All the preaching I’ve been doing lately about starting a blog, publicizing it, and building your resume online has resonated with you.  I’ve got four new syndicated bloggers on deck today – we’re up to 63 syndicated bloggers, something I never could have imagined when we started syndicating blogs at SQLServerPedia.  I’m really proud of what we – the community – has built there in the last year.  Introducing…

Kendra Little (Blog – @Kendra_Little)

Kendra is a senior DBA with a decade of SQL experience, and she currently works in the online ad industry.  She designs, plans, and executes releases & changes for OLTP & OLAP systems, plus automates maintenance, performance monitoring, and reporting for server health.  In the midst of all that, she’s a frequent Twitterer and blogger:

• Error Configuring DataCollector – she ran into problems configuring the Management Data Warehouse, then not only took the time to document how she fixed it, thereby making your life easier if you ever Google this problem, but she even filed a bug on Connect!  That’s dedication.
• Follow Friday: @SQLSaurus – I stopped doing FollowFridays on Twitter a while back because I couldn’t cram enough good information about someone into a tweet.  Kendra fixed that by writing an entire blog post – and a drawing – about a tweep.  Nice work!
• Change Data Capture vs Change Tracking – this is another example of why reading blogs will give you a head start on the Microsoft Certified Master program.  This topic is covered in the MCM, and if you read blogs before you enroll, your head will be chock full of explanations already.

Piotr Rodak (Blog)

Do me a favor – if you code T-SQL, go click on Piotr’s blog right now, and read the “if” statement at the top of the page.  Tell me that isn’t funny.  When he’s not writing T-SQL statements with double meanings, he’s working as a senior database developer and database architect for one of the biggest financial institutions in the world.  He’s got over 17 years of experience in IT, and he passes it on in his blog:

• INSTEAD OF triggers on views – shows how to update multiple tables simultaneously in a trigger.  I am *so* stealing this technique for one of my presentations.
• Coding Best Practices – Naming Constraints – this isn’t a default, but it’s an extremely good idea, and he explains why.  The best practices are backed up with these kinds of examples.
• How to Prepare Sample Data – a common problem that he solves with simple queries, not an add-on product.

Shaun Stuart (Blog)

Shaun’s a senior DBA who’s been working with SQL Server since 1997.  He’s been blogging for years and just recently decided to start blogging about SQL Server.  Some of his recent posts include:

• There Can Be Only One – in which he asks the classic interview question, “How many clustered indexes can a table have?”
• Problems with SQL 2008 SP1 CU7 on a Cluster – Shaun explains how to fix an issue he ran into.  His solution reminds me of why the best DBAs succeed.  It isn’t about book learnin’ – it’s about being willing to roll your sleeves up and figure things out logically.
• Policy Based Management Strangeness – he dives into PBM, a tricky new feature of SQL Server 2008.

Todd Robinson (Blog – @DevSQL)

I met Todd a couple of years ago at a PASS Summit where he was volunteering.  He’s been through one of the toughest gigs at PASS – being on the Program Committee, the group responsible for picking which speakers and sessions are chosen.  I don’t envy him, and I thank him for his work!  In addition to volunteering, he works as a Senior Database Developer for Travelport, does technical editing and writing, and helped develop Microsoft certification exams for SQL Server and .NET.  Some of his recent posts include:

• NoSQL versus SQL – Todd talks about it in terms of speed and relates it to the Windows AppFabric Cache.
• Building a Presentation for PASS AppDev VC – Todd’s work on the AppFabric Cache is cutting edge.  Most people aren’t using caching for their database tier, and his knowledge would help a lot of people.  He touches on why it can be rough presenting on topics like this – there’s stuff under NDA.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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As Editor-in-Chief at SQLServerPedia, one of my jobs is to check out what other wikis are doing, see how it’s working for them, and steal their ideas apply their knowledge.  We used to try nominating an Article of the Month every month, but frankly, that just wasn’t working.  People told me they don’t like to jump start articles all by themselves.  So how do the big boys grow wiki articles?

Every month, Wikitravel.org chooses a single article to be the Collaboration of the Month.  Authors focus their efforts on making this one article better, and then the following month, that article is featured as the Destination of the Month.  It’s been really successful for them – read the comments about their 2009 collaborations, and check out how the editors celebrate the contributions from different authors.

Love it!  I added a SQLServerPedia Collaboration of the Month page to focus on a different article each month.  The page lists a number of ways you can contribute information.  Our goal is to keep each bullet point to a minimum amount of work so that you can knock out a bullet point in an hour or two of work and raise your hands in victory.

For February, we’re focusing on the Wait Types article.  Jason Strate (Blog – @StrateSQL) asked if he could help flesh out that article because there’s not a good repository for waits out there.  I needed the exact same information for next month’s virtual training event.  Presto – I love it when a plan comes together.

How You Can Help Right Now

Here’s our goals for the Wait Types article:

• Add skeleton pages for each wait type by copy/pasting our wait types template
• Flesh out skeleton pages whenever possible – some wait types are just complete unknowns right now, but some are fairly well understood (think CXPACKET)
• Merge content from the other Wait Events articles into the Wait Types article – we’d rather have a single well-written article than a few fragments on the topic
• Add queries in the T-SQL code library to check waits

Contributed content doesn’t have to be an exclusive at SQLServerPedia – if you’ve already written something and you’d like to copy some of that material into the wiki post, we’d love the help.  Please email me first at Brent.Ozar@Quest.com before you copy any material, though, because I have to make sure you’re the rightful owner.  I can’t have people copy/pasting somebody else’s work, and I’ll want to keep your email on file giving us permission to use the content.

I know it’s intimidating, but you – yes, you – are qualified to edit the wiki! Get yourself an account at SQLServerPedia, and there’s an Edit button at the top of every single page.  Here’s a few links to help get you started:

• How to Help at SQLServerPedia – includes a ten-minute video on how to create articles.
• How to Format Text and Pictures – if you want to make your work look all fancy-like.
• How to Review Pages – includes the bare minimum standards for public articles.

And I hate to have to say this, but please don’t email me a list of changes for a wiki article.  I love you, every single one of you, but I’m not your secretary.  The magic of the wiki is that anybody can contribute, and you are anybody.

How SQLServerPedia Helps You Back

If you’ve written a great blog post about the Collaboration of the Month topic, or if you’ve been thinking about writing one, now’s your chance – add it to the Related Reading section of the article.  After the one-month blitz finishes for the Collaboration of the Month, we’ll feature that article prominently in a webcast or podcast.  This is a chance to bring a lot of new eyeballs to your blog.

We can’t feature every single post on the article, unfortunately, and the Editors reserve the right to prune that list.  We’d like to keep it to 5 related blog posts per article, and we’ll favor wiki contributors over those who haven’t contributed.

Finally, I’d like to give something back to the contributors.  I already know what kinds of prizes you want to win, but I need your help figuring out how to give a prize away each month as part of the Collaboration of the Month.  Do we do a random drawing from everyone who contributed to the article?  Do we try to judge the most valuable contribution?

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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Squeaking in just before Thursday’s contest deadline comes our newest blogger, John Sansom (Blog – Twitter – StackOverflow).  I’ve read John’s blog for several months now, and I’ve been giving him a secret invisible thumbs-up every time he tweaks his blogging strategy to align with my recommendations.  (And no, I haven’t told him this, hahaha.)

John is a DBA in the UK who “gets” the whole blogging and social media thing.  He’s even started a SQL Server Guru Challenge, an ongoing test of DBA skills that I’ve found uniquely enjoyable.  The first round was a SQL Server crossword puzzle that went out just before I had to board a plane, and I couldn’t get one last damn clue.  I’m excited to see what the next round brings.

Some of John’s recent posts include:

• Top 5 Free SQL Server Tools – including the BIDS Helper and the SSMS Tools Pack.
• Weekly Links Post – he does these pretty regularly.  If you don’t have time to read a lot of blogs, subscribe to John’s blog, mine, Jeremiah Peschka’s Facility9.com, and Rhonda Tipton’s blog.  Between those four, our weekly link posts will give you a good recap of what happened lately.
• SQL Server Guru Challenge Round 1 – and I still can’t figure out 16 across.  Click on the Javascript version to see the right clue numbers.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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