Here is another testimonial from a SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master who doesn’t work for Microsoft – and wasn’t paid to say all this good stuff J.  His name is Peter Fictum and he is a SQL Server Engineer at GoDaddy.com:

“I would be happy to share some of my feedback and value on the MCM SQL Program.  My experience was filled with lots of positive twists and turns.

·       Being away from home for three weeks at the campus at Microsoft rejuvenated me for my job when I returned.  It got me fired up to put to practice what I learned during the class sessions.  I couldn't wait to get back to work and start implementing to help our team.

·       The daily classes and caliber of instructors was amazing.  I was impressed with their actual hands-on knowledge of the everyday issues we face, not just text book knowledge, not just white board scribbles or PowerPoint slide decks, but information that I could actually use on a daily basis.  The instructors could relate to the challenges we face and were able to offer real-world solutions.  You get full access to all the instructor notes, decks, and scripts.  I find myself referencing them often in my day to day work.

·       The other students in class were extremely smart (part of Microsoft's process for only accepting top tier talent) and I was able to form study groups with them after class and on the weekends.  Having a group of people going through the same program together with the ability to share knowledge was a very big benefit.  Lifelong friends were made during those three weeks.

·       The exams were challenging and pushed you to study areas of SQL Server you may not typically find yourself researching on a daily basis.  Made me acquire a much deeper knowledge of SQL Server and how it works.  Because of this, I know feel like I better understand a lot of the topics and I now have a more solid foundation to quickly learn new areas of SQL Server that I didn't have before the training.

·       The labs in class were extremely challenging and gave me an opportunity to see something outside my day to day routine.

·       Being added to the MCM / MCA email distribution lists and being able to read / share expertise and experience is invaluable.

·       Words cannot describe what it feels like to be part of the top tier of SQL Server expertise / knowledge in the world and that is what the MCM SQL certification is all about.

·       I also learned not to challenge Ken Tanner to a mini-go-kart race as I will not win.  :)

·       The other thing I believe to be a real benefit actually happens after the program is complete and you can start sharing with others your new credential.  Everyone I talk to is amazed that I am a MCM on SQL 2008 and that is a good feeling.  It feels great to have worked so hard for something and then be rewarded in so many ways.

·       One night during the program I had the opportunity to meet the SQL Server Product team.  This was amazing as these are the people who actually take my feedback and roll changes directly into the product.  Definitely one of the highlights of the program for a lot of the students because we were able to meet and talk to the people who are building SQL Server and have a direct influence on future product direction.  Imagine if your favorite car was a Lamborghini and you had the opportunity to meet and talk to the people responsible for designing and building the car.  This was a very cool experience.

In summary, this was the best training I have ever received and will probably help me at least as much if not more than my 7 years of college and two degrees.  By the end of the three weeks I could barely walk back to my hotel because I was so mentally and physically exhausted...I think I crawled or carried myself...I don't remember and just wanted to rest.  :)  I loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat!

 This is not a sales pitch for the program, as I think the program sells itself; however get ready to experience something like you have never experienced before in your life.”

Thanks much to Peter for sharing his experience with the program,

Joe

I was recently asked by a potential SQL MCM candidate if we could share testimonials about the SQL Microsoft Certified Master program from non-Microsoft employees  Out of the 57 MCMs in the world, only 12 are not Microsoft employees  (by the way – the numbers on our Meet the Microsoft Certified Masters and Microsoft Certified Architects page only show SQL MCMs/MCAs that have opted-in to share their status).  Nonetheless, these folks represent 21% of an already small (but growing) community.

So after emailing a few of our non-Microsoft SQL MCMs, we got a few replies that I thought would be great to share with the world (with their permission, of course).

The following quote is from Bob Duffy, a Database Architect for Prodata.  Bob holds both the SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 versions of the Microsoft Certified Master certification, as well as being a Microsoft Certified Architect:

“I can 100% recommend the MCM programs. Three weeks to get master level content from some of the best guys in the world is awesome. It really is a chance to solidify knowledge, fill cracks, move up a notch, see different perspectives and get the top most technical certification on the planet for SQL Server. After 18 years in the database industry it was the most I have been  pushed in terms of knowledge and experiences in such a short space of time. Before the MCM I was almost coasting along on knowledge and self-improvement.

 For me there has been tremendous benefit, especially in terms of :

a)           Instant recognition, especially when dealing with Microsoft related customers and projects.

b)           Access to the MCM content and IP as it matures each release.

c)            Nearly lifetime membership to a network of elite experts  in SQL Server.

d)           Moving to the top of the pile on potential candidates for a project.

 As a side note the pressure and challenge are huge too – no one takes it in their stride without some sweat…”

Thanks much to Bob for sharing his experiences - and I'll share more testimonials over time,

Joe

The seventh SQL Microsoft Certified Masters rotation is almost finished.  It has been a jam packed 48 hours:

• A full day on the topic of SQL Security from Greg Low
• Last night we had a Meet and Greet in Building 35 - where our candidates had a chance to meet several PMs and Devs from the SQL Engine and SQL CAT team.  Fantastic showing and great conversations.
• Kalen Delaney stopped by for the final signature on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals this morning!  She mentioned that these might be the only copies with all five signatures included.  Not sure if we can pull this off for each rotation, but we'll certainly try.
• The rest of today will be about High Availability.

Now it all comes down to Saturday.  8AM they will have a two hour exam.  11AM they will start their six hour qualification lab.

Wish them luck,

Joe

We’re midway through the second week of “Rotation 7” for the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program. We tried something new for this rotation, providing a copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals for each participant. So far we’ve been able to get four signatures on everyone’s copy (Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp and Adam Machanic are instructors for the program, and Conor Cunningham was kind enough to stop by for a visit this morning.) See the photo below (notice that Adam’s signature rides the fence between attribute-centric and element-centric XML camps).

** Update! Kalen Delaney dropped by for a visit and signed everyone’s books!  Below is a photo will all five signatures.  ** 

We kicked off the seventh rotation of the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program on Monday and I have to say how impressed I am with this latest batch of 12 candidates.  The cumulative experience in the room is significant, and the intelligence and skill level is very high.  Even though we have a room full of experts, this is still a very thoughtful and humble group.  This bodes well for the next three weeks.

It is only the third day of the first week – and the journey is just beginning for them.  Over the next three weeks they’ll be getting instruction from luminaries of the SQL world – including Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Adam Machanic, Gert Drapers, and Greg Low.   

At night, they must study.  During the weekends, they must study. 

Study for what?  Three two hour “written” exams and on the last day, a six hour hands on qualification lab. 

They will get a couple of breaks.  Tonight we’re taking a trip to Seattle for a round of darts, pool and beer.  And on the last week, we’ll be taking a trip to Building 35 to meet a few members of the SQL product team. 

But what will they be doing tomorrow night, or the night after, or next Saturday night?  Studying and lab practice.  Wish them luck!

Just a heads up that if you've been on the fence about registering for the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program - you have just three more days to do so (last registration day for the October rotation is September 18th).  Remember that you'll get a $3,550 discount if you attend this year's training rotation.

 SQL MCM is indeed an investment of both time and money - so why try for it?  Here are a few good reasons that I can think of:

·       By achieving SQL MCM you validate your technical depth for the most advanced certification awarded by Microsoft and become part of a very exclusive community (less than 60 SQL 2008/2005 MCMs in the world) – allowing you to really differentiate yourself among other experienced professionals

·       Three weeks of hard core SQL Engine training delivered by top-of-the-industry instructors

·       Access to MCM community email distribution list (which you can use for questions, information sharing, product team feedback)

·       Ongoing education sessions from the SQL product team and industry experts

·       Exclusive use of MCM Logo

·       Access to SharePoint site containing community content and previous rotation documentation.

·       Increased Product team accessibility and visibility (via distribution lists, and Microsoft contacts who will help you get a response from the appropriate dev team members)

·       Welcome kit including engraved Plaque, updated MCP transcript (of course)

·       Coming soon… Public MCM/MCA Profile on Microsoft website (opt-in if you want to maintain your privacy)

·       Upgrade path for new versions of SQL Server.  For example – SQL Server 2005 MCMs do not need to re-attend the three week SQL Server 2008 MCM session.  Instead, they take a six hour qualification lab in order to upgrade their MCM version.

 So if you've been considering SQL MCM - now is the time to take the leap!  Register here.

I just posted some information on two SQL MCM Program Fee discounts available for the next SQL MCM "rotation" (coming up in October):

 SQL MCM Program Fee Discounts

If you have any questions about this - feel free to contact me directly.  Thanks,

 Joe

I downloaded the client-based version of SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online, however the installer wanted to upgrade my existing version of Books Online. Rather than do that, I'll just be using the MSDN version of SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online which you can find here.  First thing I always look for in a new BOL is the What's New section - which if you're viewing on MSDN, is found under the following branch: "SQL Server\SQL Server 2008 R2\Product Documentation\SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online\Getting Started\What's New".  Then I immediately jump to "What's New (Database Engine)" because that's what pays the bills for me.  You'll find for the that "Scalability and Performance Enhancements" and "Manageability Enhancements" have R2 feature additions - so be sure to give those sections a read.

Just a reminder that SQL-DMO will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server - so if you have an application that depends on SQL-DMO, the clock is ticking (although you have a few years to correct probably). 

Also, if you are installing SQL Server 2008 on a fresh server (no other previous versions of SQL installed) and you need SQL-DMO, you can install SQL-DMO via the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components.  Or you can also get it off of the install media under \x86\Setup\x86\SQLServer2005_BC.msi.

Building something new?  Don't use SQL-DMO - use SMO (SQL Server Management Objects) instead.

** Cross posted on The Master Blog **

We have more four more SQL Server Microsoft Certified Masters and one Microsoft Certified Architect to announce! 

First of all, please meet our new SQL Server Microsoft Certified Architect, John Hicks (using some of his self-deprecating words, not mine J):

·        John Hicks, Architect, Microsoft.  After several years of failure trying to work as a professional musician, John has had some limited success working on large database software projects. He lives in Renton, WA with his very patient wife, Anne, and three kids — all of whom hope to grow up to support their father in his dotage.  You can follow John’s blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/johnhicks.

And we also have a new batch of MCMs to announce (in alphabetical order):

·        Joe Belson, West Region Principal Consultant, Microsoft.  Joe is a Principal Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services.  He works with some of Microsoft's largest customers on some of the largest mission critical database systems around the world.  His experience focuses around VLDB, SQL Development, DBA, performance, and systems management automation.  Mr. Belson's 18 years of RDBMS experience includes RBase, DBase, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server 4.2 thru SQL Server 2008.  He enjoys spending quality time with his wife Robin of 20 years and his two wonderful teenagers.  They have a home in the US / Pacific Northwest.  He also enjoys sport motorcycling, scuba diving, and volunteer work during his spare time.

·        Jimmy May, SQL Server Senior Performance Consultant, member of the world famous Microsoft Assessment Consulting, & Engineering (A.C.E.). Jimmy is the Visionary-in-Chief of SQL Server Pros & was formerly the Senior Database Architect for one of the world’s largest, SQL Server high-throughput OLTP DBs.  He is a founder & on the executive committees of both the Indiana Windows User Group (www.iwug.net) & Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (www.indypass.org).  He is a recipient of the MS IT Gold Star award, and is collaborating with the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQL CAT) on a series of SQL best practices papers, the first of which was just published: Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server.  He is a member of the Microsoft Oracle Center of Excellence.  Jimmy lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his lovely new bride, Phyllis, & Fannie May the Wonder Dog.  Jimmy blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay and tweets at www.twitter.com/aspiringgeek.    

·        Tony Rivera, Technical Support Advisor, Dell, Inc. Tony is a support advisor specializing in complex software issues. He is an avid gamer, technology hobbyist, and full-time native Texan. Tony currently resides in the Austin area with his wife and a quartet of cats.

·        Arvind Shyamsundar, Premier Field Engineer, Microsoft. Arvind is a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft Corporation India, focused on the SQL Server Relational Engine. His specialty areas are performance troubleshooting and tuning, replication and clustering. He is a lead for the SQL Server Risk Assessment Program (SQLRAP) in Asia, and has great interest and passion around using the SQLRAP to make sure customers SQL Server environments are working to their full potential. He also developed and maintains tools for internal SQLRAP usage. From time to time he uses his prior experience as a developer to also deliver deep dive debugging sessions for ISVs. Arvind blogs at http://blogs.msdn.com/arvindsh.

Big congratulations to our new SQL MCA and MCMs!  Well done, and welcome to the community.

Good Morning,

Just a heads up that I just posted an introduction to nine out of twelve of the new MCM SQL Server 2008 candidates:

 Meet the new batch of SQL Server Microsoft Certified Masters

For those of you interested in validating your skills, pushing your technical boundaries, and getting top notch training - the next SQL MCM rotation is taking place October 5th to the 23rd.  And as of today, you can save US $3,550 on the program fee (applies to the October 2009 rotation).

Cheers

Short post with two updates today:

After many months of development, the much anticipated SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering White Paper has arrived!  You can download it here.  175 pages, so block off your calendar.

Second update, is that I'll be helping out with the SQL Microsoft Certified Masters program this next year.  I've been getting up to speed over the last two weeks, and next week I'll post an introduction of the latest group of SQL MCM graduates on the Master Blog.  My day job as a support engineer stays the same, but I'll be helping out over the nights/weekends. 

All this extra work keeps me out of trouble...

Today I found a new (for me), undocumented method for identifying the location of the SQL Error log.  I knew you could either check the registry or use SQL Server Configuration Manager and the "startup parameters" option.  I ran SQL Profiler while opening up a SQL Error log in SQL Server Management Studio and found that SERVERPROPERTY has an option called 'ErrorLogFileName', as demonstrated here:

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ErrorLogFileName')

Again - you won't find it in Books Online, so it is officially undocumented with all the risks that implies - but useful for large environments where you're not always sure where the error logs reside and need to collect them directly for root cause analysis.

The new SQL Server Premier Field Engineer Blog is now launched!  It will start off small, but hopefully we'll be able to get many of my team members to contribute on a frequent basis.  They have so much experience to share, and after prompting from Adam Machanic, I realized that it would indeed be a great idea to get something like this going.  Stay tuned for interesting and engaging content.