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One of the greatest things that has arisen in the past 10 years or so is a veritable stream of great conferences for people to learn how to write better software, many of them low cost or even free. In the Data Platform community, we have had nearly 800 free SQL Saturday events around the world in that time. Add to this far more local meetups, and then many other small, medium and large conferences, and it isn’t unlikely that there have been nearly 10000 sessions presented just on the topic of the SQL Server product alone.

One thing that these events share, is that the speakers are human beings who want to do a great job. Sometimes, they do, sometimes they don’t. As a reader of this blog, I expect that you have probably been to at least one event during the past year (and if you haven’t, much of what I am going to say pertains to blog comments…hint, hint!). As you sat down to hear someone teach you about a topic, you were usually handed a sheet of paper that was titled: “Session Evaluation”, with at least one row of boxes to check how you felt the session went.

As a frequent speaker, and a bit of a sensitive person, one of my absolute least favorite things in the world is receiving this feedback. This may sound like I generally get bad feedback, but that is not the problem (I am usually a bit over average). The problem is that even when I get 90% perfect scores, there are going to be a few bits of feedback that makes me mad. For example, something like the following:

What did I do wrong that this person felt the need to give me a below average score? What can I improve so that the next group of people I present to will get something better? Was it for something that was in our out of my control, or can I fix it? So many questions!

While the lack of a written comment makes the ranking of 2 hurtful and not helpful, sometimes the comments indicate something that range from confusion as to how I, as a speaker can fix it, or rage that a person could be so shallow or offensive. Examples taken from aggregates of real feedback I have seen, both to me and to other people:

• Room was too hot
• Room was too cold
• Screen was too small
• Chair was uncomfortable
• I don’t like the speaker’s choice of shirt
• Was in the wrong session. Didn’t learn what I expected.
• Too basic – I already knew this stuff
• Something super offensive
• So much information, I would need to go back and read the materials again to understand the topic in detail

For some conferences, the scores are used for future speaking possibilities, which I may now lose because “the room was not comfortable?” The last one was kind of the most interesting feedback I have received ever… I never considered that the attendee would be able to comprehend a subject so well in 60 minutes that they wouldn’t need to do any further reading on the topic. And I am guilty as charged with providing extra information in the downloads of my session.

My challenge to you today is to realize that most speakers care about your comments and take them to heart. Do your best to make your feedback actionable, not just insults. And give as much feedback as you can, it will almost certainly be appreciated by the speaker. Sometimes a session just doesn’t work one day, and the feedback will help make that clear. Sometimes, I find that I don’t love a lot of sessions that other people do love, so maybe the session just didn’t suit your fancy for some reason.

Constructive negative feedback such as the following, is very much appreciated, and has helped make me better over the years:

• Didn’t leave time for questions between topics. Was feeling lost.
• Please don’t move the laser pointer around like we are cats. Keep it still and pointed at the thing you are highlighting.
• Relax, the audience is your friend
• Cover the real-life applications of the topic first
• Way too much to try to cover in 1 hour

The primary thing to understand is that speakers love to hear what they could do better from the people who attended the session. If that feedback is not above average, then make it clear why you felt that way. If everyone filled out the session evaluations with at least two sentences of feedback, the quality of presentations would skyrocket in no time.

Of course, while negative, constructive feedback is most helpful, getting positive feedback is essential too. If 100 people are in a room, and 10 people return evaluations, 2 of them negative, as a speaker, this makes me feel like there were 20 people in the room that didn’t like the session. Maybe more. So (and I am preaching to myself here too,) fill in those session evaluations! Seeing 4’s and 5’s makes one happy, but seeing actual words saying, “Thanks for teaching me something!” is priceless. Just knowing that someone loved it enough to scribble a nice remark makes the hours of preparation, expenses of travel, and time not spent in another session learning something yourself, worth it.

Louis Davidson (@drsql) from SQLServerCentral.com

» Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. These headlines are gathered throughout the week and are posted in real time at the website. Check there for information throughout the week or enjoy this weekly summary of the SQL Server world.

Webinars

Double Win- Watch DeWitt and Help SQLSoldier's Loved Ones! - Brent Ozar (blog/@BrentO) is sponsoring a special webcast in a couple weeks, with an amazing presenter:https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/06/announcing-a-very-special-sqlfamily-webcast-with-dr-david-dewitt/The webcast (“SQL Query Optimization. Why ......(more)

Extending DevOps to the database: release management - Microsoft MVP Steve Jones and Redgate’s Arneh Eskandari show how Redgate’s Database DevOps solution works to improve your database development and deployment processes. You'll see a demo of tools from Redgate's SQL Toolbelt and see how they plug into your usual technology stack. There will also be plenty of time to ask Steve and Arneh questions....(more)

Vendors/3rd Party Products

SQL Prompt Hidden Gems: The SSMS Results Pane - Louis Davidson explores the hidden treasures within SQL Prompt right-click context menu when working in the SSMS grid format results pane....(more)

Finding code smells using SQL Prompt: Asterisk in SELECT list - An article from Phil Factor on finding code smells using SQL Prompt: Asterisk in SELECT list ...(more)

T-SQL

Quick and dirty: How to right-align numeric columns in SSMS - Here are 50 random numbers: --- 50 random numbers WITH cte AS ( SELECT 0 AS i, 100000.*POWER(RAND(CHECKSUM(NEWID())), 3) AS n UNION ALL SELECT i+1, 100000.*POWER(RAND(CHECKSUM(NEWID())), 3) FROM cte WHERE i(more)

Tech News

Amazon’s Clever Machines Are Moving From the Warehouse to Headquarters - The people who command six-figure salaries to negotiate multimillion-dollar deals with major brands are being replaced by software that predicts what shoppers want and how much to charge for it. Amazon’s algorithms, refined through years of monitoring ......(more)

Net Neutrality Rules Expire as Backers Turn to Congress, Courts - The Obama-era net neutrality regulations that barred broadband providers from slowing or blocking internet traffic expired Monday, a major milestone in a debate that continues in the courts and Congress as Democrats press to restore the rules. ...(more)

Rackspace Launches Data Center Colocation Service - Pitches space, power, network in 10 locations as “bridge” to cloud. Rackspace has launched a data center colocation business, offering space, power, and network connectivity for customers’ own hardware in 10 locations around the world. ...(more)

SQL Server Security

How to get started with Always Encrypted for Beginners Part 4: Change is Coming - A few weeks ago, I wrote Part 1, 2 and 3 of this series, which was a beginner’s guide to Always Encrypted. In part 4, I am going to talk about the changes that are coming in vNext of SQL Server. As I discussed in part 3 there are many roads blocks the can stop the implementation of Always Encrypted (AE). In the current available versions of SQL Server 2016 and 2017, along with Azure SQL Database, the cost of using AE was way too high for many companies....(more)

Security news and thoughts

If You’re A Facebook User, You’re Also a Research Subject - The company’s long been conflicted about how to work with social scientists, and now runs several programs, each reflecting the contorted relationship Facebook has with external scrutiny. ...(more)

Detecting Data Breaches - Data breaches make the news on an almost daily basis. There is no turning back, however, as we are firmly entrenched in this digital way of life. Brian Kelley discusses some of the reasons data breaches occur and what we can do to prevent them....(more)

R Language

Detecting unconscious bias in models, with R - There's growing awareness that the data we collect, and in particular the variables we include as factors in our predictive models, can lead to unwanted bias in outcomes: from loan applications, to law enforcement, and in many other areas. In some instances, ......(more)

PowerShell

PowerShell Script Analyzer 1.17.1 Released! - Summary: A new version of PSScriptAnalyzer is now available with many new features, rules, fixes and improvements. You might remember me from my previous cross-platform remoting blog post, but just to introduce myself: I am Christoph Bergmeister, a full ......(more)

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

Line Breaks And Auto-Indent In The Power BI DAX Formula Bar - The other day I discovered something new (at least to me) while writing the DAX for a measure in Power BI Desktop: when you insert a new line in your DAX expression using SHIFT-ENTER it also auto-indents the code. I asked a few people if this was new ......(more)

Power BI Tutorial | From Flat File To Data Model - In this Power BI Tutorial, Patrick looks at how to load data from a flat file to the data model. This could be a text, csv or excel file with a lot of columns. Don't just pull it into Power BI. Take time to structure your data in your data model. From ......(more)

Power BI BlackJack, World Cup 2018 and Power BI updates… (June 11, 2018) - Fun with DAX – Blackjack Game (@philseamark) Follow the World Cup 2018 in Power BI (@CurbalEN) Subscribe others to email subscriptions in Power BI Power BI Desktop June Feature Summary Power BI Service and Mobile May Feature Summary BONUS ITEMS: Updating ......(more)

Performance Tuning SQL Server

Why aren’t you using Query Store? - Way back in 2016 I wrote a post trying to find out why people were not using Extended Events.  See, I really like Extended Events, and I’d been presenting on the topic for several years, but I kept running into people who wouldn’t even try XE.  There ......(more)

Plan Metrics Without the Plan: Trace Flag 7412 - I place a lot of emphasis on capturing actual execution plans because of the runtime metrics, but with Trace Flag 7412, we don’t need the plan. This is great news, because capturing execution plans, even using extended events, is an expensive proposition. ...(more)

NoSQL

The State of NoSQL Databases in 2018: Is NoSQL Usage No Longer Cool? - The buzz around NoSQL databases has quieted. Does that mean NoSQL usage is waning, or that NoSQL has become such a part of the IT landscape that we almost don't notice it anymore? ...(more)

ETL/SSIS/ELT

Executing ssisUnit tests in MSTest framework - One of the drawbacks of ssisUnit is that it has only its own test runner. You can run the tests either using GUI or the console application, but the output is not that easy to parse and to present on the report. I’m used to working with Pester output ......(more)

Run a PowerShell Script from SSIS - It can be confusing to know which tool in the SSIS toolbox to use when trying to execute a PowerShell script from within SSIS. The best task to use is an Execute Process Task. Under General you can give it a name and a description....(more)

Using SSIS to Stage JSON in SQL Server Tables - Last month I started wrangling with JSON in SSIS and discussed how to download JSON files and store them as flat files. Now I want to move that data into staging tables in SQL Server. My general philosophy about staging tables is to move the data into ......(more)

Database Design, Theory and Development

Foreign Keys Part 1: Understanding the Fundamentals - Note: This is the first part of a two-part re-write of several earlier posts, to bring them into line with McGoveran's formalization and re-interpretation of Codd's true RDM, which includes his own corrections, refinements and extensions[1]. For a more ......(more)

Design Thinking Data Models - I seriously believe, and I also know from professional experiences that Design Thinking is the secret sauce for creating high quality Data Models. This sounds contra intuitive, so we will have to do ......(more)

Data Privacy and GDPR

Infographic: 55 Things You Need to Know About GDPR - The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect last month, and ___ has created an infographic covering 55 things data handlers should know about GDPR. The infographic was created by Betipy. According to the company, “There ......(more)

Welcome to the new world of curating data, not owning it - In this article Richard Macaskill explores how to more accurately classify, map, tag or catalog data in order to support automated behaviors, simplify decisions, and tell others how we are handling precious assets....(more)

Big Data

Including File Properties and Metadata in a U-SQL Script - When working on big data systems, it can be very helpful to include file properties and other metadata directly within the data results. Capturing data lineage can come in very handy, especially if reconciling or troubleshooting issues (for instance, ......(more)

Azure SQL Database

Moving to Azure: A change in processes – TSQL Tuesday 103 - For this month’s t-sql Tuesday our host Bjoern Peters (b/t) wants us to describe our experiences with Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance. Well, unfortunately, although I am very excited about it, I don’t have access to Azure SQL Managed ......(more)

Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Data Lake

Azure Data Lake Analytics and U-SQL Spring 2018 Updates: Parquet support, small files, dynamic output, fast file sets, and much more! - Hello Azure Data Lake and U-SQL fans and followers. It is high time for the release notes for all the cool features we released over the winter as well as listing all the pending deprecation items and breaking changes. There was so much cool new stuff that it took me several weeks to write the release notes (on top of my day job!) that the next release will probably already be out by the time you read this! I promise that the June release notes will come sooner! :). Without further ado, here are the Spring 2018 Updates for Azure Data Lake U-SQL and Developer Tooling!...(more)

Azure CosmosDB

Azure Cosmos DB vs. SQL Server: Scalability Differences - Azure Cosmos DB introduces career- and technical-related questions for traditional DBAs; how it handles scalability, by scaling out rather than up, distinguishes it from SQL Server. ...(more)

Understanding Cosmos DB - Cosmos DB is an awesome product that is mainly used for large-scale OLTP solutions.  Any web, mobile, gaming, and IoT application that needs to handle massive amounts of data, reads, and writes at a globally distributed scale with near-real response ......(more)

AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services

Getting Back to the Basics: What is Machine Learning? - Click to learn more about author Seth Deland. Machine Learning seems to be the engineering industry’s latest buzzword – a technology with astonishing potential, yet one that many businesses struggle to understand, let alone embrace.  Just last year, ......(more)

Case Study: Artificial Intelligence Helps Bike Share Programs Get Smart - The North American Bikeshare Association (NABSA) reports that there were 50,000 bike share bicycles in the U.S. as of 2016, an increase of 30,000 bikes since 2012. Those bikes made 28 million trips in 2016, a 25 percent increase over 2015, and as of ......(more)

Administration of SQL Server

SQL Server -Database Backup Report using PowerShell and T-SQL - In the previous articles, we discussed several ways of taking backup and testing the restore process to ensure the integrity of the backup file. In this article, we’re going to discuss the importance of the database backup reporting. This kind of reporting ......(more)

File Growth Rate – The GUI Lies - If you are like me, you use the SSMS GUI for various things.  Though, I tend to use scripts for the management of most things, I do check on the database growth rates of files using the GUI interface. While I was recently,  doing a review of a client’s ......(more)

Is that share using SMBv1? - Sharing is caring, unless the share is using SMBv1. In case you’ve missed it (though, if you’re a data professional or other IT pro, you must live under a rock if you’ve missed it), SMBv1 should never ever be used. Alas, some shares out there still exist ......(more)

Two Types of Performance Counters - I had an issue where an instance of SQL Server was only showing the XTP (In Memory) performance counters. None of the other SQL Server counters were available, so I followed the procedure I’d written about previously. Once that was completed, I restarted ......(more)

Changing the Collation of the Instance, the Databases, and All Columns in All User Databases: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? - Demystifying What “sqlservr -q” Actually Does (last updated on 2018-06-12) For various reasons, people sometimes find themselves in the unfortunate (and unenviable) situation of having an Instance of SQL Server configured with the wrong Collation. This ......(more)