unsustainable. They need…
T-SQL Tuesday #83 – We’re still terrible at delivering databases
This is my first contribution to the T-SQL Tuesday blog party. This month it’s hosted by the impatient DBA. The theme for this month is that we’re still dealing with the same problems. I hope you don’t all want to throw me out of the party after you finish reading… Here’s goes. *GULP* When a graduate sales guy, within a…
Three odd attitudes towards database unit testing that make me angry
Recently I’ve come across three attitudes towards unit testing database functions and stored procedures etc that I’ve found rather odd, confusing or downright infuriating. I thought I’d share the things people said and the attitudes they expressed, before explaining why they are stupid. Here goes… “The QA team write the tests” You’re doing it wrong. Developers should write their own…
Introducing DLM Consultants Part 5: DLM Bespoke Consultancy
This post is the final part of a series that introduces DLM Consultants and discusses each of the training and consulting packages that they offer: Introducing DLM Consultants Part 1: The Mission Introducing DLM Consultants Part 2: DLM Health Check Introducing DLM Consultants Part 3: DLM Workshops Introducing DLM Consultants Part 4: DLM Kick-starter Introducing DLM Consultants Part 5: DLM Bespoke Consultancy This…
Introducing DLM Consultants Part 4: DLM Kick-starter
This post is the fourth part of a five part series that introduces DLM Consultants and discusses each of the training and consulting packages that they offer: Introducing DLM Consultants Part 1: The Mission Introducing DLM Consultants Part 2: DLM Health Check Introducing DLM Consultants Part 3: DLM Workshops Introducing DLM Consultants Part 4: DLM Kick-starter Introducing DLM Consultants Part 5: DLM Bespoke Consultancy…