SQL Sins and Powershell scripts, from another lovely #SQLSatOKC

Hi-ho there, Jen the DBA here. We spent a lovely weekend in balmy (99F and 30% humidity) Moore, Oklahoma for SQL Saturday #309.

On Friday, Sean and I gave our “Become an Enterprise DBA” precon, and had dinner with the natives. Thanks again, OKC UG, for the dinner and beer! Friday night we had our regular DBAs@Midnight, titled “3 Rants”, where we talked about the new Coke* campaign, and the darn SQL whippersnappers these days, and that companies and orgs really need to STOP REBRANDING CONSTANTLY BECAUSE THAT’S A REALLY BAD IDEA. I’m looking at you, “SQLPASS-not-SQL Server“.

Ahem.

T-SQL ThrowDOWN

Saturday, we attended our very first T-SQL Throwdown, hosted as always by its creator, Hakim Ali. I had been recruited as an “Expert for Hire”, though no one wound up “hiring” me…and this was so much fun! Hakim tells the attendees to form groups of 2-4, with at least one laptop (with SQL installed) among them. Some people choose not to participate, but that’s fine, as it turns out that coding actually IS a good spectator sport.

He passed out USB sticks with the password-protected questions, and began. He revealed the password for the first question, and the teams got right to work. As a team figured out the answer, they’d come up to the front to type it in on the display. If they got it wrong, the next team in line – if there was a team in line at all – could try. The points, and the difficulty, ramped up question by question.

It was great. Some teams would get most of the way there, and fail on a typo. Others would get the answer NEARLY right, but leave out one crucial detail. Nobody was requesting expert help (it costs half the question’s points for an expert), so he made the experts free for teams that hadn’t scored yet.

After 10 questions, the winning team just barely took the lead, and took home the prizes. I was really pleased with how entertaining and engaging the whole event was. (I’m going to push him for a Celebrity Throwdown sometime…)

okcposhOur Sessions

Sean presented his RegEx for DBAs session (here’s the code) to fill in for a last minute cancellation, and then presented DIY Performance Reporting (demo code) as the last session of the day.

I presented both Code sins, and my new Powershell Cmdlets for DBAs session (download the code file here), which seemed well received.

Thanks very much, OKC, for a fantastic SQL Saturday!

Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen

 

*I don’t mean New Coke. That’s just not okay.

3 thoughts on “SQL Sins and Powershell scripts, from another lovely #SQLSatOKC

  1. Mike Skinner

    You guys are awesome. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into all you do and specifically putting so much effort into the SQL Saturday in OKC. The RegEx session that Sean gave (impromptu) was world changing for me. The T-SQL Throwdown you mention was a blast (my team was the winning team…not that I am bragging or anything cause every team was doing well in my eyes) and every session that you guys gave had a ton of tidbits beyond my expectations. So thank you guys again. Your efforts to the community are very truly appreciated.

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