The 12 days of SQL
Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) had an idea: a group of people should blog about writing which they’ve loved this year by people in the SQL community. For each “day of SQL,” someone picks a blog which they thought was great and writes about it.
Yesterday was Day 8, when Karen Lopez talked about a post by Louis Davidson and asked “What is your over/under?” Karen is a great speaker, an inspiring writer, and just an incredibly interesting person. Check out her post!
On the 9th Day of SQL the engine gave to me: Something a little different than I expected.
Day 9: The Day of Paul White
This day of SQL is not about nine ladies dancing. (Sorry Karen!) Instead, it’s devoted to one New Zealander writing: his name is Paul White (blog | twitter).
First off, let me say that Paul White’s blog, “Page Free Space,” is just plain awesome. When I see Paul’s written a new post I know to allocate some time for it and read it through slowly, and that I should expect to have to think about what I’m reading to understand it.
I swear I can sometimes feel things moving around in my head when I read Paul’s posts. Apply the warning about overhead bins during flight: be careful, contents may shift while you’re reading Paul White’s blog.
So What’s My Favorite Post of the Year?
I picked Paul’s post, The Case of the Missing Shared Locks.
There’s a lot to love about this post. It is a great demonstration that things aren’t as simple as they seem.
Paul starts the post with the question:
If I hold an exclusive lock on a row, can another transaction running at the default read committed isolation level read it?
The answer to that would seem fairly straightforward. But in fact, things are pretty complicated. However, if you go through it slowly and really look at the examples, it can help you understand a lot about locking.
This is good.
Why is it Good that Things Are So Complicated? It’s CONFUSING.
Have you ever said something along these lines? “I’d like to give a presentation sometime, but I don’t have anything to talk about.”
Or, “I’m not sure that I have anything that interesting to fill a whole hour.”
Well, take a look at Paul’s post. He took something small, and he looked very closely at it. He played with it a couple of different ways, and he worked on it to see how it behaved. He stepped through it in a series of short, straightforward steps.
You can do the same thing with many things you’re familiar with. You can take a topic, or a feature, or a method of doing something and distill it into an interesting question. You can then look closely at the question and work with it carefully. Use it as a chance to explore something. You’re probably familiar with it, but by taking the time to write about it or present it, you’ll have the opportunity to get to know it better than you ever thought you could.
Who’s Next?
I’m handing the dreidl off to Crys Manson (blog | twitter) for Day 10.
Crys is a seriously great DBA, a fantastic friend, and she sometimes makes me snort liquid through my nose laughing.
Tag, Crys, you’re it!
How’d We Get Here?
If you want to check out where we’ve been so far, we’ve had:
- Brent O’s 12 Days of SQL post
- Day1: Jeremiah Peschka
- Day 2: Grant Fritchey
- Day 3: Dave Stein
- Day 4: Andy Leonard
- Day 5: Erin Stellato
- Day 6: Tim Ford
- Day 7: Yanni Robel
- Day 8: Karen Lopez
A Little Present
You don’t need to be Jewish for this to be your favorite holiday song this year. Rock on with the Maccabeats, y’all. (You will need to click the “watch on YouTube” link.)
I agree with you completly. When Brent announced the concept of 12 days of Christmas, I made a comment stating Paul should have been on the list because he has the Best techinical blog I have ever read.
I am glad to see that others also appreciate it.
I agree. The only thing better than Paul White’s blog is Paul White + Brad Schulz’s blog.
I really enjoyed the “Heaps of Trouble” posts they did recently: http://bradsruminations.blogspot.com/2010/12/heaps-o-trouble-follow-up.html
Well, you’re making me blush… Here I came to your site to post a comment that “Thank Goodness someone recognized Paul White’s Blog”, and I see that you mention mine as well… but I wouldn’t say “only thing better than Paul’s blog” by any stretch… In the words of Garth: “I’m not worthy”. (But thanks for the compliment!)
Paul’s blog is awesome… I rank all blogs on a scale from 1 to Paul.
–Brad
I’ve been surprised it took to day 9 for Paul to get mentioned, and could well imagine him getting a couple of extra mentions in the remaining days.
There’s just a lot of great blogs to choose from. Making yourself pick one favorite post from everyone from the whole year isn’t easy to do!
The XEvent series Mr Kehayias is putting on right now is pretty amazing, for example.
Which is not to say I had any doubts about my pick– not at all. It’s just pretty amazing looking back at this year in the blogs.