Leaving (or minimizing) Twitter

Andy Levy

Fairly short post here. Due to the recent events around Twitter (which I will not get into), I’m making an effort to reduce or completely cease my activity on that platform. My Contact page has been updated with all of the below accounts/sites.

Community Tools Month 2022 - dbatools

Andy Levy

The Prompt

In July, Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) asked us to make September Community Tools Awareness Month.

In September, I want you to improve community knowledge about one free tool that you rely on every week in order to get your job done.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, but I’m going to select the amazing PowerShell module dbatools.

dbatools Is for Everyone

Despite what the name may imply, dbatools is a valuable toolkit for anyone who needs to interact with SQL Server. It’s not just about upgrades and migrations anymore. I like to tell people it’ll make them look like a wizard to their colleagues because of how quickly things can get done with just a few commands.

Meetings Are Work Too

Andy Levy

So Many Meetings

I’ve said it. We’ve all said it.

I can’t get any work done today, I’ve got so many meetings.

I need to be reminded on occasion that for most of us, the meetings are work too. They are part of the job and we need to think of them as such.

But I get it. I’m a technical professional. If you’re reading this blog, you probably are too. We feel “productive” when we’re actually putting fingers to keyboard, marker to whiteboard, “making stuff.” Being in meetings doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything to move things forward.

T-SQL Tuesday 153: The Conference Changed Everything For Me

Andy Levy

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month, and this month Kevin Kline (blog | twitter) asks us to talk about an IT conference that resulted in a major opportunity.

Tell us the story of how attending an IT conference or event resulted in an amazing career or life opportunity.

T-SQL Tuesday Logo

It will be a common refrain in this community, but I’m going to pick a PASS Summit. But not my first one.

Why You (usually) Want a Clustered Index

Andy Levy

Note: I originally wrote this a few years ago but never posted it. It resurfaced when I migrated the blog so it’s being posted now.

After watching Kevin Kline’s (blog | twitter) webinar Essential Tasks to a Successful Cloud Migration, I downloaded the T-SQL scripts to run them against some of my databases. One of the included queries identifies tables with forwarded fetches and right on top of the list was a table with over 1.6 billion forwarded fetches in the roughly 3 weeks since the instance was last restarted.

Blog Changes Coming

Andy Levy

Over the next couple days (weeks?), a significant change is coming to my blog (and if you’re reading this text, it’s already happened). I will be leaving Wordpress behind and my current hosting. Replacing it will be an all-new site hosted on Azure Static Sites, with the content written in Markdown and pages generated via the Hugo static site generator.