Announcing New Live Online Classes! Save 50% to Celebrate.

I used to run live online classes all year round, and I really miss it. I’ve had such a good time at conferences lately, and I feel like it’s time to bring the live stuff back.

Plus I don’t know about you, but I have a heck of a hard time paying attention to recorded videos. I don’t know what it is, but I do a MUCH better job of keeping up when there’s a specific day/time I have to show up, and when there’s a live person on the other side of the screen. I can clear my schedule out to make room for the session, and I love that I can ask them live questions via the chat, and get personalized answers right away.

So let’s do live classes again! But let’s make a few changes:

Live classes will be half-days, Monday-Friday so you can keep the lights on at your day job, keeping your manager happy, and lets you really focus on class while it’s happening. At the end of each day, you have an optional hands-on lab to prove you conquered the lecture’s concepts. The class times in various time zones:

• Eastern: Noon-4PM
• Central: 11AM-3PM
• Pacific: 9AM-1PM
• GMT: 17:00-21:00

It’s now easier to follow along with the labs (and it’s optional.) In the past, I’ve had students restore the database in between each lab. That worked great, but it meant that students couldn’t use Azure SQL DB or Amazon RDS SQL Server because restores weren’t easy on those platforms. Now, we’ll be keeping the clustered indexes the same every time, and creating tables if we need different clustered indexes. That’ll make it easier to reset for each lab by simply running a stored proc to drop nonclustered indexes and extra objects. Here’s how to set up your labs. Or, if you’d like, you can also rent a lab VM from me.

I’ve simplified my class lineup. I’ve got just 6 classes altogether: Index Tuning, Query Tuning, and Server Tuning, with Fundamentals & Mastering versions of each. Rather than having separate classes for things like parameter sniffing, columnstore, and tempdb, I’ve merged those in where appropriate in the other classes. (They’d all changed so much with SQL Server 2022 & 2025 that it made sense to bring ’em directly into the index/query/server classes.)

Here’s the new class lineup.

I’m doing 2 rotations for the 2026 classes: a fall rotation, then a winter one. When you buy a ticket to one of the classes, you get access to all of the dates of that class, so if you miss the first one, if a production emergency pops up, no biggie! Hit the next one instead.

• Fundamentals Week – July 13-17, Nov 2-6 – covering Fundamentals of Index Tuning, Query Tuning, and Server Tuning
• Mastering Index Tuning – Aug 31-Sept 4, Nov 30-Dec 4
• Mastering Query Tuning – Sept 28-Oct 2, Jan 11-15 2027
• Mastering Server Tuning – Oct 19-23, Feb 8-12 2027
• Or grab a Live Class Season Pass for all of the above dates

Each live topic is $1,495 individually, or $4,395 for a Live Class 2026 Season Pass for all of the above. The live tickets include the recordings as well, and after the classes complete, the recordings will be $795 for each of the above. (Obviously, the recordings won’t be available until after the classes finish, heh.)

Buy before July 10, and take 50% off Fundamentals Week or the Live Class Season Pass! That’s $747.50 for Fundamentals Week, or $2197.50 to attend everything, plus access to the recordings in 2026.

I wanna make it as easy as possible for you to get signed up, so I’ve put together a few sample emails that you can copy/paste in to send to your manager, accounting, HR, or whoever else approves your training funds:

• Database administrator
• Database administrator having a really bad day
• Developer without a full time DBA at the company
• Manager facing big migration and upgrade projects
• Manager picking a new lead SQL person
• Manager tired of firefighting performance emergencies
• Manager with a training budget
• Manager worried about cloud bills
• Manager who’s been mandated to implement & spend money on AI
• Manager who lost a poker game

If you have another situation where you need a letter, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll see what ChatGPT can come up with.

See you in the live online classes!