Rob Farley : australia

A Tripp to Melbourne?

Rob Farley — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:53:07 GMT

I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve been to Melbourne (although I did pass through the airport there on my way back from Wagga). I don’t know when I’ll be there next, but I have felt tempted to try to get there this week.

Partly it’s because my mum is about to turn sixty, but also because my friends Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal are in Australia this week, and speaking at the Melbourne SQL Server User Group tomorrow night.

I won’t be there, but if you’re going to be in Melbourne, then make sure you register and get yourself there. It’s bound to be quite packed, as these guys are the world experts in their areas – so be early and tell them hi from me!

Big events every month this quarter

Rob Farley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:23:47 GMT

A new Financial Year in Australia, and a bunch of technical events coming up.

Of course there’s the usual monthly user groups, but there’s more – particularly if you’re in Adelaide.

July sees CodeCampSA in Adelaide on the weekend of July 18/19. I’ve put my name into the hat for speakers, and will try to be there for a chunk of Saturday (Sundays are too busy for me). I’m sure at least one of my sons will want to come along as well, which will be fun. Big thanks to David Gardiner for putting the website together.

August sees SharePoint Saturday come to Sydney (8th) and Adelaide (15th). You may not agree with Aaron about what SharePoint is, but if you’re into SharePoint, I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of these events.

September brings Australian geeks to the Gold Coast again for the Microsoft’s annual TechEd Australia, this year with the added incentive of an HP Mini for attendees (conditions apply of course). It’s the 2140, which is a discontinued line, but that doesn’t make it any less attractive a machine. I’m sure this will help persuade people to get themselves over to Queensland.

And in case you hadn’t realised, I’ve recently discovered how easy it is to put maps into blogs using Windows Live Writer… just so that you can all see the beach, and understand how poorly attended the sessions would be if they ran TechEd Australia in the summer.

Seriously cheap exams in Australia

Rob Farley — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:56:41 GMT

If you’re an MCP in Australia and you haven’t passed any exams over the past couple of years (since July 1, 2007), then Microsoft has an offer at the moment to let you do an exam for only US$25 (until June 30, 2009). Ok, so that means the price really depends on the value of the Aussie dollar, but either way, it’s not a bad opportunity.

The offer is only on for a very short time, but why not check out http://www.learnandcertify.com/mcpupgrade/ and see what you can do? I’m thinking it’s a nice opportunity to knock over one of those Upgrade exams to get yourself from MCITP:SQL2005 to MCITP:SQL2008. You don’t get a second shot with this one, and you can only get one voucher – but it’s so cheap you may as well try it.

Time zone limbo

Rob Farley — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:00:08 GMT

Australia is currently in an interesting week for time zones.

Up until a couple of years ago, Daylight Savings finished on the last Sunday in March. That’s when the clocks got put back to Standard Time, as the Australian summer ended. Last year though, this got extended by a week, until the first Sunday in April. A similar change was made in October, changing the start of Daylight Savings from the last weekend of October to the first weekend of October. We now have six months of summer instead of five (although weather-wise, it’s a lot more…)

That’s fine – most people have patched their machines happily, and don’t have a problem. My mobile phone is an old O2 XDA, running Windows Mobile 2003 (I once upgraded to a newer device, but a washing machine had an argument with it and won). Unfortunately, i don’t think there’s a patch for WM2003, and so this week my phone (and hence, my alarms) thinks that I’m an hour out.

It’s fine when I’m in Melbourne or Sydney – I can set the time zone to be Magadan (which is in Russia), and the problem goes away. All good – I don’t really care where my phone thinks I am, just so long as the time is right.

The problem is when I’m in Adelaide… Adelaide which is normally in GMT+0930 (yes, on the half-hour), but this week is still in GMT+1030. According to my mobile device, there is nowhere in the world that is GMT+1030 this week. So instead I’ve had to change my alarms to wake me up half an hour later, whilst I pretend I’m in Siberia. I recently learned that the Russian for “Bless You” (ie, that thing you say when someone sneezes) is “Bud Zdorov” (literally "Be Healthy”, and I apologise for the spelling. ‘Bud’ rhymes with ‘Good’). I’m not sure it’s quite enough to get me through though.

One day I plan to visit Kathmandu, where the time zone is on the quarter-hour. Then I can return to the normality of Adelaide’s half-hour time zone.

I’ve written about the pain of daylight savings before, particularly around the pain of storing datetime fields in a database. Today i read a post from Bart Duncan, recommending the use of datetimeoffset. I thoroughly agree with him, although I wonder how long it will be before people make this a priority.

Presenting at ADNUG this week

Rob Farley — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:03:41 GMT

I haven't been to ADNUG for a while. I love that the group is there, but over the past year or more, I haven't prioritised getting to the meetings. I've been to meetings of equivalent groups in Melbourne and Sydney, but not to the Adelaide .Net Group for a while.

But this week I will! I've offered to be a stand-in presenter, and will present a few tips around T-SQL. I'm presenting a similar talk in Wagga this coming weekend, so it'll give me a chance to work out my talk in advance. I regularly present and teach T-SQL things, so I'll be picking a few of the more useful suggestions (particularly those that get a good response from the audience), and showing some of them. People who at one of my recent presentations may have heard bits before, but definitely not all of them.

Congratulations, Mitch

Rob Farley — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:13:56 GMT

A good friend of mine from Perth got awarded MVP status this past week. Mitch Wheat runs the .Net User Group over there, and does a terrific job. He does a lot for the community, and is incredibly smart. I'm really pleased for him.

PS: There are a bunch of other new MVPs this October as well (plus I got rewarded) - I'm just mentioning Mitch because he's a good friend and I'm so pleased for him!

Improving Your T-SQL Arsenal - slides

Rob Farley — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:46:16 GMT

I've given this presentation a couple of times at user-groups now - last week in Adelaide, and this week in Melbourne. I posted the scripts to my blog recently, making them available to people who heard this talk at TechEd Australia at the start of the month, so now I've got around to uploading the slide deck as well.

I actually plan to blog about many of the tips too, so watch for that over the next month or so. I'll try to do at least one a week for a while, if not more. Obviously some will become longer articles, while some will be quite short. Much of the material gets covered my Advanced T-SQL Querying and Reporting course too - so feel free to check that out some time if you can.

DAT283

Rob Farley — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:49:07 GMT

TechEd AU this week. I'm giving a talk on "T-SQL Tips n Techniques: Improving Your T-SQL Arsenal" on Friday morning. The slides are available from CommNet for people registered, but the scripts are here as well. Come along to the talk to see how I use the scripts, but do grab these if you want to be trying them out on your data while I present. They all work on SQL Server 2005, and they use the AdventureWorks database.

I'll also try to do a series of blog posts about some of the tips, but as well as that, many of them are part of the Advanced T-SQL course that I put together earlier in the year.

UNICEF Australia project at TechEd

Rob Farley — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:13:53 GMT

It was unfortunate news when I heard that the UNICEF Australia site was hacked a little while ago. An old colleague of mine called me to let me know, and to ask if I knew anyone who could help them out. I used to work at a hosting company with this guy, and had seen quite a few websites get hacked one way or another (the typical methods being SQL Injection or Cookie Poisoning).

UNICEF is one of my favourite charities. They work to promote and protect the rights of children all over the world. As a kid I remember a book called "I Like This Poem" on my mother's bookshelf - a UNICEF publication containing poems that were nominated by children (like Alfred Noyes' "When Daddy Fell Into The Pond") that I can't seem to find any reference of online. So I was more than happy to help them get back online. I got in touch with their hosting provider, who could not have done anything to prevent the attack but were very helpful in trying to help resolve the problem. I also contacted the MVP community and got some help from a few friends in fixing up code.

They got back online, and I hope are relatively secure, but I also had a chat to some people at Microsoft about what they could do, and they've come to the party!

A couple of years ago, there was a community project at TechEd Australia to help the Smith Family (in the DevGarten). This year, UNICEF are getting helped.

If you're going to be at TechEd Australia this year, please try to find some time to get involved in the UNICEF project. The idea will be to make sure that they have a great new (secure) website, that will encourage people to visit, donate, find out what's happening with this great charity. I'm sure everyone who donates some time will learn a lot from the experience, and also enjoy the chance to work for the children of the world.

Melbourne Launch

Rob Farley — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:50:57 GMT

So I'm at the Heroes launch in Melbourne today. I'm going to hang out at the Experts booth, so if you're here and have a question about SQL Server 2008, why not come over?

My trip to Perth

Rob Farley — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:52:16 GMT

I was in Perth last week, teaching a private course. The course went well, but best of all, I got to meet a good Perth-based friend of mine for the first time. I've known Mitch Wheat for ages online, but he's always just been on the other end of the wire. Now I know what he looks like!

It was great getting to see Perth. The students I had were a great bunch of people, and I got to meet members of the SQL Server User Group when I spoke there on Tuesday night. I presented about ranking functions and windowing - but also spoke about the MERGE statement from SQL 2008. Both talks I'd done before, but this time squeezed in to a single talk. It was lots of fun.

I really encourage everyone to get into public speaking. It's terrifying, of course. But it's also terrifically rewarding. There's nothing quite like standing in front of a crowd of strangers and explaining something to them. With any luck they've come to learn, so they're not actually critiquing you as a presenter - they're just hoping to pick up some of what you know.

If you're reading this and don't even attend a user-group, please get involved. You meet other people who do what you do. You learn stuff you didn't know before. Next time you need to hire someone, you might find that the interviewee is someone you've come across before. But as soon as you stand up and demonstrate that you know your stuff, the quality of candidates who want to work with you goes up, because the smart people in the crowd will feel a certain affinity towards you.

And who knows - perhaps you'll decide that you want to try being a presenter at a Speaker Idol, like my friend Jeff Wharton who runs the Canberra SQL Server User Group. Jeff presented today at my user group in Adelaide, and it was great to be able to advertise him as an Idol Winner. Congratulations again, Jeff, and thanks for today.

SQL and Virtual Earth

Rob Farley — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:07:11 GMT

A while back I was talking to Bronwen Zande, of Brisbane-based SoulSolutions and GeekGirlBlogs.

Anyway, she and her partner John are big fans of Virtual Earth. As it's well publicised that SQL Server 2008 will have new spatial types, including fancy ways of integrating with Virtual Earth, I asked her if they were planning a tour of the Australian SQL Server User Groups to demonstrate how this could work. I figure this is something that few SQL Server people will do much investigation into, but may well be asked about by developers who are keen to find out what's possible.

Lo and behold, I guess things are happening, because they're on their way! In Adelaide, this meeting will be on January 10th, our usual time-slot on the second Thursday of the month, and there are other events happening around the country too. All this despite the fact that the latest publicly available version (July still) of SQL Server 2008 doesn't have the spatial types in it. Hopefully by then something will be available for us to check out the demos. Keep your eye on https://connect.microsoft.com/sql for news on that.

SQL Down Under talks, and England wins

Rob Farley — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:21:22 GMT

This weekend is getting better and better. With England winning in both the football and the rugby, my mood is pretty good anyway - despite having to give the first presentation of Sunday morning at the SQL Down Under Code Camp. The local TV channel sent cameras just after I finished, so I think I managed to avoid having my presentation on the local news. At least, I hope they came just after I finished... otherwise I didn't notice them lurking in the corner.

I taught the crowd about MERGE & Table-Valued Parameters, and got good feedback from various members of the audience. Hopefully people will be able to take the content and use it to try things out in SQL2008 when they get back to the real world.

Now, Grant Paisley is presenting about Analysis Services Best Practices. I've heard Grant give this talk before, but it's still good. With Darren Gosbell, Greg Linwood and Kevin Kline still to come today, it's going to be good. Poor France though... with Scotland beating the Ukraine in their Euro 2008 qualifiers, Les Blues need to win both their remaining matches to qualify for the tournament, and Scotland probably only need to a draw against Italy to go through.

SQL Down Under Code Camp begins

Rob Farley — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:27:06 GMT

Two days of intensive SQL Server training, thanks to experts from around Australia and Kevin Kline from the US. All the Australian SQL Server MVPs are coming (five here so far, two more coming soon).

The coffee is great (thanks Peter), the company is great, and there are so many more people here (than last year) because there is also a Security Camp on at the same time. All the user-group leads are here, including Perth and the new Hobart group (Jason Cook's getting this going), which means every Australian state is represented.

I'm sure other people will be blogging about this too, so keep your eye out for them. I'll try to blog more later on today.

Free SQL training at events in the UK and Australia

Rob Farley — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:42:56 GMT

...and I'm not even referring to the User Groups which run regularly. The ones I'm referring to are SQLBits and the SQL Down Under Code Camp.

SQLBits was in the UK last weekend, and was a massive success. I would've loved to have been able to attend, but it's a bit far to travel (I guess about 12000 miles). They had over three hundred attend, which is fantastic! Adelaide User Group regular Martin Cairney was there, and presented the talk he gave in Adelaide earlier this year. It seems to have been received well.

And this coming weekend is the SQL Down Under Code Camp in Wagga Wagga. It should be a great event, with well over a hundred people there. If you're able to get to Wagga, I thoroughly recommend it.

My favourite thing about SQL Server 2008

Rob Farley — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:35:48 GMT

A few people have asked me what my favourite thing is in SQL Server 2008 ("Katmai"). But my favourite thing isn't actually a feature at all, it's a mindset that Microsoft are taking with it.

This mindset is "We will only put features into the CTPs once they are basically complete - including the documentation." And this makes me say "Wow!".

One of the problems with all beta software is the stuff that's in there that just isn't finished yet. You try to use some feature, and it doesn't work. Or worse, something dies because you tried it. It's these scenarios that stop people trying out betas, and seeing people using the previous version still nearly two years after release (It's now over 21 months since SQL 2005 was released).

Not the case with SQL Server 2008 though. Functionality may be limited, but hopefully new features should be both stable and documented when they appear. So now because this is the case, people should be able to port their systems over before release, confident that features won't be changing significantly between that time and RTM.

This week at my user-group I'm giving a talk on MERGE & TVPs. Two essentially different topics, but ones that compliment each other nicely. I think people will be leaving this meeting picturing places in their code where they want to refactor it to take advantage of these new features.

Thoughts on TechEd

Rob Farley — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:47:08 GMT

I enjoy TechEd. It's always good fun. Last week was my fourth TechEd, having attended for the past three years, plus in '99. The last three years have seen my involvement increase each time. Last year I proctored with the Hands-On Labs, and this year I presented both a session and an Instructor-Led Lab. I'm a big believer in giving back to the community, and I see this as part of it.

I do find that the more I'm involved, the fewer sessions I actually get to attend. But I don't feel like I'm missing out, because it's not why I go to TechEd. I go to meet people, to help people with questions, see old friends, and to be a part of the big event. In '99, I went because my employer sent me. I went to learn things, and I did. In the last few years though, my approach has been quite different, and I think I've got more from the event. This year, as a speaker, I was able to mix with a slightly different crowd, but also had an entirely different Ask The Experts experience to previous years.

There's something about community - the more you give to it, the more you feel a part of it, and the more you want to give. If you're reading this, you should get involved in your local user-groups (or even think about starting one, like the Hobart-based Datawise guys).

Only 71 people have MCITP:BI

Rob Farley — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:31:30 GMT

Mitch Wheat sent me this. According to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certified.mspx, there are only 71 people in the world (well, at the end of June) who have achieved MCITP:BI. This means passing the two exams 70-445 and 70-446. You could be one if you use SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and do a bit of Data Mining. Doing some of the courses like the ones offered by Solid Quality Learning might help too, of course.

Code Camps galore

Rob Farley — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:32:28 GMT

We all know that Adelaide hosted Code Camp SA recently - it was a great success, and some people even wished I was there!

TechEd is coming up of course, but now there are two code camps scheduled for October, on the same weekend (13-14) and at the same venue! Yes, that place is Wagga Wagga - one Wagga for each event.

Firstly, and most importantly I'm sure, is the second SQL Down Under Code Camp. But the other one is the Security Camp Oz. With me doing the SQL Security talk at TechEd this year, I'm sure I'll have a good reason to attend both!

Also in October, but the weekend before, and in the UK, the SQL community is hosting SQLBits. These guys have three streams (Dev, DBA, BI), and promises to be a fantastic event. I only wish I could be there. I'm sure Tony, Simon, Jamie, Jasper and Chris will do a fantastic job.

Seems wherever you are, October will be a big month for training.

TechEd slides uploaded

Rob Farley — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:44:17 GMT

I should've posted that I was confirmed as a speaker at this year's TechEd Australia. It's in just over two weeks' time - August 7-10. Today I uploaded my slide deck, so that delegates may be able to download the slides before they come to the talk.

I'm doing the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Security Best Practices talk - code DAT308. It's on Thursday morning at 9:45. Much better than being on Friday morning, when everyone might be a little bleary-eyed after the party at Movie World.

I'm also going to be doing an Instructor-Led Lab, on Database Mirroring. I don't have a timetable for that yet, but if you're interested, then do come along.

Just bear in mind that TechEd Australia is completely sold out now, so if my presenting has persuaded you to come along, then I'm sorry - you're a bit too late. ;)