What do computer guys do with their weekend?

...they go to Wagga Wagga of course!

I spent this past weekend at Charles Sturt University in the country NSW town of Wagga Wagga (which I found out means "Land of many crows in the Australian Aboriginal language).  The reason for this trip was to attend the annual SQL Server Code Camp which is run by the Australian SQL Server users group. 

This was the second year that this event was run and once again I'm really happy that I attended.  The weekend was dedicated to learning more about SQL Server and featured many sessions dedicated to the new features that will appear in the next version of SQL Server that is scheduled for release sometime next year. 

The quality of the speakers at this event ranged from exceptional to one or two that were dull, dry and pretty much charisma dead.  Some people just have no ability as teachers.  SQL gurus yes, teachers - no.  Overall though, it was a great event and I met a lot of great people who really knew their stuff.  Each year there seems to be a guest speaker.  Last year's guest speaker was none other than black belt SQL author Itzik Ben-Gan.  Itzik gave some fantastic talks about query performance tuning and had the entire audience captivated.  I was fortunate enough to spend about half and hour alone with Itzik after his session for a bit of one-on-one Q&A time.  Itzik looked over some of the database queries that make up the "office hours" code that runs inside HelpMaster Pro.  It was reassuring to have one of the true gurus of the industry look over this particular piece of (very tricky) SQL code and not say something like "What on earth were you thinking!!?".  

Thanks Itzik - that half an hour was gold.  I learnt so much just by watching you systematically work your way through a query tuning process.

This year's guest speaker was Kevin Kline from Quest Software.  Let me just say that if you ever need a someone to tune your computer hardware for maximum database speed, Kevin's your man.  He really knows how to get SQL Server performing and he's literally written the book on it!   He delivered a great talk entitled "Bare Metal Tuning" which examined the art of database performance benchmarking and the methodology that companies (read Oracle vs Microsoft vs IBM) use to show that their database platform is the quickest.  I guess any database system would be quick if it had over 900 hard drives, more system memory than a freight train of RAM sticks, and enough parallel processing power to make the SETI@home project look like a solar-powered calculator.  I had no idea that performance benchmarking was carried out on such unrealistic hardware specifications.  For full details, you can download the system configuration disclaimers that the benchmarking was performed on via the TPC website.  (900+ hard drives on one machine!!???)

.....meanwhile back on Earth.....

By the way, if you're running a SQL Server database and have the data files (.mdf) on the same hard-drive spindle as your transaction log (.ldf), move your log files off this drive right now - you'll instantly get a significant performance boost.  For more information about this, visit sql-server-performance.com  It's amazing what you can discover over a few beers with Kevin!

Overall the event was highly educational and highly recommended.  I'll definitely be back next year.  I picked up a lot of usefulinformation that I plan to incorporate into the future development of HelpMaster Pro, and I look forward to downloading the latest CTP of SQL Server when it's released in the coming weeks.

Big thanks to Greg Low for organizing the event again and Microsoft for the pizzas and coke (how do they know that developers like this stuff for lunch?).

This weekend I might play some tennis instead.... ;-)