Nick Holmes a Court

Top 9 SQL Server Queries you need to know to manage a large high performance database

2012-01-29T22:13:00.004+11:00

Having worked with terabyte databases in SQL Server for over 5 years i thought i would share the top 9 queries i use to manage my databases / datawarehouses.

1. View longest running queries - [_DBA_Queries_LongestRunning]
Shows which queries since the last SQL restart have taken the longest time to execute. Also shows number of times the query has been run and average execution time.

2. View queries with greatest IO impact - [_DBA_Queries_MostIO]
Shows which queries since the last SQL restart have used the greatest IO. Also shows number of times the query has been run and average execution time.

3. View blocking transactions - [_DBA_ViewBlockingTransactions]
Views which queries are currently running that are blocking other queries. Shows the Query SQL and the ID of the processes so you can KILL [ID] any naughty queries that may be screwing with your DB performance.

4. View currently running queries - [_DBA_ViewCurrentlyRunningQueries]
View which queries are active in the system. Very useful if you are curious what queries are active and shows which user is running each query.

5. View Index Fragmentation [_DBA_IndexFragmentation]
Shows how fragmented current indexes are by percentage as well as how frequently they are used.

6. Rebuild Indexes - [_DBA_Indexes_RebuildFragmentedIndex]
Run a task that rebuilds/reoptimises indexes in the most effecient manner possible. Rebuilds worst performing indexes first. Takes 20-50% of the time to run as the built-in maintenance task for reindexing.

7. Show missing Indexes - [_DBA_Indexes_FindMissing]
If you have multiple users/applications you may have queries that you are unaware need to be optimised. Its also useful to see if you have accidentally defined an index incorrectly (eg missing a column that is needed)

8. View datafile usage - [_DBA_ViewDBFileUsage]
Shows which files your database is using and how much space they are using on disk as well as how much free space may be in the file. Very useful to check if you can shrink your files.

9. Shrink datafiles in chunks - [_DBA_ShrinkFilesInChunks]
If you have a large database and clean up a big block of data, you will want to shrink the files on the filesystem. The built in SQL task that does this, may takes hours or even days to run (with no visibility on progress) and will impact database performance in the meantime. This script shrinks the datafile in chunks so you can see visibility and run small shrinks over several days

What queries have you used that have been helpful? Any comments feel free to share.

Elevator pitch's for A Players...

2012-01-19T00:08:00.001+11:00

How to create a great elevator pitch?

- What we are doing?-
- Why its unique, interesting or valuable?
- Why you should care...

I really wish i had recorded my early elevator pitches for BuzzNumbers. As i indulge in recollection of past events, my first investor pitch took 10 minutes to complete. Rushing forward to today, i've pitched thousands of times over to associates, clients, investors etc. It now feels so natural to give an elevator pitch in less than 60 seconds that i had kind of forgotten that i even had to try to hone the perfect "elevator pitch".

I've recently been working with StartMate and internal teams at BuzzNumbers for new products we are bringing to market this year and the concept of elevator pitch has come up a few times this week and spurred me to think about this again.

As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has seen thousands of pitches, i have formed an opinion on what makes a good pitch that works for me on both sides of the table and i wanted to share my experience.

The key things i think you need to cover in your pitch is

- What problem do you solve?
- What traction/milestones you have that achieved to prove you are solving this problem
- What you want from the person you are speaking to? (Your "ask")

So with renewed focus, i though perhaps to deliver my Elevator pitch as see it today for BuzzNumbers...

Version 1

BuzzNumbers helps businesses track, measure and understand what people are saying online and on social media about their company, people, products and competitors.

Our world-class social media analytics platform has best in breed and patent pending realtime monitoring of News, Blogs, Forums, Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as Video, Classifieds like Craigslist and Ebay and even BitTorrent networks.

Our company was founded in 2009 and is now trusted and used daily by over 150 global fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, AMP, BHP, Astra-Zeneca, EarthHour and multiple Government Agencies and our company is growing exponentially at over XX% per month.

It would be great to get your contact details if that is ok. Do you have a business card so i can send you some information to see if this is of interest?

After reflecting on this <1min pitch, which i use frequently, i realised it is objectively perhaps longer than what is necessary to cement interest and get the business card.

So i cut it down to something shorter

Version 2

BuzzNumbers helps companies track what people are saying about them online.

Our customers use this information to get market research and consumer insights in near real-time, something that was never possible before our patent pending Software as a Service was created.

We founded the company in 2009, and have since grown exponentially and acquired more than 150 enterprise customers including Microsoft, AMP, BHP, Astra-Zeneca and many many more across all industry sectors.

I'd love to tell you more - do you have a business card i can send you some information about our company?

While now under 35 seconds, surely i could do better!
In thinking how i could to get this down, i recalled giving a pitch when i bumped into an old colleague while crossing a pedestrian crossing in the street who asked "what are you doing now?". My crosswalk pitch?

Version 3

I'm at BuzzNumbers. We help companies understand the voice of the consumer on the web. We are growing crazy fast in both enterprise customers and revenue.

It would be great if you could recommend any potential customers, partners or investors that you think would be interested? Do you have a business card i could send a link to our web demo?

Ok, so im now happy with this badass 15 seconds pitch. This pitch is a taster of what we do and why it is cool, and an "ask" to get their contact details without being too pushy.

So what are your thoughts?

What is your elevator pitch?

What do you do? Why is it unique? Why do i care?

Leave a comment!

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

2012-01-09T00:15:00.001+11:00

The man watching... by Rainer Maria Rilke

2012-01-07T22:16:00.001+11:00

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

RIP Dennis Ritchie - the man who taught me code

2011-10-15T00:24:00.002+11:00

Today Dennis Ritchie died...

While likely wont get nearly much press, as Wired Magazine put it - Dennis Ritchie was The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On

When i was just a young kid, my dad gave me a book "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie - it was this book that first taught me about If/Else, Loops, Switchs, Functions and all the first ways i had ever seen logic described in language. It confused me, it delighted me, it made me want to know more and gave me a thirst for programming.

Thanks Dennis - a generation of programmers thanks you...

Moving from SQL Server to Mongo (NOSQL)

2011-09-28T18:57:00.000+10:00

I presented last night at Sydney Alt.NET event on Lessons Learned migrating from SQL Server (RDBMS) to MongoDB (NOSQL)

Here is my deck, which was well received.

Moving from SQL Server to MongoDB

View more presentations from nickhac

On the conservative moral minority...

2011-09-26T15:37:00.000+10:00

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

When self reference, irony, and meta humor go too far... (a cautionary tale)

2011-08-17T20:28:00.002+10:00

Creating a profitable startup company (David Heinemeier Hansson) - Video

2011-06-20T21:56:00.002+10:00

Why stress is actually good for you?

2011-06-12T02:27:00.009+10:00

I've been reading some material tonight that argues that stress is actually good for you from a biological perspective and this is called Hormesis. From reading this, i think we can quickly argue that this applies to psychology and that we can in fact improve our capacity to better manage our lives through actively encouraging and engaging in high stress scenarios.

What is Hormesis?

A universal biological principal whereby a stress that is harmful at high doses promotes defense and repair processes at low doses

Examples of Hormesis in action

Allergen immunotherapy
Cold showers as an anti-depressant
Lifting weights to grow muscles
Exposure therapy for phobias/anxiety
Boot camp for delinquent kids

Why this matters?

Exposing yourself deliberately to high exposure stress scenarios, improves your ability to handle and respond to stress, conflict and personal challenges that happen on a day to day basis.

This is both a chemical, biological and psychological theory that has a reasonable degree of proof and projected applicability across our personal, interpersonal and business interactions.

There is an identified neurotransmitter in the brain BDNF which is understood to foster the brain's ability to adapt and learn. This theory states that exposing the brain to high levels of stress and exposure across many dimensions ultimately improves the brains ability to manage lower levels of stress by re-enforcing and strengthening existing neural pathways.

This seems reasonably obvious upon reflection, but if we can use this theory as a call to action for us to deliberately expose ourselves to big stress and big challenges and then use our emotional intelligence to realise that when we do this we are just bringing up our baseline, we can actually use previously unwanted stress to actually better ourselves.

How to use unwanted stress to actually improve yourself?

Push yourself deliberately into scenarios that you are significantly uncomfortable with (and actively try to engage your emotional intelligence to not worry about it) with the knowledge that this improves your ability to better manage everyday situations and ultimately make yourself better equipped to operate in your world.

You might just find that your unwanted stress, actually ends up making you a more balanced and less stressed person!

Thanks to http://gettingstronger.org/hormesis/ for inspiration and data on this...

Do you know where money comes from? (Money as debt)

2011-05-26T00:07:00.000+10:00

Edwina reminded me of a youtube documentary that we watched some time ago. Basically it explains where money comes from. When you withdraw 20 bucks, where does the value behind that actually come from and what hold it as worthy?

Australian Internet - 10 minutes on TPG

2011-05-24T22:25:00.001+10:00

So ive been a long term customer of TPG for Home, Business etc...

Here is a photo of my uptime for the last 10 minutes.

This has been my internet connection for the last few weeks, experiencing drop outs for 30 seconds to 2 minutes at a time about 10 times an hour. Call for support "have you restarted your modem"...

My First NodeJS Application - A Company Logo Generator

2011-05-22T22:26:00.007+10:00

Recently ive decided to learn NodeJS, so a few weeks back i wrote a hello world application. Ive been using Microsoft .NET commercially for around 10 years and although we do use a fair amount of open source technology at BuzzNumbers, i dont write that much code these days so i wanted to get my hands dirty.

I had been looking for a real world application to build in NodeJS and over the last week a requirement emerged for an service that enables me to input a company name in a IMG SRC and get back the company logo.

This gives me flexability so i can just hotlink a company logo anytime when ever im blogging or as part of a client reporting application and the company logo will embed nicely

For Example

src=" http://companylogogenerator.nickhac.com?q=qantas"
or src=" http://companylogogenerator.nickhac.com?q=westpac"

To achieve this i had to use overcome a number of technical challenges...

Extract parameters from querystring to get the company name
Build up a URL based on the URL and Company Name
Download HTML from an Image Search Webpage
Parse the HTML and extract URL's of Images
Redirect the Web Request to serve up the image from the 3rd party suite
Keep the Web Server Always Online and handle errors (using forever)

Here is the code http://pastebin.com/iY2gwUDM

Probably the happiest guy ever...

2011-05-17T23:46:00.000+10:00

How to be happy

Imagine you have to pay $100 everytime you say "umm"

2011-04-28T21:44:00.005+10:00

My dad gave me some advice a long time ago, and it has really altered the way i think about almost every public speaker i hear and almost every conversation i have.

When i was growing up, if i was sitting at the dinner table and had just told the family what happened that day, he would say "you have to give me a dollar for every time you just said umm"

Now, adjusted for income earning power and inflation, today it should be $100, and in my opinion this should apply to "Umm", "Ahh", "you know"

Its always more poignant to leave a white space rather than feel you need to fill the air with noise. Listen to almost all political and key business leaders, they almost never use these words, and often use big clear white spaces in their spoken word.

Now at this point i have to apologise to you if you are reading this, as this information has fundamentally ruined my ability to listen to others who use the words "Umm", "Ahh", "you know"

Sorry... but i hope this makes your speech a little more poignant

The 5 ways of giving advice (and how to be a better leader)

2011-04-23T09:51:00.003+10:00

As a leader in your company or as a specialist with years of experience in your field you are often called upon to help others address their challenges on a regular basis.

From some recent learnings i've had there are 5 different ways that advice is given or received, and i have found this useful to reflect upon as often as specialists we focus on solving others problems rather than enabling them to solve their own problems.

The 5 ways of giving advice

1, Consulting
Giving specific advice and describing actions to solve problems

2. Training
Transference of skills, you impart knowledge of a specific process to enable them - "teach a man to fish"

3. Mentoring
Being available as a wealth of knowledge and experience and sharing past experiences and their outcomes

4. Facilitating
Amongst a group of people, managing the flow of engagement to create an outcome while having no personal agenda

5. Coaching
Creating awareness of the actual current position, thereby enabling people to explore and make choices to create real action and be empowered to solve their own problems

It's important to realise what kind of advice you are giving the people who ask for your time and input. Providing consulting advice is useful in scenarios of high-risk where a solution is needed now, but really doesn't scale as your company grows.

The role of a CEO or leader within a high-growth company should ultimately progress from Consulting to Coach, for example, how many business cards from 1 man companies have "CEO" written on them do nothing else but consulting, contrast that to the CEO of a fortune 500 company who would almost never engage in any kind of consulting, training, mentoring or facilitating but actual purely as a coach to their key executives.

So consider your role within your company or in your engagement with others. How can you progress from beyond being a pure consultant to one that empowers others and creates a multiple of value?

Toilet walls and art...

2011-04-22T22:36:00.001+10:00

Was at a new bar in Sydney last night for company drinks, i saw this quote, and for some reason it resonated with me...

I like the use of the word "discuss"

"If writing on toilet walls is done neither for critical acclaim or monetary gain, is it not therefore the purest form of art? Discuss"

The role of a Startup CTO (Eric Ries, Authors @ Google)

2011-04-20T10:10:00.000+10:00

I had been listening to alot of talk 2nd hand about lean startups etc, but i watched this great presentation by Eric Ries (who i didnt realise was CTO and Founder of IMVU).

He addresses some great questions

- Why Agile or Scum development methodology only really solves half the problem for startups
- When to pivot?
- What to include in your MVP? What to leave out?
- How to speed up your innovation / product / market feedback cycle?

Business Model Generation (Video)

2011-04-20T09:50:00.002+10:00

The future of commerce... Google VP Payments from Web 2.0 SF 2011

2011-04-03T14:41:00.000+10:00

Probably the talk i enjoyed the most from Web 2.0 SF

Kevin Kelly Keynote from Web 2.0 SF 2011

2011-04-03T13:29:00.001+10:00

Been in SF this week meeting partners, VC's, advisors and some great aussie entrepeneurs

Bardia Housman who sold BusinessCatalyst/GoodBarry to Adobe
Cameron Yulli - Founder and CEO of AdGent
Mick Johnstone from Ycombinator who is now at FaceBook
Elias Bizannes from Vast.com (founder of Silicon Beach)
Marty Wells - serial entrepeneur
Ozan Onay - Co-Founder of TopGuest
Chris Saad - VP Product at Echo

I also had the great privilege of checking out some of the keynotes from Web 2.0 SF 2011

Ive been a long time fan of Kevin Kelly (Editor of Wired Magazine) and he gave a great presentation on the next big trends in the web. He is a little slow to start, but if you care about entrepreneurship, definitely recommend watching it through...

Blogging from 36,000 ft in the air at 448mph

2011-03-26T06:45:00.001+11:00

Im writing this blog post from 36,218ft high in the air moving at 448mph on a flight from LAX to SFO on Virgin America. Ive been waiting probably a decade for this moment, and yes, it is as good as i hoped it would be :)

Being Governed...

2011-03-15T21:54:00.000+11:00

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294."
— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The internet as a source of revenue destruction

2011-03-15T08:59:00.004+11:00

In the last ten years the internet has effectively destroyed several billion dollar industries, and replaced them with million dollar industries.

What it seems, is that by creating a significantly more efficient model for both production and distribution, the internet doesn't replace existing revenue, it destroys it.

For entrepreneurs and startup businesses, this creates significant opportunity. For large existing companies, this should be reasonably troubling.

What industries are next?

Interview on iPitch for BuzzNumbers

2011-03-14T14:34:00.002+11:00

The guys at iPitch interviewed me as part of their coverage on successful tech entrepreneurs.

http://www.ipitch.com.au/public/entrepreneur-interview-nick-holmes-a-court-buzznumbers/