Live Class Justification Email for Manager Picking a Lead SQL Person
Please register _EMPLOYEE_NAME_HERE_ for Brent Ozar’s Live Class Season Pass before registration closes. https://training.brentozar.com/p/live-class-season-pass
To get the price on the site, we have to use a credit card or purchasing card. If we ask for a PO or invoice, it’s full price.
Use their name & email as the buyer info. The receipt will go there, and tell them to forward it to you for accounting.
The background: I’m approving this because we need someone in-house who can lead the first pass on SQL Server performance problems. We do not need to turn them into a full-time DBA, but we do need someone who can troubleshoot slow queries, bad indexes, server pressure, and production performance problems before we escalate or start guessing.
The Season Pass includes these live classes:
- Fundamentals Week (which includes index, query, and server tuning)
- Mastering Index Tuning
- Mastering Query Tuning
- Mastering Server Tuning
Each class is Monday-Friday, 4 hours per day. I’ll clear their calendar for the class times on those dates so they can focus on the training while still being available for urgent issues as needed.
This is a good fit because SQL Server performance problems tend to land on whoever is closest to the application, the database, or the production emergency. I want us to have a designated person who knows how to gather evidence, read execution plans, review indexing choices, use the right troubleshooting tools, and explain what is actually happening.
This should help us build more performance tuning capability in-house, instead of depending on trial-and-error, scattered blog posts, generic monitoring alerts, or expensive outside help every time something gets slow.
The goals are faster troubleshooting, better internal ownership, fewer escalations, and better decisions about when we really need code changes, index changes, server changes, or outside expertise.
There’s cheaper recorded training options, but we’ve found that the team just doesn’t complete that training. With live classes, they can ask questions, stay focused, and block the time on their calendar. The live format creates the urgency and structure to actually get through the material. If they miss a class, though, like if an emergency pops up, they also get access to the recordings through the end of the year.
Brent has 25+ years of real-world SQL Server performance tuning experience, has trained over 18,000 students, and teaches with the full-size Stack Overflow database instead of tiny demo databases. That matters because we need practical judgment, not just textbook examples. Real systems have messy queries, imperfect indexes, bad estimates, blocking, waits, and tradeoffs where the first obvious answer is not always the right one.
The classes also cover practical troubleshooting with the free open source First Responder Kit tools like sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, and sp_BlitzIndex. Those can help our internal tuning lead quickly identify which queries and indexes are causing the most pain, prioritize the work, and explain the findings to the rest of the team.
One other thing I like: the training itself is built and taught by a real human being, and Brent says none of the training material is generated by AI. At the same time, the classes include practical use of AI tools because that’s where SQL Server troubleshooting is headed. I want our team to learn how to use AI effectively and cost-effectively, with the right guardrails, instead of either blindly trusting it or ignoring it completely.
Please get this registered before registration closes so they can get into the next rotation.